I really had no sense of time from the moment they ruptured my membranes until after Oliver's birth. I had to ask the nurse and mom and Camilla to fill me in after the fact. If you'd asked me then, I would have told you it all took forever.
The truth was that it didn't.
Time is strange in hospitals, and time is strange when in labor.
I had the best support, you know.
-- The nurse who took over at 7pm, right around the time labor really began, was wonderful. She was personal and competent and deferential. She also won my heart by coming up with creative ways to keep the nurse manager from fretting about how often we were losing the baby's heart rate on the monitor, due to position.
-- My mom: Labor Extraordinaire.
-- Camilla, who without ever having given birth herself, knows exactly what to do and when to do it. She's amazing.
-- And I had Daniel, who even the night before when I had fretted about what was impending, said to me, "You know I'm in this with you, right? Whatever happens, I'm with you."
They tell me it was probably around 11:10pm that I was cleaned up from the "traumatic" round of contractions surrounding the bathroom run/IV "explosion" and re-settled on the bed. Maybe 25 minutes or so after Dr. Barrett had pronounced me the disheartening mere 6cm dilated.
I do know that there were very few, if any, contractions from that point on that weren't morphing into an urge to bear down. The contraction would begin normally, turn into a version of pushing that I wasn't entirely familiar with, and then go in and out like that 2 or 3 times before it was over. The nurse was arranging birthing supplies very calmly. I remember Mom saying I should try to breathe through the urge to push. I remember thinking I couldn't believe I was feeling at like I should push when I couldn't be more than, what-- 7 or 8cm?
Daniel said at one point Camilla caught the nurse's eye and quietly pointed at me as if to say, "Um, there's a baby coming."
The nurse came over, watched me through a contraction, smiled warmly at me, and said very calmly, "Great. You're doing great. But if you could maybe just breathe through the next contraction, it would be good if the doctor was here."
It was all incredibly calm, I have to say. I appreciated that.
Dr. Barrett was in by the next contraction. He watched me. He never checked me. Even in that moment I thought how much he had opted for looking at my face, feeling my abdomen, and listening to me instead of reading numbers or doing exams throughout the labor. I really appreciated that.
And then I was told, "Go ahead," and I did. And in one contraction, managed superbly by the doctor who caught my eye and breathed me through just the right seconds, my baby entered the world and took his first breath.
He was crying instantly.
He was beautiful.
He was the little redheaded boy I was pulling for!
Apgars of 10 and 10.
Strong, healthy.
I held him. We cried and laughed. The doctor sat and smiled. The nurses held back and graciously gave us this moment. Nobody whisked the baby away, nobody started messing with me. It was as if time held still for a minute while I soaked it all in.
He was here!
And already!
I had gone from 6cm and baby -1 to holding him in my arms in less than 50 minutes.
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