Meet the New Boss

It was Monday, and she was due Friday. I assumed she would be late, like most first babies, but I knew time was running out and I had a PhD proposal to turn in and a lot of work left to do. I sent a draft to my advisor saying that I was panicking a bit about the delivery and that I wanted to get him something to look at now, and I would fill in additional sections on Wednesday. Tuesday I spent most of the day revising an article I had contributed to, promising to make additional revisions the next day. Eleanor had other plans.

Around 9:30 Tuesday night, May 1st, I went to bed, but had some cramping. Irregular and mild, they got a little more intense around midnight. I spent the night mostly awake, timing them with an iPhone app, staring at the dog as my point of focus. In the morning Josh woke up and I told him he wasn't going to work. We called the doula around 9:30 and she arrived at 10:30, just as we were about to head to the hospital. It seemed like it was time - they were four minutes apart, but still a bit irregular. Ellen calmed me down.

Our tub was useless - too cramped, not deep enough. The birthing ball was also useless. I spent most of the rest of the morning holding onto the sink or the banister, and focusing on one of Josh's eyes. I was worried it would just go on forever.

Around 2:00 we decided it was time to go - I was starting to feel the baby moving down. I figured I was about 5cm and I was in for a lot more labor at the hospital. Josh grabbed the bag and put down a garbage bag and a small Ikea rug in the backseat; I knelt on the floor of the backseat facing the rear of the car and he drove to the hospital. The whole way I focused on this one dog hair. I was not as affected by the potholes along the way as I feared I would be when we did the dry run. My water broke at Pennsylvania and Fairmount.

At the hospital I was still leaking fluid as I checked in, giving them my social security number between contractions. Multiple times. I just wanted to get into the PETU for evaluation. Signs on the walls said "Quiet hospitals promote healing" and I felt bad but damned if I wasn't going to keep on yelling and moaning from the pain. The midwife checked me out and when she said "you're 9cm" I was so relieved. I figured things would go quickly - she certainly seemed to think so. Josh had left the birth bag in the car and left to go get it. There was some discussion about whether or not to put in an IV, I didn't care. Just put it in.

I walked down to the delivery room, making more of a mess on the way. They had me start pushing on a birthing stool (which didn't seem very effective; I wasn't really feeling a huge urge to push). A couple times my blood pressure went down (or up?) and they had me lay on my left side for a bit. I did some pushing holding onto the end of a length of cloth. An hour passed. They put me on my back and told me to push with my feet up against their hands. Josh, the nurse, and the doula and the midwife all took turns. This didn't seem like the best position for pushing according to my birth classes but here I was, making slow progress. Another hour passed. There were a lot of ice chips. The pushing didn't hurt, but I was exhausted.

I hadn't had any back pain, and the ring of fire the nurse was telling me I was feeling was nothing much either, so I figured she was coming out face down and evenly. They told me they could see her head and I thought I was almost done, but it was another half hour at least before she came flying out, face up, all at once. In two seconds she was on my chest, wailing, pooping and peeing. Josh cut the cord. We decided on her name. I delivered the placenta.

They called in a doctor to do the repair of my third degree tear. I sang as they stitched, sang to Eleanor. Josh held her for a while after they weighed her - 8lbs, 1 oz, not a small baby. The nurses and the midwife kept telling me what an amazing mom I was, what an amazing job I did; it was nice, but I was thinking they must say that to all the women! They're never going to say "you know, that was pretty average."

I called my mom and started crying when I told her how sorry I was for all the pain and suffering I had put her through during labor, and afterwards! They were so shocked to hear that Eleanor was already here, I think we had told them we would try and let them know when things had gotten started. But we weren't thinking of that. We called Josh's parents. They were still stitching me up. Our doula got us started breastfeeding, Eleanor latched on like a champ.

I felt like I had pushed my eyes right out of their sockets. The tissue around them was swollen for days. I just wanted to sleep, but she had to breastfeed every two hours, so the nurses kept bringing her in. In the morning she wouldn't stop crying until the orderly who brought my breakfast leaned over to her saying "Who did this to you, sugar? I'm gonna get 'em, yes I am, you just tell me who did this to you!" My roommate was French and they spoke so softly, and their baby was so quiet. It was their second, and I believe they walked home. I could barely move.

The breastfeeding problems started immediately. She was losing weight and had high bilirubin. We rented a pump from the hospital on Saturday. Her heel was pricked for four days until she turned the corner. I was delirious from lack of sleep and nauseated and ravenous at the same time. Josh made me smoothies and I ate mostly granola bars. My thirst was endless. I'm still not sure how I made it through that period. The first ten days were impossible. Everyone had competing priorities - the lactation consultants wanted me to feed her every two hours; the pediatrician and therapist wanted me to sleep as much as possible, six hours; the doctors/midwives wanted me to find 20 minutes to soak so that my tear would heal, 3 times a day. It did not seem possible, at the time, to do all those things at the same time. I felt bombarded and pulled apart. When we added pumping it got even worse.

Putting together blocks of 3 hours of sleep began to help; my appetite improved by the time my parents arrived, when she was almost two weeks old. I could smile and make a little conversation. The more I was able to sleep the cuter she got. I did not expect to get such a cute baby! She was hairy and jaundiced just like Josh was, but was definitely not an ugly baby. At one point I dissolved into tears, so confused as to how it was possible that she was ours, that she had even come into being. "Where did she come from?" I asked Josh. "It's so amazing, how could it possibly be true?"