This is the story of Meridian's birth. It's quite long, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible so I would have it to share with her when she is having babies of her own.

For a week, I had been dilated to 4cm and my cervix had been 75% effaced. I had been having contractions for the better part of a week, and although they were consistently 3-4 minutes apart and over 60 seconds in length, they were not painful at all. They were just an intense tightening of my uterus. It was kind of neat to watch these contractions because you could see the outline of Meridian’s body as my tummy tightened. We jokingly called the contraction belly my “lunchbox belly” because it would become very square in shape during the contractions, as her bum pressed into the upper right part of my uterus and her feet pressed into the upper left part.

We had a good labor drill on the Sunday before Meridian’s birth (May 23rd), when I thought my water was leaking. It felt a little foolish to be headed to the hospital with contractions that didn’t hurt, and it didn’t quite feel like the real thing. However, since I was Group B Strep positive and we had decided to have antibiotics during labor, we headed out. We arrived and I was checked by Blair. As it turned out, my water had not broken, so either I was experiencing my first pregnancy-induced bout of incontinence or I had a lot of wet discharge. This was good news, however, because having my water break without first beginning to labor actively would mean I had an increased chance of a prolonged labor which increased the possibility of a c-section, which we very much wanted to avoid. My cervix was unchanged from my appointment the previous Monday (May 17th), which came as a surprise to me. I got to 4cm without feeling anything, and then for a week I was feeling things, but my cervix wasn’t changing - that was a strange reality to be faced with.

Because my contractions seemed so regular, they wanted to do a non-stress test on the baby. This involved being hooked up to the external fetal monitor, which consists of two belts around my abdomen: one to measure the baby’s heart rate and one to measure the length and intensity of contractions. This turned out to be very helpful to me because it made me confident that the sensations I had been identifying as contractions were just that. Also, my contractions were longer and closer together than I had realized. They were coming every two minutes and lasting two minutes in most cases. This shocked the nurse, who came in to ask if I was feeling the contractions the same way they were being measured. I told her I was, and she was surprised, especially at the fact that they were not painful. When the stress test was complete, we were released to go home.

Over the next several days I was vigilant about paying attention to every twinge and leak. On Tuesday (May 25th) I went in for my 40 week appointment to find that my cervix was still unchanged. I decided that for my own piece of mind I really needed to put it out of my mind and just enjoy the last few days or weeks of pregnancy. With that in mind, I came home and went for a walk with Ryan, Danny and Kaitlynn to the playground. This was quite a bit more exercise than I was accustomed to lately, as my hips and tailbone had been achy in the last few weeks of pregnancy. We got home, and I showered and fell asleep. I woke up around 3:30pm, and took care of some email. Around 4:30 I started feeling my contractions in my hips, and they were definitely noticeable and irritable. I layed down on the bed for a while and timed the contractions. They were coming around 4-5 minutes apart. Ryan was with me, helping time and running her fingers through my hair. We timed for about an hour, and decided not to get too excited about it - it could be pre-labor or it could be early labor. After the false alarm earlier in the week, I didn’t want to put too much stock in anything. We went downstairs, David arrived home, and Ryan and David cooked dinner while I sat reading to them from a magazine. The contractions were still consistent and made me need to pee, so I was off every few minutes to the bathroom. I was having a bit of bloody show with each trip to the bathroom, which got my excitement going a bit more - something must have been happening. I sat on the couch to eat dinner because it was too uncomfortable to sit at the table, and after dinner we all watched Paycheck. I leaned over the birthing ball throughout the movie as my contractions were getting more and more uncomfortable. My one year old neice, Kaitlynn, must have realized I was in pain because she kept coming over to snuggle and kiss me. In retrospect, I realize this was early labor. At the time though, I was concerned about my fami ly’s history of fast births, and I didn’t want to miss out on having the jacuzzi at the birthing center ease the pain of my contractions, so at 11pm, we called the midwife on duty. It turned out to be Nell, who’d seen me earlier that day. She asked the standard questions (how far apart and how long contractions were, if I could talk through them, etc.) and then said she really didn’t think it was time yet. I reminded her of my family’s history, and she said to go for another hour and call back. We called back at midnight reporting that contractions were consistently 3 minutes apart, and that they were all well over 60 seconds. She still didn’t think I sounded as if I were in enough pain, but decided to have me come in and be checked.

