Madeleine’s Birth Story

Madeleine’s Birth Story

Just like in the movies, the night I went into labor began with a storm.

Swirling gray and pink clouds were studded with bolts of lightning that had me scurrying—as much as someone nine months pregnant can scurry—up our gravel lane toward the house.

I sensed something shifting in the atmosphere as much as I could sense a shifting in my womb, and I wondered if the next time I walked that lane I would be walking it as a mother of two.

I was right.

My contractions started around nine-o’clock. I will never forget that sense of anticipation: cuddled beneath the warm covers with my husband sleeping beside me and my eldest daughter in the nursery next door as my youngest daughter was still safely cocooned inside my womb.

My husband, always a light sleeper, woke up when I started timing my contractions. He tossed some t-shirts and jeans into a backpack in preparation to go to the hospital.

Around thirty minutes later, I was standing at the end of the bed, swaying slightly to the metronome of my contractions as the rain lashed the French doors, when my husband told me a tree had fallen across the road and was keeping his sister from reaching our house.

By the time my sister-in-law arrived to watch our toddler, I was in shushing mode, meaning that no one could speak while I was having a contraction.

She took one look at me and agreed that it was time to go to the hospital.

I hemmed and hawed and dragged my feet while slowly packing toiletries in a bag.

My first delivery had been anything but idyllic, and I was not eager to repeat the process of interventions that stole a majority of the joy surrounding my firstborn daughter’s birth.

I had six contractions during the twenty-five minute drive, but I was so aware of the scent of the storm. Of the black sheen on the rain-polished streets. Of the ruby glow of the stop lights that were stopping no one but us.

I told my husband that they were just going to send me home—that I wasn’t actually in labor.

I was wrong.

I was already four centimeters dilated when I arrived at 1 o’clock, and my contractions were consistent, dilating my body a centimeter an hour.

Around four, I told my nurse that I thought I might be in transition.

She grinned and said, “You’re too smiley.”

I thought to myself, You just don’t know me. I’m always smiley. I’ll be this smiley when I give birth.

Well, I was sure wrong about that, too.

By six, I was sweating and trembling and all but foaming at the mouth. I would move from the birthing ball, to the floor, to hands and knees on the bed. With every contraction, my husband put counter pressure on my lower back, and my nurse gripped my hands and helped me breathe.

When she had to leave for a few minutes, I asked my mother-in-law if she could be my breathing coach. She stepped right in and gripped my hands and breathed with me.

It was such a beautiful experience to have the support of my family, even as I was aware of going through some of the most intense pain of my life.

At 6:30, my bag of waters still had not broken. Because my doctor was scheduled to deliver a C-section at 7:30, she wasn’t sure if she could make it to pop my water, not to mention deliver my baby. Another doctor from the same practice—who I couldn’t’ve picked out of a crowd since we’d never met—was going to delivery my baby.

I was disappointed, to say the least.

But then, I heard the squeak of rubber-soled shoes across tile, and when I glanced up from a contraction—my sweaty bangs hanging in my eyes—I saw my doctor, a heroine in green scrubs.

She kindly waited for me to get through another contraction before popping my bag of waters. I thought the pain would increase after that, but instead I felt the most wonderful relief. I sighed and then groaned low in my throat.

Nobody was prepared for me to start pushing—most of all me. The doctor and nurses flew into action. I pushed and then felt resistance. I screamed, “I don’t know how to push!”

They reassured me that I did, and I pushed again. They told me my daughter was crowning, but I knew it without being told.

The doctor mentioned to the nurse that the shoulder was stuck. I felt her adjust the shoulder. They asked me to push again, and then the body slipped out.

The epidural I received during my previous birth had left me feeling so groggy, and my legs like slabs of cold beef, that I didn’t feel very present for the birth at all, which was my greatest incentive for going natural this time around.

Now, under those lights, I was aware of everything: of the blessed cacophony of my second daughter’s first cry, of the doctor kneading my womb after I delivered the placenta, of my husband kissing me on the forehead with tears in his eyes.

And I knew, staring up at him and then down at our perfect daughter cradled in my arms, that being a mother to two little girls was going to be one of the greatest joys of my life.

This time, finally, I was right.

Do you have a unique birth experience (good or bad) that you’d like to share? Please do!