Once the Pit was going we put on a hypnobirthing meditation track to see if we could relax and maybe even catch a nap. It was a 20 minute track and M had a cat nap… I relaxed pretty well but the contractions were getting strong pretty quickly and I didn’t sleep. I was already starting to have to breathe through the pain a little. I asked M when we should call our doula in and he said he was thinking maybe after dinnertime, somewhere around 5 or 6 pm. I said my contractions were already starting to get pretty strong and I thought I would need her sooner… I had a feeling things were going to get intense quickly. I was still only on one unit of Pitocin and it was starting to move fast.
Our doula showed up around 3 pm (and my Pitocin got turned up a unit) with various massage tools, and we had a birthing ball and had thought that I would want to move around a lot, but at that point I was already going into the zone and just wanted to kneel backwards on the bed, with the head of the bed up so I could press my chest into it and just let my belly hang free. I was starting to vocalize a little bit on my exhalations, kind of like a long sigh. The nurse offered to check me because she thought I seemed to be progressing pretty quickly and was curious – so was I, so I let her check, and I was already at 4cm.
Shortly after she arrived the doula encouraged me to go pee. I already did not want to get up and go anywhere but I knew I should. Sitting on the toilet intensified the contractions like crazy. When I came out she suggested I sit on the birthing ball and that, too, just made them too intense for me at that point. I went back to my kneeling position on the bed and I started to really moan through the contractions. They were coming really strong and really close together. The breaks between felt heavenly, but they were only lasting about two minutes. Our doula took advantage of one break to tell me that I should try to make my breaths longer, focus on moving the contractions down, and keep my vocalizations low and deep. This was really good advice and was pretty much what I was focused on through the rest of my labor. A couple of times she asked me if I could visualize a peaceful place, but really I was just visualizing moving all that energy down and making it productive instead of just painful. Every time I did that it seemed like I could actually feel my body progressing more.
This part of labor starts to get fuzzy but I think it was about 4 pm when they checked me again and I was about 5 cm. Everyone seemed to think that was great (which it was), but I felt like I had so much farther to go and was already in so much pain. They assured me (and M) that transition would go even faster than this, so really I was more than halfway through.
M, the doula, and the nurse were an awesome coaching team. I never said anything like this out loud, but from around 5 cm on, my determination was started to flag, and I didn’t know if I could make it through. In retrospect I think that if the nurse had offered me an epidural, I probably would have thought to myself that she must know this was impossible I should just take the drugs. But no one ever mentioned an epidural to me so I didn’t ask for it. They just kept telling me I was doing great, I was strong, and not only could I do it, I was doing it. The three of them worked really well together and I think the overall chemistry and atmosphere in the room was excellent. We had a birthing playlist going on the ipod and when the music could filter through to me I enjoyed hearing songs that I loved. I think a lot of my motivation when I was really in the weeds was that M totally believed in me, even though at that point I did not, so if he thought I could do it, I would try. I also got through just by telling myself that I would hang on through one more contraction, then one more.
I can’t remember when I was checked again, but I remember being checked at 6 cm, and then the next time was “6 to 7,” at which point I thought – what??? – but the nurse assured me that transition was coming soon. And it was. I was still in bed and had stayed there pretty much the entire time but I just never wanted to go anywhere because my contractions were so on top of each other and the slightest movement seemed to trigger another one. The only thing I changed was when I got tired of kneeling I laid on my side. The IV line was driving me crazy up until transition when I ceased to notice anything but the contractions.
No comments:
Post a Comment