Labor Play by Play by Ryan

Just to preface this, I have not read Angie’s blog on the delivery yet. I didn’t want her version of the story to affect the telling of my version.

So without further ado…here’s how it happened.

4:30am  I’m waken up by Angie. She tells me that she’s just had three contractions. “These are different” she says, referring to the Braxton-Hicks contractions she’d been having on and off for the past week. “This is it, I think this is it.”

We sat in bed for a bit and talked about what we needed to do. I mentioned I was hungry and asked if she wanted a bowl of Lucky Charms. She did. I went downstairs, made us each a bowl and came back to bed. As we enjoyed out breakfast I thought things seemed to be going fairly smooth. She’d had a few more contractions, but nothing too major. She had an app on her iPhone for timing contractions and we knew we were supposed to wait until the contractions were 4 minutes apart, lasting for 1 minute for 1 hour before we would go to the Birth Center.

5:15am I got up and took a shower. By now Angie’s contractions were getting stronger and much closer together. They were about 10 minutes apart lasting 45-60 seconds. I still didn’t think much of it. During all the pre-natal classes and in all the books we had read, early labor was supposed to last hours- 6, 8, 10 hours perhaps. I thought we had plenty of time. Boy, was I wrong.

5:27am  I’m out of the shower by now and I hear Angie calling our Doula, Rachel to let her know we are in labor. Rachel tells Angie she had to drop her kids off and then she’ll be right over to go down to the birth center with us. I start packing up some of the last minute things we’ll need in our bags and Angie gets in the shower to try to relax as the contractions are getting much stronger and much more frequent. We are still using the app on the phone to keep track of them.

6:10am We check the app and realize that for the past hour Angie has been having contractions every 3-4 minutes lasting 60-90 seconds. Those are the magic numbers. Now I need to call the Birth Center to let them know that we are in labor and should be coming in soon. I place the call at 6:13 and get their answering service. They call back a few minutes later and talk to Angie and tell her to come on in. By now I’m trying to load everything into the car. Trying to help Angie as much as I can. Trying to process this entire event. By now Angie can no longer talk during contractions. And we only get about 2 minutes or so in between contractions that we can talk.

6:35am  We are completely packed in the car and we are downstairs. I’m putting Angie’s socks and shoes on her since she can no longer bend over. Our Doula, Rachel, is still not here, but Angie says “I want to go to the Birth Center now.”  In every book we read and every class we took, they always answered the question “When do we go to the birth center?” with the same answer…. “Your wife will know when it’s time. When she’s ready, she’ll tell you.” And sure enough, Angie told me.

6:37am I call Rachel and tell her we are heading to the Birth Center and that she needs to meet us there. Rachel tells me that she’s only 15 minutes away if we want to wait. I tell her that Angie wants to go now. She agrees to meet us there and Angie and I jump in the car.

7:00am We pull into the Birth Center parking lot just as Rachel pulls up. I jump out to go around and let Angie out. Rachel asks me how thing are. I reply, “Things are going fast!”

We get into the birth center and Angie immediately asks if the room with the water tub is open. The Nurse says it isn’t, someone just had a baby in it.  Angie is devastated. I can tell she’s not happy. All she’s talked about during the pregnancy was how much she wanted that water birth. Now it wasn’t going to happen. THIS was the first moment my eyes started tearing up. I knew Angie wasn’t happy. I knew this wasn’t going to go the way she planned and worried that this might be a problem. For the entire pregnancy Angie knew she was going to have a completely natural birth, and, for her, the water tub was going to be her savior. Now it was gone.

They rushed us into an exam room where they check Angie’s dilation. 7cm! Already! 9cm is when you start pushing. She was already at 7! The nurses looked shocked. They couldn't believe how far along she already was. Many women labor for 10 hours before they get to 7cm, Angie’s been at this for just over 2.5 hours. They let us know that she is having a fast labor and that it’s going to be very intense.

We leave the exam room and start towards the labor rooms. The nurse offers up our choice of two. Angie quickly chooses the closest one.

In the labor room the nurses quickly start doing nurse things. Taking Angie’s blood pressure, asking about tests results from previous in the week, listening to the baby’s heartbeat in the womb. All of these things I’m assuming are much easier to do when the mother isn’t having 2 minute long contractions every 30 seconds.

By the time they want to take Angie’s temperature, she is on all fours at the end of the bed having pretty intense contractions. The Midwife takes her digital thermometer and places it in Angie’s mouth and asks her to make sure it’s under her tongue. She looks at the digital read out, not happy with it, and asks Angie again to make sure it’s under her tongue. Now Angie is in mid-contraction. The Midwife is still not getting a reading on her thermometer. “I don’t think it’s under your tongue,” she says to Angie. “It’s not under her tongue,” the Midwife says to me and Rachel. Angie now coming out of the contraction screams “IT’S UNDER MY GODDAMN TONGUE!”  The Midwife quickly removes it and decides her temperature must be fine.

