BIRTH STORY

I was just. So. Pregnant. I had fantasized about the magic of pregnancy for four years — imagined how cute I would look in maternity clothes, how much attention I would receive, how I would glow.

Reality couldn’t even begin to live up to my daydreams. I started to swell sometime in the late second trimester; my feet and legs were twice their normal size. I bought a new, bigger, pair of shoes. Then I had to buy another new pair, another size up. My maternity clothes stopped fitting; my belly hung out of the bottom of shirts, and the pants were too tight. My wedding ring stopped fitting. In all I gained 65 pounds.

I still cringe when I look at this picture.

I was in pain and discomfort every way there was to be in pain and discomfort. My swollen feet felt tight and sore; my left heel was numb. My back hurt and was covered with acne, my breasts ached, and I had a strange stabbing rib pain. I couldn’t sleep. I got hemorrhoids. I was sweating like a professional athlete; I craved Coca-Cola like a junkie. I was stressed out, over it, exhausted. I missed alcohol and running and high heels and deli meat. I began to look with envy at girls I used to be like: fit, free, fun. I was Jabba the Hutt on the sofa, unable to summon the energy to shave my legs, let alone have sex with my husband. Oh the irony.

My due date came and went. One day past; two. A week. I kept slogging in to work. Coworkers looked at me with surprise, then pity: “You’re still here?!”

I went in for my 41-week OB appointment on a Friday, and blessedly, my blood pressure had finally elevated to a level high enough to cause concern. I was strapped to a monitor undergoing a non-stress test when my OB walked in and said, “You have preeclampsia; you’re going to the hospital today to have a baby.”

Philip and I looked at each other with excitement and terror. This is it! As desperately as I didn’t want to be induced, I was flooded with relief. No more pregnancy misery. Time to finally meet our daughter!

I went back into work to finish tying up loose ends; Philip came home and cleaned the house. We cooked a nice dinner, finished packing the hospital bag. I took a shower and blow-dried my hair. It was surreal.

Selfie in the hospital elevator

The maternity ward of the hospital was quiet when we arrived at 11 p.m. In the labor and delivery room, the nurse got right to work and quickly began rubbing me the wrong way. She told me to remove all my clothes and put on the hospital gown. “Even my underwear?” I asked.

She scoffed. “Did you get pregnant with your underwear on?” she retorted in her smoker’s voice. She fumbled with the IV, having to place it twice. She thought she had started the Pitocin two times but actually hadn’t. She struggled to make notes on the computer (“they make these things for the kids”) and kept muttering to herself the whole time she was prepping me for the induction. Nothing about her made me feel calm or reassured.

It was a very long night. Being pumped full of fluid, I had to use the toilet every two hours, which meant having to call the awful nurse to unhook me from the machine every time. I tossed and turned, making the baby’s heart-rate monitor slip out of place, which meant the awful nurse had to keep coming in to readjust it. The straps around my belly were itchy, and I was anxious.

At 7 a.m. a new nurse started her shift, and she was WONDERFUL — totally chill and competent. Her name was even Alyssa, my sister’s name, so it felt meant to be. She began to check my dilation (3 cm at that point) and pump up the Pitocin drip.

Some time in the morning I began to feel contractions, and they intensified quickly. They were coming every three minutes, and unlike my expectations, I was in constant pain. There was no rest/relief in between, only slightly less pain. I asked Philip to press firmly on my lower back, which helped some, but at one point both he and Alyssa had stepped out of the room, and I was breathing through the contractions alone. Lying helplessly on my side, staring at the wall and sucking in air as deeply as I could, I felt wave after wave of period cramps times a thousand. Strapped to several monitors and hooked up to an IV, I couldn’t walk around to assist with labor or use any of the yoga positions I had learned, not even cat and cow. This is insane, I thought. Why am I trying to be a hero? As soon as the nurse returned, I asked for the epidural.

Placing the epidural was uneventful, even though I was fearful and shaky. Soon a warm sensation began to spread over my legs, and I could feel my whole body relaxing. I quickly slipped off to the second greatest sleep of my life. (The first was after a transatlantic flight, when I was stuck at Heathrow for hours unable to get a hold of Philip, who was already in the U.K. Finally I ended up taking the world’s most expensive cab to our hotel and dropping my jet-lagged ass into the glorious white bedding of a Marriott Bed®.)

