The Drama of Ewan’s Emergence

Well, if you read the previous post, you’ll know what my very long labor experience was like when I had Isaac. I did not like the whole clinical, bed-bound ordeal so I decided to go more natural with my second baby, Ewan. I didn’t want the typical hospital experience, so I chose a birth center instead. Not only did I choose a birth center, I chose The Birth Centre — an incredible private midwifery service in Tooting, south of the Thames, but still part of London. Yes, Ewan was born in Tooting. You may laugh now.

So, before baby #2 arrived, I jumped wholeheartedly into the natural birth preparations. Homeopathy! Aromatherapy! Birth pool! Classical music! I was up for almost anything that would make for a great natural birth. I even tried a little yoga, but I drew the line at hypno-birthing. I am not down with that kind of thing. I was particularly enamored of the birth pool idea; I bought a whole book about it and made sure my midwives knew I was into it. I also got a crazy striped two-piece maternity swimsuit to wear in the birth pool. Luckily, they had birthing pools at The Birth Centre, so at least I didn’t have to rent one.

I wasn’t sure if I could really handle a natural birth, but I knew one thing for sure–I really did not want to give birth in a hospital again. Ack. That last experience was so icky –no modesty, no dignity, no control. I also decided I didn’t want to give birth in at home–and I figured the landlady wouldn’t be too pleased if I tried to deliver a baby in her flat. The Birth Centre was the perfect happy medium between a home birth and a hospital birth–and it was next door to a hospital…just in case.

The best thing about The Birth Centre was I had two awesome midwives–Debbie and Natalie. They alternated visits to me and both were consummate professionals as well as warm and friendly. And hey, I just got to use the word consummate in a sentence.

I was all ready. Books read, homeopathy kit and aromatherapy stuff bought, bags packed. We’d arranged a ride and babysitting for Isaac. However, Ewan wasn’t ready to come. His due date came and went. Everyone knows the due date is just a guideline and not set in stone, but it’s still hard to accept when you’re still massively pregnant past the date. I was truly enormous, and sick and tired of being truly enormous. I did my best to kick-start his arrival. I was desperate to bust that puppy out, let me tell you. I was drinking raspberry leaf tea and taking evening primrose oil capsules. I don’t even remember exactly what those did, though, but it was supposed to be something fabulous. I took walks until I could barely waddle down the street at a snail’s pace. I can’t tell you how much chicken curry I ate. It seems like we had hot curry dishes almost every night for a week hoping Ewan would get the hint. My friend Audra told me her sister bumped down the stairs on her bottom to speed her baby’s arrival, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that.

Oh, and the worst part–Isaac came down with chicken pox just after the due date. So we had to double-check that the family who would be looking after him had already had their round of the disease. Poor little guy. His worst night was the night we were in labor.

Finally–bam–contractions started at 10 p.m. on Monday night, the 25th of July. Brian was in the living room on a conference call for work. I was lying in bed reading when I started feeling something. I started talking to Ewan–”Yo, dude, is that you? Does this mean you’re coming or is this another false alarm?” (I’d already called the midwives for some false starts in the last couple weeks.) I started watching the clock. Tick tock tick tock. And I was pretty sure, so I went to the living room and started signaling to Brian that it was time. He eventually got off the phone and urged me to call the midwives. I waited until I was 100% sure the contractions were for real. The midwives said to meet them at The Birth Centre. And there was much rejoicing!

My friend Lucia came for Isaac (and the poor little thing had chicken pox)and took him home for the night. I put on my TENS machine (I’d explain it but it would be exceptionally boring–you just need to know it helps the pain with electrical pulses or something) and wore it in the mini-cab on the way to the birth center. We got to the birth center at about 2:30 a.m., and we started unpacking all my special little helps. Brian put some music in the CD player and we had a few hours of mild labor. Boring. I spent some time in a birthing pool, but when I got in the water, it slowed my contractions dramatically, so I had to get out again. (Somewhere on my computer I have a picture of me in that birth pool, if I haven’t deleted it already, but I’m not about to post it here–yikes, scary.) My labor progressed best when I knelt on the floor and embraced a birthing ball. I never expected to be the kind of woman who would spend her labor on the floor hugging a ball, but yep, that actually is the kind of woman I am.

Brian was supremely helpful by rubbing my back as I hugged the ball. Then my midwife Debbie decided labor was progressing too slowly, so she told me I had two choices. I could just rest a while, maybe sleep a bit, or I could have her break my waters. No way was I going to suffer through another insufferably long labor like the one I’d had with Isaac, so I asked her to break the waters. So at 6:45 a.m. I had to lie down on the floor. As I arranged myself I saw the instrument she was about to use–it looked exactly like a wickedly long and pointy crochet hook. Yowza. That was a bit daunting, but I tried not to think about it. I’ll skip the ugly details and assure you that it worked. Debbie was really gentle and reassuring, and Brian held my hand, so it wasn’t too bad.

It amazed me how quickly this trick worked. Soon the contractions were dramatically more painful and effective and labor began to really progress. Holy cow did it ever progress. I tried the birthing pool again (I really wanted to actually deliver in the water). I also tried some Entonox, (50% oxygen and 50% nitrous oxide given through a rubber facemask). I don’t know how to describe its effects and at the time I couldn’t decide whether it was working and whether I liked it. It made me feel light-headed, woozy, and sleepy but I couldn’t tell if that gave me any pain relief or if it was just annoying enough to distract me from the pain a little. It wasn’t making me as spacey as whatever they gave me during my labor with Isaac, but I hated the lack of control and sleepiness. I finally tossed aside the Entonox and got out of the pool. All I wanted to do was to get back on the floor and embrace my beloved birthing ball.

