Clearing Webs

Phineas's birth story

Well, my youngest son is a year old now and I'm not pregnant. That's right. For a few short months (before Gid's fourth birthday) I have the distinguished pleasure of enjoying a three year old, a two year old and a one year old son. And all this nausea-free! I love this sweet little one year old boy. The mass of sickness and busyness that's kept me from blogging has had me reflective.

A year ago on the 23rd of this month I went into labor around ten at night. I let Andy sleep a little and tried to rest between contractions. Before midnight with Isaac's barely-make-it-to-the-hospital labor still pretty fresh in my mind I decided we should go ahead and make the forty minute trek to the hospital. It was weird to so calmly check into the hospital I'd rushed screaming into a little over a year before. We got a room, they filled the birthing tub and we settled in. I decided I wanted to save the tub until labor got so bad I could hardly handle it anymore. It was a nice room w/a great bed, recliner and couch. In the way labor works these things out the comfy spot my body wanted me to labor in was the bathroom floor. The toilet and tub were too high to lean comfortably on and because of back labor I needed to be in a semi-dog position during contractions. So every two to three minutes for about six hours my wonderful husband lay down on the bathroom floor allowing me to collapse on his back. Now if he were flat on the floor it was too low and if he was fully on his hands and knees it was too high so he had to support all my laboring weight balanced somewhere between the two. Between contractions Andy would give me honey, water and ice and make sure I was going to the bathroom so my bladder wouldn't impede labor progression. I can say that for this, our third labor in less than three years, we'd hit our stride. My husband labored right along with me and was everything I could have needed. Around seven in the morning (I think) I needed to move to the tub. They refilled it with warm water and Andy and I moved the process into the tub. As transition hit the back pain was intense but the water helped the pain a lot. Pretty soon with each contraction my arms and legs would go numb, temporarily paralyzed. I just couldn't control them (I'd had slipped discs the last half of Phin's pregnancy). I was so grateful for Andy in the tub holding my head, helping me stay focused and relaxed. Pretty soon it was obvious I should have been feeling some sort of need to push but was only feeling intense increased pain. My midwife, Margaret, checked me again and called for the fetal heart monitor. They raised my belly out of the tub and got a reading on his heart rate. Somewhere around this time Margaret explained Phineas appeared to be in a facial presentation. What she didn't explain was that facing one way there was no choice but cesarean. Facing the other way there was a chance of vaginal delivery. When they got Phin's heart rate they called for the ultrasound machine. They didn't tell us exactly what they saw but the nurses got very busy and one kept asking Margaret if she should go get the doctor who was on call. Margaret told me I'd have to get out of the tub, she was going to try to turn Phin. At this point I couldn't use my legs so they ended up pretty much carrying me to the bed. Well, God was feeling good about no C-section for us and turned Phin around on the five foot trip from tub to bed. Phin's heart rate was looking poor and they called the resuscitation team to come in on standby. At that point my body just wasn't working. I was sending it all the signals to move and to push but it just wasn't working right. Despite not being able to walk minutes earlier I felt certain if I could just squat everything would be okay. I kept asking Margaret to please let me squat. She was so good with me. "Let's get through this next contraction first." She kept calmly putting me off instead of telling me how crazy that idea was under the circumstances. I'm not sure exactly what all Margaret did but she reached in for Phin, turning and manipulating. She pushed on my stomach and urged me to get him out quickly. His head finally emerged which is then usually followed by one more push and the rush of the baby's body following. But sweet Phin didn't do that. I couldn't control my legs or arms, my body wasn't doing what I told it to and pushing seemed literally impossible. I didn't think I had anything left in me. I kid you not I had visions of walking around for the rest of my life with that poor boy's head out and the rest of his body just stuck there. "Hi, I'm Lynn and this may be a little awkward but this is my son Phineas." After further urging Phin did fully emerge scary, bruised and blue with a face the shape of a football. I'm not talking the long vertical football head a lot of babies get. I'm talking a blue horizontal squooshed football head. There was much patting and rubbing and suctioning but within a couple minutes I had him in my arms and was nursing him. I was exhausted. Margaret summed it up, "That was a tough one." And yeah, it's trite, but I'd go through every bit of it again. I love you, Phin.