As I wrote in my Pregnancy Journal, I had my first bout of "false labor" on Monday morning, April 13. These were the first contractions I'd had that were actually bothersome: rather than just a tightening, they felt more like menstrual cramps. However, they went away after I got up. Then, right after midnight on Wednesday morning, April 15, I started getting contractions again. At about 12:45 a.m. I thought they might be worth timing, and started writing them down. The first five were exactly six minutes apart, which was exciting and made me thing something might be happening. The last of these five was a doozy and I wrote "ouch!!" next to it. After that they became somewhat less regular. At 1:30 I decided that I should really try to sleep. I woke up to another uncomfortable couple of contractions at 5:46 a.m., which I wrote down, then went back to sleep until a little after 7:00. The contractions after this point were still slightly unpleasant but irregular, ranging between 5 and 20 minutes apart. Paul got up and went to work, since I had a feeling no real action was going to take place that day. Paul notes that I didn't wake him up during the night, which he was grateful for, and that in the morning, I was fairly nonchalant about the contractions I'd been having, so he went to work not particularly concerned that he'd suddenly be paged.

Around 10:00 a.m. Mom called from McCloud to say that she hadn't left yet. She had let Sweetpea the cat out for a run around the neighborhood early that morning, and since the sun was shining for the first time in a while, Sweetpea hadn't come back yet. Mom didn't want to leave town with the cat still out if she could manage it. I told her that I had been having contractions all night, and she got worried that I would go into active labor before she got here. I was a lot less worried. I thought the contractions would disappear pretty soon, as they had with the bout of them I'd gotten in the wee hours of Monday morning.

Sure enough, they pretty much went away. By the end of the morning I was back to almost normal. I was trying not to over-exert myself, but I did need to neaten up the apartment a bit, and ended up working probably more than I should have. I started the laundry and vacuumed a lot of the apartment.

Mom phoned from Williams at about ten minutes to 1:00, I think. As luck would have it I was in the shower right then. When I heard the phone ring I hopped out, soaking wet, but missed her call. She left a voicemail saying that she was in Williams and that we could page her if we needed to. I decided not to page her and make her pull off the road -- she would get here soon enough and would find out that no, I wasn't in labor yet.

Mom arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon -- she made good time! I told her how things stood. We visited for a while and I gave her the tour of the apartment, including the baby's room. Somehow we wound up cleaning things. She helped me with the rest of the housework that I hadn't gotten to, including doing the rest of the laundry. I got inspired to wash the bed linen, which Mom said was a good idea because it meant that my water would certainly break all over the new clean sheets that night! As it turned out that wasn't the case -- but I did go into proper labor that night, so it's just as well that we had clean sheets to come home to when it was all over.

Before too long Paul got home from school. He looked tired and worn out, and had had a tough day. Mom and I continued cleaning the apartment while he did some work at his desk. He looked like he needed to regroup for a bit, and Mom and I were pleased to be able to make his environment a little more pleasant while he did that. I hadn't gone for my daily walk yet that day, so after a while Paul and I decided to go out. I had invited Mom to go with us, but as it turned out I didn't feel that great and had a feeling that we wouldn't take a very long walk, so when Mom decided to stay at the apartment instead, I said that was fine. As it turned out we weren't out for very long at all. My lower back was bothering me, mostly because of all the housework I think. So we turned around at Larkspur Street and came back to the apartment. On the way back I brought up the subject of induction. I was feeling more and more as time went by like maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. Perhaps a lot of this was impatience, but there were other thoughts as well, like worries that the baby was just going to get bigger and more postmature and would become hard to deliver. I told Paul how I was feeling, and he seemed to agree that it would be okay to go along with the induction if that's what Dr. Miner thought we should do. He was anxious about the baby being "overdue" and thought that the doctor's advice might be the best advice.

By the time I went to bed that evening, I was feeling a little discouraged. I hadn't had a hint of any real contractions since that morning, and had the feeling that none were going to show up. I was distressed about going in for my appointment with Dr. Miner the next morning and having to make some kind of decision about the induction. It would have been really nice to go into labor spontaneously. Paul and Mom didn't want me to get too discouraged, but it was bothering me a little bit.

To my surprise, around 2:30 that morning, Thursday, April 16th, I woke up with more cramp-like contractions. I really hadn't thought any were going to show up. I wound up getting up to go to the bathroom a few times, and the second of these times I saw more of the brownish mucous plug. As I was heading back to bed, Mom called to me (from her sleeping bag on the futon in the living room). She was sleeping lightly anyhow in anticipation of labor commencing very soon, and said that she had been awake during the night a lot lately anyway, feeling too warm. I went in and sat down and told her what was happening. She was excited, more so than I was since I was feeling pessimistic and was sure that these contractions would go away in the morning. (Note: I continued this "don't get your hopes up" mentality until we checked into the hospital the next afternoon! When they finally checked us in I finally let myself believe that I was really in labor and would leave the hospital with a baby -- but then new problems began.) We chatted for a while in the dark in the living room, and before long I lay down next to her on the futon and she rubbed my back, which was fairly uncomfortable. After a while she went out on the balcony. The contractions became more uncomfortable, perhaps because of the lack of distraction, and I ended up pacing up and down the front hallway a couple of times. Shortly after she came back I went back to bed.

In the morning I was awake by 7:00 or so. The contractions were still going on, though now that I was up I expected them to stop any minute. I went to take a shower to get ready for my appointment with Dr. Miner. Paul suggested that I ride to the hospital with Mom because he would need to leave directly from the hospital to go do some work for his school. I was a little startled because I had thought that he basically had the day off work, but I agreed. Then at about 20 minutes to 8:00 he said that he was going to leave then and would meet us at the hospital. Again I was startled, because it meant that he had so much work to do that day that he needed to get a head start on it. My contractions were kind of annoying me and so it was bad timing, and I got very upset when he left. Mom came in to ask why I was crying, and I said, "Why does he have to leave right now?" She immediately went out to get him. He came back in and we talked for a minute and patched things up. He said that if I needed him to stay he would, but I said that he should go ahead and go to work. I couldn't really justify his being around if this was just going to turn into another bout of false labor -- but at the same time I felt to a certain extent like I needed him around, and wished that he really did have the whole day off.

Around this same time I decided to start timing the contractions again. I started writing them down at 7:47 a.m., and they were hovering between five and seven minutes apart. Mom was ready early and we left the apartment at 8:00 or a minute or two before. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that it was a Thursday and that there would be rush-hour traffic on 101, so it took us the entire half-hour to get to the hospital. We were a few minutes late, and Paul was already there when we got there, which really pleased me. I was awfully glad to see him. We went up to the registration desk to check in. When we happened to mention that I was having contractions that were about six minutes apart, the registration person said, "Oh, you should have told me that," and did something extra, perhaps entering the information into her computer. I really couldn't see what all the fuss was about, since I had been having contractions on and off for days, and I thought it was pretty silly of them to get worked up about it.

I was scheduled to have a Non-Stress Test at 8:30 and then see Dr. Miner at 9:00. I got called for the NST right away. This NST was by far the most interesting of the three I'd had, since I was actually having semi-regular contractions. They moved to between five and six minutes apart during the test, actually, and the monitor logged four of them. Paul wrote "mild", "ouch", "oww!" and "mild" next to these, and I do recall that the third one was particularly annoying. Michele said that the baby's heartbeat looked great throughout the test (the first of MANY times over the next two days that we would be told how great the baby was doing, since this happened all throughout labor!). Then we got an ultrasound. This was slightly alarming at first because she couldn't find any large pockets of amniotic fluid, and it looked like we might be running really low. But then she did find one or two, and so it seemed like things were okay.

After the NST we went across the hall for our 9:00 appointment with Dr. Miner. The nurse called us in very quickly, which I thought at the time might be because I appeared to be in labor, but might actually just have been because it was early in the morning. For the first time since the beginning of my pregnancy, my weight hadn't gone up! I had a brief moment of amusement about that. The nurse said that my urine was not as dilute as it should have been, which was mostly because it was early in the day and I hadn't had much of a chance to drink a lot of water. And my blood pressure was high, which it turned out was going to be the case on and off throughout labor, though it came down quite nicely afterwards.

Mom writes:

    "My memory is that your BP fluctuated -- sometimes high and sometimes okay, depending on various circumstances and the level of your pain medication. Sorry that I can't be more specific. I just know that as it fluctuated it was one of the things I was more sanguine about -- because I've worked with medical professionals enough to know that this is their *first* consideration and therefore the consideration I needed to worry the least about because they were (in my mind) guaranteed to be paying attention to your BP and to deal with it."

Late that night I was wearing a blood pressure cuff on my arm that took my blood pressure automatically every few minutes and then, I assume, transmitted the information out to the nurses' station. I hadn't even known there was such a thing, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Dr. Miner came in and seemed pleased that contractions were happening. She checked me and expressed delight at how much progress I had made since the previous Thursday. I was much more effaced, she said, and the baby had dropped down a long ways, to -1 or 0 station. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and I practically cheered at this news! I was still only dilated to about 1 centimeter, but the other news was so good that I didn't mind. Dr. Miner said that she was going to strip my membranes, which meant running her finger in a circle just inside my cervix to loosen the membranes from the uterine wall. (I knew about this procedure, though she may have called it something else when she was telling us that she was going to do it.) This was very uncomfortable, like an extremely nasty contraction, and made me wince. Paul, who was still writing down each contraction in our yellow notebook, saw me wince and asked if I was having a contraction. All I could think to say, with most of my brain focusing on the pain, was, "No -- she's bothering me," and the wording made us all smile. It made me laugh, which I found distracted me from the pain quite nicely.

Dr. Miner said that at this point either I would go into active labor today or they would give me Pitocin on Friday. I asked her what I should do, and she recommended napping if I could, or walking if I couldn't, to get things going. So we left, feeling fairly positive about things.

