The Friday before Tessa was born, I had an appointment with an ultrasound. She was so low they were like "yeah...we can't see her face. Too deep in there. Also your baby is huge." This is the same thing I heard at the end of my pregnancy with Brynn and pretty much the whole time with Tessa, too. My girl babies always measure so much ahead they make me take extra gestational diabetes tests. I ALWAYS PASS THEM. Anyway, they estimated Tessa was already 8.5 pounds (spoiler alert: she wasn't). But my doctor said I was already dilated to a 4 and we would just induce labor a week early if she wasn't here yet. I'm pretty sure what he said was "No point in having a 9.5 pound baby" (spoiler alert: we didn't).
The irony here is incredible. The concept of going your entire pregnancy just praying your baby won't be crazy early and then having to be induced was really making Greg and I laugh. You know, like angry/crying/laughing. But the other thing my doctor said was "Yeah...you won't make it one more week."
And I knew he was right. Monday morning I woke up thinking, "This is the day." I was crazy hormonal. All sorts of "my body is getting ready to eject this baby" things were happening. I was pretty much continuously feeling pressure because of how low she was, and I'm not even joking here. It was almost-ready-to-push kind of pressure. She was so so so low...but no contractions. Maybe they will start this afternoon....maybe they will start tonight...
But they just didn't start. I was a little over 38 weeks but I knew I wasn't going to go much longer and I was DONE. Around this time I started saying things to Greg like "Can you imagine some people are pregnant for TWO MORE WEEKS???" I had never gone longer than 37 weeks and while it would be really cool to have a full term baby, I knew we had reached the point where she would be able to coordinate sucking and swallowing and I knew it was really, really close. So I was done.
But no contractions.
So Monday night I went to bed. Tuesday I went to Wal-mart for some strange reason and I have memories of waddling around in a grumpy hormonal pregnant haze. And that whole day I knew contractions would start...but they didn't.
Until bed time for the kids. I sat down to read books and was all cringy and Greg was like "Are you sure nothing's happening?" I was in pain, but I had been in weird pain for days. And I thought yeah...maybe this is different.
Time to take a little break here and explain some things. So much about having children has been out of my control. Probably a lot of people feel that way but for different reasons. For us, having kids has become so medicalized because of IVF. And I'm so grateful for IVF and so grateful we have had amazing outcomes with this technology. But it isn't how I would have planned it, obviously. PPROM (water breaking extra early) has also made me feel wildly out of control. There is just always this possibility of tragedy occurring, and that haunts me. There's no other word for it. PPROM has absolutely robbed me of my peace, and I've fought tooth and nail to reclaim some sense of groundedness and optimism for my pregnancies. It's cliche, but words can't express how full my heart is of gratitude that Tessa is safe and that she was born close to term. We did not have to say goodbye to another baby. The blessing that she is here and she is sleeping upstairs at this very moment is so monumental I don't know how to contain it. When we lost Austin and Daniel to PPROM, the magnitude of the loss was so gaping I just couldn't comprehend it. I had to think in terms of what I had gained instead of what I had lost. And now we focus on what we have gained as well, and it's so exquisite and just so large I can't comprehend it, either.
But that doesn't mean I've ever felt in control, and I wanted to feel in control of this delivery. I had the sneaking suspicion that my labor would go fast this time. I started feeling that way well before my due date approached. Call it Mother's Intuition if you would like. I believe this was a simple tender mercy from God. I wanted to try this delivery natural, so it could feel in my control and so not every tiny little thing had to be way over-medicalized. I know that probably sounds crazy to some people, and I get that. But I like doing hard things and pushing myself, and I wanted to experience a natural childbirth. And if the birth was going to go fast, I thought, yeah. I can hack this.
It's not necessarily in my personality to do things like this. I feel like growing up I believed that hard = bad. That's simply not true. Hard isn't bad. It's just hard. I also don't like to try something when the possibility of failing is real. What can I say, I'm a raging perfectionist. Maybe it's because academics were always so doable for me. I'm not sure, but I HATE going out on a limb when something might not work out the way I want it to. Again, my natural desire is to want to be IN CONTROL OF EVERYTHING. And so a natural childbirth absolutely challenged all of my control issues. It was one thing I could decide to do, but I knew I couldn't absolutely decide how it would turn out. There was a chance I wouldn't be able to do it. Was I going to commit to trying natural anyway?
And I decided, yes. I would try. I would acknowledge I might fail, and that would be okay. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but I do know that God bolstered my self-confidence the whole time I was pregnant. I just knew that it would be worth trying, and I'm grateful I had that sense of hope while I was pregnant. In a way, that little insight also helped me know she would make it, and would be okay, and that was a huge deal too. Fertility stuff has been such a challenge in my life, but I do feel like I've gotten these little insights along the way that reassure me that Heavenly Father cares.