We left for the birthing center around 12:20am, and arrived there around 1am. As we walked upstairs, we stopped a few times for contractions - it helped me to apply pressure to something as I worked through the contractions, so I pressed hard against the walls. We made it upstairs, and Nell hadn’t arrived yet. Our nurse, Cindy went through the admissions paperwork with us, and got us into the room and me set up on the monitor. Nell arrived and checked me - I was STILL at 4cm. This came both as a shock and as a HUGE disappointment. Nell recommended that they break my water, as my contractions were plenty long and hard. She said that the baby just hadn’t come down into the pelvis yet, so the contractions really weren’t working my cervix. David and I had taken Bradley classes and were trained to resist routine interventions, so we had to really think about that. Nell seemed a little put off that we weren’t just going with her recommendation. Dave and I discussed it for about ten minutes between contractions. Dave pointed out that once the water was broken we were committed in that we were then on time limit before other interventions would be pushed at us. A c-section was a fear of mine, so the time factor seemed important to me. We discussed this with Nell, who said she really thought the baby would be here regardless in the next twelve hours; her concern was that I’d been awake all day and might exhaust myself before it was time to push. She thought breaking my water would shorten my labor considerably given the intensity and frequency of my contractions. David and I decided to go ahead and let her break my water. First they got an IV going so that I could get antibiotics for Group B Strep. They tried to put in a heplock in my right hand, and I looked away and was distracted from my contractions by the fear of needles. I kept asking if they were done, but apparently it was problematic, and they couldn’t get it in. Finally, they elected to put it in my forearm instead and I hum med to myself to tick off the seconds until they were done. Once it was in, I never noticed it for the rest of the labor.

I was a little afraid that having my water broken might hurt, but I didn’t even feel it. I just felt the warm gush of water. Immediately after my water was broken I began to feel the contractions much more intensely. I realized then that the contractions from earlier in the evening that I had been counting as “painful contractions” were in fact only “noticeable contractions”. The contractions still gave me the urge to pee, so I tried to labor sitting on the toilet, but the pressure it placed on my hips made the contraction pain seem so much worse and made my legs have that tingly falling asleep sensation. I wanted to get in the tub, but Nell said we needed to wait to see if the contractions got firmly under way first because getting in the tub too early can slow labor rather than help it. Also, when Nell checked me, she said the baby’s head had come down not quite straight; she was tilted a little bit against my cervix. She said that if I did a chin to chest position or leaned over the birthing ball for thirty minutes, she would allow me to get in the tub after that. That gave me something to work towards, which I desperately needed in order to maintain that position because it was not comfortable for me at all. The time passed quickly I guess because I was too focused on managing the pain of contractions to be interested in the clock. I just remember being overjoyed to hear that I could get into the tub.

Nell asked me to go to the bathroom before getting into the tub, and apparently I told my sister and husband that just because they got to see me poo here, that it didn’t mean it would EVER happen again. Everyone got a kick out of that. Funny, I don’t even remember saying it, but was told about it after the labor was over. Then came the tub. The only time I smiled during the whole labor was as I stepped into the tub. I could literally feel the pain melting off of me. The contractions were so much more manageable in the water. They were still painful, but they were somehow counterbalanced by weightlessness and warmth. It was like having a heating pad on my whole body. I labored in the tub for about another hour or so, and I progressed very rapidly during this period. One of the best things about being in the water was the ability to change position instantly without any of the additional pain that is added by the strain of moving. I labored in so many positions in the tub: hands and knees, kneeling, floating on my back, stretched out with my feet against one side of the tub and head at the other, etc. Nell turned the jets on to see if I liked the pressure, but I hated it, so they were turned off. She said some women like it and others don’t. Periodically, the jets would kick back on by themselves to circulate warm water, and I remember how much my pain heightened just in the few seconds that they were on.

Being in the tub is the portion of my labor other than pushing that I remember most vividly. I remember the feeling of the contractions, the way that changing positions helped ease the pain, the conversations that were going on around me, the strange feeling of being part of a group that was helping me labor but at the same time being completely inward and focused on myself. I remember being able to communicate only in the most rudimentary manner. I remember needing silence. I remember having conversations with my labor team in my head because I didn’t have the strength to respond verbally. Aloud I only had the strength to say “Ssshhhhh” and “Water” and “I need sugar.” I had a real need for silence - it felt in a sense that the power of the pain ought to have silenced all around me and that the noises were an intrusion on what my body was doing. David and Ryan were really terrific, constantly giving me positive affirmations and trying to verbalize for me as I worked through the pain. This is what we had planned and practiced; it is what I thought I would need, and in the throes of labor I didn’t have the wherewithal to communicate that I needed silence. “Ssshhhh” was as specific as I could be.

I remember feeling like a failure; everyone kept telling me what a good job I was doing, but I didn’t feel like I was doing a good job. I felt like they were patronizing me to make me feel better. I thought several times “I overestimated myself, and I cannot do this…” and in the next moment felt guilty for thinking I wouldn’t be able to do it, and feeling that I wasn’t making a good enough effort for my baby. I remember distrusting Nell when she told Ryan and David that I was probably in transition when my legs started shaking. I thought to myself “She is such a liar. She just wants me to feel motivated.” I just thought that if my body dilated to 4cm, and then stayed there for a week even through 8 hours of mild contractions that I was screwed and would be in labor for hours on end. I think partly I believed this to protect myself from extreme disappointment if I hadn’t progressed by the next internal exam.

After being in the water for about an hour and fifteen minutes (which at the time felt like several hours but also like no time at all, as if I were in a dimension where time was measured differently), I started to feel the urge to push. It wasn’t an overwhelming urge, just the inkling of a different need my body was having. I said this aloud, in rudimentary language of course: “I need to push.” Nell told me to listen to my body and that if I needed to push to allow myself to do it. Through the next few contractions I pushed, but without really committing to the idea. I think I was kind of tasting the new pain to see if it was something I wanted to do. Nell checked me and announced I was at 9 ½ cm. Again, I thought “She’s lying,” but this time I allowed a glimmer of hope. I burst out “Do you promise, Nell? Do you promise?” To which she responded, “I wouldn’t lie to you, honey.” At that point I felt a rush of excitement. I COULD do this. I was almost done.