Paul left to go get his work done, and Mom and I drove back to the apartment in her car. It was a beautiful day, very sunny and warm. When we got back to the apartment, I decided that we should listen to music, so I put a country music mix on the stereo: Clint Black, Vince Gill, Doug Stone, Pam Tillis, and Bryan White. I also remembered what Zann had said about eating regularly during labor, and I decided that wanted to make a fruit salad with the fruit that Paul had brought home the day before. So I did this, and it kept me occupied for the better part of half an hour. Then I rocked in the chair for a while and ate two bowls of the fruit salad while I dealt with a few contractions of varied intensity. After that I decided that walking was the thing to do -- not only between the contractions but during them -- so I paced around the apartment, mostly in circles around the sofa, with occasional detours to the front hall or the bedroom. Mom was out on the balcony for some of this time. It was an absolutely beautiful day -- "A great day to have a baby," we said several times over the next few hours. The warm sun was coming through the windows, and we were singing along with several of the country songs. In spite of the labor, we were having a great time, laughing about it all in between contractions. I remarked that when Paul came home he wouldn't think that this was what labor was supposed to be about! This was a really nice time.

Mom writes:

    "Yes...I will forever remember the early hours of your labor on the morning of the 16th. There was a kind of timeless pleasure to it -- with the sun pouring in the window, country music playing, a fruit salad being made and partly eaten by you, and moments of (what?) *contentment* between you and me between your contractions. Life was manageable then, full of promise. I think that both you and I believed that the hours of labor ahead would be neither long nor *too* terribly difficult."

The contractions were still fairly irregular during the mid-morning, ranging from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. At 10:45 came a contraction that seemed to go on forever. I couldn't tell if it was actually one big long contraction, or several strung together without much of a break in between. This may have been a precursor of things to come, as it turns out. At the time I mentioned it to Mom and she said she didn't know what it was, but that maybe it was the baby moving down. I hoped so!

Right after that the contractions evened out a bit to between four and eight minutes. At a quarter to twelve, since I couldn't immediately think of anything better to do, I went to take a shower. I had three contractions there, which seemed to be fairly close together, maybe four minutes apart. After I got out of the shower I got dressed in my cream-and-purple dress, the one that had become too tight across the front and had a button missing. Not elegant, but comfortable. I sat in the rocking chair and rocked for a while, and there was a long break -- 11 minutes -- before the next contraction came. This, too, might have been a precursor of things to come: by the late afternoon these occasional breaks were striking fear into my heart, since they always seemed to precede an increase in intensity. On this occasion I think it meant that the contractions were about to speed up, because after 12:15 they sped up to anywhere between two and five minutes apart.

Before too long, maybe around 12:45, Mom suggested that I page Paul. I was reluctant to disturb him while he was working -- I was still playing the pessimist. Things still felt very manageable to me, and I guess I was expecting to start feeling worse before I became convinced that this was the real thing! But my contractions were between two and five minutes apart, and things seemed to be moving along, so I had to admit that perhaps he should be here. Mom pretty much insisted that I page him, so I did. He called back right away. He was glad to come home, and said he'd be here in fifteen minutes or so. I hung up the phone. I found that once I'd called him, I was impatient for him to get here!

He arrived shortly after 1:00. When he found out how close together the contractions were, he agreed with Mom's suggestion that we should call the hospital. Even though I knew that we were supposed to call when the contractions were five minutes apart and one minute long for one hour, I still thought they were jumping the gun. It's funny to think back on now. Paul called the hospital at about 1:15. They asked him several questions which he passed along to me, and at the end they invited us back to the hospital for a labor check. Whatever wording they used made me laugh, and I went out on the balcony to tell Mom that we had been cordially invited to return to the hospital. Mom left a phone message for Rod so he would know where she was, and left a message for Dad too, telling him not to rush to the hospital but to stand by for further bulletins. Dad was actually at work, working one of his alternate Thursdays.

I didn't change out of my rather ragged dress -- I just threw on my white Keds and out we went. This shows that I was a little beyond caring about appearances at that point! We decided there was at least a chance that we might end up staying, so we brought our bags with us. On the way out the door I stopped and stared at my walking shoes, which were sitting in the hall. I got temporarily stuck trying to decide whether to take them or not. I guess I stood and stared at them for a noticeably long period of time, because Mom noticed and pointed out that if I wasn't sure, that I could take them and then just not wear them if I didn't want to. This hadn't really occurred to me, but it seemed like a good idea, so we took them. I was just a little out of it!

We took Mom's car because I thought it would be more comfortable than Paul's, and in fact it was fairly comfortable. Since we thought we might check into the hospital, we moved the carseat from Paul's car into Mom's. Paul drove, I sat in the passenger seat, and Mom got to be a nervous passenger in the backseat. Paul says that though we'd driven the road to the hospital many times before, it seemed unusually long this trip. I found the ride to the hospital pleasant enough, except for a few annoying contractions. I was at the point where I didn't really want to listen to, let alone engage in, a lot of chit-chat during contractions. But I was comfortable enough, except for when we turned into the hospital parking lot.

We went in and were greeted by the receptionist we'd seen that morning, who cheerfully welcomed us back. I asked the nurses if I had to provide yet another urine specimen, and they said no, which was a very small blessing. Dr. Wood examined me and declared me dilated two to three centimeters. This was very exciting, since I had just been at one centimeter that morning, and the time in between hadn't really been that difficult. Now I started to think that I might have a short and relatively easy labor. He said that we could go downstairs and check in at Labor and Delivery. I wasn't entirely sure that he was telling us we could check in, rather than going home, so I think I asked for clarification. Sure enough, this was the message!

We went down to Labor and Delivery, and saw right away on the white board that all six of the L&D rooms were full. It was a busy day! I was amazed and commented on it to Paul: we both remembered that when we'd taken the tour of L&D during our Lamaze class, only one of the rooms had been occupied! The nurse said that she would show us to our "semi-semi-private room". This turned out to be part of a hallway. They set up a bed in the hall and put a couple of screens around it. This was at about 2:25 in the afternoon. The nurse gave me a hospital gown, one of the standard ugly kind that are open in the back, but then she also gave me another one to wear over it, open in the front like a robe, so I wasn't at all indecent. I thought this was a really nice solution. I lay down on the bed while they hooked me up to the external fetal monitor. By this time the contractions were bothersome enough that I wasn't really wild about the idea of lying down during them, but I had known way in advance that they would have to do this. So now Paul and Mom could watch the contractions on the monitor, and knew exactly how far apart they were. But I figured since we were now at the hospital, that it wasn't that critical anymore that we time them, so I told them not to worry about it too much. The nurse tried very hard to make everyone comfortable, bringing in chairs for Mom and Paul. My contractions were so reliably 2-5 minutes apart at that time that Mom actually worried that I'd have to give birth in the hallway. Little did she know!

The staff did several tests, including taking my temperature (97.9) and my blood pressure (still high, 140/84). The nurse, Ruth, who Paul had spoken to on the phone when he called from home, gave us several forms to fill out and sign. Finally after quite a bit of time had gone by, I asked Paul how long I had been on the monitor. He said about forty minutes. This was twice as long as the twenty minutes I had been given to understand would be required when I first checked into the hospital, so I asked Paul to go ask if they would let me get up now. The contractions were getting hard to deal with and I really wanted to be able to walk around. He went to check, and when he came back he said that the nurses were going to take off the monitors because clearly I was doing fine. I was able to get up at about 3:15 p.m.

I wanted to walk up and down the halls for a while. The nurses said that they were about to discharge a patient in one of the rooms, and that if I went to walk that probably when I came back the room would be cleaned up and ready for us to take over. So I went out into the hall to pace up and down. Paul came along and walked with me, which I really appreciated, although at the same time I wasn't dealing with other people too well by this time. The contractions were very annoying at this point, and I tried various ways of dealing with them, including bending over to lean on the railing, continuing to walk, and just standing still. Nothing worked particularly well. Looking back, I think that this was the beginning of the really difficult part, which would last for the next five hours.

While I was walking, I noticed a nameplate next to a door that read "E. Newkirk". I thought of Erina Newkirk from Lamplighters, and wondered about the coincidence. That mystery would be solved the next day!

At 3:45 we were let into our room, Labor and Delivery Room 2. It was a very nice room, with a birthing table in the middle, a baby warmer in the corner, a chair that folded out into a cot in the opposite corner, and a rocking chair in front of the window. Paul observed that the view from the window was of the K-Mart across the street from the hospital. Down the road, we could also see the Taco Bell. It was pretty much like the room we had seen on our tour. Paul and Mom noticed that the cupboards held all the supplies we would need, including extra towels and things like that. I was pleased to hear this but it was hard for me to really enjoy much of anything at this point.

At this point I start to get a little fuzzy on the details, as most of the rest of the afternoon and evening was an unpleasant blur. I did a lot of pacing around the room, since walking often seemed to be the best solution. It didn't work great during contractions, though, and I was constantly trying to find a position that would work for even one contraction, let alone work for several. For a while I got in the shower, and that was kind of nice except that after a while it was very steamy and I felt like I couldn't breathe, so I had to get out. Also it was hard to stand up the whole time (sitting down on the stool in the shower didn't seem appealing) and I had limited room. Once I got out of the shower, it helped a lot to have Paul or Mom applying pressure to my lower back. I suppose this was back labor, though at the time I didn't really think it was, because I didn't think the baby was posterior.

