It was a verifiable miracle: Somehow I woke up on Christmas morning able to cram my 40-weeks-pregnant belly into my festive footie pajamas and zip them up. Even though it was my due date, I’d already decided Baby would be at least a week late. Nothing was happening. The doctor and midwife agreed. Having a baby that day was truly nowhere on my radar.
After a big French toast brunch, I went to the bathroom around 11:30 a.m., and when I stood up from the toilet and started to wrestle the zipper of my PJs, things felt…a little wet. Oops. I cleaned myself up and stood again – and the same thing. This is it, I thought. The point where I’m so pregnant I lose all control of my bodily functions.
Feeling a little soggy, I skipped the zipper and shuffled out of the bathroom with the top half of my jammies dangling. “Honey,” I said to my husband, “I think I just peed my onesie.” When he suggested I text our doula just in case it wasn’t pee, I rolled my eyes and fired off my embarrassing news.
I felt totally normal and, despite Husband’s pleas to take it easy, went about my day, making our Christmas-tradition homemade lasagna for later. After an hour-plus in the kitchen, I felt a little crampy/lower back-achy – Husband’s ears perked up. I told him to join the Ten Months Pregnant Club, did the reluctant eye-roll/doula-text and threw some Thai leftovers in the microwave for lunch. (If there is any proof that I didn’t think I was in labor, it was that.)
Mid-afternoon, I put my then-dry PJs back on so we could take my 40-week bump picture. I tried to take a nap but felt restless. Our doula checked in, and she suggested going for a walk to see whether my not-painful, quasi-cramps, which I took a wild guess were coming every 12 to 15 minutes-ish, would speed up (maybe labor!) or slow down (not labor).
We left at 4 p.m. and strolled for a mile before Husband pressed me and I admitted that OK, OK, maybe I was feeling a little more something a little more often. He made me turn around. I rolled my eyes. Then things picked up. We walked at a decent clip, talking and laughing – and every so often, I’d have to slow way down, waddle/shuffle and do some serious breathing before snapping back into our pace and conversation.
When we got home around 5 p.m., I wasn’t in pain but conceded that yes, these might be early contractions, yes, they were getting stronger and yes, we just might have a baby in the next day or two, maybe three. I didn’t think it was necessary to time the contractions but humored Husband through a few – they were three or four minutes apart. I suggested we time them for an hour before doing anything drastic, but he was long gone, through the roof, to call the doula and midwife and hospital and anyone who would listen.
We were planning a hypnobirth, so I calmly got in bed and more or less relaxed through a Hypnobabies audio track. At some point in my half-sleep I wondered what the moaning noise I could hear over my headphones was. Being horizontal wasn’t comfortable for long, and I emerged from the bedroom to find soft lights, candles and our lasagna waiting on the table. Christmas dinner went like this: I stood next to the table between contractions, nibbling on a piece of toast, while my sweet husband shoveled approximately 12 pounds of lasagna into his mouth, scared it’d be a long time before he’d eat again. Each contraction, I paced away from the table, through the living room and into the nursery, moaning, and then walked right back and continued our conversation.
It was 6:30 p.m. or so at this point, and the intensity was building. Husband tried to comfort me. I told him I was fine and to please comfort the dog (who was anxiously following me around, collecting the sweatshirts and blankets I dropped when I got hot). Despite my protests that it was too early, Husband jumped into serious go mode (during my contractions when I couldn’t do much to stop him – smart man). He put the final things in the bags. He put the bags in the car. He pulled the car in front of the door.
Around 7:45 p.m., he called our doula and midwife who both told him the same thing: help her take a quick shower to relax, then get to the hospital, stat. The shower was hot and relaxing and awesome. I started shampooing my hair, much to my panicked husband’s horror. He about passed out when I requested we let the conditioner sit “for a contraction or two.” I told him to calm down. Relax. We’re not in any hurry. We’ll get ready slowly and head to the hospital peacefully when we’re ready.
And then I had The Contraction That Changes Everything. People tell you about a sudden urge to push. I had no idea what this meant – until I did. “CHANGE OF PLANS!” I grunt-moaned. “WE’RE HURRYING NOW!”
Before making a mad between-contractions dash to the car, I froze by our front door. I looked up at Husband, smiled a groggy smile, and said, “My body is doing it. It knows what to do, and it’s just doing it. This is amazing.” And then I crumpled into a contraction.
The five-minute ride to the hospital was an uneventful blur. We pulled into the emergency entrance around 8:15 p.m., and let’s just say it was not like the movies (think security personnel screaming at Husband to move the car, not beautiful doctors in tailored scrubs running to us in slow-mo). Because I was so calm and Hypnobabied, the nurses assumed I was still early in the process when I strolled into Labor and Delivery alone. A minute later, Husband busted through the doors with all of our stuff – like a kid running to catch the bus with his backpack bobbing up and down – and panted that we didn’t have time for triage, that I needed a room right now. The nurse said, “Sir, is this your first baby? That’s cute. There are some things we need to do first.” I was mid-contraction and unable to speak, but it totally registered and made me giggle on the inside. When I came out of the contraction, I softly interrupted their back-and-forth and said, “Excuse me. I kind of feel like I’m pushing right now.” The nurse quite literally jumped, and what do you know? A room opened right up.
I paced around, refusing to lie down, until my midwife arrived to check me. “Ms. Kate,” she asked, “where have you been hiding from me all day?” We asked her not to tell us the stats, but her eyes got big and she whispered something to the nurse that prompted her jaw to drop and her to run out of the room. (We later learned I was fully dilated and effaced.) The midwife left, and I leapt out of the bed and back into my preferred position: standing in a partial squat, leaning my arms against the bed. The sensations were overpowering, bizarre and in some realm of painful, yes – but I felt completely in control and vaguely like everything I was experiencing was happening to someone else.
My doula and her apprentice arrived and, like I was a prized fighter, rubbed my shoulders and lifted Gatorade to my lips between contractions/pushing/whatever my body was doing. (I made a mental note to drink lemonade Gatorade during any physical feats for the rest of my life.) I thought, how does this go? What stage am I in? How many hours to go – will it be tomorrow morning? Afternoon? Can I just keep standing here? I told my doula I felt good and soldiered on.
In the quick transition from maybe-labor to definitely-labor, we hadn’t told any family or friends things were happening. Husband was typing a quick text to my BFF when the midwife tapped him on the shoulder. Expecting to be shamed for texting while his wife was working so very hard, he looked up – and the midwife pointed down at the baby’s head.
I still thought I was in this for the long haul. No one told me what was going on – I guess they figured I could feel it, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption – and all of a sudden, I felt a big release of pressure that kind of stunned me. I heard excited gasps that weren’t mine. “Reach down and grab your baby!” my midwife said. And, in perhaps my finest moment of all time, I said, dead serious, “Was that the BABY?!”
Then for the Husband’s finest moment. His job was to announce the sex. “It’s a—a—uh—I think it’s…a little girl? Is it a girl?” (“It was dark.” “The cord was between her legs.” The list goes on.) And then they kicked us out of the hospital because we were unfit for parenthood. Just kidding.
It was 9:04 p.m. on Christmas – and I was still standing up.
A nurse whispered, “Oh my god. You are She-Ra.”
I pulled our sweet, alert little girl to my chest and finally crawled into that bed.
