The Birth of Leo Star: Lena's Story

This is Lena's story, in her words.

I am writing this while my 6 day old baby is sleeping on my chest, with my laptop propped on a nursing pillow on my lap in my postpartum nest where I have dutifully stayed resting since the birth.

I had been having Braxton hicks contractions fairly regularly for weeks. I often had times in the night when I would feel them stronger, or have insomnia. But Thursday morning, my due date, when I woke up at about 4:30 am to pee, the contractions did feel a little different. More present. I felt myself wanting for spiral my hips through them just a little bit. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I got back in bed anyway and observed the contractions, coming fairly regularly, every 15 or 20 minutes or so. Some I felt more than others. Jasper, who often comes into bed and snuggles up to me at some point in the middle of the night, was in bed next to me as I rolled my hips through the contractions, unable to fall back asleep. I rested that way until morning.

A little after 7 am, Jaz and Luke had gone outside to check on our goat who was also pregnant and due anytime. I turned to Lex and told her softly, as Zeben sucked on her boob, that I thought I might be in early labor. I was very unsure about this because I was pretty sure my labor would start with my water breaking. All of my mother and sister’s labors had started that way and I was fairly certain that mine would follow that pattern.

We got up and started the day, getting the boys all ready for camp and nursery school, packing lunches and eating breakfast. We had been planning on going to the farmer supply coop 30 minutes away to get some supplies for our goats. We decided to go anyway, but called our midwife and let her know that we suspected the possibility of early labor and we would call again if it obviously progressed. She advised us to continue our day as planned, but to eat and drink well and rest as much as possible. The contractions became less regular and a bit less intense during the day. We had a productive trip to Greenfield. As we drove by our backup hospital on our way home, I commented that I hoped we didn’t see this place any time soon.

I took a shower and a brief nap when we got home while Lex picked Zeben up from school. At that point a professional photographer was scheduled to come take pregnant pictures of us. A friend of ours is starting a parenting support center in Northampton and they are decorating the walls with photographs of families and realized they didn’t have any lesbian pregnant pictures, so they asked if we would agree to be photographed before I had the baby. We cut it pretty close, but there we were posing half naked for photos while light contractions continued and occasionally I felt liquid of some sort drip down my legs. The day continued without much progress, Lex picked up the older boys from school and went grocery shopping on the way home. I had clearly stated that I wanted the house filled with fruit and food our children liked as part of my birth plan. I lay down again while she was gone, but didn’t sleep.

Our midwife called to check in that late afternoon, we told her how the day had gone and that we would call again if the contractions picked back up. We had a great dinner, I had a good apatite and ate copious amounts of cous cous, grilled zucchini, summer squash and apple chicken sausage. I was glad I had a good apatite, but I thought it might mean active labor was still a ways off. I also hoped that I would be able to digest the dinner before any onset of active labor because if I had to throw up that menu later would be pretty disgusting.

I put Luke and Jaz to bed that night, I read to them on the mattress on the floor in their room, pausing to breathe through the occasional contractions. Lukas asked me what was wrong, I said nothing was wrong but I might be in labor. He said, well early labor right? I told him I thought we might be moving toward mid-labor, but we would probably have the baby out sometime in the next few days. The boys went to bed well, I rubbed Lukas’ feet and snuggled Jaz as usual.

When I came down stairs it was just after 8 pm. I called my sister and told her I thought I might be in early labor, but was not sure, she told me she wanted me to call any time of night when I was sure, I told her I would. Then I called my parents and told them I thought I might be in early labor and asked if they would be able to be on call to help out with the old boys the next day in case I was in active labor. We didn’t want to send them away to nursery school and art camp if that was happening, they said they’d be happy to and to call them anytime. At that point Lex called Katie, our good friend who is a birth doula and had been our midwife’s assistant and would be at our birth. She decided to come over and check in, we asked her to bring her birth ball and to pick up some lemonade and Gatorade. I had been reading Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent, I had just read about the birth of her third child in which she called repeatedly for iced tea. I imagined that I was going to call repeatedly for lemonade in the same way and wanted to be stocked up. Katie insisted on the Gatorade for it’s high electrolyte content. By the time Katie showed up the contractions weren’t much stronger but were more regular at about every 20 minutes, but varying from 15 to 30 minutes and sometimes lasting 5 minutes, and sometimes lasting 15 seconds. We put the drinks in the fridge and inflated her birth ball with our loud electric air pump.