One position that I kept coming back to was leaning my hands on the edge of the sink, with my feet fairly far back, and rocking, either forward on one foot and back onto the other, or from side to side, or occasionally in a circle. It was also a good place to be because I kept feeling like I was about to be sick. It wasn't constant but cropped up fairly often. I didn't want to throw up in the toilet because having my head that close to the toilet always makes me feel even sicker -- I've always preferred a nice clean plastic bin or a sink when I have to do this. I asked Paul and Mom to find out if it was all right with the hospital if I was sick in the sink, and mentioned to Mom my aversion to throwing up in the toilet, and she said she felt the same way. That made me feel better! Mom then spotted a square pink plastic bin on top of the dresser and, guessing, grabbed it and took it out to the nurse's station and asked, "If my daughter is going to throw up, is this where you'd like her to do it?" They said yes and then told her they'd like the contents to be saved. So she came back and plunked the basin into the sink.

At 4:30 there was a change of shift, and we got a new nurse named Charlene. She was a pretty woman with dark hair who wore a shirt that had teddy bears all over it. She was very nice and very helpful, and I was sorry to see her go much later that night when her shift ended. Unfortunately she kept trying to help me along with advice that I didn't like much, since I was barely coping and figured that I was already trying everything and doing the best that I could. She encouraged me to walk, which I was doing when I could, but it didn't always work. She also encouraged me to stay hydrated, which I already knew was a priority, particularly if I wanted to avoid an IV (besides wanted to avoid the intervention, I knew that an IV would interfere with my mobility, which didn't seem at all workable to me). But it was really hard to stay up to date on my fluid intake. Eating and drinking seemed really unappealing to me -- I felt like it would increase the odds of my throwing up. Also, I could only deal with food and drink while I was resting between contractions, and there just weren't quite enough rests. Every time a contraction ended and I headed for the table to get a bite to eat or drink, another contraction would start and I wouldn't make it. When I started feeling like I might throw up, I wondered if maybe I'd dilated really quickly and was already in transition. I thought probably not, but it seemed like a possibility. It was a while before I found out how off the mark I really was!

Charlene asked me to leave a urine sample the next time that I went to the bathroom, which I promised to do, but then it was a couple of hours before I got in there again. For one thing, there was a period where sitting on the toilet would make a contraction start, so a couple of times I tried to go and then wound up in pain once I got there. Finally I forgot about it altogether. After a while Paul reminded me that I was supposed to leave a sample, so I did. When Charlene came in again she mentioned that it was pretty dark (i.e., not dilute enough), which I knew but I couldn't do anything about it. Frustrating!

6:00 p.m. was a turning point. I hadn't had a vaginal exam in a while, and no one seemed in any hurry to do one, but I was starting to get impatient to find out how far along I was. So when Charlene came in again, I asked her if I could have a cervical check, and she said yes. Of course this meant I had to lie on the bed, which I really didn't feel like doing, but I endured it. She told me that I was 95% effaced but still three centimeters dilated. I just groaned, which must have seemed like a predictable and fairly mild reaction, but in truth this is when I started to lose it. I was already on the verge of losing it just because of the pain from the contractions, but hearing that I was at three centimeters -- a whole seven centimeters away from where I'd actually started to hope I might be -- was completely disheartening.

Charlene suggested getting back in the shower again, saying that it would stimulate oxytocin and maybe speed up dilation (a fact I hadn't known, or at least had forgotten). This was a good idea, and I knew the shower would feel good anyway, so I went. But I was in a miserable mood. When the first contraction hit while I was in the shower, I started sobbing, saying "I can't do this" over and over again. It was all I could think of to say to express how I felt. I was really giving up. Part of me hoped to be rescued, somehow, for someone to come up with a solution, since clearly I couldn't come up with one myself. But also I had started to realize that I wasn't going to be able to go much farther without medication, and I was incredibly disappointed in myself for feeling this way. The guilt and embarrassment were enormous. Paul and Mom tried to make me feel better, to encourage me and buoy me up with words of praise, but I was beyond the point where I could believe them. I felt like a failure, and I felt like I knew something that they didn't: that I really wasn't going to be able to do this. There was actually still a faint glimmer of hope that they might be right, that maybe I could do it if I just got my head in the right place. But, looking back, I know that that was totally unrealistic. I really was at the end of my rope, and I wouldn't have been able to do this for as much longer as it would have taken to get to ten centimeters. Let alone the pushing at the end, which would require a strength that I had long since used up!

Interestingly, I was vocalizing a lot from this point on -- lots of loud means, and lots of complaining. I had originally envisioned myself being the type to labor silently, out of self-consciousness and pride if nothing else. It certainly didn't work out that way.

After a while in the shower, I don't know how long -- half an hour? -- I got out, still in despair. Paul told me that it would be all right, and that I needed to breathe with him. He was completely determined to help me, to make this work by standing by me. I think that I had lost a little bit of despair and was feeling more resigned, so I agreed. I was in a depressed, who-cares kind of space, but it allowed me to hang in there a little longer, I think, just because it made me passive. With the first contraction after the shower, I wound up on my knees by the side of the birthing bed. We wound up doing the "symphony" breathing that Gabriela taught us during out Lamaze class. Somewhere in the back of my head it occurred to me that I wasn't supposed to have to use this complex breathing pattern when I was only three centimeters dilated, but I didn't particularly care. For a moment I thought it might be my salvation. It actually worked for the first contraction. Of course I was still in anguish, and it took all every scrap of my mental energy to concentrate entirely on the breathing and block everything else out completely. But to that extent it worked. And we did it for two more contractions after that. By then I knew that it wasn't going to work anymore. In increasing despair, I got up and started rocking against the sink again. But even that wasn't really working at all.

Around this time, or a while later, Mom left the room, perhaps to go outside for a cigarette. My worst phase hit at this point. I wound up with several contractions, maybe seven or maybe as many as ten (I lost count) that were strung together, one after the other, with brief dips in between but nothing that I could really relax during. The "resting" phase between each was not relief, but a moderate discomfort that left me wiped out and desperately hoping that I would actually get some relief before the next unbearable contraction came along. I could hardly believe it when this went on for almost ten contractions. I was in tears again, moaning, asking out loud why it had to be this way, more or less in complete despair. Paul wrote in his notebook, "8:30 PM: Pain too great during contractions. Too many contractions, No time to rest or regroup. Requests drugs."

It was at this point that I said they were going to need to give me something to improve the situation. The words I had never wanted to say, had had no intention of saying. The nurse, Charlene, came in and saw that I was really losing it, and asked if I would like to talk to the midwife about some pain relief. I said yes. The truth is that I was already thinking seriously about an epidural at this point, although I was too embarrassed to say so. The woman who came in was a very nice midwife named Marian. I was fairly out of it so I don't remember a lot of the details here. I liked Marian right away -- she was very supportive and had a warm, comforting and competent air about her. She said that I could have a shot of Fentanyl (a narcotic similar to Demerol), which would take the edge off the pain, and would be fairly harmless because it was short-acting. In addition, they could hook me up to an IV, which not only would be a good way to receive the Fentanyl, but also would allow me to receive some fluids (a 5% Dextrose solution), and this would rehydrate me and bring my energy back up. I was secretly thinking that it was going to take more than that, but I agreed. So I got in bed, and they put an IV in my wrist. Of course I still wasn't handling the contractions very well, and every one felt like the last one I could possibly cope with. I asked how long it would take before the Fentanyl kicked in, and they said it would start to act right away. I was immensely relieved. This was at about 8:30 p.m.

I immediately felt better. I got a tiny buzz from the Fentanyl right away -- a warm feeling and a slight spaciness -- which let me know that it was working, and instantly I was able to relax a little bit. It made the contractions very manageable -- I could still feel them, but they were much easier to deal with. And now I could eat and drink, which was great. I hadn't been able to eat before because there was never enough real down-time between contractions to get as much as a bite. So Paul said that he was going to go over to Taco Bell, and asked if he could get me something to eat. I said that a taco salad would be great. He came back and I was able to eat quite a bit of it, though not all.

Shortly before 9:30, the shot of Fentanyl started to wear off, and I could tell that things were about to get tough again. Now that I'd managed to escape the pain for almost an hour, I was terrified of going back into it again, and was feeling a bit frantic about making sure I didn't have to. (This mentality resurfaced again the next day on a couple of occasions -- basically it lasted until the end of the labor.) The staff picked up on my panic, and gave me a second shot of the Fentanyl. Again, it worked quickly and I was very relieved. But I knew that I couldn't go on getting shots of Fentanyl every hour until the baby showed up. It was my impression that they were hoping I could rest and regroup for a little while until I could go back to dealing with the contractions with no medication, but by now I knew that that wasn't an option. It wasn't that I needed some time to recuperate, it was that I couldn't deal with the contractions at that level no matter what.

So I started talking to Paul about the epidural. Again, I was embarrassed to mention it, and it was hard to suggest. But I think I was gaining a certain definitiveness and clarity from the whole experience, and it was giving me a no-nonsense approach to just about everything. Paul was completely supportive about the idea of an epidural. I think he believed me now when I said that I couldn't handle it without. I was still very guilty and apologetic, but he talked me down from that fairly successfully. Paul says that I looked defeated, and that he was concerned about keeping me as comfortable as I could be under the circumstances. As far as he was concerned, I had no reason to feel guilty or apologetic. He felt that if I were more comfortable, the labor would go better, and the baby would be born happy and healthy.

Marian the midwife came back in, and we talked about the possibility of getting an epidural. Again, in my neurotic way I was somehow convinced that she wouldn't be supportive of the idea, maybe because she was a midwife and seemed so natural and healthy about everything. But she agreed that it was a solution we could consider. Paul reminds me that Marian was very kind and generous with her advice. He felt that though we had attended two childbirth preparation classes together and should have known all there was to know about medication during birth, it was nice to be reminded of the options, and to really know what each of these options meant. Marian explained the pain medications to us, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Paul's feeling was that Kaiser tends to be fairly conservative about medical intervention to begin with, so they approach drugs and epidurals with caution -- a good approach. I would tend to agree.

