Read Parts
I and
II of Connor's Birth Story
Around noon or 12:15 pm on March 3, our midwife Mick encouraged me to start to push through the contractions, even though they weren’t really “pushing” contractions yet, if I felt the urge. I later found out that the baby was still pretty high (zero station) so she was hoping that I could push the baby down a bit and give myself a little relief from the intense contractions before actually getting into the third stage of labor. I found it difficult to know how to push through these, although pushing did provide a slight relief from the pain.
When it was time to start pushing for real, I moved off my side and onto my feet, leaning over a balance ball that was placed on the bed. I had my right hand in my mom’s, my left hand in Nick’s, and when it was time to push I was able to roll down into a squat using them as leverage. I pushed this way for at least half an hour (45 minutes, maybe?), and after a little while I was able to get some really good productive pushes as I felt my body adapt to the pushing contractions and direct me. I felt like this was the hardest work of my life and after what felt like an eternity of pushing I simply could not believe that the baby wasn’t HERE ALREADY. Mick and Lindsay encouraged me to change positions and I got back into bed, lying on my left side with my right leg pulled toward my chest. I pushed this way for a while, curling my body into the contractions. I still couldn’t believe the baby hadn’t rocketed out yet, given how hard and long I was pushing. Everyone in the room kept telling me what a great job I was doing and how close the baby was getting; everyone was exclaiming that they could see the top of the head and the baby was starting to crown. Lindsay ran to get a mirror that she set up so I could see the top of the baby’s head, and despite being excited to see an alien-like patch of head I simply could not believe that the kid was not farther out of me! THIS PAIN, far more than the pain of Transition, started to sap my strength. This pain was REAL PAIN, like 18 on a scale of 1 to 10. This pain absolutely took me aback – most of the natural birth stories I read described pushing as a “relief” and in general, unmedicated births have much much shorter pushing stages than medicated ones. So I guess I was expecting … well, I don’t know, I guess I was expecting to feel the urge to push, start pushing, and 20 minutes later, voila! Baby! So to be working SO HARD for SO LONG, to be feeling all of the right urges and pushing until my brain felt like it was going to liquefy, and then to hear the excitement from the nurses just to see a ¾-inch wedge of head down there?! That’s IT?! I knew I still had a while to go. Nick and my mom were the best cheerleaders a gal could ask for, though. Just hearing the voice of my mother, a woman who gave birth to three children without drugs, a woman who had felt every bit of the same pain I was feeling at that moment, while giving birth to ME, tell me “You are doing SO GREAT!” and “I am SO proud of you, honey!” … you hear people wax poetic about how words can give you strength but I don’t think I’d ever really experienced that firsthand before then. So I kept on pushing.
FINALLY, Mick, Lindsay, and the nurse coming on shift, Karis, started to pull out glove kits and started scooting waterproof pads under me, and I exclaimed “Oh, this must really be it! You’re putting on gloves!” which elicited a laugh from everyone. I moved onto my back and bore down with every last bit I had for several contractions, all the while hearing my mom, Nick, Mick, and the nurses say things like “The head’s almost there! You’re doing it! You’re so close now!” I kept waiting for the midwife to tell me to push gently (the birth classes and books all said that when it was time to actually birth the head you’d be encouraged to push more slowly and gently), but Mick was focused on what felt to me like pushing the baby’s head BACK IN. I was confused but kept pushing with the contractions and she and the nurses got quiet and focused. So I pushed. And pushed. And then, around 1:30 pm, I heard them exclaim that the head was out! I (for some reason) expected the rest of the baby to just pop on out after that, but it took a couple more good pushes to get the shoulders out. I heard the baby start to wail and Mick got a funny look on her face before saying “Um, your baby girl is a BOY” … I would pay very good money for some video of my expression in the following 10 seconds. I was speechless, Nick was speechless, my mom was speechless. I’m pretty sure I looked like a deer in the headlights. As I was recovering from the shock, they put him on my chest and the first words out of my mouth were “He’s SO BIG!” I could not get over his long spindle fingers and his HUGE head that was surprisingly round. Before they covered us with blankets I noticed that he was covered in a fair amount of blood and I snuck a peek past him and my legs to see Mick in deep concentration in my nether regions, so I knew I must have a pretty good tear down there. But here’s the thing – before he was born, I was terrified, absolutely terrified, of tearing. It was the one thing about childbirth that frightened me. And then, with him in my arms, I could not have cared less. I distinctly remember seeing the blood, thinking “Huh, guess I tore. Wonder how bad it is?” and totally NOT CARING.
