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A very fast labor for a first time mom, rushing to deliver at a birth center in Texas she has been planning on delivering at instead of delivering on the side of the road.

December 18, 2003

I always knew I wanted to have a natural, out-of-hospital birth, but when I found out I was pregnant there were NO midwives in north LA where I live. The closest one I could locate was in lake charles...way too far away. I called every hospital, clinic, and physician finder in the phone book, and they all thought I was crazy for wanting a natural birth and had no idea where I could find a midwife (fortunately there are midwives here now...see annie's midwives page for contact info). I spent weeks making phone calls and searching the internet for midwives' listings. I located a few in east texas, about an hour/hour-and-a-half drive from where I live in LA. I interviewed a couple and settled on a gentle, practical, natural-minded, experienced midwife who quickly became a friend. At the time she was working on getting a LA license in addition to her texas license, but the paperwork was still processing, so I would not be able to have a home-birth unless I moved to texas(which we actually considered!). But she had a nice birth center, and i could have my baby there. The only thing was I'd have to drive an hour-and-a-half once I went into labor. It wasn't ideal, but it was a good solution, and I was comfortable taking responsibilty in the event something unplanned came up.

I had a lot of morning sickness, but other than that I enjoyed a strong healthy pregnancy, and I worked full-time all the way through...in fact I called in to work the day I gave birth. Toward the end of my pregnancy i could tell things were happening. I felt like I was laboring slowly for about 2 weeks, and I told the midwife that when I finally went into labor, I'd already be mostly there. She agreed that what I was feeling was progress, but she didn't really seem to believe me that things were going to happen quickly. Maybe she was just downplaying it because she didn't want to set me up for disappointment. But I knew. I knew what my body was doing, and I knew it was going to be a fast labor.

So a few days before I went into labor I went into work when a coworker anounced that her roommate had been diagnosed with the flu. I couldn't believe it, i was 9 months pregnant and exposed to the flu. Sure enough, three days later I was sick. I had a prenatal appointment that day which would've required driving to her office, so i called the midwife to reschedule. She felt like I prolly wouldn't go into labor when I was sick, but after I got better things might start happening. but things already had been happening. The next day was a tuesday and I woke up feeling really good and proceeded to start nesting. I had miniblinds laid out in the front yard scrubbing them with a brush, I was rearranging furniture...it was crazy. My neighbor came out of her house to ask me how far dilated I was! I thought maybe I didn't have the flu after all. About 1:00 that night I got up to pee and my water broke. At first I wasn't sure because I'd never had my water break before, but I eventually figured it out and called the midwife. She asked about contractions which at that point I wasn't having any at all. So she suggested I go back to bed and get some rest and that I should call her when I'd been having regular contractions for an hour. I took a little time to enjoy the quiet of the night, I ate some chicken and rice, I tried to finish packing my bag. And then I woke my husband to let him know what was going on. An hour later I called her because as soon as I hung up the phone the contractions started and they were regular. At that point she said that it was good I was having regular contractions and I probably had a good DAY's worth of labor ahead of me (I still laugh about that), and that she didn't want me to drive over too early in my labor because driving can sometimes slow things down, so she wanted a good labor pattern established, and I should call her when my contractions were less than 5 minutes apart and consistantly 1 minute long. By this point it was getting intense and I had my husband up and timing. Pretty soon they were 3 or 4 minutes apart and around 45 seconds to a minute long. I got in a hot shower to get more comfortable. Well, by this point I was starting to question whether I could keep this up for the better part of a day, because things were getting really intense. I know now that at this point I was already in the transition stage. I was in the shower about 10 minutes before my husband says, "when were we supposed to call the midwife?" I said, "when they're at least a minute long" he said, "that one was 2m 45s". And the next one was 3 minutes and so was the next one. In a matter of about ten minutes they jumped from 45 seconds long to 3 minutes! So he calls the poor sleep-deprived midwife who tells us it's time to come NOW. Well, it took 45 minutes just to get in the car, because by this point I

can't even sit up during a contraction and they're coming every minute or so. So I turn off the water, hit the floor, have a contraction. Get out of the shower, hit the floor, have a contraction. Get a towel, hit the floor, have a contraction. Dry one leg, hit the floor, have a contraction.