Some time before 10:30, Marian came back in and did a vaginal exam, and said, "Well, I think you should have the epidural. You're still at three centimeters." At this point I wasn't distressed to hear that I was still at three centimeters -- if anything, it was my salvation, because it meant that no one was going to argue with me about the epidural. How strange to have gone from completely dismissing the possibility of an epidural (before labor began) to feeling I needed to con my way into one!

They had to get the anesthesiologist in to do the epidural, and she arrived not long thereafter. She didn't have a great bedside manner: she seemed a little brusque and unfriendly. Luckily, she was the most unpleasant person we encountered during our stay at Kaiser -- everyone else ranged from pretty good to totally great. The procedure for the epidural was not too bad. They had me sit on the edge of the bed with my feet dangling, and I held on to Paul for support. It was a tiny bit uncomfortable but really quite workable. When they were getting ready to insert the epidural catheter I was a bit nervous, since I knew that this was when things could go wrong (and no one likes to have her spine at the mercy of a slightly rude anesthesiologist). But they got it in fairly smoothly.

The anesthesiologist first injected the hollow needle into the epidural space. Through this needle, a thin tube is fed into the epidural space. This tube carries the anesthetic which is fed by a pump. The tube for the epidural (which actually looked like a thin wire) was taped to my back, along the spine, and a junction of the tube was taped to my left shoulder. >From this junction, a larger tube ran to the drug-pump. Part of the procedure really hurt, and I winced and yelled out from the pain, which seemed to surprise them. I was briefly convinced I was going to be one of those scary epidural statistics. But a minute later everything was fine. Since I couldn't see what was going on, I couldn't tell what was happening when, but Mom thinks that what hurt was the first lumbar puncture. This part actually drew blood, which surprised Mom, who was sitting behind me. I wasn't aware I was bleeding, but I think I had heard that the insertion of the epidural drew blood. Mom says that when they threaded the epidural catheter into place that she thinks that felt mildly uncomfortable to me, but just momentarily because it began working immediately, and obviously worked quickest at the site of first contact. I don't remember this part.

The epidural was up and running around 10:30 p.m. No sooner had I gotten settled back into bed than Charlene looked at the monitor and said, "You're having a contraction now." I couldn't even feel it. I told her this, and she asked whether I at least felt any pressure. I didn't really. A few minutes later she asked, "How does that contraction feel?" I could see on the monitor that another one was happening, but again I couldn't even feel it. "What contraction?" I answered, and folks chuckled. There might have been a slight sensation of pressure or tightening, but it was pretty subtle. So immediately I went from feeling like I couldn't cope to feeling like I was cheating by not being able to feel anything. (I think my neurosis threshold was pretty low at this point.) But everyone was being extremely supportive.

They knew that the epidural would slow down the contractions, and I gather that they decided that I was going to need extra help, especially since my contractions up until this point (unhindered by the epidural) hadn't gotten me past three centimeters. So a few minutes later they started me on Pitocin, also administered through the IV. This too was started at a fairly low dosage. Mom's impression was that Pitocin was regarded as almost routine with the epidural, but she's not sure why: perhaps because contractions might slow down, or because they did slow down, or perhaps because since the epidural was in place anyhow then giving the contractions a boost was a good idea and wouldn't make me feel worse at that point.

A short time after that, at around 11:00 p.m., they also removed my external contraction monitor and replaced it with an internal monitor. This went into my uterus and checked the contractions from there. In addition, they wanted to attach an internal fetal monitor to the baby's scalp, which again would be much more accurate than the external monitor that recorded his heart rate. I remembered Zann showing us both of these monitors at one of our Bradley class sessions, and once again I was thankful for everything we had learned. It is strange to think of how many things I learned while thinking, "Well, we'll never have to use this," that eventually we did use. As they were getting everything set up, one woman (Marian, probably) realized that they were going to have to rupture my membranes if they wanted to use the internal monitors -- in all the activity, they had almost forgotten about this step. So we had a few moments of levity there that I enjoyed quite a bit. Marian ruptured my membranes, which I don't remember even feeling. Paul says that she used the amnio-hook similar to one we saw in our Bradley class. Mom says that I wouldn't have felt the rupture of the membranes in any case because the membranes have no sensation -- which is true, although I would have expected to feel maybe a "pop" like some women describe feeling, or at least a gush of fluid. Some of the lack of sensation may have been because of the epidural. Anyway, when Marian mentioned that there was some meconium in the fluid, I was surprised that she was done already. She held up the soaked pad to show me the fluid with the meconium in it, and sure enough there was some blackish-green stuff that I could see easily.

Marian suggested an "amnio flush", which would replace the lost amniotic fluid with saline and help wash out the meconium. I think that this was the only procedure that I hadn't heard of in advance, but it certainly sounded clever. Mom mentioned it later as being an innovative procedure that she had never heard of either.

She writes,

    I thought the amnio-flush was a stroke of real medical genius. I was so impressed when they explained it and said they were going to do it because of the meconium in the amniotic fluid. I'm still impressed. [Thanks to my new education I now suspect that Andrew's initial respiratory distress was due to meconium aspiration -- they ruptured my membranes almost as soon as I got to the hospital, and the fluid was VERY green/black, and of course Andrew was born completely covered in this gunky stuff, so I bet he did inhale it at some point. Whereas Ben had nice clean saline to breathe. Excellent.)

Something I almost completely forgot about later is that they also inserted a urethral catheter after the epidural. Paul can't recall, and neither can I now that it's all over, whether I was hooked up to the Foley catheter because the epidural also affects urination, or whether it would be ridiculous to try to go to the bathroom with all the hardware -- it wouldn't fit into the same room! Seriously, I think it was the former. I had dreaded the possibility of being catheterized, Mom points out -- it seemed so undignified, and I was convinced it would feel bizarre and uncomfortable -- but she had tried to reassure me beforehand that it was essentially no big deal ("and wasn't I right?" she asks). True enough. At the time I think I mentally rolled my eyes at how wired-up I was getting to be. But at that point I wasn't even particularly nervous about the catheter. Well, okay, I was a little nervous. But it was only the tiniest bit uncomfortable when they inserted it (again, nothing compared to what I'd been dealing with earlier!) and I never felt it again after that. Later in labor I remember thinking that it was rather a relief not to have to deal with the little housekeeping detail of going to the bathroom. Just one less thing to worry about.

So at this point I had the IV with the Dextrose solution and the Pitocin coming into my left wrist, the epidural catheter going into my back, and three wires (the fetal scalp monitor, the contraction monitor, and the amnio flush) going into my vagina, plus a blood pressure cuff around my right arm that took my blood pressure automatically every few minutes. But oddly enough none of it really bothered me. This was exactly the wired state of affairs that everyone in my Bradley class, ourselves included, seemed so desperate to avoid, but under the circumstances it all struck me as worthwhile. Paul wrote in our notebook, "Jen comfortable for first time all day."

Mom writes that after I'd gotten the epidural and was saying how much better I felt, that Charlene said, "Yeah, I bet now you're like, `Duh! [smacks her forehead with her palm] I could have done this hours ago!'" I don't remember her saying this, but it's entirely possible. I don't seem to have been picking up on any of the messages from the staff that I was not wimping out. Mom also says that before the epidural was started that Charlene emphasized a couple of times that the pain I was feeling was "real pain...it's not in your head." Mom thought the message Charlene was trying to send was that I shouldn't expect to be able to talk myself out of this pain as though it was imaginary.

Mom had some interesting things to say about this whole episode, so I am including them here. She writes:

    In your labor/delivery room, after many hours (which you have described as I would have), and after your cervical check which took place when I was out of the room, I returned to find that you were in the shower. And you were pretty distraught. When Paul told me that you were still only about 3 cm. dilated (albeit 80-90% effaced) I know that at that moment I started to seriously unravel. You were having such a tough time, and were so miserable... and all I knew was that I'd never suffered in the way you were suffering, and that, moreover, I would *never* have lasted it out the way you were doing. Never. I'd have long since given up. At the same time I was very resolved and clear in my mind that this was not *MY* life, my labor, my baby, my marriage. And I did *not* want to interfere. I wanted to be a support, but not an interference. After Paul told me about the 3 cm. dilation and I went and spoke to you in the shower, I went back and knelt down by Paul's side and we talked a little about the situation (I don't remember exactly what we said) and sometime in there I recall saying something along the lines of your never having had the world's best pain tolerance. Which was true enough on its own. However, in this instance I happened to feel that you had already displayed a remarkable level of pain tolerance, not to mention a willingness to take punishment, and as I spoke to him I was really hoping to subtly communicate to him that it was time get you some pain relief. But on the other hand I wasn't quite willing to come right out and say *plainly* what I really thought...which was, "This is too hard, she can't go on, she has to just abandon this plan, just *stop*, stop torturing herself and get some pain medication RIGHT THIS MINUTE!" ...In other words, I was trying subtly to manipulate the situation in the hopes that Paul himself would (?what?) suddenly bolt to his feet and say, "Jen, time for an epidural!!" ... I really did not want to be *pushing* you and Paul to do something that you were really opposed to doing. But I *did* by then desperately hope you'd make a sudden change in your game plan.

    In this way I think my position was the same as that of the nurse (Charlene) and the midwife (Marian) who were on duty at that time. I think we wanted to be respectful of your wishes, while privately we were *on our knees* hoping that you'd get an epidural. Maybe I'm just projecting here, but I do not actually think the staff was hoping that the first shot or two of Fentanyl would give you a chance to regroup and then go back to unmedicated labor. My sense was that they were also hoping that you would accept an epidural, but that they were VERY wary of doing anything that might later leave you feeling you'd been pushed into doing something against your wishes and beliefs.

    When you did finally have the epidural in place, I remember that Charlene quizzed you a little about what you'd "been told" about natural childbirth -- and as she did so she sounded almost irate, as though she thought that natural childbirth advocates sold their patients a bill of goods which ordinary people (like you) paid for.

