How she arrived: Our birth story.

Part one: The before.

On Tuesday evening, while wondering if baby is ever going to come, I start having irregular, infrequent contractions, or pressure waves in Hypnobabies parlance, that are mild but strong enough to make me take pause. I’ve been having practice contractions for weeks, but all were entirely painless. These aren’t. A few are strong enough to wake me during the night, and after a particularly uncomfortable one in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, I can’t go back to sleep. I get up and the day begins in the dark.

A few hours later, we go to the 41-week appointment at our expected hospital of delivery. Except for a prolonged dip that is blamed on my lying on my back and compressing the vena cava, baby’s heartrate is strong and regular during the monitoring, during which I have one contraction that registers (and several that don't). Nobody seems impressed by it.

The midwife performs the first internal exam since the 38-week appointment, which had shown a cervix entirely inhospitable to delivery of a baby. This exam shows a cervix almost fully effaced and about two centimeters dilated. Progress; cool. Perhaps these contractions are having an effect.

She suggests a membrane sweep to encourage the onset of labor. Despite wanting everything to happen naturally, I am, at this point, ready to accept a minor intervention if it decreases our chances of an induction or other, more major interventions later. So it is done.

An ultrasound is performed; the doctors think that both baby and placenta look good. I have another few contractions here and there, but again, nobody seems very impressed. They send us off with an appointment for two days later and a hopeful farewell: Perhaps we’ll see you sooner than that!

We arrive home at 10:30 and finish packing our hospital bags, just in case there is a "sooner than that." For the same reason, Gilles wonders if he should forgo work. Go, I tell him. No point in two people hanging around waiting for something to happen. I debate keeping an afternoon coffee date with a friend and decide that a long nap would do me better instead. The coffee date is canceled.

Gilles leaves for work at 11:30. I settle onto the couch for a snooze and am awoken a short while later by a pressure wave much stronger than those of before. I can’t go back to sleep so decide to take a bath.

Part two: The bathtub.

It's sometime after noon. I am submerged and relaxed when the first immense pressure wave rolls over me. And then another, and another, and another. They hit me, and then hit me harder, and then even harder. I am shocked at the power of what must surely be just the beginning of labor.

Luckily, the phone is in the bathroom with me. Gilles had asked me to check in with him in the early afternoon; feeling lazy and predicting that I’d still be soaking, I had placed it by my side. At 1:09, I call him at work.

Come home, I tell him.

He starts to ask me something. Another wave hits.

Just come home, I tell him again, and hang up as another wave begins to roll over me.

He calls me back at 1:15, on his way home, worried.

I can’t really talk. I assure him that I'm okay. But … I think it’s starting.

The waves keep coming with incredible intensity and Gilles arrives around 1:30. He finds me in the bath. He hears me and sees me.  

We need to go to the hospital right now, he tells me.  

No! I cry. This is just the beginning. No.

He wants to at least call the hospital. I tell him that we need to time the contractions first. It’s only me who knows how to use the timing application on my i-device. I manage to explain it to him between ever more powerful waves. He times four of them. Two minutes apart, each over a minute long.

I cannot comprehend what these numbers mean, namely, that after an hour and a half or so of labor, I am in transition. The numbers mean nothing to me. All I can think is that one cannot, must not, call a hospital about coming in for a birth after having timed only four contractions.

We need to go to the hospital, he tells me again.

Okay, I agree. After the next contraction.

I am lying, and I know it. Getting out of the bathtub would be nearly impossible. Putting on clothes, walking down three flights of stairs, clambering into the car, and driving to the hospital, twenty minutes away, would be utterly impossible.

After the next contraction, he asks me again to get out. I can’t. I don’t even try.

After the next one, I suggest again, just to appease him.

He is scared and frustrated. I’m calling the hospital right now, he says, ignoring my cries of protest.

It’s just after two. Call an ambulance, the hospital tells him. He hangs up and tells me that that’s what he’s going to do.

I am enraged. Absolutely not. The most humiliating scenario I can imagine is showing up in the maternity ward on a stretcher, sirens wailing, me too, only to find out I’m three centimeters dilated and have hours to go. I am completely out of my mind yet lucid (and angry) enough to convince him to disregard the hospital’s directions and to start timing contractions again.

So, against his will, he does. Same duration, same frequency. After four more, he ignores my renewed cries of protest and calls the hospital a second time, when all of a sudden I have to push. My body is already pushing. I put a hand on my bottom and feel it expanding with the pressure.

I have to push! I scream.

She has to push! he screams, into the phone.

