Joey Came in the Early Afternoon

First off, thanks, everyone. =) Now that he’s born, I’m going to call the kiddo Joey on the blog, in keeping with my “children are animals” theme; he’s awful’ long, with huge feet, just like a baby kangaroo. Let me tell you what happened!

Friday night I took castor oil—I actually tried this with Cricket, went into labor the next day, and then labored for 2.5 days. This time I had a predictably unpleasant Friday night, then woke up at 9:32 on Saturday with painful contractions. For whatever reason, my biggest concern was crying wolf . . . so I emailed a few family members and friends, saying things like “Well, I can’t talk or type through these contractions, so maybe?” I do think that I handled labor much better than the first time, overall: I kept managing to think of the pain as energy, like Ina May would have wanted, and to think of the contractions as similar to being dragged ashore by the sea, a scary experience that I enjoy. I also tried to explain what it felt like to my husband by referring to the early part of a Dylan Thomas poem that he hasn’t read. Not my most successful communication moment.

After an hour or so, I called my mother to ask whether I could take a bath without stopping labor. She said that even if it did slow in the bath, it would pick right up once I got out, which sounded like a bargain. But they didn’t slow down in the bath, and I was just not getting a lot of pain relief (I thought), so I climbed out and suggested to Mr. Book that he should try timing my contractions. After the second one, he said “Those were two minutes and forty-five seconds apart. We are going to the hospital.” I argued that they need to be consistently close together, so he timed two more, and while he didn’t tell me how far apart they were, he did immediately go to call the midwives. And then he got put on hold.

I admit that I didn’t do super well on those last few contractions in his company; once I cried out, “Oh God, I can’t do this!” What I meant was “I can’t do this for twelve hours,” which is honestly what I thought I had to look forward to. Lying naked on the bed and trying to take deep breaths, I started thinking that it was a good thing there was no one around offering me drugs because I might have accepted, and maybe I can’t do this, and golly gee this seems like transition but it can’t be—it’s too soon for that! Well, while the Mister was on hold, I shouted from the bedroom “It’s happening now!” having—I don’t want to say that I had pushed once, but pushing once had happened, and I had to get to the bathroom right away. I could feel that there was something at the verge, and I stood over the toilet feeling the whatever and trying to figure out whether it was a baby’s head or my bag of waters. “I’m having the baby!” Mr. Book wanted to know what to do, so I told him to call 911 and then pushed again—and a whole head and shoulders came out while my water broke around Joey (Mr. Book apparently came to see what was happening, did, and hung up on the midwives to get an ambulance, but I honestly didn’t notice him there). I remembered that when I got to this point with Cricket, the otherwise very laidback midwives ordered me to push quick quick quick, so I pushed one more time at at 1 p.m. my baby slid out and into the toilet. I scooped him up and sat down, grabbing a nearby towel to cover him with and clutching him to my chest. I delivered the placenta a few minutes later, and then the paramedics arrived. They seemed a bit bewildered by the situation, especially when they asked if I could stand and come out and I explained that I couldn’t because the baby was tethered to the placenta, which was in the toilet. But we all three got into an ambulance pretty quickly, got to the hospital, and verified that the little dude is just fine, to the astonishment of apparently every medical professional in the building. The paramedics kept asking whether I had planned this, and I couldn’t think of a better way to explain than “My first baby took two and a half days; I thought we had more time.” If there is another little book one day, I suspect that my husband will drag me to the hospital every time I frown at my stomach. He and half my family are suspicious that I may have done it on purpose, and while I admit that I’m not displeased to have avoided a hospital birth, I just want to point out that we were preparing to go when, uh, Joey happened. He’s just a hair over nine pounds, and lovely.