By now it’s approaching 7:50 am. I haven’t had a chance to call to text anyone to let them know we are in labor. I know at this point I’m not going to call anyone. I’m so teary eyed that even the thought of talking to someone about this makes me go into a sobbing cry. I’m not sad or scared. Just so proud of Angie. Just so happy for what’s about to happen. I was just being hit with wave upon wave of emotion.

At this point Angie has been standing facing me between contractions and then bending over and hanging off me during the contractions. With each contraction she’s bending over farther and farther.  I’m crying so much now that my nose is running. One of the midwives see this and brings me a few tissues.

The Midwife’s have decided that since they couldn’t give her a water birth, that perhaps she’d like to get in the regular sized bathtub that was in the room. Rachel and I manage to get Angie walked over to the tub. I bend down and remove Angie’s socks. She steps into the tub. A big contraction comes. Angie’s water breaks. Angie has another contraction and starts making pushing sounds. The Midwives decide it’s time to move her back to the bed. So the extent of Angie’s water birth ended up being her, standing ankle deep in water, water breaking and then getting back out.

While the Midwives and Rachel help Angie back to the bed. I take quick moment to send out a few texts. I know her mom needs to know. I need to send her something that is quick and to the point, but without sounding like there was something wrong. Through tears, this is what my fingers came up with.

I also fired off a couple of other quick texts. One to my Dad’s phone.

and a few minutes later to my sister’s phone.

My mom can’t get text messages, so I was relying on my sister to get the news to her.

With my due diligence performed in the "informing people area", I got back to supporting Angie the best I could as she started the pushing part of labor.

I joined her back at the bed where she was obviously having very, very strong contractions. I’m sure if you ask her she can tell you how bad they were. All I know is that she could not talk, could barely respond to anything. She seemed like she was in an entire different world. "Laborland" I think they call it. I did everything I could to comfort her. I rubbed her back, held her hand, gave her water and put cold towels on her neck. I wanted to give her encouraging words, but every time I opened my mouth to say something I just started crying more. I whispered to her at one point, “You are the strongest woman ever.” I blubbered for 30 seconds after that and my nose started running and dripping snot on her back. I figured at that point I should stop trying to talk.

Luckily, Rachel was doing a great job providing the support Angie needed. I am not going to be able to express in this blog what a great job Rachel did. I don’t know of anyone in this entire world that could do what she did. When Angie would make sounds, Rachel would make them with her. She would make the sounds Angie needed to make to encourage her along. When Angie said “I can’t do this,” Rachel responded with “You CAN do this, you ARE doing this, and you’re doing GREAT!” I don’t know how Angie took those words, but they made me feel much better. Rachel did a great job of encouraging Angie to just do what her body needed to do. “Do what your body knows,” she’d say, “You know exactly what to do.” Awesome advice, because by now Angie was doing everything perfect.

Around 8:30 Angie’s mom arrived at the Birth Center. The nurse out in the waiting area, not knowing how far along we were, tried to let her in. I quickly waved her off. Angie was face down/ass up on the bed and James was starting to descend down the birth canal. She was in no position (literally and figuratively) to see her mom or her mom to see her.

As the Midwives were checking on Angie, one asked the other to turn the bathroom light on behind her so she could have a bit more light to see what was going on. Being a quick thinker, I pulled out my iPhone, turned on the flashlight app and handed it to the Midwife. “What’s this?” she asked. “A flashlight, so you can see better.” She laughed and used it to get a better look at where all the action was. I guess there really is an app for everything.

Now Angie was approaching the “Ring of Fire”. I think this is when the baby starts crowning. It seemed to hurt quite a bit. Angie started grabbing my leg and pulling all my leg hair out. It hurt, but I figure only about .0000000000000000001% as much pain as Angie was in. So I didn’t even flinch.

Soon it was getting time. The Midwives asked me if I wanted to come around to watch the baby come out. I declined, politely through between teary sobs.

And then, all of the sudden, out came James. I heard him cry out. Angie took a deep breath, paused and said very nonchalantly, “That’s it, that wasn’t so bad.”

Angie rolled around, sat down, and James was handed to her and we both sat there in amazement at what we had created.

Throughout it all, I could not stop thinking just how amazed I was at Angie. She is so strong. Stronger than any person I have ever known. She did such a great job. For the rest of my life I will be trying to repay her for what she did that day. She’s the love of my life.

Later that day my sister texted me back and asked me how and I were doing. I think this text sums it up pretty well.