I went into the shower to try find relief and my wonderful doula got soaked while putting pressure on my lower back. I remember staring at the horrible pink tiles and thinking the lines in them looked like elephants, I may have shared this observation with Cari, I can’t recall. I moaned through some, hit the wall through some, and wiggled, stood, or laid down through others. I remember thinking before I went into labor that if I got into water I would try to keep my hair dry so I wouldn’t look awful in any pictures, but as I watched the drops run down my bangs I honestly could not have cared less.
When the midwife arrived 4 or 5 hours later I was still in the shower with poor sopping Cari by my side. Cari told her I was active and vocalizing well, so she asked me to get out so she could check me. Part of me thrilled at the idea and part of me cowered, but I went. It was painful, and I remember moaning loudly, staring into my husbands face. The pain was quickly replaced by the Earth shattering news that I was only two to three centimeters dilated. It hit me like a blow to the gut. My doula had to tell me later that what she said was two to three centimeters, because my memory was only that she had said two. That was the number I was clinging to. She did this Clingon-like motion with her fingers to show me how big that was and my stomach nearly turned over at the sight. I was crushed and her seeming annoyance at being right did nothing to make me feel better. I couldn’t understand how I could have been in so much pain for so long, with contractions so close together and only have reached 2 cm’s. I had been sure I would be at least at a 5 and the news knocked the wind out of me. At this point, I cried. I wasn’t balling, but I felt a few tears stream down my face as I tried to focus on the midwifes assistants face. All I could think was that it had taken me at hours of intense pain to get those 2 centimeters and I still had 8 more to go. I couldn’t fathom how I would go on for that long. All of my knowledge about how the first 4 cm’s are the hardest and longest was gone from me. To me each centimeter was going to take just as long, and be just as awful as the 2 I already had, or worse. I heard my voice repeating “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can do this.“ I searched the faces in the room for understanding, but I saw only annoyance in my midwife and her assistant. I was told once again I needed to rest and was left alone in the bedroom with my husband. I shut up, feeling now like a weakling and a failure. How could all of these other women do this and describe it so beautifully and never loose hope? What was wrong with me? I tried to rest, I even succeeded a few times, glimpsing sleep for a minute or two before waking up at the peak of a rush with no way out. I tried to remain calm and listen to my body. I focused on each limb and asked it how it wanted to be moved, not daring to take on my whole body at once. I made the in and out movement of my breath my whole world, each rush a wave to be ridden, and I still felt everything.
I heard voices from the other room and began straining to hear. Even in labor, I was being nosey. I believe I heard Cari ask if she should (or could) come in to see me, but it’s what I heard next that shattered any confidence I may have been clinging to. My midwife who had only been with me through a handful of contractions, most of which with her hand inside me cause me more extreme pain, angrily retaliated “This is just ridiculous, I’m not going to coddle her through every contraction!” John started talking to me, pulling me back to lay down and I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hear what else was being said, but he had heard it too and was trying to distract me. I angrily pulled away, but by the time I got him to shut up they were quiet. So that was it, I was failing. I was weak and I was a bad birther. I was suddenly flooded with memories of my midwife and her assistant telling me about other women whose births they had just attended. Some they would describe as beautiful, but others they would roll their eyes at and even laugh while telling me about the noises they made, or the way they acted. I hadn’t liked it at the time, but it was near the end of my pregnancy and I still really liked my midwife, and I had always assumed she was telling me these stories as a peer, being a doula. Now I wondered what mean things they would say about me and what a bad birther I was. Cry baby? Complainer? Drama queen? And of course the two words that would now haunt the rest of my labor: Weak and Failure.
