2004-04-24, 11:48 a.m.

Let's get to the hospital in one piece...

Leon is asleep, and I'm sort of wired - the coffee this morning was WAY too strong. So, without further preface, here's how it all happened. You should know by now that in places it will be graphic.

I first realized that I was probably having contractions at 4:30, Thursday morning, March 18th, one day after my due date. I remember waking up and looking at the clock - my lower back was aching, and I thought I just needed to shift positions. I rolled over and went back to sleep. 10 minutes later, I woke up again - the same pain in my lower back. Again I went back to sleep, then woke up again, 10 minutes later. It occurred to me that this regularity of the pain in meant something significant.

At 5:30 I decided to get up and walk around. The pain wasn't bad - it felt like times when I had ridden my bike for a long time, and my back got really sore, only this time the feeling came and went. I don't remember exactly what I did for the next few hours, while I timed the spacing between the contractions. I knew they were contractions not by the way they felt, but by the frequency, and the fact that when they passed I felt just fine, no residual pain. I had tried to get a sense from other women what exactly contractions felt like, but no one had been able to explain them to my satisfaction. The most consistent thing I heard (and most irritating for its lack of precision) was that I'd simply KNOW when I had contractions. Someone had described them as being like menstrual cramps but stronger, but that didn't end up being my experience at all. I suppose they are officially muscle spasms - for me, they started as an ache in my lower back that then wrapped around to my lower abdomen while increasing in intensity. At least, that's how they felt at the beginning, when they were slow and relatively mild, and I could track them. Later, when they got stronger and more closely spaced, all the sensations seemed to hit at the same time.

Christopher got up around 7:30. He was supposed to be out in the field later that day, but I told him that I thought today might well to be the day - my contractions were still more than 5 minutes apart, but not by much. Christopher got his watch out and started doing split-times on me - it was very funny, him trying to get dressed, make breakfast, brush his teeth, etc, while also running around the apartment after me as I paced through the contractions, telling him when the started and stopped. Soon they were every 5 minutes, then every 3, so I called my OB's office to let them know what was happening, and to ask if I should head to the hospital. The hospital will send you home if you're not far enough along, and I really didn't want to be sent away once we did get there. Trish, the fabulous nurse about whom I've written before, called back 5 minutes later, very excited. She said that the hospital had been alerted that we were coming, and that we should go as soon as possible.

Christopher then officially shifted into high-adrenaline gear. He rushed around getting everything ready, I called the dog walkers to ask them to come by for the next day or so, let my mom know we were heading to the hospital, and left messages with a few friends. The baby seat was in the car, I was packed, we had our 'Having A Baby' sign to stick in the window of the car in case of bad traffic. On the way down the stairs, I had another contraction, and had to sit and just breathe. I was using stage two (he he hoo, over and over) lamaze breathing to get through the contractions - I have no idea if this was what I was supposed to be doing, but it helped a lot.

Later, at the hospital, one of the triage nurses told me it was too early for that kind of breathing, and i felt embarassed, so I stopped - luckily she was the only person who made me feel stupid the whole day, but I wish I hadn't let her make me feel that way.

I had several more contractions during the drive through Williamsburg and over the bridge, but was managing them pretty well. Christopher, as I said before, was pumping adrenaline like crazy, and I warned him that running down Hasidic men on the way to the birth of your first child would probably be bad Karma. But we got to the hospital safely, and without having to use the sign.

We arrived at labor and delivery, the 4th floor at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, at 9:30 am. They put us in a triage room, hooked me up to a fetal heart monitor and a contracto-meter (my term - I have no idea what it's really called), and checked my dilation - 4 cm. Labor was indeed progressing. The contractions were coming steadily, every 3-4 minutes at this point, and I was still managing them pretty well, doing breathing with Christopher. Then the stupid nurse made her comment that I was using the breathing too soon, and I felt embarrassed, and tried to just deal with the contractions through deep breathing instead. That really didn't work.

