Timeline of a birth

11:15pm Wednesday: we have foolishly stayed up this late to watch Top Chef, even though we know that Greta has to get up at 6am the following morning to drink castor oil, on our midwives' orders. Greta has become fascinated with cooking shows in the past few weeks -- a nesting symptom, perhaps?

6:00am Thursday: I help Greta choke down two ounces of the foul, foul castor oil, mixed with mango (yes, mango!) sorbet. Greta goes back to bed, feeling a little queasy; I stay up.

8:30am: Just as I am about to leave for work, Greta lumbers out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, where she experiences gastric distress. Horrified at the severity of it, I decide not to go to work.

8:45am: Though I try to delay it, Midwife Karen tells me, via phone, that I have to go drop off the Big Jug O' Pee (see earlier posts) as soon as possible -- they need the results of that test. I reluctantly leave Greta, who is camped in the bathroom.

10:30am: I return to the apartment, to find Greta still in the bathroom, and now in the throes of a kind of torture. She is vomiting into plastic shopping bags, and every few minutes her bowels clench painfully, even though they have long since been completely emptied.

11:30: NanaBanana and Grandpa Cliff arrive from Connecticut. I meet them downstairs and tell them that Greta is in no mood for visitors, and will probably need to sleep for a few hours after this ordeal is over. They decide to wait in our building's lounge. (Sandy bruises herself on the pool table in there somehow ... poor Sandy!)

Noon: No change. Greta is now hanging onto the towel rack next to the toilet to get through the intestinal spasms. I get on the phone with Karen, who suggests that maybe Greta's pains are actually labor pains. She tells me to feel Greta's stomach when the pain in the worst -- if her Seamus-stuffed uterus is is hard as a rock (or a spasming muscle), then it's a uterine contraction. Unfortunately, I find that her stomach remains soft.

12:30pm: Greta is in such distress now that she can't tolerate talking to me, or even having me in the bathroom. I straighten up the apartment a bit, checking in on her periodically.

1:00: At Karen's urging, I finally convince Greta to get off the toilet and lie down in bed so that she can rest (I, do however, resist Karen's suggestion that I put a Depends on Greta). Greta's nether regions are in such distress that I apply a frozen witch-hazel maxi pad to ease them. Greta falls asleep.

1:45: After sleeping peacefully for about a half hour, Greta's sleep is increasingly interrupted by more spasms. I assume that this is the last throes of the castor oil torture, but the spasms keep getting worse. When they get bad enough for Greta to clutch our bed's headboard and groan loudly, I say, out loud to myself, "Something's not right here," and begin to dial Karen again. As I wait for her to return the call, I suddenly realize what's happening: Greta is in labor.

2:00: Karen confirms my diagnosis and requests that we call her back in about two hours, or if there are any major changes to the labor. I am a bit alarmed that contractions have started at only five minutes apart. No "early labor" for us. No Braxton-Hicks contractions. No "going to the movies to distract ourselves". Straight into hard labor. "I'm not sure I can do this," pants Greta.

2:30: I've been helping Greta through a few more headboard-clutching contractions. I wonder, could I help her through labor all on my own? I believe I could, but I have no inclination to try to prove it. I call our doula, Bonu; she says she'll be here ASAP.

3:00: I ask Cliff and Sandy to come up from the lounge.

3:30: Greta has mostly been laboring in the bathroom again: but this time, standing up, bent over and clutching the sink, while I rub her back. Bonu arrives and takes over massage duties. Greta is now on her hands and knees on the couch, while Bonu expertly massages her back. Meanwhile, Nana and Cliff assemble the "AquaDoula" portable tub. Their extracts Greta's first laugh of the day.
On the one hand, I am very pleased that a professional is here. On the other, I feel somewhat useless. I stroke Greta's hair and talk to her. I'm amazed by, and bit guilty about, my ability to emotionally tolerate her suffering during the contractions. Maybe we've just done so much birth prep that I know exactly what to expect -- and that Seamus is waiting for us on the far end of this.

4:00: Greta tries out the tub, crouching in it on all fours, while Bonu and I scoop warm water onto her back. It feels very good for a while -- it make the contractions easier to bear. After a while, though, she begins to feel nauseous, so we help her get out and dry her off.

4:30: While on a bathroom break, Greta has a contraction and feels Seamus "drop" lower -- something we've been waiting weeks for him to do. Shortly afterwards, Bonu gets onto the phone with Karen and they have a "birth professionals" confab. Bonu stresses to Karen that she feels, based on Greta's vocalizations, that she may already have begun to push (which, for those of you not in the know, is pretty much the very last last step before birth happens). Greta's moans have a guttural quality that sounds "push-y" to Bonu (and to me, too).
I try to put Greta on the phone with Karen, but Greta is by no means in a talking mood. Like many laboring women, she finds that she must put all of her concentration into her work, even between contractions. So instead, I hold the phone up to her and let Karen listen during a contraction. "I'm going to come over," Karen says.

5:00: Karen arrives and examines Greta. After "getting all up in her business," as they say, Karen looks surprised. "I'm feeling something very, very good here," she says. "You're completely dilated. There's nothin' but baby up there." I have a moment of awful fear when it takes Karen a while to find Seamus' heartbeat with her doppler device; once she does, it's a beautiful sound.

5:30: As the second midwife, Martine, arrives, Greta's lying on our bed on her side. I'm lying next to her, trying to soothe her, Bonu is behind her, massaging her, and Karen is down at her business end. The contractions are more intense then ever, and Greta is clutching the headboard again, and my hand, sometimes.

5:50: To my amazement, Karen and Martine begin encouraging Greta to push. I'm amazed because this means that we are in the home stretch -- if you are familiar with how long labor usually takes, you are probably amazed as well. "You're going to set a record!" I tell Greta. "My mom already did that," she gasps. I'm impressed that she's able to make a joke at this particular moment in her life.
Indeed, all along I've been impressed at how lucid she's been between contractions. As noted above, she didn't really want to talk to anyone, but when she had to or was able to, she was pretty much her regular self -- stressed and ornery, but that's pretty much like she is during a working day at TPR.

6:20: Karen says, "He's got hair!" Again, I am amazed and thrilled -- this is going to be over so soon! I had thought it would take at least twice this long. "Seamus is coming!" I tell Greta.

6:25: I've been lying next to Greta, reluctant to see what's going on further down. (I can remember Captain Hollow's reaction to the sight of his baby crowning.) But now I think, I'm going to regret it if I don't see my son come into the world. I look, and I see the hair.

6:32: At the next push, the head begins to emerge -- and at the push after that, it just keeps emerging, and emerging, and emerging. Due to the miracle of molding by the cervix and birth canal -- without which, vaginal birth would be impossible -- Seamus' head is (temporarily) tremendously long and sort of cylindrical. It's shaped like the head of one of H.R. Giger's aliens.

6:33: "It kind of ... burns," gasps Greta. "Yes, I know," says Bonu (also a mother) and presses a pressure point on Greta's hand to ease the pain.

6:34: The eyes emerge -- dark, wide, and staring right at me.

6:35: "Let's get her onto her hands and knees," says Karen, and together, we do.

6:36: Karen eases Seamus' shoulders out, then deftly lifts a loop of umbilical cord that's draped around his chest over his head and out of the way. The rest of his body slides out onto the bed. In defiance of entropy, something new and wonderful has entered the world.

6:37: "I want him on me!" says Greta, weakly. We ease her back onto her back, and Seamus is placed on her chest, and covered with a blanket. "Hello, Seamus," I say.