Meanwhile my poor husband's running around trying to get everything in the car, and I'm still thinking I'll be in labor all day, so I'm sending him to fetch snacks and juice and stuff. Finally I manage to inch my way to the back seat of my mother-in-law's 2 door honda civic (we both were driving 2 seater cars at that time so we had to borrow the civic). We get down to the end of our driveway when my husband realizes he forgot his glasses, so while he runs inside, I take a quick inventory. Let me just interject that i have never felt so alert and in control. I knew things were moving very fast, but I was so confident in my body, that I wasn't worried or scared at all. It all felt very instinctual and primal. I felt like my body knew what to do, and I was comfortable, in fact empowered...it was a very surreal feeling. And I knew exactly what was going on around me the whole time. I had super acute senses, it was amazing. I just have to say that this was one of the coolest things about having an unmedicated birth. So while he's in the house I note that it's 4:06 am and we have a quarter of a tank of gas, and we have a 115 mile drive to get to the birth center.

So we take off like a bat out of hell. We hit the interstate going about 90 the whole way, and about the time we got to the outskirts of town.........a cop pulls us over. He says, "I pulled you over because I wanted to talk to you about your speed back there" and my husband says (and I KNOW men dream about saying this), "I'm sorry officer, my wife's in labor and we're trying to get to our midwife." Now i'm not just in the beginning stages of labor and heading to the hospital...noooo, I'm in sweaty, heaving, sho'-nuff by-God LABOR about to deliver a baby in the back seat. The cop takes one look at me and says, "go, go" and pats the roof of the car. He ended up escorting us to the state line. No other cops stopped us so we kinda think he may have radioed ahead of us. My husband's being so loving and supportive from up in the front seat, but there's only so much he can do to comfort me when he's driving 95 down the highway on the phone in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, in the back seat, I'm having a hard time getting comfortable...or at least getting not uncomfortable. I can't sit up, but I'm so thirsty, so in the 15 second break I get between contractions I'm trying to drink water sideways laying down. About the time we get half way there I HAVE to push. My husband calls my brother who's a firefighter/emt who I can hear laughing at me because I'm yelling and cussing at this point. He tells me to not push, which just makes me laugh in between expletives. Fireman matt suggests maybe we should find a hospital in the next town. I really really didn't want to do that and said I'd rather have the baby on the side of the highway. We had already agreed that if it came to that, as long as the baby was fine, we would just wrap up the baby and keep going to the midwife's birth center. I was an emt too at that time, so i felt like i could tell if the baby was ok or not. I didn't want to involve 911 because they would want to take me to the hospital and I'd be admitted for three days and the whole schmeer. So we were prepared to sign a refusal of treatment in the event we ended up on the side of the road and some trucker called 911. Anyway, after talking to my brother, my husband calls the midwife who can also hear me yelling in the back seat (man, it was so empowering to yell). She thinks we can make it if I try to "breathe through the contractions". I tell her, or rather, bark between contactions, "CAN'T NOT PUSH". So she says to do short grunting pushes instead of long ones. At this point my husband keeps telling me we're almost there forgetting that i have the senses of a superhero. I know exactly where we are, I know who he's talking to and what they're saying, I know where orion is in the sky, and I know that it feels really good to push and i don't want to do little "short grunting pushes". We got to the birth center on fumes, we briefly considered stopping for gas, but we didn't want the birth certificate to say our son was born at the Racetrack on I-20. Instead we ran every light in town, and took our chances. We finally get to the birth center at 6:05 am. The midwife says she's never found a client in such a funny position. I'm laying face down on the seat kinda with one knee on the seat and one knee on the floorboard and I'm hanging onto the back of the seat. She grabs my arm to help me out of the car saying she can't deliver my baby in the car. I can only tell her, "I can't". She then goes into a schpiel listing the reasons why I need to get out of the car, and I'm trying to