The Tuft Tales: Olivia Ann Tuft

October 9^th, 2015

2:30 AM – “Ouchhhh!” My eyes flew open. “That didn’t feel great”, I thought as I rolled over. You get used to various aches and pains when pregnant. I’d been having contractions for nearly four days, so I didn’t think twice before falling back asleep.

3:00 AM – “K, ready to be not be pregnant…” I groaned as another one hit and I rolled over again.

3:30 AM – “…. Wait, is this the real deal?” Then I recalled the previous week:

Sunday evening, when I officially hit full-term, we thought my water may have broken. We went to the birth center to confirm the leak and the test came out positive for a water break, but I’d previously had two, false positive tests so this wasn’t surprising news. Since there wasn’t much liquid the risk of an infection was very, very low. We decided to wait and see if contractions picked up at all or if more liquid came, which didn’t happen, so we went about our lives.

Wednesday evening I was very actively trying not to count the passing of time by watching Curious George with Milo while bouncing on my yoga ball. I got up, felt a little “ping!”, and more liquid came down. “This was it!” we thought. I called my mom to let her know. She couldn’t leave until Friday so she was sad she was most likely going to miss the birth. Pam picked up Milo, we packed up and headed to the birth center at 8 PM. With Milo the outer membrane of the amniotic sack had ruptured, so we chose to do a membrane sweep to get things going and seven hours later we had ourselves a baby. Expecting the same thing here, we again did a membrane sweep (which is about as comfortable as it sounds, ps). During the sweep my midwife said that Livvy had flipped completely posterior and told me that I should stay leaning forward, on hands and knees, to get her turned to the best position which would also avoid a lot of back pain during labor. My contractions picked up good and hard after the sweep. For four hours we stayed at the birth center working through them, but they never stayed consistent. This labor was not following the same script we thought it would. By 1 AM both Kyle and I were exhausted. We talked over our options; 1: break the water completely and have a baby, or 2: go home and get some rest. As quickly as we both like to accomplish things, we just didn’t feel right about rushing through this. We’d both been up all night the previous night (him – with a teething Milo; me - with contractions). We didn’t want to run the labor marathon on an empty tank of gas, so we decided to head home. My midwives gave me a magnesium tablet to help relax the muscles and two Tylenol PM’s. We zonked and I had the best night's sleep I'd had in months.

On Thursday we went about life as normal. Contractions were intense but very irregular. I stayed on my feet, got a mani/pedi, and went to the chiropractor to get my back adjusted (all the better to labor with, my dear!). By the evening my contractions had settled down and I hadn't had any more leaks; it seemed like this little girl wanted to bake a bit longer. We picked Milo back up from Pam’s and then we got a surprise text from my mom saying she was en route here a day earlier than planned, driving like a madman with her dad. They arrived around 9 PM. Mom and I discussed tactics for our “Walk Baby Out” project to commence the next day and then we all went to bed around 11 PM.

“Yeah, see Jess? This can’t be the real deal. You've had too many false alarms already. Just try walking her out tomorrow”, and I flipped my pillows over and fell asleep.

4:00 AM – “Ok, SOMETHING is happening here!” I jolted up as another contraction hit me. This one was different. Trying not to get excited I thought, “If this is the real deal, I need to rest as much as possible”. So I tried again to fall back asleep.

4:30 AM – “Well, this is pointless”, I muttered as I got up. I decided to take a hot shower to help alleviate some of the intensity from the contractions. My back was getting a bit uncomfortable so I thought it may help with that too.

5:30 AM – “Now I’m a shriveled prune AND my back hurts”. I got out of my tub/shower and back into bed. These contractions were annoyingly inconsistent and my back HURT.

6:00 AM – “Wait. BACK PAIN. BABY IS IN THE WRONG POSITION”. Suddenly the light bulb went off in my head. Of course my back hurts if she’s posterior! I got up and flipped over to my hands and knees on our bed to try to get her turned.

6:25 AM – “Andddd she’s flipped!” I grinned in satisfaction.

6:30 AM – “BIRTH CENTER. NOW.” No longer grinning, I immediately felt the difference in contractions. Nothing was irregular. Coming in three minutes apart and lasting a minute and a half, I was worried we wouldn’t even make it to the birthing center. We called the birth center hotline to let them know we were coming. We got up and packed the last few things. Mom made us eggs, and I breathed through my contractions again using the HypnoBabies techniques I’d learned last time. Kyle alerted his mom – she and my mom would work out getting Milo taken care of.

