Molly is now five months old and i think it's time i share
her birth story. i shared her brothers' and i am so glad i have those tales
recorded. it's only fair she gets her turn. especially because it was so
wonderfully pleasant.
yes, i said it: pleasant.
which is funny, because i was dreading it. the closer my due
date grew, the more fearful and anxious i became. i'd only done the whole
pushing-a-baby-out-of-my-body thing 15 months earlier. (and Gavin came out face
up, completely thwarting the whole second-baby-is-easier theory. i think we're
both still traumatized from the ordeal.) fifteen months was not enough time to
forget what an awful business it all is.
deep down, i was really, really scared.
because i couldn't control how my Mollybean would enter the
world (or when), i used my last days of pregnancy to plow through a mile-long
to-do list. i anticipated having no time for anything at all once i was
officially a mama of three, so i wanted to work as far ahead as possible. which
explains why approximately 48 hours before i gave birth, i was out front
trimming our hedges with the giant clippers my dad had gifted me when we moved.
i am sure i looked ridiculous, but i felt a hell of a lot better when it was
done.
welcome to my neuroses.
anyway. perhaps sensing her mama's need for inner peace (or
maybe trying to mentally prepare for her two big brothers) Molly stayed put on
her due date. she stayed put for another almost-three days, in fact. on
November 11th, Michael was scheduled to work from four to midnight. i told him
a million times to go into work, i'd be fine, don't worry, he was only 90
minutes away, et cetera et cetera et cetera. well, i think he'd been at work
for less than a half-hour when i called him and told him to come home. nothing
was imminent, but i was feeling contractions stronger than the good ol' Braxton
Hicks and though my parents were only a few towns over, i really wanted my
husband with me. good chap that he is, he got right back in his car without
complaint and came home.
i woke up the morning of Wednesday, November 12th feeling
pretty sure i'd be going to the hospital soon. and i was right. i think it was
around three o'clock in the afternoon when we headed over (a five-minute ride
with no tunnels or midtown traffic to deal with—joy!). it was a gorgeous day,
sunny and unseasonably warm for almost-winter. i left without a coat and
remember thinking, as i walked (gingerly—the contractions were gathering speed
and intensity) from the car into the hospital, "i better enjoy this now."
(smart girl: the next day it snowed.)
this seems like a good time to tell you that when we moved
in August and i was forced to find a new OB, i took it hard. i loved Dr. M and everyone in her Spring
Street office in New York. i'd gone there for years and though Dr. M hadn't
delivered my boys, i had hoped she'd deliver my girl. alas, having a
long-distance OB is not very wise or practical (or so Dr. M insisted when i
asked if i could stay on as her patient. dear god). as i started the search for
an OB closer to our new home, i was dismayed to find that every single practice
had at least one male doctor. Dr. M's office was all-female. i'd never had a
male gyno or OB and the thought of it weirded me out. but everyone i spoke to
(including Dr. M) told me i would be in great hands (oh, eek—no pun intended, i
swear) with a male doctor, and that i should basically grow the hell up
already.
maybe a month and a half before Molly's birth, i met Dr. D,
one of two OBs at my new practice and the one who happened to be a man. i
brought Michael with me to the appointment—because one should always introduce
her husband to any man who might have occasion to become intimate with her lady
parts. pretty much instantly i loved him. Dr. D was easygoing, low-key but
personable, and exuded a confident calmness that i found incredibly reassuring.
he had grown up in New York and had delivered something like 15,000 babies in
his career. he answered my questions with ease and humor. there was no exam
during that appointment, just a heartbeat check, but i felt fairly comfortable
with the possibility that he might someday have to, you know, eventually go
there.
between that appointment and November 12th, i'd grown a
little fearful of the other doctor in the practice. her name was Dr. W and
though she was nice enough (and, obviously, a woman), she started talking to me
about induction two weeks before my due date. her type A intensity did not jive
with my whatever-happens-happens philosophy. i imagined her yelling me in the
delivery room, and i wanted none of it.
as luck would have it, Dr. D was on-call when i was in labor
and i will forever thank my lucky stars for that. he was amazing. the entire experience was—as i said—so very pleasant, from
arriving at the hospital and getting checked in (easy, quiet, peaceful) to
receiving the epidural (timely, drama-free), to the moment Dr. D padded in
wearing his blue scrubs and a kind smile. he asked me if i had any questions or
concerns and i blurted that i was worried about pushing. that's where things
had gone wrong with both Matthew and Gavin (fetal heart monitors, oxygen masks,
a lot of anxiety and barked instructions), and i just did not want to do it
again.
"so why don't you labor down, then?" he said.
"labor what?" i said
"labor down. when you get to 10 centimeters, if you
don't feel like pushing, we'll wait. let your body bring the baby down on its
own."
wait? WAIT? that
was an option? why had no one told me
that before? "okay," i said, still not entirely sure what it entailed
but liking the sound of it. "i will labor down."
i got to 10 centimeters pretty quickly after getting settled
in my L&D room. and when i got there, i did not feel like pushing, so i
waited. Michael and i watched back to back to back episodes of
"Friends" on TBS (utterly comforting to both of us) and i just let my
body do its thing. at the risk of sounding crunchy, it all felt so very natural. i had mostly positive birth
experiences at NYU with the boys, but man, the second i hit 10, it was
"okay, let's PUSH." they're on a tight schedule there, not enough
rooms for too many mamas. and what did i know? so i pushed before i was ready.
and it was awful (see aforementioned fetal heart monitors and oxygen masks).
but this time, this experience—now i know why some people
say childbirth is beautiful. of course it hurt like hell, but it was a
different kind of pain. the contractions i felt after i was fully dilated were
intense but—i don't know. i was able to breathe through them, calmly. i really
just trusted my body. and my baby.
at one point—i guess probably around quarter to six—Dr. D
came in to check on me. he took one look, saw the baby's head and said,
"oh! we better get going here." he (calmly and efficiently) called
the nurses in, got his tools ready, turned on the light, got me into position
and—
TWO PUSHES LATER MOLLY
WAS HERE.
two measly pushes! i couldn't believe it. i watched her come
out of me—at five fifty-one—and i burst into tears and said, "you're my
favorite!" Dr. D placed her on my chest and i laughed-cried forever,
blathering to both him and my daughter about how awesome it all was.
it really, really was. i couldn't have asked for a more
wonderful finale to my childbirth experiences.
if any of you reading this are pregnant or are planning to be
at some point in your life, i strongly encourage you to talk to your OB about
laboring down. i really, really wish someone had told me about it when i was
pregnant with Matthew.
i am not sure if there's a true correlation between birth
experience and the personality of a baby, but poor Gavin had a very rough first
few months of life while Molly has been an extremely relaxed, easygoing and
happy little bean since the moment she came into the world.
just a thought...!
mbm
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