I was mad now, but not at the right people. I was mad at myself. I had tried so, so hard not to be a complainer. I didn’t want to speak negatively about my birth because I wanted to remember it in a positive way. I had thought I had been controlling myself well, I had thought I was coping the way I had seen other women cope, but now I felt less-than, and I was mad at myself for it. I got back into the shower, not knowing what else I could possibly do. I decided to try a visualization we were taught in Hypnobabies to help us work with the pain to open for the baby, but when I tried to focus on my uterus or where the pain was coming from during a contraction I would get lost. The pain didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere near my belly, it was everywhere. The only way I can describe it is like trying to focus on the part of your body that has water on it while getting thrown around under a wave searching for the surface; it was everywhere and it was all encompassing. Pain became the force singing through every cell of my body. The pinnacle, if anywhere, was not my uterus it was radiating from my back.
The midwife said she was going to set the tub up in my living room, so I had to get out of the shower. At this point modesty was not a concern of mine, so I stood leaning my head against the towel rod while Cari sat on the toilet and put pressure on my lower back. Something about the angle was pure perfection. I could still feel the rushes, and they were still intense, but they were manageable. This I could do. When I told Cari how much better things were this way she told me she thought I was having back labor. My thinking brain turned on again momentarily and everything made sense. I wasn’t as weak as I thought, I was having back labor! These contractions, these manageable, no-so-bad ones were what most women felt and what I was feeling before was what women described as hell. This made me feel strong again, and it restored some of my faith in my body. I was even able to joke with Cari and promised not to leak anything on her while she rubbed by back. I continued vocalizing on a lower scale until the midwife came in to say the tub was done. I mustered a smile and told her I would go in the tub when I needed it, but I was very happy leaning against the wall. She looked irritated again and my smile faltered. “What do you mean they feel better?” I told her it was back labor and Cari was making it bearable for me. Something in her face made me think this was the wrong answer. “If you were really in that much pain in the first place then nothing would be helping you.” I spent my next contraction visualizing bouncing her face off the door jam and momentarily wondered if labor counted for a temporary insanity plea. I then relinquished myself to try out the living room.
The birth ball helped for a few contractions, but there were knives in my back and my nerves were pulled taunt so it wasn’t enough. At some point I was checked again and found to be at 4 or 5 cm’s. I have no memory of this check, but it convinced her I was really in labor so I was allowed to go into the tub. John, my husband, came in and sat behind me. He rubbed my back for a while and the water helped. It wasn’t the ‘natural epidural’ so many women had praised it as being, but it was help. I tried to get up to go to the bathroom and was told I didn’t really have to go, it was just the babies head. I remember saying “I don’t care, I don’t want to poop in my tub.” I remember being in the bathroom briefly but am told I was actually in there for a very long time. Every few minutes I would come to the door, open it, shut it, and disappear again. I remember doing this twice because I would think I was ready to go back to the tub, but as soon as a new rush would come I would sit back down. Eventually I called out that I felt sick and someone brought bag to puke it. I didn‘t need it right away, but took it with me back to the living room. I tried leaning on hands and knees over the birth ball again. The rushes seemed to be coming so quickly they were colliding into each other. Cari had been rubbing my shoulders and encouraging me when I looked up at her with tears in my eyes and said “I don’t know if I can do this. This is so awful I don’t know if I can take transition.” There was a faint smile when she told me “I think you are.” The thought was amazing to me. I got back into the tub and was finally able to rest between rushes while leaning against John. Every once in a while a rush would be so intense it would make me call out for my puke bag and every time the midwife would ask me if I had ever been abused. All my knowledge of birth was gone at this point, so I couldn’t understand why she was asking and I was annoyed at her for it. She also kept asking if I was sure my water had broke earlier, even though I had told her what color the strip had been.
There was a blessed relief as things began to slow down slightly and my contractions spaced out a bit. This seemed to just annoy my midwife further and she began making me panic that I was somehow failing again. I was again asked to leave my comfort zone and go get checked again. This check brought the very unexpected and welcome news that I was dilated fully to 10 centimeters. I found a sudden rush of energy with this news and dared to smile again. I was told there was a slight cervical lip, but it was okay to push. I didn’t have the urge at the time, and not pushing before my body told me to had been something we discussed at my prenatal appointments, but I had been awake for 24 hours now, my thinking brain was MIA, and I wanted this to be over, so I began to push. This is when things began to go wrong.
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