How twenty billion women gave birth.. I don’t know.

This is the story of Tia bringing our first baby into the world.

Her water broke at 8:30 PM on the March 15th. She called her doctor who said to go to the hospital and now we wish we hadn’t. We’d have been fine at home until hard labor set in. We had made marginal preparation to do hypnobirthing. What training we had in hypnobirthing slightly eased pains and made time pass more quickly (there is a hypnotic suggestion that 20 minutes become 1). The hospital said an IV was necessary and inserted one; we don’t think it was. They told her not to eat or drink much; she did (you need food and water, not an IV). They pressed to induce after 6 hours, and we politely and formally refused. They wanted the birth to move along quickly and we didn’t; thinking haste and stress add pain to birth, and the enormous uterine strength of pitosin induction can make the uterus really hammer on the baby. Baby took a very long time to ready for birth and we didn’t want to hurry it. After about ten hours we went with minimal induction through very slowly rising pitosin levels. At this point Tia took a walking epidural and later a stronger one. The hospital pressured for antibiotics for an expressed danger of infection and we also refused this; thinking the risk is small and it’s just that they don’t want to be liable. They didn’t say the risk was small until we asked. For them, any risk at all is huge. We think most of the infections in labor come from hospital staff putting their hands up mothers’ arses to measure progress. Towards the very end of labor Tia’s temperature rose to a level where they felt antibiotics necessary and we obliged.

We had been trained that the uterus is an involuntary muscle and that the only real pushing a mom can do is in placing more pressure on the uterus through surrounding muscles, which works in a way, if a terrible way that can tear both those muscles and the uterus. We had learned that the best way to aid the uterus is through a slow and steady supply of oxygen in slow, long inhales and exhales on each contraction. After baby descended maybe half way down the birth canal through this breathing, the staff instructed Tia to take quick, sharp inhales, hold the breath, and push down hard for an arbitrary 10 seconds. This is my understanding of why that kind of breathing is awful for birthing: picture yourself rearing to fight. You take a quick sharp inhale and hold your breath because it keeps your muscles tight as a brick. You may even take many successive sharp breaths. The more oxygen a muscle gets, the more it tightens up. If you give that kind of oxygen supply to the laboring uterus, it will tighten up terribly so that the finger-like muscles cannot effectively massage the baby downward. Combine this with our numbing it out of use with drugs and it becomes necessary to start using surrounding abdominal muscles that weren’t designed for labor. Also the epidural numbed her so much that she really wasnt able to push with those other muscles at all until the very end. She feigned holding her breath and pushing by inhaling more sharply but still exhaling slowly. I think these sharper inhales stiffened the uterus and the numbing drugs made it less mobile so that she had to push with other muscles, which at the end made searing pain.

Baby came out posterior (face up) which was more difficult both for him and mom. About half way down the birth canal he stopped moving (though his heart rate was still fine), so that it became necessary to pull him out with forceps around his cheeks. This and the pressure on his face from the posterior position bruised his face. But I don’t think for the circumstance he’d have come out on his own or with mommy’s help, so that I’m very grateful for the way the doctor expertly got baby out. As I write this (March 20th 2005), baby’s bruise seems to have healed up, though he is jaundiced, and we are using provided blue lights to help him out of the jaundice. His hemoglobin count (if that’s what they’re counting) was 16 after one day and 18.5 the next (whatever these numbers mean), so that the rise of it has dramatically slowed, evidencing that he’s fighting it really well.

In retrospect we forgot that we wanted Tia to lie on her back and side for the actual birth; we believe the slight angle of sitting presses down on the cervix and makes it harder or impossible to further open. I don’t know on that one; I don’t know why the baby stopped moving half way down the canal.

We placed baby on mommy’s tummy very shortly after birth for skin-to-skin contact. I didn’t know he was going to be thoroughly covered in a chalky, mucousy substance – that apparently is to keep his skin hydrated and oily in the womb. Studies have indicated a lot more calmness and adaptability in babies a few hours later when skin contact was made right at birth, compared to babies that did not have this. They pressed to have baby weighed and cleaned after a short while of this; I wish I had insisted that baby stay right where he is for as long as he and mother want – he calmed right down on mommy’s tummy, and mommy says it’s a very good and happy memory.

He was 7 pounds 1 ounce.. I forget how long, I think 19 inches.

They had us use a glowy-blue-light thing on his back to help cure the Jaundice, saying they would rent a light box if it seemed like he needed it. We waited a while and then he needed the light box. The light box, unlike other measures taken during labor, poses no risk of any side effects at all – it’s just light. I think Baby would heal of the jaundice faster if we just started out with the light box instead of waiting to see if it’s necessary. Why delay using something that can pose no harm, and on the other hand pressure to use things that really can cause harm, when those things aren’t necessary? If Baby seems fine and we can help him in a way that might prevent him from getting worse, why not do it right away? This has made me think that what someone said is true. Someone said that our medical culture is a disease-oriented cure system instead of a health-oriented maintenance and prevention system. I think that observation is very accurate. We need cures and emergency aid when there is an emergency; though I wonder how many situations would not turn into emergencies if we were more focused on prevention. Philisophically though, it might just be human nature – the frog doesn’t jump out of the kettle until it’s either really, really hot or the frog is dead.

[Comments made by me, Alex, a year in review: Light heals! I love it. And at the last here.. that’s great, Alex. End a blog entry about birth by talking about a dead frog. That’s just great. lol]