…and this is the short version.

Just kidding.

Feel free to skim if you wish… some people actually like to read uber-long stories like this… and I don’t want to forget anything… but the rest of you normal people, don’t feel bad.

Yes, we are alive. The earth has not swallowed us whole and we were not eaten by a big monster. We might have felt like it for a couple quick moments, what with John’s surgery a week after having a baby and all… but the fact that we’re still here would seem to say otherwise. And, I think we were also saved by our parents, between John’s mom driving down from Colorado on short notice to help us out, and my parents taking Troy last weekend while John was in the hospital. We’re doing good.

As I sit here with a wee little one nursing in one arm and typing away with the other hand–it’s amazing how good one can become at this, uh, skill of one-handed typing–I can hardly believe it’s been twelve days since this little man came into the world. Let me just preface the whole thing with saying how very blessed we are… to have been given the gift of not one but two precious little lives to love and nurture and raise to the honor and glory of Jesus… it is just unspeakable. I never imagined I could love two little men so completely and yet so differently. My heart overflows.

So you want to know how things went? Let me tell ya…

Oh, and before we start… I’m going to try to not be, you know, graphic, but this is about birth, so…

It all started two Mondays ago with a few contractions. I’d been to see my midwife that morning, and we discussed the fact that I was due on Wednesday. She gave a few suggestions of herbal “labor starters” that can help, but only if the baby is completely ready to come already. I had some good indications labor was coming soon, so I stopped at the drug store on my way home and picked up some black cohosh, evening primrose oil… and a bottle of castor oil. Yum. Again, I knew that such a “remedy” wouldn’t work unless my body was ready to go anyway, and figured that if nothing else, I’d get a good, uh, cleansing… so I chugged down two ounces in some orange juice.

By that evening, the contractions had started to get more regular and had completely changed in the way they felt from the Braxton-Hicks I’d been experiencing for the past two or three months. We went to a Bible conference meeting at church that night, during which I started using John’s cell phone clock to time contractions, writing them down on a church bulletin. I couldn’t really tell you much about the message that night.

Late that night, I called my “team”–my parents and brother, my cousin and my bestest friend. We’d planned to have all of them there when the baby came. My parents drove the two hours out here and my cousin, Tiffany, came and slept on the couch while we kept in good contact with Bethany, letting her know the current status and if she needed to drive over. I called my midwife to touch bases and let her know how things were going. The contractions continued through the night, gaining in intensity and becoming more regular.

And then, midway through the day on Tuesday… it all stopped. Just stopped.

Soooo…. that was a leetle discouraging, but hey, we’d had a good day as a family. My parents drove on home that night, a bit reluctantly, due to work and such, though Tiffany decided to stay a little longer to help us out…. and she wanted to be here, just in case.

I talked again with my midwife on Wednesday, discussing the weirdness of it all and the various “symptoms” I’d been having, and she suggested that I try the castor oil again, followed by a second dose two hours later.

Ha. Not happening.

I took the first dose and there was no way, as sick as that made me feel, that I was taking another one. It makes me shudder just thinking about it. Heebie-jeebies big time.

BUT.

It worked.

By late that evening, I was again having regular contractions, though by this time I wasn’t convinced it was going to be anything more than the prodromal labor that Monday’s episode had turned out to be. So we went to bed.

I ended up being awake half the night due to the wonderful cleansing effects of castor oil, ahem, finally sleeping for the longest stretch of about two hours until John’s alarm clock went off at 5am. In a groggy state, I watched him shaving in the bathroom and with the next contraction, told him that I didn’t think he’d be going to work that day.

By six o’clock, I was sure he wouldn’t be going to work that day. I had no idea how far apart these contractions were, or how long they were, but my body knew there was something different. This was It.

We woke Tiffany up, I took a shower and John started getting the last few things together. We called my parents, my friend who was planning to watch Troy while the baby was born, and then I called my midwife, who said to come down right away. We live about 40 minutes from the birth center, without traffic, and it was almost 7am… heading right into rush hour.

Driving for a little over an hour through contractions is not fun. Just so ya know.

But we made it down there, got settled into one of the beautiful bedroom-like birthing rooms and found out that I was only dilated to 2-3 cm, though almost completely effaced. The contractions were getting stronger at about 2-3 minutes apart, but we definitely had some progress to make, so John, Tiffany and I headed a few blocks over and walked around Balboa Park for a while, with my parents and brother arriving in San Diego and joining us in our walk toward the end.

But hold on a minute. Back up.

My dad had been at work that morning when we called to say we were leaving. As a fire fighter, he works 24 hour shifts and was quickly trying to call his replacement so he could leave. He and my mom set up a place to meet along the way, and as soon as he could, he hurried to get there.