    Anyhow, I did, yes, absent myself for yet another cigarette when you climbed out of that second shower. I had a cigarette...and a quiet, sustained nervous breakdown. I felt entirely helpless to do anything for you. I didn't want to undermine what you and Paul had planned on and worked for together. But I didn't know whether I could bear to see you go through another hour...another *minute*...of that kind of pain. I was afraid that when I went back in the room I would start screaming and shouting orders: "Stop this! She can't do it any more. The baby's too big! Can't you see that it's time to stop this? Get anesthesiology in here RIGHT THIS MINUTE!!!" ...I knew that I was in danger of becoming so obnoxious that you, Paul and the entire staff would have me thrown off the premises.

I asked the staff if they had any idea how long it would take me to dilate the rest of the way. They said that of course it could vary, but that the average was one centimeter per hour. This meant that I might be fully dilated by 5:00 a.m., and with an hour of pushing at the end, that meant that the baby might arrive around 6:00. I was excited about this prospect because Marian was going to be on duty until 8:00, and I was really hoping she would deliver the baby. I liked her immensely and felt really comfortable with her.

Around midnight, Larry dropped in for a surprise visit. This was a real treat since I hadn't been expecting him. Fortunately his timing was good, since now I felt better and was coherent. Paul had left him a message at home around 10:50 saying that I'd had a tough time and had had medication, and Larry had gotten the message when he got home from playing Mame. He drove back over to the hospital, found us, and then stayed and visited for about 45 minutes.

Around this same time, there was a change of shift and Charlene left. I was sorry to see her go. But we got a new nurse who was equally nice. Her name was Patty and she was very soft-spoken, quite a calming influence. She was also pregnant! The night was fairly pleasant. Once all the medical procedures were finished, like inserting the epidural, the lights were dimmed again so we could rest. Somewhere in here Paul took a photo of me with all of my tubes and wires -- I look very plugged in, but also happy for the first time in ages.

Mom was pushing me hard to get some sleep. I did close my eyes and even dozed for brief periods, but my mind was too full of everything that was happening to really be able to sleep. If it weren't for the fact that I knew I had a hard job ahead of me, I wouldn't even have tried to sleep. As it was, I tried but didn't succeed very well. Paul fell asleep on the cot in the corner and Mom curled up in the rocking chair while I lay on the bed and tried to sleep. We were interrupted periodically by various staff (mainly Patty the nurse) coming in to check on things, but for the most part it was very peaceful.

I wasn't supposed to lie on my back because of the weight of the baby on my vena cava, so I kept flipping over from my left to my right side and back again. This was even more of a chore than it had been during pregnancy, because now, in addition to my size, I had all these tubes and wires to contend with. In addition, the epidural had taken away some of my control over my legs, and in particular it had made my right leg pretty useless. I could still feel it and could move it somewhat, but if my foot fell off the right side of the bed (which happened fairly often) I couldn't lift it back on, so I had to ask Mom or Paul to do it for me. Rather embarrassing!

Another thing I forgot about after the fact, just like the catheter, was that when I got the epidural, my face began to itch. They warned me that this would happen when they first put the epidural in, and I kind of thought, "Okay, whatever, no big deal." And actually it wasn't, but slowly it became more noticeable so that after a while my face was itching fairly regularly. So I would scratch and think that the moment was over, and then a few seconds later I would itch again. It was another thing that made it hard to sleep -- it was just distracting enough. Mom also noticed that I was slowly developing a rash on my face. Plus I started to get hot, and as time passed, the rash became more florid, and Mom says I began to feel hot to the touch.

In the middle of the night I woke up from a light doze feeling fairly nauseous. I knew that Mom wouldn't mind being awoken if she had actually managed to fall asleep, so I asked her to bring me the basin that was in the sink. She brought it and I got sick in it. We pushed the button for the nurse and Patty came in and cleaned things up. I had managed to get the front of my hospital gown soiled, so she helped me change my gown, which was very complicated and took quite a while because of all the wires and tubes. We also discovered that the monitors went all weird when I was throwing up, maybe just because I was moving around.

After the cleanup I think I dozed again for a while, and then woke up and was sick again. This time I was very careful not to get anything on my gown! Patty came in again. This happened a total of five times, the last three in fairly rapid succession. I found out later that Mom was feeling awful for me at this point, thinking how terrible it was that I should have to deal with throwing up (especially after I'd said earlier how much I hated it and how I would do anything to avoid it) after all that agonizing labor. >From my point of view, it wasn't that bad. It was annoying, but I think the earlier labor had shifted my perspective -- nothing else really seemed like that big a deal any more. The speculated that it was the epidural medication making me sick, and so after I'd been sick two or three times they called Marian in, and she authorized me to receive a shot of Phenergan to counteract the nausea. Mom said this was good stuff and that she'd had to give it to Andrew when he was little. I was still sick again a couple of times after that, but then the Phenergan kicked in and things settled down.

Mom was surprised that Patty began to show up when I was vomiting. It took us a while to realize that they were seeing stuff on the monitor at the nurse's station and that therefore she could tell when you were throwing up. Apparently Patty said at one point, "I think this bothers your mother more than it does you." But Mom says that she was not really able to assess my level of comfort at that point. I had said that I was okay, but to her I still looked like I was "on the ragged edge of nowhere", as she puts it. Plus she still just wished I could sleep!

Marian came back to the room at Patty's request because she was the only person who could authorize the Phenergan. Mom realized at this point that Marian was on a double shift and was actually trying to sleep between various visits to the labor/delivery ward. This never occurred to me until Mom mentioned it weeks later, though I had wondered once or twice why her shift didn't end until 8:00 since she had been there well before midnight. Anyway, Mom didn't mention Marian's napping to me or to Paul because she didn't want either of us to hesitate to ask for anything we needed. Mom says that the next morning sometime, when she saw Marian sitting at the nurses station with deep bags under her eyes, she asked her, "Did you get any sleep last night?" Marian apparently smiled and said, "Just a little, thanks, but I'm fine."

The night went by fairly quickly for me. I did doze a bit, and before I knew it, it was light outside. I am very fuzzy on the details from this point through the rest of the morning. I do know that they checked me at some point and I was more dilated -- maybe six centimeters? -- but we were definitely behind the one-centimeter-per-hour "schedule".

At maybe 4:00 a.m. or so, Mom realized that the hour was drawing near when Dad would be leaving to come to the hospital, and that it was still too early for him to show up, and that also it was still important for me to be allowed to sleep. So she went to call him. She got his message machine and left a "don't come yet" message. But she thought he was actually probably already on his way. Dad had actually come home from work on Thursday evening and taken a nap. That evening and until about 2:00 a.m., Mom had called him several times, each time with the message that the ETA had been set later again. He wanted to be there before the baby was born, but he also wanted to get whatever sleep he could. Mom did not want him to come in and wake me up when he got here, so she asked the nurses' station to keep an eye out for him and to tiptoe in and get her when he arrived. They were all too happy to do this, because they too wanted me to sleep. Her big plan was to go out and keep him company or something, anything, until I woke up again. But it turned out he had gotten her earlier message and went back to sleep until she phoned him again around 6:00 a.m. So he arrived around 7:00.

Larry stopped by around 7:30, on his way to work, and visited until about 8:30. Somehow everyone got to talking about The Ten Commandments (I don't know why -- maybe because Easter had just passed?), and everyone, Larry especially, was quoting their favorite lines. So there was definitely plenty of levity available. I think Mom was still hoping I would sleep some more, but by now I was thinking, Hey, it's daytime!

At some point Mom figured out that she'd lost her car keys. She was scrambling frantically through all of her stuff, and Paul was helping to search. Both of them were apparently trying to be quiet because I was dozing, which is strange because I remember all this fairly clearly. At any rate, Mom eventually remembered that she'd left the car keys on the hook inside the toilet stall in the first floor ladies' room, and went down to retrieve them.

A little before 8:00 a.m. Marian came in to say that she was leaving. She told us when we saw her the next day that if I had been close to delivery she would have stayed, and I had guessed that that was the case, but we all knew I wasn't going to get there any time soon. I was very sorry to see her go.

The new midwife came in -- her name was Karen, and she was very nice, but I didn't click with her the way I had with Marian. We did some troubleshooting. She asked if I had been having back labor, and I said that I wasn't sure. My back had hurt, but I didn't know if it was back labor, because I didn't know what back labor felt like! She thought the baby might be facing to the side, which could have resulted in some of the discomfort. She said she would bring in the other midwife, Jeannie, to check things out.

At 8:00 Patty left too, and we got a new nurse whose name I forget, who I didn't like quite as much.

Early in the morning, someone (maybe Karen or one of the nurses) came in with the best news of the day: Dr. Miner was on call that day. She had already seen our names and said that she wanted to deliver our baby! I was elated. We knew she would come by soon, so I waited for her to show up.

At some point Karen came in again with Jeannie, a more senior midwife, who I liked a lot. She was rather quirky. She examined me and then did some poking around at my cervix to get it to dilate a bit more, which worked. She also said that the baby was facing sideways (the same way that he'd been facing throughout the last eight weeks of pregnancy, I believe). She said that lying on my left side would encourage the baby to turn, so from that point on I lay on my left side, though it was a bit uncomfortable staying that way instead of flipping back and forth.