Finally we were speeding along. At 8:30 a.m. I was experiencing pain on a whole new level. It was no longer localized in the womb. I felt like it was overtaking my entire body and eating away at my soul. Perhaps you think I’m melodramatic, but if you’ve been there you’ll know it’s no exaggeration. The ear-splitting screams were of mythic proportion. Just like with Isaac, I got very weepy and told Brian I just couldn’t do it. I was fantasizing about dragging my gargantuan shuddering carcass across the street to the hospital for an epidural but in retrospect I’m sure I was too far along to do that. At that point I was standing leaning heavily on Brian and shrieking as the contractions hit me one after another. Brian continued to reassure me–making me look in his eyes as he told me that I could do it. His most effective encouragement was
reminding me that I’d said if Kendra could do it, so could I. (Kendra is my older sister who delivered both her boys naturally.) I was a bit irritated by the reminder, but it helped steel my resolve.

My midwife Natalie gave me some stuff from my homeopathy kit (“Were those just placebos?” I wondered) and encouraged me. For a few minutes she had me sit on the birthing ball and face her, and she held my hands and encouraged me to breathe through the pain. It sounds a bit odd, perhaps, but that did help. I focused on Natalie and slowed my breath instead of just crying. It was very calming (though I did not become completely calm).

Natalie then urged me to try walking around a bit, though for some reason I felt glued to the birthing ball. Finally I got up, with Brian’s help, and we walked out into the hall, but we didn’t make it far as more hideous, deathly contractions slammed into me. I hurried (as much as I could hurry in that state) back into the birthing room and fell back onto the birthing ball, clutching it as if it was a lifeline. Soon after (at about 9:10 a.m.) I began to feel the urge to push. This was a new feeling since I hadn’t felt it with Isaac’s birth, but it was an undeniable compulsion. Brian later told me he realized birth must be imminent as Natalie began to prepare by getting out a towel and other paraphernalia, but she didn’t say anything. I think she just knew how to read my screams. Indeed, just before she began to prepare, I began to feel like I would push soon. We didn’t discuss it at all, though I may have screamed something about wanting to push after we started to move. I have to tell you that even in the midst of all that, I was feeling some sort of cosmic connection to my womanhood. Cool. As Natalie prepared I scrambled around trying to decide what position to take–finally I got back on all fours embracing the birthing ball again. Brian went in front of the ball and supported me from there.

The next hour seemed to last for several hours. I only realized later, as I read over the midwives’ birth notes, that it was only an hour. I leaned over the ball grasping Brian and screaming as if I’d lost my senses (which I had at that point). As I pushed I felt a strange horrible stinging sensation, but the midwives explained that was normal and that I needed to push through that feeling. At 9:40, Natalie started saying she could see the head and everyone kept telling me we were “almost there” but I just kept screaming and pushing. Finally, at 10:07 a.m., I actually felt a release with a huge stinging push and baby Ewan was slipping out–Natalie was there to catch him.

Then everything became really horrible. I expected her to hand Ewan to me between my legs so I could see him but instead I realized it was eerily silent. Finally I looked behind me, and my baby was lying quiet and still on the floor and his skin was blue. Literally blue–like the sky is blue. To be honest, he looked dead–I was terrified. The midwives were very busy trying to get him to breathe, sometimes blocking my view so that I wasn’t sure what was going on. Also, I had taken off my glasses so I couldn’t even see him or what was happening clearly. They were giving Ewan oxygen and then suddenly paramedics were rushing in the room (only 5 minutes after his birth) and soon they took him away to the hospital. Brian and another midwife, Rachel, went with him. The other midwives then explained to me that Ewan had been born with the cord tight around his neck–apparently a more common occurence than I had thought.

Meanwhile, my midwives continued to take care of me and clean me up. I can’t emphasize enough how incredible Debbie and Natalie were. They were phenomenal. I was shaking from shock and from an injection given to deliver the placenta. I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening and I felt so cold (though it was a hot July day). At this point, the midwives explained that when Ewan was born the umbilical cord was wrapped tight around his neck, so he couldn’t start to breathe. Fortunately his heart rate never faltered–it was fine when they monitored shortly before delivery and still fine after.

As I was changing into some clean clothes, the midwives got a call from Rachel at the hospital–Ewan was now “pink and screaming”. It was the best news I’d ever heard. Soon after another ambulance arrived to take us to the hospital to be with the baby. I managed to hobble slowly down the stairs and walk the few yards to the ambulance outside. Unbelievable to me that I was able to do that so soon after the birth. Luckily the hospital was a very short drive and when we arrived we were told Ewan was doing well and they put me in a wheelchair and took me to him. Finally, an hour after his birth, I was able to hold my sweet baby–who, by the way, weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs. 11 oz. No wonder it felt like that….

We stayed in the hospital for 48 hours so they could observe Ewan. The horror of the English hospital experience is something for a whole different blog. For now, suffice it to say that I shared a room with three other women and their babies, and I called one of the midwives in the ward The Nazi Midwife (but never to her face). Finally we got to take our healthy baby home and introduce him to his pox-ridden brother. Now I’m a mother of two. Wow.