Enter flashing lights in the rear-view mirror.

Seriously.

Thankfully, the police officer was someone who works for my dad’s city, so he actually believed my dad when he said his daughter was in labor and he was rushing to get there. So he got out of the ticket. Ahem.

The ironic thing is that the last ticket he got was over four years ago, with John in the car, just after John asked my dad if he could begin a relationship with me. Apparently my dad shouldn’t drive when there is anything going on in the life of his baby girl.

So where were we? Oh yes, walking through the park. That was great. What with the homeless people everywhere we looked, the business people taking lunchtime walks in their nice clothes, and the free-spirited twenty-somethings hanging around… I had plenty of distractions to help get through these still-early-labor contractions.

Around 1:30 in the afternoon my midwife, Tamara, checked me again… and discovered that I was still only at 3cm. Her suggestion was to go home for a while, be in my own environment, do stuff around the house, and be back later once labor got into full swing.

The thing is, like I said, we don’t exactly live around the corner. So instead, we all opted to go to a nearby fancy-schmancy mall, walk around a bit, get something for lunch–which, by the way, sounded about as appetizing right then as, well, anything really gross. Basically, we wanted to stay in the area.

But, this is ME we’re talking about, and even in the midst of some not-so-fun laboring times, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of walking around said fancy-schmancy mall in a pair of old grey yoga pants, a big and baggy blue t-shirt with a stain on it and a pair of brown flip-flops. So my daddy–who is obviously one to spoil this baby girl of his–told my mama to take my into Motherhood Maternity and get me something to wear. For one day. Because I was obviously, you know, about to have a baby. That’s my daddy for ya.

Upon examining the directory at the mall, we realized there was no Motherhood store, but there was a Gap Maternity, which we attempted to find.

By the time we found the store in this huge spiral-shaped mall, I wasn’t doing so great. At all. As we all spread out looking at clothes across the several connected Gap stores and the guys–Dad, my brother Zach and John–went across the way to Sharper Image, and with my mom and bestest friend Bethany ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the simply adorable maternity clothes… I was leaning against clothing rounders, moaning through each contraction. I no longer really cared so much about what I was wearing.

They grabbed several selections that I would have been thrilled about had it been a week earlier and we headed to the dressing room. I was suddenly feeling a little panicky.

“You’re going in with me, right?” I asked my mom, who assured me she was.

I tried on a pair of jeans. They were cute. But another contraction was hitting…. I bent over a bit and leaned against the wall. They would do just fine. What did I think of these shirts? They were both cute. Just stick one over my head and let’s be done.

My mom took the tags and went to go pay for the outfit I was now wearing. Tiffany had come into the dressing room by then and was helping me get my old clothes together.

And then.

And THEN.

I felt a pop. And a gush.

In the Gap Maternity dressing room. My water had just broken.

I started crying. I was feeling a bit, uh, fragile at the moment.

The very next contraction hit like a ton of bricks… labor had started. For real.

A wee bit of chaos ensued as the store clerks, who were naturally freaking out, looked for something, anything, to clean up with, my mom found some underwear from the store, the guys were alerted (John couldn’t seem to wipe the silly grin from his face) and we finally got out of the store.

At the elevator we met a lady who wasn’t too thrilled with us for needing to go DOWN when she needed to go UP. I started to explain to her that the elevator was already on its way down, so it would pick us up on its way and then come back up to get her. She didn’t quite get what I was saying, judging from the scowl on her face. I leaned against my brother as another contraction hit with ever-increasing intensity and managed to get out, “I’m sorry, I just don’t know. I’m in labor.”

That changed her look a little.

It matched the looks on the faces of the rest of the mall-shoppers who were watching an obviously very pregnant mama try to make her way back to the parking garage, stopping every few steps to close her eyes and lean against her husband while she made it through another contraction. Quite comical. In retrospect, of course. At the time, those looks did something in my mind that made me want to bawl like a baby.

We finally made it back to the truck–with me panicking once I remembered that nobody had eaten lunch yet, at nearly 3pm, but then completely freaking out once I realized that I’d just told them to go get some food for themselves and that would mean having my dad and brother leave us. Another contraction hit and I cried, “Don’t leave!!” So they didn’t.

The few blocks’ drive back to the birth center was… not fun. The car and labor just don’t mix.

But we made it back. I changed back into my comfy clothes and laid on the big bed in the birthing room. My midwife came in and checked me again… still only at 3cm. Ugh. I asked if his head was still ballottable. My sweet midwife looked at me like I’d grown another head.

“Uh, yes… but, HOW do you know that term? I don’t even know how to spell it!”