Katie stayed until about 10:30 and then we all decided we should go to bed and get some rest, if the labor progressed we would call Katie back, but if it didn’t we would all need our strength for the coming days. Katie went home and we went upstairs and watched a show online in bed until about midnight when we turned off the lights to sleep for the night. Lex fell right to sleep. I tried to sleep but the contractions were getting stronger.

By 12:15 I started having contractions that there was no way I could lie down through. I got on my hands and knees and spiraled by pelvis in bed, then they started coming more frequently and were stronger, I got up and went to the bathroom and leaned on the sink and spiraled. For the first time I had to moan through some. Some were stronger than others but over the next hour while I let Lex sleep they became much more frequent, about every 3 to 5 minutes and stronger. At about 1:15 I woke Lex up and told her that I thought I was in active labor. The progression of contraction strength and frequency were hard to deny. Lex decided she should check my dilation before we called the midwife. She had checked me a few times over the last week, including the day before, so she had a reference point for comparison. She checked me on the floor in our book nook and I was just about one centimeter dilated.

We went downstairs and called Katie and our midwife. Katie decided to come right over, she could help us decide when it would be a good time to set up the birth tub and tell our midwife, Tanya, that it was definitely time to come. Lex called Tanya and told her about the contractions and the dilation, since I wasn’t very dilated Tanya thought it would probably take until the next day, I should try to eat, drink and rest as much as possible and that we should check in as things progressed. She said she would probably see us tomorrow. At this point I started feeling sick and I ran to the sink and threw up, retching repeatedly while running water and rinsing out my mouth. Our garbage disposal has been broken for a while and the, luckily mostly digested, puke wasn’t washing away well and I begged Lex to do something because the smell was horrible for me. She grabbed the plunger and drained the sink while I continued to rinse my mouth. I knew that puking in labor can really help dilation, so I tried to think positively about it, but I was nervous that this was just the first of many pukings. Luckily it turned out to be the only one.

By the time Katie arrived I was moaning through all of the contractions. Lex put on the birth mix I had started working on. I enjoyed the first song, “Walking in Memphis” and found it helpful to listen to during the contractions, which were taking more and more of my focus as I paced around the kitchen. When “Ooh child” came on next I immediately knew it was the wrong kind of beat and without even realizing what song it was yelled for it to be skipped. For me this kind of marked a shift from being a regular person with contractions, to being a bossy woman in labor. After the mix played through I realized that I had felt best during the Enya track and asked for that album after that.

Katie encouraged me to rest as much as possible between contractions, because this could still last for days. She encouraged me to lie down on the couch and drink something between every contraction. I was able to lie down between contractions for a little while, I drank some lemonade water (lemonade mixed with water, my favorite drink these days) from a straw after every contraction. They weren’t exactly regular in length or frequency, but they were stronger and stronger and taking more and more of my attention. For most of them I was having to get up and spiral my pelvis and moan, I tried being on my knees with my hands and elbows on the couch and hanging over the birth ball on the couch, both these positions helped as I rolled and moaned. I don’t know how long it went on like this, I had lost a sense of time, the pattern was only broken by occasionally going upstairs to pee. I asked Lex to call my sister because I was certain that I was in labor and she wanted to know, and it was not going to last for days, not at this pace. At a certain point I stopped being able to lie down at all and I started needing someone to push on my lower back. This need for lower back pressure became more and more desperate. I tried to keep my moaning low and my jaw loose like Ina May recommends, but during the stronger contractions this was taking more conscious effort.

At some point it started seeming like the contractions were never stopping, I had a vague awareness of Katie and Lex talking to each other in hushed tones and calling Tanya. They told her about the progression of the contractions, I heard them say double peaking and remember feeling like they were quintuple peaking. Tanya asked Lex if I felt like I wanted her to come, Lex asked me and I moaned out a desperate “YES”. At this point I felt like the contractions were so intense that I had to have this baby soon, and our midwife lives about an hour away, I couldn’t imagine this going on for much more than a few more hours.