They tell him, again, more urgently this time, to call an ambulance – and call us back if you see the head.

He hangs up and I tell him that I must have been mistaken, that I didn't mean it, that I don’t really need to push. He ignores me and and starts calling the emergency number and my body keeps pushing and a few minutes later we hear sirens.

Part three: The homebirth that wasn’t.

It’s about 2:15. Four paramedics – two of whom are obstetricians – burst into the flat and then into the bathroom. I find the capacity to make a joke about meeting them in my current state, naked and drenched and floating among the debris of labor. They insert a hep-lock into my hand and start draining the water and pull me out and lead me into the bedroom, telling me all the while not to push.

It has been set up for birth: waterproof pad on the mattress, IV hanging from the lamp, and, horrors, my precious white-stained ant chairs dragged in from the kitchen to serve as stirrups. Gilles is told to put towels in the oven, to warm them for welcoming a new arrival.

An internal exam is performed. How many centimeters? I ask. Nobody responds. They are discussing among themselves and on the phone with the hospital. I ask again. One turns to me and looks me in the eyes.

Five, he tells me. I am shocked and immediately revise the degree of dilation in my most humiliating scenario from three centimeters to the barely more acceptable five.

But I can’t be pushing if it’s five! I tell him.

He keeps looking at me, as if to say, Yes, exactly. (Very sneaky, I later realize.)

I am shivering, shaking. They cover me with a blanket and tell me I must be cold after having left the bath. I’m not cold. But I can feel my body shutting down. I no longer need to push. I can’t feel any more contractions. Everything is shocking and scary and nothing at all like what we had expected.

My mouth is so incredibly dry. I want water. They don’t want me to drink. They want me to lie on my back and get ready to give birth. I don’t want to give birth, not here, and I don’t want to have to lie on my back to do it, certainly not with the aid of the ant chairs, and I’m not happy about being forbidden to drink. I am also confused. Why give birth at home if I'm only five centimeters dilated?

The paramedics are not pleased with my non-cooperation. They confer again and make some more calls. Okay, we can go to a hospital, but we can’t go to your chosen one, they tell me. It’s too far away. And they’re too busy. We have to go to the one here in the city.

I don’t want to go there. It’s where we went for the miscarriage. They were kind and good to us then, but we don’t want to go back to the place of such heartbreak. We don’t know anything about their services for the other, more pleasant ending to a pregnancy. We didn’t even look.

I fight against it. I want to go the hospital that we chose, the one where Gilles was born, the one where we took the birth preparation classes and met the staff and toured the facilities. It doesn’t matter; we can’t.

They bundle me into a robe and strap me into a chair-like thing. I think they are going to carry it and me down the stairs, but they don’t. The chair itself just glides down them and I cannot understand how. Gilles later explains to me that it had tracks like a tank.

Outside, they transfer me onto a stretcher. I look up; the sky is so blue and the sun is shining. After a prolonged winter that sometimes seemed never-ending, it’s a beautiful spring day.

Everybody on the street is watching us. Two little girls are leaning out the door of the pottery workshop, mouths agape. The hairdresser from the salon next door comes over to wish us luck.

And then Gilles runs back upstairs to take the towels out of the oven, and that is how we will still have a flat to eventually come home to.

Part four: From home to hospital.

The ambulance takes off, sirens on. I call for Gilles, but he’s not there. He’s in the front, having the ride of his life, and I'm in the back, having the ride of mine. We climb the hills of the city towards the hospital.

The pressure waves begin again. The paramedics tell me they will give me something to slow down the labor, to give us time to arrive safely. But I don’t want any medications, I think of saying before deciding not to. At this point, it’s less about what I want, rather what they want, and that is for a baby not to be born in their ambulance. They place a mask over my face. Later I learn that it was just oxygen.

Another internal exam is done right before we arrive.

How many? I want to know.

Five, they tell me again, and I feel my most humiliating scenario coming horrifyingly into fruition.

It’s three o’clock. They park and unload and start wheeling me into the hospital. We enter the delivery room and I look around. Where is the birth ball, the pool, the ropes, everything I wanted to use to get through this labor easily and naturally? (In the other delivery rooms, I realize later – the non-emergency ones.)

Give them our birth preferences! I call to Gilles, panicked about the lack of what I was counting on having.

He can’t. The birth preferences are not in the bag he remembered to pick up. In the rush, a second little bag was left behind. In it was also the camera. We will have no visual record of this experience. We will also have no celebratory post-delivery treat (other than the one in the form of a baby, of course).