come up with a single word that says "I KNOW I need to get out of the car, but I'm in the middle of a contraction and I can't move right this second so stop pulling on my &I#&**^%$%#@%&^ arm." Finally i squeak out, "wait." She understands, and tells me she'll help me when i'm ready. Once that contraction was over i didn't wait for anyone to help me. I jumped out of the car, ran into the birth center, and up the stairs. I remember asking her which room she wanted me in, but I didn't wait for her answer, I just picked one. I think my husband ran to catch up with me, and I remember smiling when he took my arm, but I didn't wait for him to keep up. I'm flinging off clothes the whole way and I manage to dive into the bed naked as the next contraction hit. I landed on my side which was how I was trying to be when I was in the car. The midwife had a pot of hot water ready (they really do boil water when the woman is in labor) and she used warm compresses to help things go easier. Being on your side is certainly an acceptable position to deliver in, in fact it has some advantages...but I remember at one point the midwife suggested I try squatting instead to help the baby move down a little easier. It just seemed like so much effort to try to get up at that point and I really didn't feel like doing it, so I just went ahead and pushed him out with the next contraction. When the baby was being born, the midwife maneuvered his head and shoulders, but she wanted me to deliver him. So she told me to take my baby. I thought she was handing him to me, but when I grabbed him, he wasn't all the way born yet. I said. "he's still in me!" She laughed and said, "i know, you need to deliver him." I swear at that moment he heard my voice, held his head up and looked me dead in the eyes. So I grabbed my baby, pushed again and pulled him right up onto my chest. My husband was sitting on the bed behind me supporting my head and shoulders, so there we were already snuggled up together the three of us right at the moment of his birth. The baby only cried for a minute or two and was immediately comforted on my chest. When I delivered the placenta my husband cut the cord. Let me just add here, that I hate those stupid plastic umbilical clamps they use in the hospital. They're bright yellow and they get in the way and they look like perm rods. I had mentioned that to my midwife, turns out she hates them too so she used a little tiny rubber band made for that purpose. It's a dark brown color so it matches the cord when it's dried. My midwife waited to do all the weighing and stuff until we'd had a little time together. She made sure the baby and I were both ok and then stepped out of the room. She sat right outside of the door so if we needed her she could hear us, but she wanted us to have some time alone. We cuddled and nursed (my little hoover took to the breast right away), and she drew up a nice warm herbal bath for the baby and me. After about 30 minutes I got up and WALKED to the bathtub. The warm bath was very comforting for the baby. He went right to sleep. My husband sat on the edge of the tub and called the family, and we relaxed and enjoyed the fumes from the herbs. The winter sun had risen and was coming in through the bathroom window. After we got dried off she weighed and measured and examined the baby on the bed right beside me. She never took him away from me, and she explained everything she was looking for during the examination. Then my husband and the baby snuggled on the couch while she patched me up and showed me the placenta (which is now planted under the fig tree in our yard). We rested for a couple of hours, and around 11 am we drove through schlotzky's, got a sandwich, put some gas in the car, and went home.

My firstborn arrived at 6:22 am on wednesday, december 18, 2003. He was 7lbs, 12oz and 21 1/2 inches long. My whole labor was less than 5 hours. Next time i swear i'm not leaving my house. And it turns out i did have the flu.

Oh, and having experienced birth without pain relief, I would not ask for it next time. In fact I can't imagine being numb and immobile and missing out on the sensations that were part of that special moment when he was born. I do have to admit, though that it would have been nice to have the freedom to try the nice midwife tricks like changing positions and sitting in the hot tub and having a massage and using the birthing ball and all that. It was very painful, but not at all traumatic. It wasn't like being in a car wreck or breaking your leg. It was powerful and amazing and healthy and spiritual. It was raw and real...it was blood, water, sweat, nakedness.......it was intense and messy and EXACTLY what i hoped for.

-Jennifer