Milo Jay Tuft

I debated for quite a while on whether or not I was going to post Milo's birth story. I was completely unprepared for how special and almost sacred the experience would be for me and I generally try and keep my feels off the internet :) The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that I wanted people to know how wonderful my experience was. Pregnancy and childbirth get a bad rep. It's not a cake walk at all - I'm not sure it was designed to be - but the negative hype that surrounds the whole process definitely exacerbates things. I've often wondered how differently women would view being pregnant and giving birth if we were more apt to share our positive experiences with it.

Anyway.

Here's your official disclaimer: THIS IS A BIRTH STORY. Read on knowing that there's a lot of anatomy :)

Tuesday, July 22^nd, 2014:

This summer Kyle and I began binge watching M*A*S*H and, per our custom, had just finished the usual 6 episodes before going to bed. I had gotten off the couch to get ready, walked into the kitchen, when I felt a slight “pop” and then some liquid start coming down my leg. I immediately “pantsed” myself in case more came down. After a split second of disbelief, I realized what happened, and rather loudly informed Kyle. I waddled over to the toilet and called our birthing center’s hotline, and they agreed with me – my water had definitely broken. Not a lot of water had come out – about 2 Tb - and because it was so late at night we all agreed that it’d be better for me to try and sleep through the night. When the water breaks, they like to see the mom at least in active birthing time within 24 hours. We gathered some stuff for us to take to the birthing center in case we ended up needing to go during the night, called & texted our immediate family members, and then tried to get some rest. I hadn’t had any contractions just before my water broke, but they picked up a bit during the night. Luckily I was able to sleep through most of them.

Wednesday, July 23^rd, 2014:

Mom was able to change her flight to come in at 9 in the morning, rather than 9 at night like the original plan had been. I was up by 7, and I tried to get the contractions going by doing some light tidying up before mom came (read: the house was a mess and I’m OCD like that). We asked Pam (Kyle’s mom) to pick up mom from the airport. Kyle and I did our best to relax until mom arrived. My midwife called me that morning asking me to come in at 10:30 so they could assess how the baby was doing, and see if I needed any help to get active labor going. Pam dropped mom off, and then we immediately went to the birthing center.

Tuesday morning I had had a prenatal where we confirmed that I was about 2cm dilated and not effaced at all. When we got to the birthing center I was about 3cm dilated and 50% effaced. There was a bag of waters still in front of Milo's head. It looked like the water I felt leaking the night before was either from a rupture in the outermost lining of the amniotic sack or it was a really high leak (my midwife explained that the membranes making up the sack are double layered, with some liquid in between them; like two pieces of Saran Wrap with water in between them). We didn’t try and locate the exact source of the leak as it was inconsequential at that point. Because it had already been 12 hours since my water broke, we all thought it was a good idea to try getting into active labor sooner rather than later, in case we needed to try another method. They did a sweep of my membranes and stretched my cervix about one more centimeter in the process. They gave us the option of going straight to the birthing suite after that, but Kyle and I wanted to do most of the laboring at home anyway. That and I was convinced it was going to take me hours to get going.

We headed home and my contractions started coming in good and hard; from when I started timing them they were about 2 ½ minutes apart, lasting 45-60 seconds. We thought they might be temporarily like this as a result of the sweeping, but would later change to the infamous “5-1-1”; contractions lasting a minute, every 5 minutes, for one hour. So I asked mom if she would go to the grocery store as I’d wanted to make some cookies for my midwives, and a big huge bowl of chicken pasta salad. I laid on the couch just breathing through the contractions, using the techniques I learned in the HypnoBabies class we’d taken. Kyle made me some eggs and kept me nice and hydrated. For the next 2 hours, the contractions didn’t lengthen apart or change much at all. Just before mom got back from the grocery store, I noticed they were getting more and more intense. Right as she walks in the door I had this overwhelming urge to push, which freaked me out. I yelled that we needed to go RIGHT NOW so we grabbed our stuff and went to the birthing center.

