Fifth time's a charm

When one does a hard thing, such as running a marathon or climbing Mt. Everest, one prepares for the worst and forms contingency plans around the worst happening. When one proceeds to run the marathon again or retackle Mt. Everest (presumably off the proceeds of the book one wrote about doing it the first time), the valuable experience gained the first time around informs the second venture, but the contingency plan is not discarded. One still must assume the worst.

Forget the third person here. In my previous four labors, I followed a recognizable pattern: labor started, it got progressively harder, and then I had a baby. I assumed this pattern would repeat itself, and if there were any deviations, it would be because something had gone wrong. But the pattern didn't repeat itself this time. And it didn't get worse.

It got easier. Not easier as in, "I know what to expect, so I can knuckle through it." Easier as in for three hours after the midwives arrived, I laid in bed and read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and enjoyed it. Easier as in I would have thought that labor had stalled out entirely except that I kept dilating. Easier as in twenty minutes before baby was born, I was standing around with my hands on my hips saying, "I know something has to happen here sometime." (The midwife was still laughing about that the next day.)

I laid in bed. I looked at the tomatoes in the garden. I ate breakfast and lunch. I quick-stepped up and down the stairs in an effort to get up a contraction that the student midwife could monitor. Low-key doesn't even begin to describe it. There was no hard labor. There were almost no painful contractions. I was in no hurry, but once Jack went down for his nap and the girls went for a walk with Grandma we decided to have the midwife strip the bag of waters so that we could have the baby before Jack woke up. And then I braced for the transition that never really came (I think maybe my legs felt a bit shaky) and the three-minute contractions that didn't show up. Sure, there were a few hard contractions that let me know things were moving, but nothing like in the past. And then I was bored with waiting around and decided to push (in the absence of any pushing contractions), and baby finally shook a leg and made her appearance.

Was it orgasmic? No. She got a little stuck and they had to give her shoulder a nudge, and nothing could be further from orgasmic than having a body wedged in your birth canal. That was pretty uncomfortable. And then there she was, and eventually she stopped yelling long enough to nurse. Then the afterbirth pains hit, and they were definitely the worse than any contraction I'd had that day.

I've tried in the past to be honest about my labors (pretty painful) and I guess this is the flip side of the coin -- sometimes it isn't that bad? Maybe it makes a difference that this was my fifth jaunt around the block? I do want to say that I don't think I could have had such an easy labor if I wasn't at home, where I was completely comfortable, and with midwives I trusted who never pushed me to rush things along. I would take this almost-fourteen-hour labor over any of my previous, including the less-than-two-hours I spent on #3.

So there you have it, and if all you mothers out there never speak to me again, I'll understand.

Homeopathic FAIL

This seems a popular topic, so I'll keep it going.

From all accounts, either homeopathic stuff works right away, or it's not going to. On that score, my foray into the homeopathic realm is an utter fail. My veins have not cleared up -- on the contrary, last night I was bent double standing over the sink, trying vainly (pun! ha!) to take some pressure off the area. I foresee appalling support garments and lots of external witch hazel in my future.

For the record, continuing our discussions of bizarre midwife tendencies, I want to say that my midwife is quite competent and very accepting of charting and NFP. The homeopathic recommendation was only one in a raft of suggestions for managing veins -- I was hoping that a "magic" remedy would work for me instead of having to start an ongoing treatment regimen. Guess what? Magic don't work.

When I was first looking into homebirth, three kids ago, I called up the only Catholic midwife I knew of in the area, but she was just getting ready to start with the nearest birthing center. In the intervening years, she's switched from the birthing center to homebirths and back again a few times, stranding a friend of mine either way. So that doesn't work for me. But I like and trust my current midwife, who's seen me through two births and a miscarriage, and I'll put up with one homeopathic recommendation in the five years I've been with her.