Just after the phone call I was on my knees leaning on the couch, moaning and rocking through a contraction when I felt something dripping down my legs. I was wearing a loose V neck tee shirt and a loose calf-length black skirt, as I went up stairs saying it was time to pee again I remember saying that some kind of liquid was dripping down my legs. I was thinking that my water had finally broken, but as I pulled myself up the stairs I lifted the skirt and saw that blood was flowing down both my legs to my knees. I got to the bathroom and peed, stripped off my clothes and asked Katie to start the shower, and the not make it hot. I never went downstairs again. I washed the blood off my legs and dropped to my hands and knees as the next contraction washed over me. There were two wash clothes in the tub left from when I gave them to Luke and Jaz to wash their feet and knees in a shower the previous night. Between contractions I shoved the wash clothes under my knees, which were digging into the sides of the rounded bottom of our clawfoot tub. I braced my arms on the side and the back of the tub, between the rounded edge and the wall. I called for a hand towel the pad the back of the tub as I rested my head on it and felt the shower on my lower back. I still needed someone to be pressing as hard as they could on my back at all times, it was the only thing that got me through.

Zeben woke up in our bedroom and Lex went to nurse him back to sleep. Katie had been planning to go set up the birth tub, but I needed her to press on my back desperately. Eventually the hot water ran out and the shower went from luke warm to cold, so I asked someone to turn it off, but continued on my knees despite the lack of running water. At this point the contractions were so intense it felt like a freight train was hurtling through me. I moaned and yelled, trying to keep my tone low, but loosing control as the strongest ones peaked. It felt like someone was trying to shove a baby’s head into the deepest depths of my ass and they were succeeding despite any size restrictions. It was a feeling impossible to describe, but unlike what some friends had warned me of, I never felt like I was dying or like I couldn’t do it.

Then, suddenly, I felt like I had to push. It wasn’t like I had a choice about it, it felt like my body was going to push whether I did or not. I remembered that if a woman’s body feels like it needs to push she is probably 10 cms and the baby could come real quickly, or it could take a long time, but it certainly meant I wanted my midwife to be there. I told Katie I had to push and she encouraged me to breathe through the urge and try my hardest to not push until Tanya arrived. This was the hardest thing in the world. Like trying to tell your body not to have explosive diarrhea, when you do. Only instead of liquid shit, it’s a baby’s head my body was convulsing to expel out of what felt like my ass. I blew as hard as I could out my mouth, I screamed and moaned loader than ever, I think I said “oh God, oh God”, but I can’t be sure. I blew raspberries with my lips and did everything I could to concentrate on redirecting my pushing uterus. I reached down and felt for his head. I could feel something; it felt like the water bag, then a couple millimeters of water, and then his head. I kept my hand on his head and tried to hold him in while I tried to stop my body from pushing. I wasn’t totally successful, some pushing happened despite my best efforts, but I held it back for, what I am told now, was about 25 minutes until Tanya arrived. That was by far the most intense 25 minutes of my life.

During that time Lex gave up on trying to nurse Zeben back to sleep and they both came in the bathroom. Zeben stood quietly watching me intently with a plastic whale toy and a bath hippo in his hands. I looked over at him, when I could, between contractions and tried to smile and tell him it was okay. He seemed rapt, yet calm and surprisingly unfazed throughout the rest of the birth. I was so grateful to hear Tanya arrive. She came into the bathroom and checked my dilation, I think she said something like, “oh yeah, we got a baby coming here.” Then she told me that I could just do what my body felt like doing. Tanya quickly checked Leo’s heartbeat with her Doppler and I was amazed at my ability to stop all sound while I listened to his perfect little heartbeat. Then I resumed pushing and moaning. Although I wouldn’t say that pushing felt “good”, it certainly felt more satisfying and natural than trying to stop my body from pushing. I let my body push, I really felt my body take over beyond consciousness. I moaned, grunted, yelled, and pushed while on my hands and knees in the tub. I felt a sudden pop and clear liquid squirted from me as my water broke. Very little water came out because Leo’s head was crowning and blocking the flow of the rest of the fluid. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t get my knees far enough apart for the baby to come out and I felt like that was what was going to happen next. I moaned this sentiment out to the crowd in the little bathroom and they responded by quickly getting a birth stool that Tanya had brought and putting it right next to the tub.