I slept for hours while Philip paid bills online and watched a Tigers game; thanks to a catheter, I didn’t even have to wake up to pee. When I awoke, I found out I had progressed significantly, dilating to 7 cm, with the baby at a -1 station. I commented to Philip that this seemed too easy — I had labored primarily in my sleep. The nurse had me shift to my side to help the baby drop even more, and we just waited for the green light to push.

Eventually I started to feel the contractions to some degree again, but I didn’t click the epidural button because I felt it would be helpful to have a sense of when the contractions were coming. At 5:40 p.m., I got the go-ahead to begin pushing. Everything was going so smoothly, I thought, I’m not going to have much of a birth story to tell!

When I started pushing, it was just Philip, the nurse and me in the room. Philip held one leg, and the nurse held the other. I was supposed to hold underneath both of my thighs, arch forward with head to chest, take the deepest breath I could, and bear down with all my might, like I was trying to evacuate the biggest turd in the universe. The nurse counted to 10, and I was basically holding my breath that whole time straining. I would do this three times in a row, then rest.

This carried on for a while; time began to feel fluid. The effort of pushing and breath-holding was tremendous — and kept intensifying. The first step was to get the baby past my pelvis. It required series after series of pushing. Just when I thought I couldn’t push any harder or feel any more exhausted, the next round of pushing took me to a deeper level of exertion and fatigue.

I was aware that I could somewhat lift my legs on my own; the epidural had worn off quite a bit. The OB was in and out of the room, but Nurse Alyssa promised to stay, even if the baby was born passed her shift, which would end at 7 p.m.; she felt confident the baby would be born by then.

At one point the OB started joking with Philip, and I snapped at them both to stop talking — I was not in any mood for jocularity! (Philip told me later that the OB even sculpted the baby’s hair into a mohawk when she crowned.) By the time the baby was past my pelvis, the OB had joined us for good. She drilled me like an NBA coach — telling me to push harder, longer, to go again. She was raising her voice and getting excited, telling me I was the best pusher she’d ever seen and that I was getting so close!

With every push I thought, This HAS to be the one; I simply CANNOT push one more time! But each time I finished my series of 10 counts and flopped backward onto the hospital bed, gasping and crying, the baby still wasn’t out. She had crowned, and it was like they say: a ring of fire. I was soaked in sweat in the most intense pain of my life; what was the epidural even doing?!

They asked me if I wanted a mirror, but I said no. Still, I could see a warped reflection of myself in the light tile overhead. I saw the dark hair on the baby’s head poking out, and it hit me with a force that I had no choice but to push her out! We were too far in to switch to a cesarean now. I never said, “I can’t,” but I thought it and felt it; I was overwhelmed with the impossibility of what I was trying to do. “Just vacuum her out!” I cried out desperately.

“I could,” said my OB, “but I’m not going to!”

Later I would liken the experience to the one other great physical achievement of my life — running a 15K race. Once you’ve begun, there is no choice but to finish; there is no turning around or going back — you have to just keep running forward, even though you’re completely out of gas and the finish line is still miles and miles away.

Finally, after an hour and 20 minutes of pushing, I hunkered down and pushed with every last ounce of strength. “Don’t stop — keep going, keep going!” the OB cried, and I did. I was completely out of breath, out of stamina, out of my mind; I had no idea who all was in the room or what they were saying or doing. Splayed out naked on the bed, I pushed like I didn’t care if this baby split my body in half.

And at 7 p.m. on the dot, out she popped. The room exploded — “What a BIG BABY!” everyone cried! I collapsed back on the bed awash in extraordinary relief. They immediately put her on my bare chest and I saw her face: She wasn’t crying; she looked confused, but she had chubby pink cheeks, a rosebud mouth and streaky red “angel kisses” on her eyelids.

I had pictured the moment a million times, how all the years of failed fertility treatments and disappointment and pain and gritty determination would finally culminate in this eruption of love and triumph, but all I could understand was that I was SO RELIEVED that she was out!

She didn’t stay on my chest long; the OB was having trouble delivering my placenta and needed me to focus. “Then Philip is going to take her skin to skin!” I said. He peeled off his shirt and held her little bare body under a blanket; he told me later she pooped all over him!