I, ahem, do a lot of reading. A bit of it online. Much of it written by knowledgeable friends and midwives, who, ya know, use terms like “ballottable” rather than saying the baby’s head isn’t in the pelvis. This started a trend throughout the rest of the birth of the midwives first asking if I knew something about childbirth, then later, often assuming off-the-bat that I did. I was shocked too. I guess I didn’t realize just how “abnormally educated” about such things I’d become. (When I saw her again a week later, she still couldn’t get over the whole “ballottable” thing. Am I really the only mom who knew what that meant?) Thanks, internet.

For a while I alternated between standing beside the bed, leaning on either it or John through each contraction, and then curling up in a ball on the bed itself. It was still much too early to get in the birthing tub due to the possibility of the warm water relaxing me to the point of slowing down my labor. So instead, my midwife suggested using the removable shower head to run water over my baby belly. I have no idea how long I sat in the tub like that… probably almost an hour?

Somewhere in there, my dad and brother made a trip over to Jamba Juice and got smoothies for everyone. I made an attempt at drinking mine, but didn’t get very far. Suddenly the snacks we’d brought to keep my strength up during labor seemed completely pointless to me.

At some point I started feeling too much pressure sitting on the hard tub floor and couldn’t get comfortable anymore, so I moved to the birthing ball.

(Notice that a bedroom suddenly becomes the “birthing room”, an over sized tub becomes the “birthing tub” and an exercise ball is now the “birthing ball” just because it’s all in the “birth center?” Funny how I didn’t notice this unimportant fact until I typed it all out…)

The longest part of my “real” labor was on the ball. It was wonderful, relieving a lot of the pressure “down there” and as the contractions became more intense, it helped to bounce slightly through each one. The waves of contractions were coming so quickly that I felt like I hardly had a break between them. My dad sat behind me for a while, rubbing my lower back, which was a huge relief.

Unlike with Troy’s birth, my mind was completely clear through every part of this one and I was able to remember, even during the most intense contractions, some tips friends had given me while I prepared for this birth. One of the most helpful things was remembering a statement my good friend Elizabeth made after her son was born, saying that when she looked back on her birth, pain itself wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. It was the intensity, “like a lioness was unleashed inside her body.” When I heard that originally, I shook my head because that certainly wasn’t how I would describe MY first birth. In the fuzziness of my memory, pain certainly stood at the forefront. This time, I was amazed–AMAZED–at how true her comment was. It was as if my body was just taking over, and I couldn’t really control it. At one point I was (AGAIN, lol) crying to myself, realizing that God had made my body to do this–to give birth to a baby–and that it was Him giving me the strength necessary to get through it. At that moment, the pain of childbirth didn’t seem so much like a “curse” as it did something that was drawing me even closer to the God who saw fit to make it this way.

Another family friend, who has had six natural births, said that with her last baby, she knew that the old standby of “just PRAY during your labor” could be, um, a little unrealistic, so she chose two people she knew of who were enduring more severe hardships than she could imagine and focused on praying for those specific people, knowing her short time of suffering paled in comparison to theirs. Going on this advice, I spent a while praying silently–albeit sometimes broken into snippets–for dear ones who are suffering, many of whom we all know through the blogosphere–Heather, Mel, the Wilhoite family, our pastor’s family who lost their son in Iraq, people in our area who lost their homes due to the fires…

Another friend who has also had six natural births had given me practical tips–”Let gravity help! Stay upright. See it as a good workout or a sporting event–and remember there is an end in sight. Call out on Jesus, quiet your heart before Him when you don’t feel like being quiet… don’t fear.” The family friend from whom I first heard of water birth, a mommy of eight, told me to focus on relaxing my stomach muscles, “letting it all hang out” and breathing through my stomach. All of this stuff kept popping into my head in intervals, keeping me trying out different ideas as I remembered them. I’ll just tell ya… it ALL helped, even if just to keep me focusing on different things.

And then, about two hours after my water broke, while sitting on the ball, my body suddenly started to push involuntarily.

We called my midwife back in. She’d left us all alone for a bit while I worked through this labor. The atmosphere was unbelievably relaxing–soft music playing in a pretty bedroom setting, my family talking quietly around me. But I was starting to panic again, being that I was certain I was still barely dilated and had just the day before read a birth story in which the mom’s urge to push came at 4cm and she had to battle against it for the rest of her labor. I was expecting my labor to go on for another zillion hours and yet I couldn’t stop myself from pushing.

She came and sat with me for about fifteen minutes, watching me through the contractions to gauge where I was “at.” Between them she remarked at how controlled my breathing was and asked where I’d learned to use such deep tones. I smiled weakly. “Online.”

She said she’d check me again at five o’clock and that if I felt like my body needed to push, let it! I could be in transition. I was positive labor was supposed to be a WHOLE lot harder than this, so I braced myself to hear, “No change.”