The paramedics transfer me from the stretcher to the delivery table. I am later told that they waited outside the delivery room for a while, wanting to hear happy news, until they were called away for another emergency. In a day or two, they will telephone the hospital to see how we are. We are touched by their care.

The two midwives, young both, beautiful both, introduce themselves. An obstetrician hovers in the background.

I would like to use a birthing pool, I tell the midwife by my head.

She shakes her head. Waterbirths are not allowed in this hospital.

So much for that, then. I tell her I would like to use it before the birth.

She smiles. But you’re ready to give birth now. You’re ready to push.

I don’t believe her. This began less than three hours ago. And for the last forty-five minutes, I have been told that I’m only five centimeters dilated, that I’m not supposed to push. What she’s telling me can’t be true. This must be just the beginning.

Despite my disbelief, I try to get ready. The only position I can think to take is on my hands and knees. A contraction begins and they tell me to push. I don’t want to; I'm still not convinced it’s time. I push tentatively and ask if they are really certain that I should. They reassure me; Yes, it’s time for this baby to come.

I ask again, a couple more times in the next few minutes.

Yes! Push!!

Part five: The birth.

And so I do. I push but still not hard enough, because I still can’t comprehend that I actually should be. I’m still not ready. I tell everybody I’m not ready, multiple times. Eventually somebody asks me why not.

Why not? Because it’s all happening too fast. There has been so much waiting but, in the end, so little warning. And, also – taking the opportunity to recycle some blog material – I haven’t finished my book yet. Laughter.

Gilles is perfect. I am burning with thirst. He brings me juice and water. He rubs my face and my back with a cool washcloth. He is there by my side and whispers words that my brain can’t understand but that my subconscious hears.

The midwives are perfect, too. The one by my head is so sweet and calm and reassuring, the one by my bottom so cheery and encouraging. They balance each other wonderfully, an amazing team.

Baby is descending but the waters still have not broken. After a while, the midwife by my bottom asks if she can rupture the sac, to speed the process. I decline. We have time.

I keep pushing. We can see the head, still in the sac. There’s a lot of hair. It’s black! I exclaim, meaning the hair, but making a grammatical error in French – hair is plural, not singular, so by it everybody thinks I mean the baby. They all laugh, including the midwife by my bottom, who is African. A joke is made.

Then – the baby’s heart rate is dropping. Low, much too low. The baby is in distress.

You need to get this baby out now, they tell me. You need to change positions and then push very, very hard.

What happens if not? I ask, half-wondering if there is another alternative to pushing very, very hard, since in my opinion, I already am.

They don’t answer this, instead repeating, This baby needs to come out now.

I move onto my side with the lower leg outstretched and the other held back by the knee. With my agreement this time, they break the waters, and I push very, very hard, harder and longer than I would ever have thought possible.

It’s a few minutes before four o'clock. I don't think I feel anything but I somehow know to look down. There is a baby, in the caul, still wrapped in the sac, being pulled out of me. The baby makes no sound. The midwife untangles the cord from the neck, a cord that has a true knot, tightly pulled, further along its length.

When I see this, hearing nothing, my heart freezes.

But then the baby is placed on me, next to Gilles. The baby moves, the baby is breathing, the baby’s heart is beating, and my heart begins beating again, too.

What is it? I ask him.

He tries to look. I ask again.

A girl. It’s a girl!

A girl. We have a little girl. This is the moment where I thought I would cry with joy and happiness, as I have cried many times imagining it. But I don’t. I can’t. And neither does Gilles. We just laugh in shock and disbelief. We can’t believe what has just happened. We can’t believe that there is a baby in the room with us. After forty-one weeks of traveling very specifically toward this moment, I realize that I wasn’t completely sure we ever would arrive.

But – we did. We are here. And there is a baby in the room with us.

She is quiet and calm but very alert. We spend some time together, her on my chest, then after the placenta is born, Gilles takes her to hold against his own chest while the obstetrician places a few stitches in me. I am lucky. There is one small, superficial tear, not even first-degree, and one or two internal abrasions. The anesthetic does not work, and the needlework is the worse pain I’ve felt all day.

Later, while the midwives are filling out the paperwork, they stop to tell me, grinning, that they’re reading our birth preferences, which the other hospital has just sent over with the rest of my file. A bit too late for these, they say.

Yes, I agree. But even without them, it was the birth of our dreams.

They both look at me hesitantly, unsure of what they have just heard. Pardon? one asks.

It was the birth of our dreams, I say again.

And although we could never have imagined that it would happen like this, both Gilles and I agree that it truly was.

The end./The beginning.