I laid on the bed shaking violently while the OB told me to push out my placenta. I tried, twice, but I was weak and completely out of it. Finally she pulled it out by hand and began stitching me up. I found out later I had a second-degree tear. I could feel the pulling pressure of the stitches, and I just couldn’t stop trembling. I was vaguely aware of the staff in the room hazarding guesses as to the baby’s weight; they were chomping at the bit to put her on the scale. I heard estimates of nine or 10 pounds, but I didn’t believe it — there was no way I had vaginally delivered a baby that large!

The nursing staff wanted to take the baby to the NICU to do a blood test, so Philip accompanied them. The room cleared out fast, and Alyssa said goodbye. I squeezed her hand and thanked her for staying by my side; I found out later she had to remain an extra two hours doing paperwork after the baby was delivered.

Before long I was alone with the recovery nurse, who was in and out and not very talkative. I asked her for several blankets; I was so cold and still shaking hard. I laid still under the piles of blankets and reveled in my relief. Elin Reese was born! She was safe and big and healthy. I had done it!

The nurse offered to bring me some snacks. I hadn’t eaten anything but one popsicle in 20 hours. I munched on some graham crackers and string cheese and drank tiny containers of apple juice and fruit punch. I asked her for more juice — I couldn’t drink enough.

I heard someone in the hall exclaim, “Eleven pounds, 11 ounces!”

“Are they talking about my baby?!” I asked the nurse in disbelief.

“I have no idea,” she said.

Someone came into the room and announced that Elin was in fact 11 pounds, 11 ounces. “Did you actually see the scale?” I asked.

The person hadn’t. I said I wouldn’t believe it until I had heard it from the horse’s mouth.

Soon Philip and the NICU nurses returned with Elin and confirmed it was true. I just couldn’t register it! I had figured she’d be big — Philip and I had both been almost nine pounds, and Elin was eight days overdue. I had brought three-month-size pajamas for her just in case the newborn ones didn’t fit. But almost 12 pounds?! That was insane! No one saw it coming. I had always measured right on schedule and didn’t have gestational diabetes; she had kept her size a secret from us all. Suddenly I felt like my relatively uneventful birth story had a unique twist: I had delivered the biggest baby I’d ever heard of among my friends!

They put Elin to my breast so she could start nursing. I had no idea what I was doing, but I liked having her so close. The NICU nurses told us we would have to supplement her with formula because her blood-sugar level was borderline and she was so big and would therefore need more sustenance than I could provide with the meager amount of colostrum my body was producing. We were upset — we never intended to use formula — but they were insistent, threatening that she might have seizures if we didn’t supplement. They even tried to take her off my breast to give her a bottle of formula. I relented and said we could give her some formula after I was done nursing.

After we fed her, we were transferred to the recovery room, where we had another wonderful nurse, Anita, for the first night. She asked me if I wanted Percocet or Motrin, and I said yes. She hooked me up with all kinds of goodness for my war zone of a crotch — disposable underwear, Depends-size sanitary pads, frozen diapers, witch hazel, Epifoam, a peri-bottle full of warm water. She brought in a breast pump so I could get as much colostrum out as possible, which we fed to Elin with a syringe. She helped my naked, swollen, wrecked body limp to the bathroom and measured my pee (she told me I had to urinate at least four ounces or I would have to get another catheter, which motivated me enough to eek out that exact amount).

When she would leave to care for other patients, I would feel panicked — here was this baby we had to keep alive, all by ourselves! What in the world were we supposed to do with it?!

We bumbled our way through breastfeeding and helplessly guessed at how much formula to chase it with. I met with two separate lactation consultants at the hospital. Philip reminded me to order meals from the cafeteria, and I devoured them. My sister- and brother-in-law brought me a Jimmy John’s no. 12 sandwich, which tasted like it had fallen from heaven. We quickly learned Elin had no interest in sleeping in her bassinet, so we took turns holding her through the night. Due to her large size, she was a legend in the hospital. Every staff person who came into our room said, “So THIS is the big baby!” I was delirious, exhausted, bloody and in serious pain, yet it might as well have been my wedding day — that’s how romantic and special and amazing it all felt.

We stayed a second night in the hospital and were discharged around 7 p.m. the following evening. We put Elin in pajamas, and it felt like the closing of a chapter to unwrap her from her hospital blanket for the final time: Now we turn the page to life at home.