Raeford's birth has been the best experience of my life. His birth changed me; it prepared me in a viseral way to be his mother. Birth caused me pain and fatigue, to the edge of what I thought I could bear, more than I thought I could endure. But I did! The fact that I did endure gives me a sense of strength and helped me transistion to motherhood.
I knew from the outset that I wanted to deliver naturally with a midwife. Circumstances permitted that I could and did deliver at home as well. I've read too much medical literature to think or feel otherwise. For a healthy, normal pregnancy, a hospital birth was not for me.
I will admit that I am a wimp for pain. I don't like it, I whine the whole time I'm experiencing it, and I question why I need to go through it all along. So, choosing a home birth is rather comical because, of course, there's no IV pain relief offered. I felt, though, that the momentary pain of labor was not worth the complications of temporary pain relief. Pain has a purpose, right?
We started pre-natal care with a group of midwives in Utah while I prepared to gradaute from the University. Mr. Graff got a job offer that took us out to Maryland exactly one month before Raeford, affectionately called "Studly", was born. I frantically looked for a midwife in the area and (luckily) found one. I just had a couple of visits with her and her birth assistant before Studly was born.
Since we'd opted to not have ultrasound confirmation of the gender of our baby, we had taken the practice of calling him a she. Both of us felt we were having a girl, and since Studly didn't care anyway, feminine pronouns were used on him in utero. I liked not knowing. We got to meet and get to know our baby when he was born and became part of our family. In any case, his in utero name was "Nudgekin", which is nice and gender neutral, unlike "Tank" or "Princess" neither of which we considered anyway, but I've heard both used on other fetuses.
My water broke Sunday morning, at about 5 a.m. It flooded the bed and surprised me and Mr. Graff. Studly was due June 15th and it was June 5th. Pretty much all of my family had babies after their due dates, so we thought we had a couple of weeks to go. My feelings were a mixture of relief, excitement, and anticipation to get this kid out of me.
We went back to bed for a couple of hours and labor started gradually. We called the midwife at 9 a.m. to let her know that my water broke earlier but that contractions were not very close together. We went for walks, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, watched Beauty & the
Beast, and played board games (scoring our best Scrabble game to date!). Mr. Graff filled the crockpot with barbeque chicken and scrubbed out the bath tub. We were a flurry of activity and anticipation. So was our extended family. Over this whole experience, Mr. Graff got hundreds of text messages and lots of phone calls.
In the evening, contractions came closer together and we called the midwife. A little while later, her and her birth assistant came to see us. They stayed through Sunday night and well into Monday. I had dilated to 7 cm and stayed there from Sunday night to Monday night. Studly was just not ready yet. Unfortunately, I was totally ready by this point--and so was all of our family. "Where's my niece?" and "Where's my grandbaby?" were the calls we got on Monday night. Everyone was worried. Mr. Graff and I were exhausted and worried about Studly's arrival; we almost turned off our phones to ignore anymore calls. By about Monday night, we'd decided to call her "Rachel Meriby".
As we wearily climbed into bed, I hoped that the baby would come soon. A couple of hours went by, with the same labor pattern. I think I gave up on counting time between contractions with Mr. Graff, but about 11 pm Monday night, things started becoming more intense. Mr. Graff was already sleeping and I didn't want to wake him up--he'd had a long almost two days of labor with me, too. By 1 a.m., I knew that the baby was coming and woke up Mr. Graff. He wanted to call the midwife right away, I told him to wait an hour because I wanted to be absolutely sure before they came back. At 2 a.m. we called and by 3:30 a.m. they were both in our apartment.
I vaguely remember walking out into our kitchen and staring at the microwave clock... 5:30 a.m. ... and thinking, "I cannot do this until ten or eleven. I'm done."
All positions I tried varied from slightly uncomfortable to bed-of-unevely-placed-nails uncomfortable. I drank Gatorade and quickly returned it back into a bowl. I took a shower--
labor stopped. Mr. Graff coaxed me out of the shower to keep labor moving. I settled onto the bed, cuddled and held by Mr. Graff who kept reassuring me that it was okay. I have no idea how he knew it was okay; I did not feel it at the time! If I had been listening to me, I would have been worried. Mr. Graff, though, is my hero and patiently helped.
My bladder desperately wanted to be emptied... and my body would not cooperate. Several unsuccessful attempts were ventured, until, at the last attempt, I rolled out of bed and onto my hands and knees where I hosed the carpet (Oops!) and then began pushing.
Pushing became my favorite part of labor. It felt constructive and felt like the eye of the
storm--calm, peaceful, focused. It also felt a lot like trying to go #2. Graphic, but true. I knew from reading that the pushing phase generally lasts about an hour. I knew I could last another hour. I heard my cell phone go off and knew that mom was calling. She was on the road from her home in Chicago and probably pretty close to our apartment. No way I was answering, though. I focused on moving Studly out.
Pregnancy never felt real to me. It felt like aliens had invaded me. My stomach moved and I'd listened to Raeford's heartbeat, but it just felt like I was getting bigger and bigger. Mentally, a giant tumor seemed like a reasonable explanation. It grows in your body and pushes everything out of the way and generally wreaks havoc. Thinking my baby was a tumor makes sense, right?
As Studly started coming out, I felt nothing below my waist, like it was numb, but I could still move all right. The birth assistant whispered, "she's crowning" to Mr. Graff. He took off his wedding ring to catch. It didn't feel like crowning to me. It felt like relief. Concentrating on letting my body expand, I focused on gently easing her out. I gave the final push thirty-seven minutes later and Raeford popped out with a splash! Seconds later I heard him fuss and the midwife handed him up to me between my legs.
Right then, Mom knocked on our door and came in to help me up onto the bed. Once on the bed, I got a good look at Studly. We had a boy! Mr. Graff missed catching by seconds, but got to cut the cord awhile later. The cord looked gray and like thick, flexible plastic tubing; for umbilical cord, it was rather short. I got to feel it pulsing while holding Raeford. Our midwife guided the placenta out and inspected it to make sure that it was intact. The placenta reminded me of a jellyfish--big, round and covered in blood vessels.
We took our time settling on a name for Raeford. Initially, we thought Joshua Chamberlain because we both liked that name, but he didn't seem like a Joshua to us. While laying on my belly, I thought, "He looks like an Elijah". We picked Raeford because it's Mr. Graff's middle name; it has heritage and that's important to both of us. So, his name became Raeford Elijah Graff.
What a transition to
motherhood! Birth prepared me for mothering; just like pregnancy prepared me for birth. This birth was exhausting, not on my time table, and surprising.
I cradled him on my chest and my heart filled with reverent awe and wonder; I've never made anything more perfect.
