Jon and I waited for labor to start from about week 38 onward. We both knew it could come at any time, especially since our baby was getting so big. There were tell-tale signs that things were progressing, including two trips to the hospital with us thinking that things were starting, but baby was comfortable in there and didn’t actually want to come out. In the last week, I was getting Braxton hicks contractions every night, and during our 39 week checkup, we set an induction date for Tues, Oct. 23rd. This was two days before the due date.
The weekend before that, our city, Kokura had a big food
festival. Jon and I wandered about,
taking photos, enjoying the warm sunny weather, seeing a robot serve ice cream,
and eating. I wanted to get lots of
“last” photos of Jon and me as a family of only two before the big day.
Monday night we went out to eat giant cheeseburgers and walked home in the rain. One last night out, eating greasy food and taking a long walk in the cool weather before we’d have to worry about keeping a little baby warm and in bed at night.
Tuesday morning we slept in a bit and went to the hospital
at 10:30. I had an initial exam with two
doctors, our personal doctor, Imai, who we had been meeting with the whole
time, and one older doctor that we saw a few times in periphery and didn’t know
very well. Dr. Imai explained that the plan
was for us to register, settle in our room, and she would give me three pills
that would start to soften my cervix and get my body ready for labor. We’d relax and I’d spend the night in the
hospital, but labor wouldn’t actually begin until the next day when I would get
an IV of pitocin to start contractions. At this point, the older doctor joked that
I’d probably just go into labor this afternoon without any help. We asked, “really?” Dr. Imai answered, “maybe….” doubtfully. However, this is the same lady that told us
for weeks the gender of our baby, prefaced with a “maybe.” When Jon asked what percent she was sure of the gender, she said, “maybe 100%.” So, maybe
her “maybes” don’t mean maybe.
Jon and I had packed lots of things to do, a pack of cards,
books, Japanese textbooks, and balloons to decorate the room. I expected to be in the hospital about a
week, between the extra day before labor and five days after, so Jon made the
room look festive. The nurses loved it. I was the only lady in the maternity ward, so
I had a private room, although the room farthest from the nurses station. I don’t know if I was alone because Japan’s
birth rate really is that low, or Oct. isn’t a popular time to have a baby, or
because most women have their babies in specialized birthing clinics or all
three, but even with so few patients, there were always about seven nurses working.
I took my three pills, beginning at about noon, and soon
afterwards they hooked me up to a fetal monitor.
Jon kept asking me what my pain level was out of a 10. I had a hard time answering him because I
didn’t know what a 10 was, so I kept low-balling my numbers…..”I don’t know a
3?” 45 minutes later, as I gasped and
stopped talking for a particularly long contraction, I said, “4? Maybe?”
Jon got a little frustrated with me and told me, “Now’s not the time to
be tough! You have to be honest and tell
me if it hurts so we can tell the nurses!”
Little did we know my level of toughness…
A little while later,
I had an exam and I was dilated to 3 cm, so I walked from my room to the
laboring room. At this point (around 5:00) I started really
feeling a lot of pain. I had initially
insisted on having an epidural, but these past few months had been reading more
about them and had toyed around with the idea of going natural.
I mean, I am a pretty tough person. I’ve always been active and I’ve had my share
of bumps and bruises and falls from horses, kicks from horses, bites from
horses….a lot of horse induced pain, actually.
And what is pain, I mean, really?
It’s just in your head. It can’t really be that bad. My body would produce chemicals to help me deal
with it. Besides, I half-assed learning
some breathing and relaxation techniques and this past month I’d been massaging
and stretching out….
----------------------------------------------------spoiler
alert---------------------------------------------
Labor is gross and here is where the descriptions get pretty
graphic. Please stop reading if you’re
not interested in the particulars.
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…my perineum, so I was pretty prepared to push this baby out
like a champ. Well, as it turns out I’M the baby and a chump to boot. I don’t know what idiot impulse made me
think I was so tough and impervious to pain.
I’ve never broken a major bone, I’ve barely had any stitches, I cried
when I stubbed my toe just a few months ago, and I used to take medicine for
MENSTRUAL pain, for God ’s sake. I’m the
epitome of a soft, sheltered, modern woman.
From 5 till 7, I kneeled or laid on the bed in the labor
room. At some point during those hours,
my water broke, but I don’t have any recollection of that because I was pretty
busy throwing up, crying, and asking Jon when the doctor was going to get there
and give me the epidural. During that
time, I was out of my mind, and I only remember snippets here and there. Jon rubbed my back and told me how great I
was doing and that the doctors were on their way to the hospital and I’d get my
epidural soon.
At some point I moved (was moved? I don’t remember) to the
actual delivery bed and the doctor tried to get me to roll up in a ball on my
side so he could put the epidural in my spine.
Laying still on my side, rolled in a ball, dilated to 5 cm, I learned
what a 10 feels like. Now I know.