7:30 AM – We arrived at the birth center and I got checked. 6 cm dilated; 80% effaced. Last time I had done most of the laboring in the birthing tub. It sounded good again so I jumped in. 10 minutes later I was out and walking around. Reclining back at all just didn’t feel right. I leaned over and hugged a huge stack of pillows at the foot of the birthing bed instead and swayed my hips through each contraction.

8:30 AM – 8 cm dilated, 100% effaced. More of the same. More leaning over and swaying through the contractions.

9:30 AM – 9.5 cm dilated; 100% effaced. I was starting to feel a bit pushy, and I was really anxious not to tear. I jumped back in the birthing tub in preparation to push remembering that the water helped relax my muscles so much the last time.

9:45 AM – I got out of the tub. My contractions weren’t as intense and felt less effective EVERY time I was in that darn tub! While it felt nice to get a break, I was on the Highway to Push and needed more motivation, and there’s nothing more motivating than contractions.

10:30 AM – I was feeling even more pushy, but not quite as pushy as I had been with Milo. My midwife suggested sitting on the birthing stool to intensify the pushes. Let it be known that squatting down while in labor definitely adds to that pushy feeling!! I still felt like my contractions weren’t very effective, and since my body was totally ready, I asked for them to break my water.

11:00 AM – I jumped into the tub. Looking back I think my brain kept chanting “tub”, while my body was saying “squat”. Brains get in the way of labor. Follow your body.

11:15 AM – Livvy’s heart rate was starting to drop a bit more during contractions than my midwives liked to see, making time a more crucial factor. They checked me and found that I had a small lip of cervix in the way, which was making me feel pushy only at the peak of contractions, rather than through the whole thing, which in turn made my pushes less effective. While in the tub, they attempted to push the lip back over her head. The tub was so relaxing to me that I couldn’t get a good feel of when to push and when not too. I reflexively jumped out of the tub and onto the birthing stool again, my brain screaming, “But it’ll hurt more on the stool!” which is when I was sure that’s where I needed to be. It was gonna hurt like hell before it got better and there was no point in trying to avoid that.

At this point I just suspended rational thinking and hung on to what my midwives were saying. One midwife helped keep that cervical lip out of the way through contractions, the other coached me on how to bear down better. That lip inhibited a lot of my natural urge to push. Slowly, slowly we worked through it all. Kyle stood right in front of me and I clung to his belt loops as I bore down, each contraction bringing Livvy closer. Kyle says he was getting worried I’d pull his pants straight off! Each contraction I pushed harder and harder. There aren’t words to describe the feeling of being asked to do the impossible again. And again. And then once more. One midwife put an oxygen mask on me during the last couple pushes to give me just the extra bit of strength necessary to push her out. The oxygen cleared my head.

11:45 AM – “THIS IS THE LAST PUSH!!” I yelled to myself. She started to crown and time hung still. Suddenly my world went black and I felt out of control. For a few milliseconds it felt like something bad had happened since I’d been so aware and present during the whole labor. Half cognizant, I heard one midwife say to stop pushing, and another coached me to puff out my breaths. Livvy’s head was out and they wanted the rest of her to slowly come out so I wouldn’t tear.

11: 47 AM – A cry.

Snap back to reality. The blackness disappeared. My little Livvy had arrived.

We walked back to the bed after everything was cleaned up a bit. Livvy latched on to nurse seconds after I put her up to my chest. I didn’t tear, though I was absolutely convinced that I had. All the afterbirth stuff passed approval and Livvy was weighed and measured; 19 inches and 7 lbs., 1 oz. (I was off by one ounce in my weight guess!). After she and I passed inspection I took a shower with Kyle’s assistance while mom held Livvy. We could stay at the birthing suite until 5:30 PM so we felt no rush to get going. It’d been just over four hours since our arrival and we were more than a bit winded! Mom left to get some groceries and Kyle, Livvy, and I hopped into the bed. Too keyed up on adrenaline, I laid down next to Livvy and, as all moms do the world over, inspected every inch of her.

“She’s here”. I thought. “My beautiful girl is finally here”.