Nell continued to let me try in the tub for a few more contractions - she knew it was my hope to have a water birth. But after a few more contractions, she felt that I wasn’t really effectively pushing, and that sitting on the toilet might trigger my body’s natural pushing mechanism. I sat on the toilet for the two most painful contractions of my labor and announced that this was not working. Nell had me get on the bed so that she could check me again, and I got on my hands and knees. I was so uncomfortable in that position that I couldn’t move. I reluctantly got on my back for the internal, thinking to myself that I did NOT want to labor on my back. It went against everything we’d been taught. I would be working against gravity. But when I turned for the internal, I was so much more comfortable that I didn’t want to move. Nell checked me and I was complete.

This began in earnest the pushing stage of my labor, and the most trying. I would gladly have done the contractions part three times as long to be able to skip the pushing, but of course negotiations on the birthing process were not an option. In retrospect I can see that my pushing really had three phases. The initial pushes (which for me was about ½ an hour) were the pushes I described earlier - tasting the pain, deciding if I liked it. So many women I talked to had said that the pushing was so much better than the contractions. I think I was testing to see if this was true. These pushes were not moving the baby. I remember Nell telling me to push like I was pooping, and this began a different kind of pushing, less mental, more physical. This was somewhat effective and I got as far as crowning and the ring of fire this way (another ½ hour). At some point during these pushes Ryan asked if I wanted to count through them, and I nodded. I remember her saying how much that helped her during the pushing, and I was willing to try anything that would help. The first few cycles she counted through I remember thinking “Good God, can’t you count any faster” and “Exactly how high does she intend to count?” The most frustrating part of this phase was that I really felt like I didn’t have any air, and everyone kept telling me to take a deep breath and do it again and harder. I felt at the time that these were good pushes, and only after experiencing the real pushes could I distinguish the difference in quality.

I remember when Nell announced I was crowning as a means of encouraging me, I was so disappointed and defeated. I had witnessed my sister Ryan’s birth a year before, and I knew that crowning meant that a very small portion of the baby’s head was visible. I felt that I had worked so hard, that I had pushed with all I had, that I couldn’t possibly work harder, that I could hardly get enough air, that they kept telling me to do it again, and I just couldn’t, that there was still so much work left to be done. I remember thinking I had changed my mind, I didn’t want to give birth today. Didn’t they have something that could just get the baby out?! At this point Nell began perineal massage, which added a new pressure to the pain. It didn’t hurt really; it just felt like added pressure. As the baby’s head came further down, Nell made a circle with her thumbs and pointer fingers, and applied pressure against the vaginal ring as I pushed. That was the most intense pain I’d felt so far, and I remember thinking through my defeatist mood “She’s not going to stop doing that until this baby is out, and the only way for her to come out is through that opening.”

This began the truest and most sincere pushing on my part. I just wanted to be done. I wanted to meet my daughter, I wanted the pain to end. I tuned everything out and listened to my body. I ignored them when they told me to push again if I felt I didn’t have enough air. I stopped pushing before Ryan got to eight if I felt I was done. Many times I pushed longer than eight, and Ryan would pause and then keep counting up through twelve or fifteen. These pushes were no-holds barred. Later, David would tell me that he grew in love and respect for me during this stage, as I made the most incredible, determined, I-mean-business facial expressions, unaware of the world around me, without modesty or regard for self-image. I think there’s something in that last part. I had an idea of who I’d wanted to be as a laboring woman, a standard I’d created for myself, the pinnacle I felt I needed to meet in order to be proud of my accomplishment. It was this that had me feeling earlier in my labor that I wasn’t doing a good job, that everyone was trying to make me feel better. It was this that I let go of in order to accomplish the awesome task of bringing my daughter into the world. It’s only now as I write this, a week after my precious baby’s birth, that I can reason and understand how my body and my mind fought each other and why I had the feelings I did.

After the birth I’d been expecting a tremendous feeling of accomplishment and empowerment. After all, I had done it: a drug free labor and the birth of a healthy baby girl. But that’s not what I felt. I felt elation at the arrival of my daughter, of course, but as regards the labor and delivery, I felt that I had failed. Now I realize that what I failed to do was to control everything. I failed to be super-woman. But I succeeded in so much more: I succeeded in giving up control, giving it over to my baby and my body, allowing myself to be vulnerable in a scary and unprecedented way. I didn’t give up. I finished the task at hand. How appropriate that in the act of giving life to my daughter I learned such a valuable lesson about the danger of expectation and the rewards of perseverance.

Meridian is two weeks old today, and she is the most perfect miracle of my life.

Meridian Paige Stiller. Born May 26, 2004, 5:22am. 8 pounds, 8 ounces; 19½ inches. She is very healthy and alert, really looking around and getting to know us. We are absolutely happy and in love with her!