So, while I was pregnant, I did a little research. Listened to some hypnobabies. Did some meditation and tried not to feel like a dork while doing it. I'll always have good memories of nodding off to sleep to the impossibly soothing voice of a British midwife while waiting for Brynn to get out of ballet. I prepared, and it felt good.
So we put the kids to bed, and went downstairs to collapse on the couch. I wasn't totally sure I could actually feel real contractions, but I downloaded the little contraction timing app on my phone anyway and started timing them sort of blindly while we watched Alone. Now I will always think of some Alaskan guy killing a musk ox when I remember Tessa's birth. If you don't know what that means don't even worry about it.
And the contractions increased. They got more discernible. They were totally manageable and not consistent. But finally I knew we were actually getting somewhere.
So we headed upstairs around 10, and I decided to get in the shower because contractions were starting to pick up. They were getting CLOSE to being five minutes apart, but I was determined to stay home as long as possible. Greg wasn't a huge fan of this idea, but like the sweet and supportive husband he is, he let me do my thing. He just sat around being quietly terrified and stressed. When I told him I wanted to stay home as long as I could a few weeks before Tess was born, he was like "Please don't have a baby on the living room floor." You laugh...but we actually do have friends who had a baby in their playroom.
So while I was standing in the hot water I quit timing contractions. I thought a lot about some advice I heard while preparing to go natural. Contractions come from my own body. My body can't create something that I cannot handle. Yeah, yeah, it sounds a little hokey as I type it out. But it's a good philosophy for life, right? We can handle more than we think we can. We really can handle anything.
After 45 minutes or so in the shower I realized that the contractions were strong. And very close. This sounds weird, but I was so wrapped up in what was internally going on that I wasn't totally capable of thinking clearly about what was going on. So I got out of the shower and Greg was like "Uh...maybe we should go in?" I started getting ready and then started crying because I wanted to stay home longer. Folks, I swear I have hospital PTSD after Callum's birth and six week NICU stay. But I was in such an intense labor by this point that Greg had to help me put my shoes on. Not because I couldn't reach them...just because I was incapable of putting on shoes at that point. So I guess that's when we knew it was time to go in.
Good thing the drive to the hospital was a whooping 7 minutes. I could not having handled it being any longer. I did the whole straighten my spine in the seat and tried not to scream. Greg pulled up to the front of the hospital to drop me off so I didn't have to walk up and I was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I CAN'T STAND THERE ALL ALONE." Labor makes you weird. So Greg parked and I walked through the parking lot like an idiot. Oh well.
We got to labor and they asked me questions and I had to point to Greg to answer them because I was not capable of coherent speech at this point. I went into the triage room and for some reason that's kind of when I lost it. The concept of laying flat on my back so they could check me just seemed like torture. I think I actually said "You want me to lay down right now?" Really laying on your back is totally the worst way to labor. The sweet little nurse did her thing and was "Uh, yeah, um, you're at an 8. Let's go!" So I walked over to another room and THINGS. STARTED. HAPPENING.
For a good part of labor I just kept my eyes closed. I don't know, it helped me focus? It was too much energy to keep my eyes open? So I have very few visual memories of what was going on at this point. I remember hearing the original nurse tell everyone I was actually probably at a 9 already, not an 8. A nurse tried to put me in some position to help with the pain and I was like, UH, NO. They blew out my vein and had to do the IV twice and I whined about that and let them know I didn't appreciate it. Respiratory therapists and other random people swarmed the room. I was like "I FEEL PRESSURE. I WANT TO PUSH." The joke was I had been "feeling pressure" for literally 3 or 4 days at that point. I might have been a little crazy at the time, but I wasn't so out of it that I wasn't capable of pulling a con job on these people.
One nurse told me I didn't have time to get pain relief, but another nurse looked at me and said "If you want to, this is your chance. We can do an epidural right now."
I said no. I was so close, and I was in it to win it. I'm really proud of myself for that. I'm glad that even though things have felt so out of my control for so many years, I was able to have that moment of power.
They told me my OB was five minutes away at one point, and even though there was someone down there getting ready to catch the baby, I will always remember my amazing OB full on sprinting into the room. I wonder how long he had been running at that point? I still think this is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. I know it's his job, but I'm glad he put all that effort into being there for me. At my last appointment he was like "Don't go into labor tonight. I have a Scout thing." After the stressful pregnancy I think maybe he wanted to be there for me and not just pass me off to some random doctor. Again, it felt nice.