I was in utter and complete amazement at my big surprise boy. I was struck by how completely beautiful he was, by the adorableness of his quivering lower lip that stuck out with each “wwwwaaaaaaaaaaah,” by how his eyes locked onto mine, by how unexpectedly excited I was when I realized that he was a blondie, by how he totally did not look like a weird little alien baby at all but a handsome little man, and um, hello: a BOY?! Lindsay asked if we had a boy’s name picked out, and I blurted out the boy’s name that we had long ago settled on, back when I was newly pregnant and we hadn’t yet gotten the first of two ultrasound “confirmations” that we were expecting a little lady. Connor Morrell Sinnokrak. Connor because we’ve both always loved the name Connor, even back when we were dating long-distance and dreaming over the phone about what our kids would someday be named. Morrell because of my Grandpa Harry Morrell, who passed away in February 2008 and whose character we can only hope our little man gets a piece of. And the minute Nick and I looked at each other and then looked at the beautiful little boy on my chest we knew that the name was perfect.
As the nurses took Connor off to be weighed, I felt a mild contraction and realized that Mick was still waiting for the afterbirth. I waited until the next contraction, pushed gently with it, and the placenta came easily. Mick called one of the OBs in the practice to come in and stitch up my tear, and while we were waiting we got to enjoy watching our little man snuggle up on my chest and start to nurse. I should say, more accurately, we got to enjoy watching our not-so-little man … he weighed in at an astonishing 10 lbs 2 oz! I still cannot believe that he was hiding in there so compactly. I know that I’m tall and tall women hide it better, but no one ever would have believed that I was carrying a 10 pounder. I couldn’t believe it as he was lying there on my chest! I kept looking at him and asking “how did all of that fit inside me?”
About an hour later the doctor arrived and I was actually a bit surprised to learn that I only had a bad second degree tear. Mick explained that the reason I tore at all was because Connor arrived in this world with his hands on his face and no matter how hard she tried to push his hands back down as his head was crowning (Ohhhhhhh, THAT’S what you were pushing back in!), I gave birth to a 14-inch head plus a pair of hands. His positioning also explained why I had to push so hard for so long; turns out the body is made to push out a head FOLLOWED by a pair of hands and it just took a bit more oomph to birth a head PLUS a pair of hands. Everyone in the room also agreed that, had I not gone through an unmedicated childbirth, I very likely would have ended up with a cesarean section: if pitocin had been used to “encourage” my contractions, the baby probably would have gone into distress; if I had taken an epidural, I almost certainly would not have been able to feel how to push productively enough to actually get him out; if I had been given an episiotomy (which almost any old-school OB would have done upon realization of what a huge head this kid had), I would have torn right through it. So even though it was tremendously hard work, would I have had it any other way? Absolutely not!
After Nick, Connor, and I had some good bonding time, a nurse showed up to do Connor’s official measurements and give him his first bath. His official stats were: 10 lbs 2 oz, 21 inches (remeasured later at 22 inches), 14 inch head, 14 inch chest, 13 ½ inch abdomen. My little burrito! Perfect wrinkly feet the size of paddles. Lovely blond hair. Gray-blue eyes. Appetite like a giant ape. Suckle strength like a Hoover (either the vacuum or the jet, take your pick). 6 poops in the first day. Leg strength of an angry mule. Incredible neck strength for a newborn. Totally, utterly, amazingly perfect.
See all kinds of pictures of baby Connor
HERE, in my Flickr collection titled, simply, "Connor."
.jpg)
