Earlier in the day Sarah and I went out to Baker’s Best for breakfast and then went to Brookline to pick-up my coat at Lisa and Dave’s house. On the way home we went to Petco and bought a ton of pet supplies including four times the litter and food that we normally purchase. On the way back from Petco we stopped for a Fresh City Wrap and smoothie then looked at rocking chairs at the next door store. Sarah wanted to buy one but they required selecting a pattern for custom manufacturing but since we had to go back to meet J, our midwife/doula we rushed back before she could select a pattern. J provided some insight into how to induce labor through natural means including drinking raspberry leaf tea, some vitamin called Borat?, and finishing incomplete things. Madeline enjoyed getting a faux examination and playing with the Doppler equipment that provides the heartbeat of the baby where her favorite part was the blue goo you need to put on the belly where the measuring device is rubbed. At night Sarah went back through bags of baby clothing to organize them. We tried watching the football game (Pittsburgh – Jacksonville) but I fell asleep at half time.
At about one AM we awoke and I went to check on the final score of the game to find that Pittsburgh had made an amazing come-back then blown the game after taking a lead. As I was describing this to Sarah she mentioned that she was having trouble sleeping and a few minutes later she let me know that “this might be it”. So I timed the contractions with Sarah giving me mentions of potential vs. real contractions and they seemed to be about six minutes apart. We thought about calling J quickly to have her come as soon as possible but since she lives 45 minutes away in Worcester we thought it would be best to be certain that we were experiencing labor and not indigestion. Sarah was walking around since false labor apparently goes away with walking around. But after an hour of timing the contractions we were certain so Sarah called J and set the wheels in motion for the home birth.
J wasn’t the first person on the scene. The midwife in training, B, came first since she lives down the street from us. Now that I have experienced it twice I know that Sarah always wants deep sacrum pushes on her back to counteract pressure from the labor as much as possible. By the time B had arrived my thumbs were already numb from pushing on her back so I was relieved the B could help with that and I could give Sarah some moral support. I must admit that the midwives were better at both moral and physical support throughout the night so I tried to focus on what I am better equipped to handle – logistics.
So when J arrived we were in full swing and Sarah was undergoing some pretty heavy contractions. She was moving around the house from the living room to the bathroom near the kitchen. That was when the first logistics request was made to me. J said – “we need a flashlight”. That was when I realized that I was also going to be somewhat limited in the logistics department since the only flashlights we had were the clever charge them yourself with a crank kind that unfortunately only last about ten seconds if you haven’t been charging them with a crank for a half hour or so. So I was in the kitchen furiously trying to charge the flashlight I had with a crank and was ultimately told that it wasn’t that important since all J needed was to be able to look at her watch while timing the heart rate of the fetus on the Doppler sonar thing. So I gave-up on the flashlight until an hour later when J asked me if I had batteries for her flashlight and I happen to keep a lot of D batteries around since Madeline’s crib aquarium toy that used to be the only way she could keep herself asleep ate them like candy.
So following the flashlight incident along came K, the second midwife. K is very experienced and is the owner of the aqua-doula that we rented. By the time K had arrived, three or four hours after Sarah started labor Sarah was already in a full bathtub that I had drawn and carefully set the temperature to 100 degrees – so as to not mask or create a false fever. J and K counseled me that Sarah was pretty far along and the it takes about two hours to fill the bath which would probably be longer than the time for the labor to be complete. I recalled the trouble with “finishing” the labor last time with the cervix having a lip that needed to be pulled back by the doctor painfully hours later than Sarah would have liked it to happen so I made the executive decision that I would spend the time while Sarah labored on an engineering project to fill a big tub in our bedroom with 100 degree water.
Now the first challenge we had was that Madeline was sleeping in the bedroom. So we had to set-up this tub without waking her up and that meant doing it in the dark. This was easy enough for K but not so easy for me as a novice but we did get the thing assembled. We then turned on the water hose to find after the thing was about a quarter full that our water heater had run out of hot water. It was flowing cold winter water into the tub instead of the 100 degree water we needed. Since the tub has some heating element in it I figured we could use that but I was counseled that it mainly maintains a temperature rather than actually heating the tub to 100 degrees. So K gave me a tutorial on my water heater. She was impressed with the size of it but noted that it wasn’t able to pull off the job. There is a knob at the bottom of the water heater that establishes the heat of the water in it designed to avoid people from scalding themselves. It ranges from vacation to warm to HOT. Our heater was set near the bottom of warm so we tuned it closer to hot and waited for it to warm-up. But we still needed to add water and we were low on time. Sarah was 9 centimeters dilated so the project was looking like a waste of time.
But the recommendation from K was to use the “boiling water” technique to heat the tub. That technique is to put pots on the stove to boil water and add the hot water to the tub to warm the temperature. This is a good idea and assumes you often have home clam bakes with four full 15 gallon pots. We generally make spaghetti for four people every two months so our largest pot is not very impressive. But I did cover the stove with two frying pans full of water, our meager spaghetti pot, and a small pot used for sauce. Since this was not having much effect on the temperature of the water we also resorted to using the coffee maker to make pots of water with no grounds in the filter and microwaving water in plastic bowls.
At 5 AM Madeline awoke in the bedroom to the flurry of mad boiling water carrying and Sarah moaning in the bathroom and threw me into a bit of a panic. So I called my parents to let them know that they may be needed to watch Madeline. I then hung up on them figuring I could tell them exactly when I would need them to help. A half hour or so later Madeline was starting to become tricky to handle without becoming a full time activity downstairs away from Sarah so I called my parents to come over. Since I was having water boiling problems I also asked them to bring bigger pots and remembered that I also needed them to bring the spare King size sheet set since ours was likely to get pretty messy.
