It’s been 2 weeks since I gave birth to my little dude Ripley Ossm Bonner and I wanted to document the experience before my pregnancy brain lets me forget. I feel extremely fortunate that I had the birth that I hoped for – it couldn’t have gone any better. Well, I guess if I didn’t have to live through contractions that would have been better. Here’s how it went down…
March 2nd, 8:00pm – I was at home alone while Sean was at a Crashspace LA meeting. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself because my friend Leena who was due a week after me had her daughter on Monday and my friend Michelle had delivered her twins earlier that day. I was only 3 days overdue (due date was Feb. 28th) but I was really uncomfortable and wanted to meet my little man. To distract myself I decided to watch “The Business of Being Born” again to remind myself about why I wanted to have a natural childbirth and to focus on what was important.
Sometime during the movie I started to get a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions. I had been getting them for a couple of months and didn’t think much of it other than I was getting more than usual. After a good cry during the movie I went to bed feeling confident that my labor would start when BB was ready to be born.
March 3rd, 3:00am – I woke up with cramps. I had been getting cramps on and off throughout my pregnancy, but these cramps kept coming. I got up and walked around and went downstairs to sit on the couch. I think I woke Sean up at around 5 or 6am after not being able to get back to sleep. I asked him what time we could call our doula Giuditta to ask if these were real contractions and we decided 7am was OK.
6:00am – I started to use my contraction app on my iPhone to see if there was any pattern and there wasn’t. They definitely seemed like contractions and they started to get more intense.
7:00am – I called Giuditta. She told me to try and go back to sleep and we would touch base at 12pm. After I spoke to her my contractions started to come more frequently and I had to breathe through them as they were feeling like bad menstrual cramps.
8:00am – With the contractions becoming more difficult to deal with Sean and I decided to call Giuditta and ask her to come over.
9:00am – Giuditta arrived. She coached me through breathing and different ways to stand and sway to get through them. We went out to the beach and walked around a bit but I felt self conscious because it was obvious I was in labor and I felt like people were staring at me. It took forever to walk to the water and back because the contractions were coming every 1 to 2 minutes and I had to keep stopping to breathe through them. Most people get more time between contractions in the beginning but for some reason I didn’t. Thankfully the contractions only last 1 minute, but I didn’t get any reprieve until I delivered 12 hours later.
I lost my plug (eww) and I remember feeling really excited. There was never a moment when I was scared or nervous, just excited and very focused.
Giuditta forced me to eat and gave me a couple cups of Ginger tea with vodka in them (omg!) to relax. It did help.
I mostly leaned on the kitchen counter for the next 4 or so hours. I moved between the couch, our bed and our balcony but each time you change position the first couple of contractions are very painful. Standing seemed to work best for me because I could move and Giuditta and Sean would grab my hips as I swayed back and forth which helped a lot. Giuditta also put various aromatherapy oils on my arms that I could breathe in and she reminded me about breathing which I focused intently on. I am so glad for yoga and for taking a breathing meditation class because I think it truly helped me to focus on my breath and be in the zone.
1:00pm – After many hours of contractions spaced every minute or two I was pretty ready to go to the hospital. I think I just needed to a change in environment and for someone to tell me how dilated and effaced I was so I knew I was making some sort of progress. The problem was that I had to get in the car and I didn’t want to get in the car. There was no way in hell I was getting in the Mini Cooper so I got in Giuditta’s more comfortable car. It actually wasn’t so bad in the car and we seemed to get to the hospital in no time as luckily there wasn’t a lot of traffic between Venice and Westwood at that hour.
2:00pm – We arrived at UCLA Ronald Reagan and Giuditta and I went to valet and then walked up to Labor and Delivery. I had already pre-checked in so they put us in a room right away to check my vitals, etc. Our midwife Maria came in and checked me. I was 100% effaced and 5 cm dilated which was great news because that meant I didn’t have to go home. Going home would have been torture. They put a belly band on me for 20 minutes to check the baby and me and that was tough but Sean and I sat on the bed back to back and he swayed with me through the contractions which helped. They put a heploc on me in case I wanted any drugs (FYI – I never took a single thing – no petocin, epidural, etc.) and then we were moved into a birthing room.
For the next several hours I moved between standing, sitting in the shower while Giuditta and Sean showered my belly and squatting on the toilet. I tried to eat here and there but it was the last thing I wanted to do. They were probably close to as exhausted as me trying to make sure I was comfortable and helping me through it all.
7:00pm – I was 8 cm dilated and Giuditta and the midwife said that if they broke my bag things would move a lot faster. This was the only intervention I agreed to. They used what looked like a crochet hook and broke it.
After that my contractions became more intense.
8:00pm – I started getting the urge to push. It feels like you have to take a major crap and that’s what it feels like to push. The “good” part was now I had more of a break between contractions – around 5 minutes. I was about 9cm at this point. I sat on the toilet and though I felt something so Giuditta had the midwife come in a check me. I really had to push at this point and they asked me to try and hold off and let my perenium stretch as Ripley’s head came down. That was way too hard to do, but I tried.
At this point I was on all fours on the bed. I never imagined that was the position I would end up in to deliver but it was really really comfortable and I felt stable and not too tired.
I pushed for the next hour and then just after 9:00pm Ripley’s head came out but his shoulder was stuck so they had me quickly flip over on my back and then I had one more big push and he was out at 9:24pm and placed on my belly.
The thing you want your baby to do when he is born is to “talk” so they know he is OK. We rubbed him and asked him to talk and he gave some cries and then some bigger cries. Everything was OK. For the next couple of hours he was on my chest. He started rooting and Giuditta helped me breastfeed him. You quickly get used to other people manipulating your boobs for you while you learn to get them to latch on.
I kept lookin.g at Ripley because I guess I had it in my mind that I would recognize him, but I totally didn’t. I also thought I would be balling my eyes out like women on TV but I didn’t, I just kept staring at him in awe.
Sometime during all this, a little more blurry, I delivered the placenta, got sewn up from a couple of small tears and peed like I never peed before (I couldn’t pee for some reason towards the end of my labor).
They weighed and measured Ripley and OMG I am so glad I didn’t know how much he weighed because I might have been too intimidated to go au naturel. Also, there is a correction to his length, he is actually 22 1/2 inches long which is in the 95th percentile.
March 4th, 10:00am – I tried to sleep but the nurses constantly came in to check on me and Ripley and it’s impossible. Plus I was like some kind of celebrity because I was totally relaxed during my labor and didn’t scream or yell and no one could believe I pushed out a 10 lb baby vaginally and not scream bloody murder. Ripley had a bunch of tests. He passed everything with flying colors – 9 on the Apgar test, Glucose was perfect (bigger babies get this test), Billy Rubin was fine (I’m O positive and he is B positive so sometimes this is a conflict and can cause issues), hearing and eyesight were perfect.
2:00pm – We went home. It was glorious.
I want to thank my doula Giuditta Tornetta for being an amazing coach before, during and after delivering Ripley. I couldn’t recommend her high enough. The staff at UCLA Ronald Reagan were really really nice and I appreciate that they respected my birth plan. My nurse midwife Maria was spectacular and I love that I didn’t get any grief for getting into any position I wanted to as I know can happen at some hospitals. I thank Ripley for being my number one partner in all of this and for making my labor as pleasant as possible. Most especially I thank my amazing husband Sean for ensuring I was well taken care of and for whispering in my ear throughout that I was doing an amazing job. <3