Kyle led me into the birthing suite, where they checked me out first thing. I was 9.5 cm dilated and 100% effaced; I’d dilated from a 4 to a 9.5 in 2 hours!! I had a ¼ inch of cervix left in front of Milo's head and the amniotic sack was still intact. I didn’t really have any plans on where or how I wanted to labor – I wanted to keep all that open as much as possible never having done it before, and not knowing what I thought would feel good in the moment. After the check, going into the birthing tub sounded amazing, so that’s what I did. Kyle and I worked through the contractions that were helping getting that last little bit of cervix out of the way. I started to feel more and more “pushy”, but we didn’t want me to push if there was still any cervix blocking the head. Finally the cervix thinned out and my midwife helped slip it over the Milo's head and I started pushing. I’m not sure how long I kept that up at all, but I started noticing that I was getting some pretty bad back pain. My midwife checked me trying to get a good idea on how the baby was positioned by feeling his skull. They were getting mixed signals on the position of the baby as the back pain indicated that he had flipped posterior, but the heartbeat indicated anterior and they weren’t able to get a good feel of his head either because of the amniotic sack being in the way.

Eventually I started to feel restless and my back was killing me. My midwife team felt like the baby really had turned posterior given the amount of back pain I was experiencing, and they wanted to double check that the cervix hadn’t slipped back in front of the baby’s head. They led me out of the tub and onto the bed. The back pain was getting really, really bad, so they had me flip over onto my stomach to relieve some of the pressure he was putting on my cervix so I wouldn’t feel quite so pushy, and to try and get him to turn. Getting his head off my cervix would also give them a better view to see if anything was blocking the birth canal. I stayed in that position for about an hour and a half. This hour and a half of fighting the urge to push was the absolute hardest thing I have ever done. I have never had to fight my body before. Every part of me was screaming "push!" but I knew I couldn't. I could not have gotten through that without Kyle’s constant, positive affirmations, as well as the reassurance from my midwives.

My midwife checked me again and could better see that ¾ of my birth canal was blocked by the remaining amniotic sack, so they broke that to clear the way. This also helped them confirm the exact position of the baby. Once the water had cleared they were able to get a good feel of the baby’s head – he was in the perfect position, there was no cervix in the way, and I could start pushing again! I decided to go back into the tub for this; the hot water was an immense relief to my very sore back. After about 40 minutes of pushing, Milo started to crown (side note: I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why it takes 2 pushes forward only to go one push back… but I don’t agree with it). My midwife immediately felt around his head for any cord and discovered an arm instead. Turns out that Milo’s left arm was up and over his head – shoulder by his ear, elbow up, and his hand behind his head; just like his dad likes to sleep. That arm position was causing all the back pain as it was pushing against my sacrum the whole time; Milo hadn’t ever been posterior! Kyle guided Milo’s head out as my midwife moved the arm back down. I gave one more push and his shoulders came out and then the rest of him just slipped out as well at 5:54 pm. (Funny enough, Milo immediately pooped and peed; first three seconds of life and he already discovered the joy of bowel movements. I just think that’s so funny!)

There was a lot of blood in Milo's head that was caused by the added pressure of having his arm by his head while I was pushing, so his face was pretty blue and stayed that way for a while. They put Milo in my hands, and I rested him on my chest, in shock that I was actually holding the little boy that I’d been feeling for so long.

They led me out of the tub, and back onto the bed again. Miraculously I did not tear my perineum (!!). I had stretched enough to get two small tears on my left side, but my midwife said they resembled paper cuts more than anything. The hot water had helped my muscles relax enough that they just "melted" out of the way of Milo's head, instead of tearing away. The cuts were so small that they actually debated if it was worth suturing them up at all but we decided to play it safe rather than sorry. After everything was cleaned up, I got 8 small sutures (4 per tear), and just rested with the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen.

They weighed and measured him after all of that. My midwife guessed that he weighed 7 lbs. 7 oz. but as she was carrying him to the scale she said, “No… I take that back. He’s heavier than that, but he doesn’t look like it! What a dense baby!” He came in at 8 lbs. 8oz. and 21 inches long; Kyle’s weight, and my height at birth. :) After that it was the footprints and Milo’s feet were bigger than the ink pad! My midwife commented that she’d never seen feet that big on a newborn. We stayed at the birthing center until about 11pm. It’d been a total of 12 hours between getting my membranes swept and driving home our new baby! Active labor was about 7 hours long (getting membranes swept to when he was born), which was quite a lot faster than I thought it would be since I'm a first time mom.

I’ve heard a lot of moms say something like they could literally feel their hearts grow twice as big when they first saw their baby, or that they never knew what love was until that moment. I didn’t feel that rush of emotion when I first held my baby. Milo has been my son since I knew I was pregnant. Seeing him after so many months of picturing the moment was surreal, but also very, very familiar. I have known him for a while. Now I’m blessed to hold him. He is the very best thing that Kyle and I have done and I would not change one single aspect of his arrival. We had the most supportive and patient team of midwives and we feel very strongly that they ensured our wonderful experience.