The evening wore on, approaching midnight. There was still just a stubborn lip of cervix impeding the baby’s progress. The midwife would check every couple of hours and tell me that it was a little softer, or a little thinner, but hour after hour, endlessly, it was still there. I still hadn’t really felt anything I recognized as a need to push, either. At some point earlier in the evening I sort of felt like maybe pushing sounded like a good idea, but I wasn’t even sure what it would mean, because my body wasn’t telling it to me, just my mind. I had tried pushing as the midwife tucked the lip out of the way (an extremely awkward arrangement), but it just pulled down with the baby’s head, so we gave up on that for the time.
Finally, at some point late, late in the evening, maybe even after midnight, the third midwife came. At this point I was completely shut off from all sense and reason by each contraction, letting my body do whatever it wanted to ameliorate the pain to the greatest degree possible (which was usually rocking while on my knees, but sometimes standing and squatting vigorously up and down to distract myself). I was slowly beginning to feel the need to go to the bathroom again, but this time a #2. I felt it there, but it didn’t want to come out. I went a couple of times to the bathroom to sit and wait to feel it descend to the point that I could push it out, but it never did. Finally I gave up on getting it out before the baby came and decided it would just have to come out at the same time. (I didn’t realize until way after the fact that it was the baby. I will have to remember that sensation for next time.)
The third midwife had brought with her a birthing stool. It was low and horse-shoe shaped, about 8 or 12 inches off the ground. It would provide support if you sat on it in a deep squat. We decided to try it and this third midwife (who was the oldest and most experienced of the three) sat on the edge of the bed and I sat in front of her on the stool. I was able to lean back against her for support and was cradled between her knees. I’m not sure where my husband was at this point, but I heard later that they had sent him to the other room to get some rest.
As the first contraction hit while I was on the stool, all of the blindingly unbearable pain of sitting during the contraction overwhelmed me and I stood up to run away. The midwife behind me literally grabbed me and forced me back down on to the stool. She whispered to me, “Let the pressure go all the way down.” Hearing through my pain-blurred senses, all I could assume was that this was an instruction of how make the hurting stop without standing up. I focused all the energy I could muster into imagining the entire force of the contraction concentrated at the top of my womb and slowly falling down, off, out the bottom.
I imagined this over and over, blocking everything else out—the pain, my surroundings, the people in the room—until the contraction had passed. I dealt with contraction after contraction like this, squeezing the midwife’s hands and pushing back into her, grasping at this visualization as my only hope of staying put during each wave of pain. I know at some point Kevin came back in the room, and I vaguely thought that he should be sitting behind me to help me, but I didn’t suggest it and I didn’t really want it because the experienced midwife that was there was doing such a good job.
Finally as I caught my breath between contractions I stopped to ask my midwife, who was on her knees down between my feet, “Should I be pushing now?” She laughed as she looked up at me and smiled, “Honey, that’s what you’ve been doing.” I was dumbstruck. I had no idea that what that was. In fact, the last I knew there was still a lip of cervix that wouldn’t let the baby’s head come through. But apparently the position my body was brought into by the birthing stool was exactly what I needed to open up the right way. After that, dealing with the contractions was easier. As I focused on the baby coming, coming, closer and closer, I don’t know if the pain of each contraction lessened, but I noticed it less. My midwife knelt in front of me massaging my perineum and vagina with oil while midwife #2 held a flashlight in the darkened room.
Finally they said there way a patch of hair showing and they invited me to feel it. Everything down there felt equally slimy and hairy to me, so I couldn’t tell what was what. The adjusted a tall a mirror that was in the room so I could see the area and I was shocked and excited by the dark black patch in the middle of all the red (I am a redhead).
Progress in pushing was very slow, but came steadily. No one remembers what time I started pushing (I don’t even remember starting to push), but at about 1:30 am, nearly 2 full days after the onset of labor, I pushed that little head all the way out (I was finally into it by that point). I stopped pushing as the contraction ended and his head was fully out, but he just kept coming without my help and slipped right out into my midwife’s hands.
They wrapped him in a clean towel and laid him on my bare belly. I didn’t notice the afterbirth because the pain in my back stopped as soon as he came out, and by comparison everything else was negligible. When it did come, they wrapped the placenta in an absorbent bed-liner pad and tucked it inside the towel with the baby. They let me snuggle my son as long as I wanted. All I can remember as I continued leaning back against the midwife with my husband close by, taking pictures, was whispering over and over to my son, “I’m not having a contraction. I’m not going to have another contraction,” with near delirious pleasure. It was the best news I could think of to share with him at the time.
