27 Hours

The baby is closing in on two months of life and though we’ve posted stuff on Facebook like mad, I haven’t actually written word one about the whole labor/birth/motherhood stuff. I have a rare moment when both the babe and the hubby are sleeping, so I’m going to use it to blog. Hopefully, this will put an end to my recurring nightmare that I haven’t done my high school English homework and will therefore never graduate. (Ruyman thinks the dream has something to do with me learning Spanish. Since the missing assignment is my life story and my Spanish skills are holding steady at next to nil, I think my subconscious is elbowing me to blog it up while I still sort of remember what happened.)

Labor

If you’re a first-time preggo person, you’re probably like I was and had no clue what labor was supposed to feel like. I didn’t want to be one of those idiots that show up at the hospital after eating extra-spicy cheese enchiladas and mistake heartburn for childbirth, so I looked up various accounts of what labor felt like. They ranged from “bad menstrual cramps” to “pain so bad I wanted to throw myself out a moving vehicle.” (Incidentally, I have no idea how the fabled “oops - indigestion” mistake is even possible. After almost nine solid months of heartburn, no pregnant woman I know would even attempt the enchilada, much less mistake reflux for contractions.)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every aspect of pregnancy varies from woman to woman and from child to child, so basically, I had nothing solid to go on.

On Thursday, September 27, I was walking to the bus stop after my afternoon class when my lower back started to hurt. This was odd, because usually the yoga kept most major aches and pains at bay. I had my suspicions, which I shared with Ruyman, but I figured if the pain increased in intensity, I would know for sure.

That evening, the nagging backache continued, but never got worse. When we finished the film at about one in the morning, Ruyman asked if I still thought I was in labor. He wanted to know so he could decide whether or not to take a sleeping pill. I told him to go ahead and take the pill and we turned out the light and tried to fall asleep. Fifteen minutes later, my water broke.

The whole water breaking thing is seriously underplayed in all those pregnancy movies. It’s not a little trickle. It’s not something you could fail to notice. And it’s not something that happens all at once. Instead, it’s a veritable flood of fluid with dribbley aftershocks for the next few hours. It’s a huge mess, in fact.

Ruyman was already asleep by the time I poked him and announced we had to go to the hospital. I don’t know if it was the tranquilizers or natural fortitude, but he was a model of calm as I fluttered around the room trying desperately to find my things and leaking like a sieve. He finally herded me out to the car and drove to the hospital. 

Like many couples, we had discussed and agreed on a birth plan. It consisted of the following: speak no Spanish, hear no Spanish, read no Spanish. This, of course, only applied to me and was meant to ensure Ruyman’s presence by my side. Spain is weird when it comes to patient privacy (showing people your chart = A OK, being in the same room as someone getting blood drawn = BAD), so we hoped a complete inability to communicate would force the doctors to allow Ruyman in order to translate. It didn’t quite work out the way we planned. 

While I was checked in and had my vitals taken in the gynecology wing, Ruyman was banished to a hallway behind a pair of fire doors. The nursing staff didn’t speak English so when they asked why I was there, I pointed to my belly, mimed an explosion, and made a splashing noise. The rest of the conversation was a similar mixture of gestures and sound effects. If you ever feel like playing an extreme version of charades, try to act out the phrase “I’m having contractions but they aren’t regular” while in labor at two o’clock in the morning with someone who speaks a different language.

Eventually, I found myself in a hospital gown and one of those beds that move up and down when you push a button (I SO WANT ONE!). Ruyman reappeared and was with me for the rest of the time, which helped streamline communication. Phrases like “Your cervix is dilated to two centimeters and we can’t give you an epidural until you’re at least a three” were definitely beyond the midwife’s acting abilities. 

After four hours of steady contractions, I was still at two centimeters, so they moved me to a different room and added oxytocin to my IV to induce stronger labor. Meanwhile, Ruyman’s sleeping pill kicked in and he was doing the strange head-jerking dance performed by exhausted souls everywhere. When the doctors came in to check on me, he would lurch back to consciousness, slur a quick translation at me, and return to being a human bobble head.

At about noon on Friday, I finally made it to a three and was rewarded with my much-desired epidural. By that time, I’d been awake for just under 30 hours and I was bushed. With the epidural, I was able to sleep for a few hours, albeit with several interruptions from the midwife, who happened to be a dude. (Is there a word for a male midwife? Midhusband? Midman? Guy-who-gets-teased-because-his-job-title-makes-him-sound-like-a-woman?)

Delivery

The medical team woke me up around three thirty in the afternoon to tell me that they were unhooking my pain meds since it was time to push. I wasn’t thrilled about cutting off the drugs, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The pushing/delivery part had been my biggest concern prior to this point. I really didn’t want an episiotomy and I was worried about my blood sugar and the baby’s since both of us were high risk for severe hypoglycemia postpartum.

After about an hour of pushing, I got an episiotomy. By this time, I didn’t really care because I was exhausted. Every muscle in my body was rapidly turning to post-work-out JELLO and I remember thinking, “Boy, it’s a good thing I got the epidural because if I had to work this hard and it hurt like hell, I don’t think I could do it.” 

I kept asking Ruyman what he could see down there, since it was a little hard to gage my progress under the circumstances. “I see a grey thing and a lot of blood,” he said. “Don’t say that!” cried the doctor. “Don’t tell her you see blood!” I thought this was asinine since a) I’m diabetic and have to make myself bleed like six times a day and b) since a pregnant woman is walking around with 1.5 times the normal amount of blood by month eight, it seemed only logical that a lot of it wouldn’t stick around during childbirth.

Meanwhile, the nurses kept saying how close I was to being done. I found it difficult to believe considering 99% of the baby was still on the inside. However, they were right. The grey thing turned out to be Anya’s head, and once that was out, everything else followed in one big push. Our baby girl was born at 5:10 PM Friday, September 28th. Ruyman still claims it was the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.