But the smile that spread across her face as she checked gave me hope. “So… what do you want to be at?” she asked.

“Um… very dilated would be nice.”

“How ’bout… a bit over eight? Almost a nine? Would that make you happy?”

And so I started bawling all over again. And said I was now more than ready to get in the tub, which… someone–John, maybe, or my cousin?–was already filling. Tamara checked the water temperature and said I could hop in there in just a few minutes.

While John helped get things ready for me over there, I asked my mom to read me the scriptures I’d written out on index cards. Transition had hit in full force and I was starting to feel so tired I didn’t know how I’d have the strength to now PUSH a baby out. She read the verses to me, reminding me of the strength my Lord was giving me, that He was here beside me and holding me in His arms, that I shouldn’t be afraid because He would strengthen me. I was starting to calm down.

The next contraction completely took my breath away. I was laying on the bed from the cervical check and knew right then there was no way I would have been able to have this baby laying in bed. That one contraction was the worst part of the entire birth… the only time I felt out of control and in a shaky voice begged Tamara and my mom and John to “hellllp me… do something….” Tamara replied that I needed to get in that tub. I looked up at my mom, my cousin Tiffany and bestest friend Bethany and asked them to remind me of why I was doing this…

“Because the Lord absolutely led you and John to this place, and to have the baby naturally,” my mama said while holding my hand.

“Because our bodies were made to have babies,” Tiffany said with conviction.

“Because it’s better for both you and the baby,” Bethany reminded me. Neither Tiffany nor Bethany have had babies themselves… it was clear the three of us had talked about all of this a few times before. Ahem.

Getting in that tub, feeling the warm water around me… this was the best part of the whole thing. We had candles lit and the instrumental music still playing, and John used a pitcher to slowly pour water over the top of my big ol’ tummy, which didn’t fit completely under the water. Everyone was asking me if I wanted John to get in the tub to hold me up, which he was more than willing to do, but I thought I’d have more freedom to move as I needed to without him in there–on top of being too paranoid about everything that was going to be getting in the water. It was okay for ME, but the thought of him being in there too? Not so much. So instead my mom and John leaned over the tub behind me and helped hold me up. My mom was afraid I’d float around like a little kid in the bath :smile:, but I was actually bracing myself with my feet across the tub.

I had one or two good, strong (although very different from out of the water) contractions, with just a little bit of involuntary pushing. I wasn’t putting any “oomph” into it yet, wanting to wait until I was completely dilated. Those two contractions did it, though, and I was more than ready.

Two pushes (uncoached, with me just following what my body was already doing–the other “best” part of this birth) delivered his head, underwater. The next push showed that we had stuck shoulders on our hands (the other term they were surprised I knew, but I thought was common–”shoulder dystocia.” Thanks, internet. :grin: ), so before the next one, I moved to a standing position and one last push brought out the baby.

Tamara and Roberta (the wonderful, sweet and gentle “head midwife”) caught him and immediately handed him up to me. They all helped me sit back down and I cuddled my little man with John leaning over my shoulder, his hand on the baby and tears in both our eyes.

Once the cord stopped pulsating, Tamara clamped and John cut it. Then we thought we’d better check and make sure he really was a boy… he was. :) They began draining the water and within a few minutes the placenta was delivered.

Ten minutes after he was born, still sitting in the now-empty tub, little Merritt was ready to eat and latched on perfectly–something which has continued ever since, much to my delight. Everyone started making phone calls to family and close friends to let them all in on our excitement.

When he was done nursing, they helped me back to the bed, cleaned up a little and the midwives left us to ourselves to love on our little baby boy.

My friend Nicole was on her way with Troy and we eagerly awaited his reaction to his new baby brother. We weren’t disapointed. He was a little tired and confused and wanted mama at first, but was soon quite curious about this little “baybee” and gave him gentle hugs and kisses.

About an hour later, the midwife/nurse came in to do Merritt’s newborn check, and get his weight and length. The stats were that we had a little Merritt Will, born at 5:45 on November 1st, 8lbs. 2oz, 20 1/2 inches long and an Apgar score of 9.

While everyone else took turns holding the sweet bebe, I got back in the shower and cleaned up. I ended up sitting on the birth stool in there for at least a half hour with my mom and Tiffany, talking through what had just happened and reviewing it all in our minds. We were all blown away with how amazing it is to see a little life enter the world–as well as the fact that I, the world’s biggest baby when it comes to pain, had just given birth completely naturally. Was I crazy???? Maybe so. But it was worth it. :)

We went home that night around midnight and have been completely overwhelmed with the blessing of having two precious boys ever since.