Around 10:30 Mom went outside for a break. While she was out of the room, Dr. Miner came in to visit. She examined me and said that I was dilated to between 8 and 9 centimeters. This was good but not there yet. She said that probably things were slow because the baby was so big, and that sometimes if our bodies couldn't deliver such a big baby, one of two things would happen: either we would get to the pushing stage, try to push and the baby wouldn't come out, or else our bodies just wouldn't finish dilating all the way. She was worried that the latter might be what was happening to me. I knew that this would mean a cesarean section, and that although Dr. Miner was hoping we wouldn't have to go that route, she wanted me to be prepared. She wanted to increase the Pitocin dosage a little to see if it helped things along. I said that this was fine, but that I would need the epidural dosage to be increased too so that I could deal with the more intense contractions, and asked if there was going to be a problem with this. She said no, that that would be fine. She also poked at my cervix for a while, trying to get it to dilate more, and had a little success. Paul came closer and stood near me while this was going on. I thought he might be worried that it was uncomfortable, so I reassured him that it wasn't. With the epidural I couldn't really feel what she was doing.

Dr. Miner left the room. Mom came back in right after that, and was sorry that she'd missed meeting Dr. Miner. Soon the staff came in and increased the Pitocin. Shortly after this there was a beeping that got our attention. When they came in to look at it, they said that the epidural had run out. This alarmed me, and I said that they needed to get it started again, and also that I was going to need an increase because of the increase in the Pitocin. I could already feel the difference in the contractions. They said that it would take an hour between the time the epidural ran out and the time that the effect of it wore off. This turned out not to be the case, at least not as far as I could tell. We waited for a while and the anesthesiologist didn't show up. I got more and more uncomfortable and more and more alarmed as the contractions got harder and harder to deal with. Before too long they were on a par with the ones I'd had to cope with the previous evening, but now I was lying in bed and couldn't move around. Worse, I was supposed to stay lying on my left side -- but after a while it finally occurred to me that this was only to get the baby to turn, so to hell with it -- I would move if I had to! Everyone was trying hard to help -- Paul, Mom and Dad all massaged my lower back and brought cool washcloths for my forehead, but I was a bit inconsolable. I got really upset, partly out of fear as well as out of pain -- I knew what I was in for, and I was scared and furious. I was ranting that I had been telling them all morning that they were going to have to increase the epidural. I was really angry that they had allowed it to run out -- couldn't they see how much more was left? Paul went to find out where the anesthesiologist was, and the nurses told him that they had called and that the anesthesiologist was on his way. Paul came back to report this, and I think I didn't think it was an acceptable answer. I know it was fairly standard procedure, but at the time it was making me crazy that I was in so much pain and the anesthesiologist was god knows where, on some other floor rather than here dealing with my epidural. I think I was at my most rude during this period.

Finally he showed up. It turned out to be the "E. Newkirk" whose nameplate I had noticed in the hall the previous afternoon. By now I was climbing the walls, crying and mad. Just as he came over to my bedside to deal with things, I had a brief coherent period between two contractions. I heard Paul ask him if there was an Erina Newkirk in his family, and he said that Erina was his sister. Fully functional at this moment, I told him that we knew Erina from Lamplighters, and that she was really sweet, and that I hoped he would tell her that he'd met us but not tell her what a wuss I was being at the moment. A minute later another contraction hit and I was climbing the walls again, so it's rather amusing that I managed to have this nice little conversation right then. At any rate, I got another shot of Fentanyl for immediate relief. Then the epidural was refilled, and started to take effect after a while.

Mom writes:

    Oh, yeah...when the epi ran out. That was quite a moment! Jeez..... I really thought that represented a certain amount of incompetence in the "handover" procedure between shifts, because they do KNOW when to expect the drip to run out. So it should have been anticipated and planned for in advance so that it would not actually run out. (I blame this "dropping the ball" on the night duty anesthetist-with-an-attitude.) Nevertheless, there you were. Both Paul and I tried to flog the staff into getting you some help *stat* -- but I also know hospital procedure so I knew that if the "on duty" nurse/anesthetist was working on an even more serious case than yours, possibly including a surgery, that you would be simply stuck with your pain until he/she got free. He would get there when he got there and not before. I was quietly hysterical, wondering how long it would take. That was an awful, awful time. And I certainly didn't blame you for fearing a return of the previous full-blown pain, because I feared it myself.

When I got the new epidural, after a while it occurred to me that I still couldn't do anything with my right leg. I was surprised that it hadn't regained sensation when the medication wore off, so now I was a bit worried about it. I still remembered the birth story I had read by the woman who wound up paralyzed from the waist down from getting an epidural. The staff assured me that the numbness was normal though.

Mom writes:

    Near the time of delivery, one of the nurses said to me, "You mean this isn't her normal color?" My god, you were a mass of tiny florid dots!! "No, it's not even *remotely* her normal color," I said. "Plus she feels hot to me." Eventually someone took your temperature, at which point I let go of the fever concern because once they'd taken your temperature I knew it would be discussed among the staff. But I remained apprehensive about your rash -- what if it was the beginning of an allergic reaction? What if you started to have asthma trouble at this point?? You were close to delivery or a c-section and were exhausted, so what would it mean for you to have an allergic/asthmatic reaction to the drugs? (Remember, I was a true basket case by now. I was *trying* to hide my anxiety, but my anxiety was mounting steadily.) As it turned out, the rash began to rapidly subside from the moment they unhooked your IV's. And you did in fact have a small temperature, but evidently not sufficient for you to even need antibiotic. (Excellent!)

I didn't pay much attention to her mentioning this, but when I saw the photos of myself after delivery (when, Mom says, the rash had already diminished somewhat), I couldn't believe how bright red I was. My nose was particularly red -- I looked like Rudolph.

The rest of the morning and the afternoon didn't improve dramatically. One almost amusing thing that happened is that the automatic blood pressure cuff on my arm went a little haywire and was really tightening a lot before it took my blood pressure. It never got out of control but it reminded me of Robocop a little bit all the same. Eventually I did manage to point it out to someone and I think they fixed it.

At some point Karen came in and I was dilated to nine and a half centimeters. She said that they had two choices: either they could turn down the epidural, and I would feel the urge to push, or they could leave the epidural up and talk me through the pushing. This was a very surreal conversation for me. I had expected to feel as though something had changed that was going to allow me to get this baby from the inside to the outside. But I felt more or less the same as I had all night. It seemed like I couldn't even conceive of pushing, that my body wouldn't be able to figure out how to do it. Based on this, it seemed like it would be best to let the epidural wear off so that I would feel the urge to push. But the catch was that there was apparently a half-hour lag between the time they turned off the epidural and the time that I would feel the urge to push. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to get through that half hour. And then what if I never did feel the urge to push, and all I felt was the pain of the contractions? Or suppose that I decided I'd made a mistake -- then I would have to wait for the anesthesiologist to start up the epidural again, if in fact that was even an option. It all seemed a little too risky to me.

I was still trying to figure out this dilemma when the contractions began to get strong enough that I could feel them through the epidural. So for the second time that morning I found myself climbing the walls. I was crying again and gasping and asking someone to go find Dr. Miner. It seemed like an eternity before she came in around 2:00 p.m. When she walked in she looked at me and said, sympathetically, "Someone's not very happy." I shook my head no. She told me to calm down and to slow down my breathing. This seemed like an impossible task and I don't think I would have done it if anyone else had suggested it. But she was rather forceful. She looked straight at me and seemed to expect that I was going to follow instructions. So, with what felt like my last ounce of self-control, I stared back and took deep breaths. And it actually helped. Paul remembers her saying, "Okay, let's have this baby!" Whatever she said, she did take charge, which was what we all needed. Mom and Dad were also very impressed with her right away.

Dr. Miner told me that when I got to another contraction, I was going to pull my legs up with my hands, take a deep breath, let it out, take another deep breath, and push. I think I figured that since I was already doing all the impossible things she was asking me to, I might as well do this one as well. So when the next contraction came I pushed. Immediately everyone started giving me lots of moral support. Dr. Miner was saying things like "Excellent! You're doing a really good job!" that really made a world of difference for me. I honestly think I would have ended up pushing for twice as long if it hadn't been for all the positive feedback.

The thing that I immediately discovered was that as long as I was pushing, the contractions didn't hurt. What a miracle that was to discover. Of course, the pushing hurt a bit (it got worse the further along we got), and was incredibly hard work and somewhat annoying, but it was still better than just lying there enduring a contraction. So what happened was that as soon as I started to feel uncomfortable, as though a contraction might be coming on, I would ask if I could push and Dr. Miner would check the monitor to see if I was actually in a contraction. As time went on, I think she realized that I'd rather push than not most of the time, so she said I could go ahead and push if I wanted to. Unfortunately she was called out of the room for a while early in the pushing, and during that time I was at the mercy of the nurses, who tended not to want me to push until a contraction was peaking. So that was a bit annoying, but I figured that I should probably follow their advice. Mom says that When Dr. Miner left the room that she was gone maybe 30 minutes. I remember that it seemed like a very long time to me, but 30 minutes sounds like too much because that's about half the time I was pushing. But maybe it was that long. Mom said that at the time she had a flashback to when she was close to delivering Andrew and her doctor disappeared for a similar amount of time, and that it seemed like an eternity.

Early on during the pushing I realized that I was really hot and uncomfortable, so I took off the hospital gown I was wearing. This was a bit complicated because of all the wires, and I ended up taping the epidural catheter to my chest. But with help from the nurses I managed to get rid of the robe. After that I felt much better. Some small part of my brain felt a bit modest, but it wasn't a very big part at this point. I also asked Dr. Miner if she would have to do an episiotomy. She seemed to stop and consider for an instant and then said that she didn't think so. I said that I would rather avoid it, and she said something to indicate that she understood this.

The pushing was tricky. I would push and push but it was hard to figure out if I was doing it right. I certainly couldn't feel any progress happening -- it was like trying to push a building over: you can push as hard as you want but nothing's going to move! Luckily, I noticed that certain kinds of pushing yielded different feedback. If I pushed one way, Dr. Miner and the nurses would say, "That's good," but if I pushed slightly differently, they'd say, "Excellent! That's really great!" So because of the feedback I was able to figure out which kind of pushing was most effective. I figured out that I had to focus on my upper abdominal muscles and push from there. It was as though I was squeezing in the area of my diaphragm and upper uterus, pushing everything inward from the sides and then down. As long as I remembered to do that, things went well. It was very hard to do but it seemed to be effective. I credit Susan and my Alexander Technique lessons with my being able to do this at all.