So Sarah labored on and a half hour later my parents arrived with the pots. Apparently they frequently host large clam bakes since they had plenty of gigantic pots. Together we were able to boil enough water to heat the tub to 97 degrees and they managed to watch Madeline. The inviting of my parents over had a chain reaction back to my sister and Dave. They were asked to walk the dogs at my parents house so they were around the corner. As Sarah labored during the morning they came over to help entertain Madeline downstairs for a while.
The aqua-doulah was in full swing and the tub in the bathroom where Sarah was laboring was getting cold despite our having thrown a couple of boiling pots of water into it. So we moved to the big tub so that Sarah and I both got into it. I was there for some moral support and rubbing her back to provide counter-pressure. Madeline wasn’t easily contained downstairs so when she walked in the door to the bedroom to see a “giant tub” she wanted to “take a tubbie”. We got her into the tub with us and she was enjoying splashing around. She wanted to jump up and down because the tub was so big but that sent shock-waves through the water causing it to splash out into the bedroom floor so that was discouraged. Eli also was fascinated by this and kept climbing into the room and peering into the tub to see what was going on. Later when Sarah was laboring on the bed he was banished to the basement for his annoying curiosity. Eventually Sarah was very uncomfortable and Madeline was trying to climb up onto her to have Sarah hold her so Madeline was banished down to play with my parents and sister. When Madeline later wanted to come-up she was quite insistent but was easily convinced that going downstairs to get 10 gummy bears would be a superior experience to seeing mommy again.
With the labor having moved along Sarah had some big challenges. She was dilated close to 10 centimeters but the baby wasn’t coming out. She didn’t feel the “urge to push” that you are supposed to. So the midwives asked her to do some pushing to move the labor forwards. She did the pushing but then the midwives checked her again and looked at each other perplexed at what they found. Their next piece of advice was to relax and rest since Sarah’s cervix was swelling and blocking the baby from coming out, because of the pushing. So Sarah went to take a half-sleep, half contraction laden rest. We found out later and they didn’t want to tell Sarah to discourage her was that after pushing for 30 minutes Sarah had gone from being 10 centimeters dilated to being 5 centimeters dilated.
I don’t recall exactly when this happened but one thought had been that Sarah’s water had never broken and that given how dilated she was that breaking the water which was bulging from the outside could cause the baby to find the right position to exit from. The midwives had trouble breaking the bag of waters but did eventually manage to do it.
At about 10:30 AM I called the Carvey’s to inform them that they should probably come over too given that the whole Housman clan was roaming the house and I had a hunch the baby might come in the next few hours. So downstairs a large crowd was gathering of family members and they were eating bagels and lox from Rosenfelds and donuts from Dunkin Donuts.
It was clear that Sarah was in a lot of pain and very frustrated and tired with the labor. She sat on the toilet and told J that she was ready for it to be all over and even asked J if it wasn’t too late to go to the hospital. J counseled her that we can always go to the hospital but once we do we can’t go back home and Sarah was happy to stay put for a little more effort. Sarah did some labor in the bed and then J mentioned that Sarah might find it less painful and stressful in the aquadoula. We had done some eating of eggs and toast after K cooked a dozen eggs and made toast for the weary crew and Sarah who had been up all night with the delivery.
The move to the aquadoula was considered to be the last option where most likely given Sarah’s exhaustion and frustration was at a level where after that I thought we would likely have to go to the hospital. Sarah mentioned that she just wanted it to finally be over. So Sarah and I got back into the tub. She labored for a while then started to feel like things had finally progressed.
She pushed out Zachary for three minutes while I was behind Sarah holding her. The intensity of the effort this time was much greater than for Madeline. With Madeline Sarah was calm when pushing her out. With Zachary she was screaming in pain letting out one very memorable primal scream as he finally came out. She referred to it as the overall labor being THE hardest thing she has done in her life and the pain of delivering Zachary as feeling like she was about to split in half.
The problem was made clear when Zachary arrived in the water. I was unable to see the exit because I was behind Sarah. The midwives let us know that Zachary arrived sunny side-up and to the side. This is technically a posterior acynclitic and is not a common home birth scenario. All babies do come out but posterior babies come out with their head in the opposite position from how the hips were designed to deliver them. So instead of having to dilate the cervix to 10 centimeters the cervix has to dilate to 12-15 centimeters. It also puts enormous pressure on the mother’s back. Had we gone into a hospital and they had run an ultrasound to find a baby in this position it is 90% that Zachary would have been born through a C-section.
But he wasn’t which was the best case since a C-section for Sarah because of her low platelets means being knocked unconscious with a tube down her throat and she was 100% opposed to that. So with Zachary out Sarah melted with joy and she cried a little with happiness as she held Zachary to her for the first time. Sarah announced to the midwives and me that it was OK for everyone to come upstairs to see the baby so my parents, my sister and Dave, and Sarah’s parents all arrived and surrounded the us to see the baby and congratulate Sarah.
Afterwards we celebrated with champagne but it was too hard to get everyone in the room at the same time with folks running around to do random errands but we did manage to sing happy birthday to Zachary once with Madeline helping to lead the song. Soon after while Sarah was recovering in the bed with Zachary - Lisa and Dave brought back an ice cream cake from JP Licks with a “Happy Birthday Zachary” written on it. We put a single frog candle on the cake and had Madeline blow it out (I helped a bit).
So I am so excited to welcome Zachary into the world. So far he has been an angel and Madeline, a two year old, appears in contrast to be a giant hand full of work to keep entertained, occupied, and to negotiate with.
I don’t believe in any form of immortality except for the genes I pass on and the memes in ideas and values that I show to the people that I influence. It is through Zachary and Madeline that I have an opportunity to make what I like best about myself, the ideas I believe in, and the people that I love to continue beyond my lifetime.
