I’ve had two children -- one born in a hospital in Houston and one born in a birth center in London. My first baby (in Texas) was induced after my water broke and contractions failed to start. So I had a very long labor with an epidural and after 8 hours of pushing my son was born with the help of a vacuum extractor. I had a terrible recovery and baby Isaac was very sleepy (even more than a newborn normally is), so I decided to go more natural with my second baby. I didn’t want the typical hospital experience, so I chose a birth center instead.
Before my second baby arrived, I was a little nervous about recognizing the start of labor contractions, since by the time contractions started with Isaac I was already in the hospital. In the couple of weeks before the real thing, I had a couple incidents of false labor, so the night labor really did start, I was reluctant to call the midwives. Finally, after a couple hours of contractions, I called and a couple hours later my husband, Brian, and I headed for the birth center.
One tool I was introduced to in England is a TENS machine. TENS stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. It’s a little battery-operated device that has pads you attach to your lower back that send little electrical pulses that somehow prevent pain signals from reaching your brain. I’m not really clear how it works but it does seem to help with the pain in early labor. I put on my TENS machine early and wore it in the taxi on the way to the birth center.
When we got to the birth center at about 2:30 a.m., we had a few hours of fairly mild labor. I spent some time in a birthing pool, but when I got in the water it slowed my contractions dramatically, so I had to get out again. My labor progressed best when I knelt on the floor and embraced a birthing ball. Brian was supremely helpful by rubbing my back at the same time.
Then, my midwife Debbie decided labor was progressing too slowly, so she told me I had two choices: I could just rest a while, maybe sleep a bit, or I could have her break my waters. I didn’t want another really long labor like I’d had with Isaac, so I asked her to break the waters.
At 6:45 a.m. she did the artificial rupture of membranes. I had to lie down on the floor and as I arranged myself I saw the instrument she was about to use. As I’d read in my pregnancy books, it indeed looked like a long crochet hook. That was a bit daunting, but I tried not to think about it. In went the hook and Debbie fiddled with it for some time -- in my memory it seemed to take 15 minutes, but my husband assures me it was not longer than a couple minutes. It was uncomfortable but bearable -- I just held tightly to Brian’s hand and looked away. Finally I felt the warm gush as the waters broke.
It amazed me how quickly this affected me. Soon the contractions were dramatically more painful and effective and labor began to really progress. With the more intense pain, I tried the birthing pool again (I had really hoped to actually deliver in the water, if possible). I also tried some Entonox, which is 50 percent oxygen and 50 percent nitrous oxide given through a rubber face mask. I don’t know how to describe its effects and at the time I couldn’t decide whether it was working and whether I liked it. It made me feel light-headed, woozy, and sleepy but I couldn’t tell if that gave me any pain relief or if it was just annoying enough to distract me from the pain a little. And I may have been sleepy also because I’d already been up all night and I was immersed in warm water. I finally tossed aside the Entonox and got out of the pool. All I wanted to do was to get back on the floor and embrace the birthing ball.
From that point things speeded up a bit. At 8:30 a.m. (within a couple hours of having my waters broken) I was crying with pain like I’d never imagined before. I got very weepy and told my husband I just couldn’t do it. I was thinking about whether I could get across the street to the hospital for an epidural but in retrospect I’m sure I was too far along to do that. At that point I was standing leaning heavily on Brian and screaming as the contractions hit me one after another. Brian continued to reassure me -- making me look in his eyes as he told me that I could do it. It was like déjà vu from our first birth experience when I was ready to give up during my eight-hour stint of pushing -- though at least then I had an epidural!
My midwife, Natalie, also helped by giving me Pulsatilla from my homeopathy kit and encouraging me. For a few minutes she had me sit on the birthing ball and face her, and she held my hands and encouraged me to breathe through the pain. It sounds a bit odd, perhaps, but that did help. I focused on Natalie and slowed my breath instead of just crying. It was very calming (though I did not become completely calm).