Throughout the pushing I could usually get in three or four pushes in one contraction before I got worn out. Then I couldn't tell if the contraction was over or not, so I would ask "Can I rest now?" and they would say yes. After a while I ended up shortening this to just a gasped, "Rest?" which I think made people laugh at one point.

I also found it really irksome to have to hold my legs up while I was pushing. I felt too tired to do it, and it was hard to coordinate pulling on my legs while I was pushing with everything else. So before long Paul was helping by holding my right leg and the assistant nurse was holding my left leg. I still found it troublesome to have my legs up in the air though, even though I knew that it was supposed to help by compressing the space. But I was much more comfortable with my feet down on the footrests, so after I'd been pushing for a while they let me push with my feet down, which was nice. At the very end of the pushing, Paul and the nurse pulled my legs up again for the last contraction or two, but by then I didn't much care.

Paul reminds me that before Dr. Miner's arrival, there was a conversation in which the midwives and nurses were talking about cutting the umbilical cord right after the baby was born, taking him to the warming table, and suctioning his airways with the Delee. Paul was concerned that this would deprive the baby of first contact with his mother. The staff was setting all this "away stuff" when Dr. Miner came in. Along the way, Paul asked her if the suctioning could be done without cutting the cord too soon, and if we could wait until the cord stopped pulsing before it was cut. In one manner or another, she said "yes." She directed the staff to prepare for suctioning while the cord was still intact.

Throughout the pushing, things were progressing all around me, though I was only dimly aware of them. For one thing, the room gradually seemed to fill with people. By the end the room contained me, Paul, Mom and Dad, the two L&D nurses, Dr. Miner, the pediatrician (Dr. Easter, I found out later) and his staff of maybe two or three other people. Also, after every few pushes, Dr. Miner would do something different. I remember hearing her say something like, "I'm going to set up the delivery table, believe it or not," which I was indeed glad to hear since it had to mean she thought I was near the end. Then there was this complicated switcheroo where they removed the foot of my bed and brought over from somewhere else a thing that was more like a table for the baby to be delivered onto. All very complicated and impressive stuff!

The last part of the pushing got really uncomfortable. Feeling the baby's head stretching things even between contractions was fairly unpleasant. Meanwhile Dr. Miner was doing everything she could to stretch things further with her hands, which really hurt. So when a contraction ended and I stopped pushing, instead of feeling a tired relief, now I just felt a whole lot of pain -- so a pushing "grunt" ended in a scream now instead of just a gasp. This was probably the hardest part for Paul and my parents to watch. Finally I felt a couple of snips and knew that Dr. Miner was doing an episiotomy, and to my surprise I didn't care. I knew that she had been stretching things manually as much as she could, and I knew that she understood that we hadn't wanted an episiotomy -- so if she was doing one after all, it was because she felt it was necessary. And at this point it was the least of my worries -- I just wanted the baby to be out!

Shortly thereafter I heard Dr. Miner mention the Delee (sp?), so I knew they were planning to suction the baby's lungs, because of the meconium. Afterwards I found out that his head was already out at that point, and I didn't even know it! Since we had asked that the cord not be cut right away, Dr. Miner suctioned the baby's lungs as soon as possible, so that they didn't have to cut the cord after he was born and go suction him elsewhere. The suctioning was done while only the baby's head was outside and before he started breathing. Paul says that it took about thirty seconds, and that Dr. Miner seemed very thorough about this.

I was starting to give out, both physically and mentally. I had my eyes closed while I was pushing, and in between pushes I wasn't really interested in finding out how far along we were -- I didn't have the mental energy, and I felt I just had to focus on the pushing. And since I couldn't really feel things progressing, I figured that we had quite a bit farther to go. Then Dr. Miner told me to look down, and I looked and saw this reddish-purple mass that had to be a body (the head must have been tucked down out of the way where I couldn't see it). Mom says that as Dr. Miner was telling me to look down, she was bringing the baby's head up toward me and delivering the rest of his body. I was completely astonished and said "Oh my God," quite a few times. I think that on some level this was the first time I really got it that all this would end in a baby. Part of my reaction was immense relief, since I knew that the pain was about to be over, and sure enough it was. The rest of his body was born very quickly, and then it didn't hurt anymore. Benjamin was born at 3:15 p.m.

I had been pushing for about an hour, they told me later. When the baby was born, Dr. Miner kind of slid him headfirst onto my tummy, Mom says, which had become this soft place that quivered with my laughter and amazement that there was a baby there. Mom and Dad both admit to cheering when the baby was born, which I recall somewhat. When they put the baby on my chest, I was startled again, because I'd forgotten about that part. He felt great, all warm and moist and very solid like a good healthy baby. He looked bright red to me (I don't know if he was really), and I remembered Zann talking during our classes about the color of newborns, and I thought that he had a very good color. As soon as he was on my chest he started to cry, which was wonderful. By the time he cried I hadn't even had a chance to wonder if he was breathing yet. He looked wonderful, very alert and extremely good-looking! I was amazed to see how handsome he was. We had been fully prepared for a funny-looking baby, so it was almost ironic to get one who was so cute right off the bat -- you'd think he would have looked more physically traumatized from the birth, but he didn't really. (Actually, his eyes were puffy from the birth, and he was decidedly cone-headed, but both of these subsided within a couple of days. Also, his nose was, and still is, covered with baby acne. Later we noticed a few other interesting things about him, like that he has a tiny cowlick right at the top of his forehead. For a while there was a mark right in the middle of his cowlick from where the fetal monitor had been inserted into his scalp -- and I can't help but wonder if somehow the fetal monitor electrified the hair in that spot and made it form a little circle? Well, okay, maybe not!)

The baby stayed on my tummy while everyone waited for the cord to stop pulsing and be cut. When they said it was time to cut the cord, I had enough presence of mind to say something about Paul getting to do it if he wanted to. Mom said she was really touched when she saw him do this. Mom said she was glad that *something* had gone the way we had both had planned, and I would have to agree. It's practically the only thing that went according to our plan!

The nurses covered both the baby and me with a sheet, and I got to hold him for a while. Paul, Mom and Dad all took photos. After about ten minutes, the staff asked if they could take the baby, and I reluctantly gave him up. They took him over to the baby-warmer in the corner of the room to measure and weigh him and wipe him off with towels. This is when everyone (me included) found out that he was 9 pounds, 15 ounces and 23 inches long. Wow! It occurred to me much much later that I never heard what his Apgar scores were -- and I don't think anyone else did either. I'm kind of curious now that it's all over, so I may ask the hospital to check his records for me at some point.

A few minutes after he was born, either when the baby was still on my belly or when they'd taken him away, I realized that we hadn't mentioned his name to anyone. Mom was standing right next to me, so I told her, "By the way -- his name is Benjamin." She instantly burst into tears and hugged me, which was gratifying. Just the sort of reaction I might have hoped for! It was a wonderful moment.

During all the aftermath, Dr. Miner was still sitting at the foot of my bed doing things, most of which I didn't pay much attention to. Now that it's all over I wish the whole thing had been videotaped, partly so that I could see exactly what medical things were going on, but at the time I really didn't care. When it was time to deliver the placenta, Dr. Miner asked me give a small push, which I did. This part was a little uncomfortable, but nothing compared to earlier! Paul says that I delivered the placenta into a blue bin. Paul and Mom both took photos of it, which I was incredibly grateful for later on. At some point Dr. Miner held up the placenta so we could see it, and everyone examined it except me -- I realized that I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't see that far! I had Paul and Dad search for my glasses, and after they found them for me I asked Dr. Miner if I could see the placenta now, and she showed it to me. I had seen plenty of them on video in our Bradley class, but to see the one that our baby lived with for nine months was amazing.

Dr. Miner also told me rather apologetically that she'd done an episiotomy, which of course I already knew about. I said it was all right. She said it had looked as though I was going to tear up near my urethra, which would have been bad. So she had made two small incisions, one on each side. (Mom recalls this conversation as happening before the episiotomy was made, during the pushing stage, but Paul's and my recollection is that there wasn't any discussion of it until afterwards.) At this point she stitched me up, which I barely noticed. One incision required two stitches, and the other one required only one. Mom reminds me that one of the things she said to me afterwards was "You are soooo strong!" And that Dr. Miner looked at her and then me and said, "Yes, you really are strong. And you have tough skin!"

Someone told me that Larry had arrived, and since I was decent by this point and things were relatively calm, I said he could come in. He had gotten there at 3:30, just fifteen minutes after Benjamin was born. So he got to see him very early on. Later he said repeatedly how amazingly alert the baby seemed.

Eventually the staff gave the baby back to us. I think it was at this point that I was able to try to nurse him. I do recall that it wasn't as soon as I'd hoped to, since we had him for about ten minutes at the beginning and then didn't get him back until he was close to an hour old. Anyway, I tried to remember all the breastfeeding stuff we'd learned, and remembered it pretty well, though it's certainly different in practice than in theory! He couldn't latch on right away and got frustrated, so it didn't quite work. But the second time I tried to nurse him, which was later after we'd been moved to our room on the Maternity ward, we got it figured out. Now that he's a month old, he still gets frustrated sometimes when he tries to nurse, but more often than not it goes smoothly.

A doctor came over came over to talk to Paul and me about the baby, and I figured out that he was the pediatrician who had attended the birth. (Paul had already seen him in action, but I hadn't been paying attention to that corner of the room. There had been all sorts of people over there who I didn't recognize.) He said that the head was very molded, which we already knew. He also said that there was a small "hickey" mark on top of the baby's head, which would go away. I don't recall what else he said, although I thought I was paying attention at the time!