Between pushing urges I stood up and climbed out of the tub and positioned myself on the birth stool. I still felt like I needed to hang on something and I articulated that somehow. Lex sat down on our little foot stool in front of me and I hung onto her neck, buried my face in her neck and made pushing sounds, said “oh my God” repeatedly and blew raspberries as my body was wracked with intense pushing rushes. Tanya checked Leo’s heartbeat again and squatted next to me, she told me that if I felt like the pushing was getting too painful that I wanted to shy away from it, I should avoid that urge and try to push through it. I never shied back from the pushing, I gave into the rushes sweeping through my body and allowed my body to push with all it’s might. In what seemed like no time at all, but was probably 5 or 10 minutes, I felt the pushing urge peak and pushed as hard as I could through it and felt the head move through my yoni, the pushing urge continued, and I looked down between my legs as I pushed Leo’s shoulders out and watched as Tanya, who squatted next to Lex and I, caught my purple scrawny little baby as he dropped between my legs. His cord was around his neck and she quickly un-looped it. She saw him take a breath and she put him right up and into my arms. I’d been reading so many birth stories I was ready for him to start crying right away and for all the pain I’d been feeling to immediately disappear and become blissfully filled with oxytocin love hormones. He didn’t cry immediately, so I just kept saying, “why isn’t he crying”, while no one else seemed worried. They said he was breathing and he just didn’t need to cry yet, but I still felt like I needed to hear him cry to know it was real and all was good. While I held him and watch him incredulously he gave a little crying squawk and then I let myself believe that it was real. Somebody said something about him being born at 5:26 am. I stared at the little naked baby on my naked chest and marveled at him, at the cord that still ran from him to inside of me and just knew that this was crazy moment.

There was bustling happening all around me as I stared at the baby in my arms. Chux pads were moved around, for some reason the stool was moved and I was sitting on the floor on a pad and Tanya was getting ready to catch the placenta. She said if I felt another urge to push to do so, right after that I felt a small contraction, nothing compared to what I had just endured, and I went with it and out came the rest of the cord and the placenta. The cord blood had finished pulsing and Tanya tied off Leo’s cord and Lex cut it. Apparently it was very thick. I was still very dazed, staring at the little baby on me and surprised by how much my body ached.

At this point our older boys, who remarkably had slept through the entire birth in the bedroom just across from the bathroom, woke up. A procession of people, supporting the baby and me and holding a chux pad between my legs worked our way through the boy’s room and into our room, where our bed was waiting for me to climb into with Leo. The boys met their little brother, with incredible excitement while I positioned myself on chucks pads on the bed.

Everything is kind of a blur after that, I snuggled Leo skin to skin, I was overwhelmed by exhaustion, Katie, Tanya and Lucinda, Tanya’s midwife partner who I had not noticed arrive, helped clean up while Lex, the boys and I acquainted ourselves with Leo on the bed. I tried getting Leo to nurse; he took to it quite quickly. I nursed him lying on my side because I was far too sore to consider sitting up. After bonding for a while it was time for the infant exam, I was curious to know how big he was, we all made guesses, and he was 7 lbs 2 oz. We washed the blood off of Leo and me with warm wet wash clothes. Tanya checked me and I only had one tiny tear that didn’t even need a stitch.

It has been almost a week since then, Leo is nursing beautifully, my milk came in, my wife has been taking wonderful care for me as I have stayed in this postpartum nest recovering. Leo is so beautiful. He is very peaceful. He mainly fusses when we switch him from horizontal to vertical or vice-versa, besides that he is sleeping, nursing or staring about. He loves to be worn by Lex in the sling and he sleeps curled up in my arms next to me between nursings and changings throughout the night. We are all very in love.

[Scroll down or click here to read Leo's Birth Story from Lex's perspective].