I should take this moment to explain that, for all that I had gone to child birthing classes, seen videos, read other people's stories, and talked to other women, I actually did not have a clear picture of how labor progresses. I can't explain quite why - maybe it's simply not possible to understand childbirth until actually experiencing it, or maybe I was so freaked out about the whole thing that I unconsciously refused to take in or really think about the information I was given. Whatever the cause, the result was that although ideally I wanted to have a natural and drug free birth, I didn't have a clear plan of how to achieve that. Next time maybe I'll use a doula (kind of a birth coach/advocate), or maybe I'll take the hypno-birthing course (not hypnoses, but serious relaxation techniques). Whatever I do, I'll do it with intention, as opposed to naive optimism. Naive optimism did work quite well for us, in part because except for that one nurse, we had an incredibly supportive bunch of doctors and nurses. But next time I'll have a plan with actual details. If I had, I probably would have told that nurse to leave me alone, and kept up my goofy but effective hooing and haing.

Time for a nap, more later.

For at least a week, Christopher has been asking me when I was going to write the email about Leon's birth - I think he misses regularly reading about our lives, second hand... And for a while I've been thinking about how to put the experience together in a coherent and not novel-length account, but up until now have not had the brain power to actually sit down and attempt the feat. Frankly, my brain has been fairly mushy for the past 5 weeks. Sure, I can have coherent conversations, but actually thinking in narrative form has seemed like a lost art, saved for people who get more than 4 hours of sleep a night, and who are not constantly concerned with the state of their nipples...

But I do need to get all this in writing, before I forget any of it. In part, to further my crusade to put this kind of information out there into the public sphere - "this is how it can happen, what it feels like" - and reduce the mystery. I also need to sort through my own brain and put the experience together for myself. And there are so many interesting things happening in the aftermath of Leon's birth that I want to write about, but I feel I can't do that until I've recounted his actual arrival.

So I started writing the email, and I discovered that it was way huger than anything else I�ve ever inflicted on all of you, my friends and family. And in the interests of keeping you all my friends (family�s stuck, hah), I realized it was time to stop overflowing your email boxes, and start my own web-log. Also known as a blog. So here it is, my first entry. Actual details of the birth to follow, as soon as I get them finished.

But in the meantime, let it be stated for the official record that I absolutely love being the mother of the most astonishing, cute, handsome, charming, squinky faced child on the planet. If you've been subjected to any of the many photos I've taken of Leon so far, you know that I'm snap-happily obsessed with documenting and sharing the charmingness that is our son. I love nursing him, I love changing his diapers (look, he pooped!), I love his nose and his little ears, I love his fuzzy hair, especially right after a bath. I love his sneeze - often a yell followed by the sneeze - he gets the loud sneeze from me. I love the way he looks when he's asleep, the noises he makes as he's waking up, the way he pulls his knees up to his chest when he sleeps. I love the fact that he's learning to focus his eyes, that he looks at me when I walk by, but that often as not he's totally fascinated by shadows and shapes I don't even notice. I love the fact that I have no idea what color his eyes will end up - right now they're still blue, but a dark blue, so who knows. I love that he is completely comfortable with the dog, who has a head that is almost bigger than Leon�s whole body, and the cat who likes to sleep right next to him. I can't wait until he's crawling, and can chase both of them. I love the fact that whenever we come back from an outing, Buster has to lick Leon to make sure he's still okay. I love the way Leon responds to Christopher, who can almost always soothe away fussiness, and I love the way he sits on Christopher's lap while we eat breakfast. I love the way he�s starting to really smile when we hang out together, and to laugh. In a nutshell, I love this kid. I am a total goof.

I am also still in complete shock about actually being a parent. I regularly look at Christopher and think, how the heck did this happen?? (Okay, yes, I know how it happened...) But I think that the biological imperative behind falling in love with one's offspring is to keep me from running away screaming everytime I realize that I'm a parent for THE REST OF MY LIFE. Dear god. But it's okay, 'cause I'm just so darn in love.