Almost before I knew it, everyone had cleared out. Suddenly it was quiet, the room was empty, and it was just me, Paul and the baby. Even Mom and Dad had disappeared, presumably to go make phone calls. So we got to enjoy our new family for a little while in the sudden peace and quiet.

Eventually the nurse came in. She asked me to leave a urine sample, which I guess was mainly for the purpose of finding out whether I could empty my bladder completely. It was an interesting question. The first time was very difficult, and the nurse sent Paul in to turn on the shower, in hopes that the sound of the running water would get me in the mood. It helped a bit.

The nurse also wanted to know if I wanted to take a shower. I definitely did! I had lots of energy, which everyone else found amazing. The nurse offered to help me if I needed it, but by this point I was feeling great, and I was already thinking that if I seemed to be doing all right that they'd let us go home sooner, so I told her I didn't need any help. I was a bit sore, and when I got into the shower I was astonished at how swollen everything felt down below. I couldn't even walk normally. I took the advice of The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy and didn't investigate too much! In addition, I found that being in the shower gave me flashbacks to the horrible part of labor the night before. So I kept the shower fairly short.

When I got out of the shower, Paul was sitting in the chair in the corner, holding the baby. I realized at this point that I'd held him for maybe fifteen minutes and Paul had gotten to be with him for a couple of hours already! But I figured I'd catch up later on. (And I definitely have!) Paul reminds me that at about this time, the nurse came in to give Benjamin his first sponge bath. Though he had been wiped off after birth, he still had some gunk on him. I believe they also took some more blood from him at this point for tests. The nurse bathed him on the baby-warming table while Paul watched, comforted the baby, and took pictures.

They told us they would move us upstairs as soon as they had moved someone else -- they only like to move one family at a time. So we bustled about packing things up. I had a lot of energy at this point, and definitely did my share, although Mom scolded me for lifting heavy things (like my duffel bag) off the floor! Somewhere in here I realized that I had been in this same room for more than twenty-four hours. This surprised me, partly because I hadn't thought of it, and partly because the room seemed so different than it had the night before when I was pacing around it in agonizing labor. I mentioned the fact that I'd been in the room for all that time to Mom, who looked around and also seemed surprised to find that it was the same room.

Finally they came and got us. I got to ride in the wheelchair and carry the baby, which felt pretty luxurious. We all took the elevator to the 5th floor, where a nurse from the nursery checked us in. They had a big complicated procedure for checking all of our wristbands to make sure that the baby belonged to Paul and me. Then the nurse told us that wanted to borrow the baby for a while to do more stuff to him (sorry for being so unclear on the details, but he had sooo many tests and things done after he was born). We said that we'd like to get him back as soon as we could. The last thing the nurse asked was whether we wanted to have him circumcised, and when I said "No," very definitively, the nurse said "Good!" which made me laugh. I guess it's true what the teacher said in our Kaiser class about the staff not liking to have to do circumcisions.

They took us to a room, but immediately moved us to another one where we wouldn't have to share unless it got really crowded. This was awfully nice. We had a nice view out the window. The new nurse asked me for yet another urine sample, and then after that asked me for one more, since I guess the output hadn't been impressive enough. After that I was in the clear.

Then I was able to crawl into my bed. They brought the baby back to us in a little portable bassinet made of clear plexiglass, all re-swaddled and wearing his little hat. Paul brought me some juice -- it turns out that we had free access to the refrigerator down the hall which had lots of juice and Jell-O and things. Pretty nice! Mom was totally exhausted, and Paul drove her back to our apartment. She told me much later that when Paul had driven her back to the apartment and they were sorting out stuff from the back of her car that might be transferred to his, she looked at my walking shoes and couldn't figure out who they belonged to. She glanced covertly at Paul's feet, then said, "Are these Jennie's shoes?" He affirmed that they were, at which point she thought they should be with him because my feet were so swollen that she didn't think they'd fit back into my Keds for the trip home. But she couldn't remember ever having seen the shoes before, and was startled to learn from me later on that we had actually discussed them on the way out the door to the hospital! On a similar note, I learned from her later that when she'd gotten ready to go to bed, she couldn't get the futon to unfold. (It's kind of tricky.) She started to panic that she wouldn't be able to go to sleep, but then realized with relief that if she had to she could sleep on the floor in her sleeping bag. She was so tired that it never occurred to her that she could sleep on the futon without unfolding it -- or better yet, sleep in Paul's and my bed, since we staying overnight at the hospital!

While Paul dropped Mom at home, Dad stayed at the hospital to keep me company. Czeslaw dropped by to visit, and brought a pot of pretty pink flowers for me and Paul and a Polish coin for Benjamin. He stayed and talked with me for a while, and left around 8:00 so that he wouldn't have to drive home in the dark. Shortly thereafter Paul returned with Laine, and they visited with us for a while. Then Dad left and gave Laine a ride home. Somewhere in here the nurse came by with dinner for me on a tray, which I didn't get to eat right away because the baby was hungry and I had to feed him -- the first of many such occasions!

When everyone had gone home, the three of us got to be together for a little while. We had a lovely time just being together in the nice quiet hospital room. It seemed very profound that we were finally a family! This is also the time when I finally noticed that my feet were really swollen. It must have been the fluids from the IV. Eventually we got ready to go to sleep. Paul curled up on the second bed with Benjamin while I curled up in my bed. After a while Paul decided that the baby was hungry, so I fed him, and he wound up falling asleep on my chest this time. Paul and I hadn't made any firm decisions in advance about whether the baby would sleep with us, but clearly it worked for all three of us from the very beginning! The baby did sleep for the last part of the night in his portable bassinet.

In the morning Paul came over to my bed and curled up with me. The baby was right beside us in the bassinet, so it was very cozy. When the nurse came in to check on me, she looked at the three of us and said to me, "Did you get lonely?" Then she brought us two breakfasts, one for me and one for Paul. The staff was really nice the whole time we were there about letting us do whatever we wanted and not worrying about the rules. I realized after we left that we'd had visitors on and off the whole time we were there, and the staff never seemed to mind, even though the rules said that visitors were only allowed from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Paul thinks that the rule is there so that people who don't want to see visitors will have a handy excuse.

At some point in the morning we had a visit from a woman on the pediatric staff. She talked to us about various baby care issues. She did say that Benjamin had a touch of jaundice, and that it was probably not severe enough to worry about but that they needed to check him out to make sure. I found out later that most babies have at least a touch of jaundice at birth. Other than that, there was nothing wrong with him. They had given him a lot of blood tests because he was so large -- I think they said that all babies over 9 lbs. 12 oz. are officially considered "large for dates" -- but he had passed all of them, so he was fine. I wasn't surprised -- I knew he was just big, not big because there was anything wrong with him. We told the pediatrician that we'd like to go home as soon as possible, and she said that if everything was okay with Benjamin that she would clear us to go home that afternoon at 3:00, 24 hours after his birth.

In the early morning they brought the baby across the hall to the nursery to do more things to him. Paul followed him, and eventually I went over too because there wasn't anything else interesting going on. We talked to a very nice staff member in the nursery, who was very helpful. The only thing that I thought was silly was that they were keeping the baby there for a little while in a baby warmer because he was chilly. I didn't understand why they didn't just send him back to the room with me so we could curl up chest-to-chest and get warm.

When I was out in the hall I heard someone call my name. It was Marian, the wonderful midwife from Thursday night. I was delighted to see her and gave her a hug. She wound up doing our follow-up interview, going over lots of postpartum stuff with us. Weíd been scheduled to meet with another OB but we got Marian instead. So that was nice. She said we could leave on Sunday, but when we told her that we wanted to leave that afternoon and that the pediatric staff had already cleared Benjamin, she said that was fine and that she'd sign off on it for us as well.

Paul left shortly after that to go to the drugstore to get some supplies for me and to drop off the first roll of film. Around 11:00 in the morning Peter and Doris brought Cassie and Cindy to visit. They brought some beautiful flowers and a cute card. The nurse also delivered my lunch, but once again I didn't get around to eating it for quite a while because of the baby and the surrounding chaos. Larry came by again (his fourth visit to the hospital!) while Peter and Doris were here, and he got to hold the baby. Things got a little crazy though -- the room was very full, and the baby got hungry and cranky -- so he didn't stay long. I fed the baby, which was kind of intimidating in front of all these people. I was wearing my new flannel nightshirt for some of this time, but I got so hot (probably a combination of feeding the baby plus fluctuating hormones) that sweat started pouring down my chest, so I had to change. Paul reappeared while Peter and Doris were visiting, and he had Mom with him, so I guess he had stopped at the apartment. Mom looked great, all dressed in blue in honor of Benjamin, and looking very bright-eyed and refreshed -- quite a change from the night before! We got a couple of good photos of the whole group. And Paul watched over the baby so I could eat my sandwich. Somewhere in here a staff person came in with our typed-up birth certificate. We had filled out a form for this earlier, and now she just needed us to check the final copy to make sure that everything was correct. Paul and I both checked it and said that it looked fine.

After our visitors left, we started getting ready to go. I gathered up as many mementos as I could find, including Ben's little hat, and the stickers on his bassinet that said "Baby Boy Zawilski". We were all packed before they came to take us downstairs. I put on my white Keds and found that they didn't really fit at all because my feet were still so swollen. I ended up wearing my walking shoes, which are a bit roomier -- so I guess it was a good thing that I brought them after all! Mom brought the car to the front of the hospital while Paul and I were taken downstairs, with a nurse pushing me and the baby in the wheelchair and Paul carrying our luggage. Paul took one more photo of me, Mom and Benjamin in front of the hospital. Then we loaded the baby into the carseat and headed home!

Click here to see pictures of Benjamin.