Jon distracted me by talking about our little T-Rex and how
we were going to be a family soon. He
tried to get me talking to distract me, but I was distracted by the doctor
explaining that he was going to inject a little local anesthesia before placing
the epidural in my spine. Are you
kidding me? Did he honestly think that I
cared one shit about a huge needle going directly into my spine at this
point? Did he think I could even feel anything besides the contractions? I cared more about the ten extra
seconds it was taking him to fuss around with the local anesthesia, than any
pain from getting that needle in.
After the epidural was in and a few minutes passed, the pain
started to subside and I immediately fell asleep. It takes a lot out of you to be in pain and
(so Jon tells me) scream and throw up for two hours. I woke up a while later to hear Jon out in
the hallway on the phone with our parents telling them that everything was
going fine and that I was resting and he’d call again when the baby came. Jon came back in and read to me from a baby
book for a while and we took some photos until around 10 when it was time to
push.
Dr. Imai arrived at this point and I was dilated to 10 cm. I thought it was pretty funny that the nurses were all wearing scrubs, masks, and hats, but both doctors had strolled in wearing their street clothes and simply put on gloves. At this point, Jon was holding my hand by my side, there were about six nurses surrounding my bed and both doctors looking inside me. The epidural had worn off and I was feeling a lot of pain again and they told me to start pushing the baby out. They said it might be a little harder than normal because the baby had twisted and wasn’t facing the optimal direction, but that everything would still be fine and start pushing!
I don’t think I did a
very good job pushing the baby out. I
didn’t know which muscles to use to push right, I got discouraged because I
didn’t think I was being effective, I didn’t push in the right intervals, and I
didn’t push strong enough. I tried, but
it was really hard, the doctors kept telling me to push for longer intervals
and then rest for longer intervals to be more effective, but I kept pushing for
a short time and getting exhausted and resting, then trying to push again right
away. I tried to tune everyone out
except Jon and only listen to what he was telling me to do, especially because
the nurses were getting really annoying.
One kept shouting, “Last push!
Last push!” right in my ear, but she started shouting it after about 20
minutes and it would be 45 minutes before my actual last push, so that got old
fast.
At one point I looked down and I was just struck by what an
absurd spectacle this whole thing was.
The 6 nurses surrounding the bed, the two doctors in casual clothes, in
fact, I could see an open pack of cigarettes in the older doctor’s front pocket
right then. Imai was telling me, “As soon as possible, longer!” Jon was translating it to mean, “Push as long
as you can!!” What was going on? I
started getting confused again and I don’t remember very much more until I saw
the doctor pulling out a long tube with a suction cup on one end of it. I knew immediately what that was. Jon noticed that I saw it and told me not to worry
about anything except pushing, one last long push to get the baby out. I focused on Jon’s face and pushed and didn’t
stop until someone attacked me and knocked the wind out of me.
As I tried to get some breath back in me, I saw that Dr. Imai
had jumped on a stool and was doing sharp, deep, compressions on my
stomach. They were so strong to
completely make me lose my breath each time.
She was helping push the baby out from the top, two nurses were pulling
on each side of my vagina to open it up wider, the other doctor was pulling on
the baby’s head with the vacuum, and I was pushing as hard as I could and
finally T-Rex came out, after about an hour of pushing. I was scared at first because she didn’t cry
for about a minute, but everything was fine and they plopped her on my chest
after she let out a healthy scream.
I couldn’t believe it.
I just kept saying to Jon, “Jon!
Our baby. Our baby, our
baby. Oh, she’s our baby, baby.” I was so shocked by her. I can see now how tiny she is, but at the
time I just kept thinking how sturdy and big she was. Had she really been inside of me just a
minute ago? Had I really pushed her
outside of me?
The doctors took her away and cleaned her up and did a few
tests and Jon told me how good I did. I
had torn pretty badly, so they started stitching me up while Jon stayed with
the baby. Finally, I was sewn up and
Jon and I could have some time with our baby.
At this point some nurse started explaining to Jon the schedule for the
week, of baby’s shots, my checkups, classes on giving the baby a bath,
etc. If I could go back in time, this is
the one thing I would change (besides pushing baby out more effectively). I mean, our baby was an hour old and she
thought the most important thing for us to do was talk about the schedule for
three days later? We should have shooed
her away.
I had lost a lot of blood, and was still bleeding a lot, so
I stayed in the labor room that night to be closer to the nurse’s station. Jon stayed with me for a few more hours as we
called our parents and finally it was time for him to go home around 3:00 or
4:00. The next morning I was able to
walk down to my room and it was pretty rough.
I was barely able to make it to my bed before
fainting. The night before the nurses
had mentioned that it might not be healthy for me to feed our baby the next day
because of the amount of blood I lost, so I was nervous that that would still
be the case. However, after breakfast
and an hour more of rest, I was ready to walk down to the nursery and was able to feed our
baby girl.
Jon arrived at the hospital soon after and we spent the whole day together as a family of three.
Jon arrived at the hospital soon after and we spent the whole day together as a family of three.
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