Birth Story III

Part the Third: Pushing

I had heard stories of women – even other first-time moms – who pushed only three or four times before their babies came out. And the incredible pressure in my personal region made me very motivated to get him out quickly. But with the first push, I began to have some doubts that this would be a fast process. And I was right: it was nearly four and a half hours from the time I started pushing to when O made his big arrival!

I didn’t know that, of course. I kept asking for updates on my progress and hearing that I was pushing just fine, but that they could only see a tiny bit of his head starting to emerge – a dime, then a quarter, then “a handful of change.” My OB said that she expected that each push would move the baby out by one millimeter – argh!

The rhythm of pushing gave me plenty of time to reflect on this experience, strangely enough. You only want to push during a contraction, both to make them as effective as possible (your uterus is also trying to squeeze the baby out) and to save your own strength. You also want to aim to push three times during each contraction, with only a quick break in between to catch your breath. However, when the contraction ends, you get to rest for a moment. If you are me, or you are as exhausted as I was, you may even find that your mind wanders in unpredictable ways and you feel almost like you’re dreaming… until the next contraction starts to build, and it’s time to push again.

A brief word on labor pain for a moment. My epidural had a “window” when it was first placed where the lower left quadrant of my abdomen was still feeling the pain of the contractions. It was fixed initially but at some point during the pushing I began to feel it again, only a brief twinge at first, but then more and more. I wasn’t able to communicate very eloquently at that point, so I started just saying “quadrant!” when it was hurting. Thankfully, the anesthesiologist was able to adjust my epidural again, and after a few minutes the pain went away so I was only dealing with the overwhelming pressure, and I started once again pushing with all of my might.

While we’re on the subject, I remember at childbirth class that we were told that pushing was the hardest physical work we would ever do. Ummmm… I’m not sure about that. I don’t want to toot my own horn here, but I’ve definitely had harder workouts! (Or maybe I’m just sufficiently out of shape so every workout seems really hard – take your pick...) It’s hard, don’t get me wrong. It’s more like weightlifting than true aerobic exercise in that you really need to psych yourself up between sets, and because I didn’t know how long I would need to push, I didn’t know how much more psyching-up I would need to do. That was the hardest part, not knowing how much longer it would last and hearing that I was only making infinitesimally small gains with every push.

Time dragged on. One hour, two hours, three hours, four… and as O started to crown, two things happened. First, I tore just from the prolonged pushing, and second, O’s heart rate got pretty low. Nobody panicked and it wasn’t very dramatic, but my OB suggested an episiotomy to help get him out as quickly as possible. On the next push I heard and felt the snip, snip, snip of her little scissors, but when he didn’t immediately emerge, I began to seriously lose patience. We went through IVF, a complicated pregnancy, and I consented to an episiotomy for this? Oh, HELL no.

On the next contraction, I pushed – and pushed – and pushed – and the contraction ended and I still pushed – and the nurse and my husband tried to hold my chin to my chest and I refused – and I kept pushing – and I felt a new and sharper kind of pain that could only be crowning – and then something unbelievably large slithered out of me – and that something started crying – and I opened my eyes to see my OB holding a baby between my legs! O was here! Everyone was relieved and smiling and my husband’s eyes were a tiny bit misty and then there was a seriously pissed-off baby on my chest. His tiny hands looked like miniature versions of my own and in between wails he opened his eyes enough for me to see that they looked exactly like his father’s. 

We were a family.