So then, I pushed. Actually, for two full contractions I just sat there and screamed. I screamed so much my voice was dead the next day. I think if I hadn't been surrounded by support I might have just lay there screaming until I died. I have heard that pushing feels like a relief after transition, but for me it was the hardest part. The desire to just scream and scream from the pain never went away. At one point a nurse said, "You have to do this, Heather. No one can do it for you. You are the only one who can get this baby here." I wanted to tell her to SHUT UP at the time, but what she said did resonate with me. Yes, I wanted to scream and scream, but I had to choose not to and reach deep deep deep to find the ability to focus on getting my baby here instead. Again, there's so much power in that.
They actually had to break my water at the last minute because it hadn't broken yet. A nurse said "You have an iron bag of water!" Again, THE IRONY. There's some evidence that PPROM is actually caused by genes that both you and your baby carry. So I guess it was never going to be a problem with Tessa, but there's no way we could have known that.
When my water broke, there was meconium in the fluid. That scared me, because I knew she needed to be born soon. They also were having trouble getting the monitor on her, probably because I was swatting them away like a crazy person. I just could not stand to have anyone touch me. But in a hazy weird way, multiple thoughts were running through my head. I had to hurry. I had to get her born because I had a weird sense that she wasn't okay. What if I couldn't do it? There was a moment in there when I thought, I can't do it. I said it aloud a time or two, but I knew there wasn't a choice. I HAD to do it. So instead I started saying, I can do this. I can do this. It's the same thing I have Brynn repeat when she's afraid of something, and I said it over and over.
And I hung on to Greg and pushed. I put all that screamy energy and fear for Tessa into pushing. Greg started crying at one point and I chewed him out because I thought he was laughing? I hit Greg a time or two. I hit a nurse a time or two. But I closed my eyes and the sweat just ran off of me and I pushed and pushed and pushed.
Originally my doctor said a lip of cervix was hanging over, but I could tell I was progressing at getting the baby here. She was getting closer. Finally they could see her. I kept asking how close we were, and the OB kept saying just a few more contractions. "She has a ton of hair!" he said at one point. Little did he know that Tessa is the Queen of baby hair. I thought at the time that he was just being nice, but hearing that gave me a little dose of energy that I really needed. She was so so close.
Then it was over. Her head was born, and the doctor acted fast because not only was there meconium in the fluid but the cord was wrapped around her neck. Greg later said that the OB whipped that thing off so fast it was incredible. Then she was out, and the relief of pressure and burst of fluid was INCREDIBLE. She was naked and slippery and on my stomach and I had done it. She was born 50 minutes after we got to the hospital.
"You could write the textbook on natural childbirth! Such control!" Okay, I know I sound really braggy, but I am proud of myself. I'm grateful that God let me have this small win. I needed it. With Cal I needed to have a c section. With Brynn my cervix had grown around the cerclage they placed to keep her in, so I needed an epidural so they could remove the stitch. I'm not good at getting pregnant. I'm not good at staying pregnant. But I am pretty good at labor, and that's really the only thing I can sort of control, anyway.
Tess did not do very well after she was born. Her blood gasses were low. Her Apgar was low. She didn't cry and wasn't very responsive. She had tons of signs of stress, and stork bite welts on her eyes and the back of her head. They told me later that sometimes babies get those from being wedged way down in the pelvis for a long period of time. I hardly got to hold her before she was sent to the special high need nursery and then the NICU. She didn't come home for 11 days, and that was really, really hard. I couldn't breastfeed her right away. After Callum's NICU saga, it felt like a slap in the face for things to go the way they did. I expected to be able to bring her home right away.
Postpartum Heather was a huge mess for a few weeks. A HUGE PSYCHOTIC MESS. I think I forgot for a long time how good it felt to do the labor on my terms. While I was in the NICU with Tessa one day, a random respiratory therapist brought up the labor. She turned to me and said, "You did SUCH a good job." At first, I was embarrassed. Oh, you saw that? Remember, I screamed for a bit.
But I think that's what I want to remember about Tessa's birth. I did a good job, and it feels nice. Like another OB said to me, "Well, that's one way to do a VBAC. Just walk in and drop a baby."
And, yeah. I did that. You have to celebrate your victories when you can. You have to know what things you can control. You have to be willing to be happy even when you can't control everything. You have to walk a middle ground and find a way to get through to the other side. Tessa's birth was hard because she wasn't totally healthy. And all my labors have been so different from each other. When Austin and Daniel were born, I was battling an intense uterine infection and I was devastated at how I knew I wouldn't get to keep them. They were born with IV narcotics only, but they were so little and tiny. And then I did the epidural thing and the c section thing.
And now I've done the natural thing. I've done it all. I'm proud of myself. And we got a sweet baby, and she's healthy now, and how can I ever express all the gratitude in my heart.
If you're still here, you are amazing. Or just addicted to reading birth stories, as we all are at times. Thanks for sticking with me, folks. Here's Tess today:
