Our Birth Story, Part 3 (The Final Chapter)

I have forgotten to mention until now that our nurse told us that I was the most polite laboring mother she’d ever been around.  All of my requests were “Please” and their responses were met with, “Thank you.”

“Would you like some water, Tori?”

“Yes, please. And could I have some help rolling over please, I’m having a hard time with this big ol’ belly. Thanks!” ***smile***

Apparently, that’s not normal.  Who knew?

I should begin this part by letting y’all know that I have no pain memory from the waist down of Cameron being born. You will not be regaled with “And then I felt a RIP as I pushed a WATERMELON out of a KEYHOLE.” I don’t remember any of that, even though there was no epidural.  It was a combination of things contributing to this, not the least of which being the Lord’s hand GRACIOUSLY shielding me. I’m not complaining, however.  I'll take it.  Here’s how that part of the story unfolded. 

The Big Guns Nurse who had checked my cervix had told me I was done but Sarah, our regular L&D nurse who had checked me in the first place, needed to check me herself.  She told me I was actually only about 9, but it wouldn’t be long (and it wasn’t, minutes maybe) and so preparations should begin.  I had Jeff put on my playlist of my songs I wanted for labor, the songs were my favorites from church (I will share that list later) and, of course, “He Will Rejoice” by Trevor Morgan (please excuse the video for the song, it was made by someone else for their parents but I haven't found another one that works. If  you let it play in the background while you read this, it will be a good musical background for what it was like for me).  That song is an arrangement of Zephaniah3:17, the scripture that has been on my heart for Cam the moment I knew he was coming.   God taking delight in Cameron…rejoicing over him with singing… if there was one thing I would want him to know, it would be that. God delights in him, and so do his parents!  I sang along with that song and tears streamed down my face.  The contractions continued to come, but I just sang right along with the songs I had chosen, my cheeks soaked with tears (and now again as I write this).  

I felt so blessed... I was about to meet my baby boy!  I had waited my whole life for this, I felt God there in the room with us.  I couldn't believe it was HAPPENING!!!!

There was hustle and bustle as everyone got ready. My doctor was off at the coast for her anniversary weekend, but the doctor who was there to deliver Cam was someone we had seen before when our doctor had gotten called out on an emergency C-section right before one of our checkups.  They got me all appropriately arranged, and she checked me out. Baby was down, my cervix was all opened up, and we were ready to rock and roll!

The pushing part was the part I was most nervous for because it seemed like the most important thing I had EVER done in my life, and yet I had no experience. There was no dress rehearsal, I didn’t know if I’d know how to do it right…and yet it was the most important thing EVER!  Everyone just says, “And then you push” as if you just know how to do it.  Well, I did, so that was good. In our birthing class, they told us that the baby would press down on a bundle of nerves that would give me the urge to push. I never felt that, at least not that I remember.  I just started pushing with each contraction once they told me I was ready and everything went fine, so I know they weren’t leading me wrong.

My mom was stroking my head, Jeff was holding my hand, and there was a team of the doctor, Sarah, and one other nurse down by my business getting ready to catch that little guy when he came out.

“PUUUUUUUUUUUUUSH!” They told me, so I did.

“Oh, Tori, you’re SUCH a good pusher!” the doctor and nurses told me. “Oh, you’re GOOD AT THIS!”  I was in immense pain and that sounded like the most generic $h*t I had ever heard in my life, so I tuned them right out so I didn’t get all annoyed and smack somebody and lose my status as Most Polite Laboring Mother Of All Time. 

“Tori, honey, this is only temporary.  This is a little bit of pain for what we’ve been waiting our whole lives for,” Jeff dutifully recited.  We had planned the things I wanted him to say, but now, in the moment, it sounded rehearsed and I wanted to smack him so I had to tune him out as well. Besides, that was what he was supposed to say to get me through contractions, not through pushing. I should have told him to sing “Eye of the Tiger” when I was pushing, THAT would have gotten the job done

The back labor continued throughout the pushing. They told me it would subside as the baby moved down, but that didn’t happen for quite awhile, I don’t even remember the point at which it stopped hurting…it might have hurt the whole darned time for all I know.

I yelled, just like they do in the movies. I couldn’t help it, the pain of the contractions kept overwhelming the pushingness!!! The doctor told me not to yell, it was keeping me from pushing as hard as I needed to and I needed to channel that energy into pushing. She was right, of course, butI couldn't help it because I was in enough pain from the back labor that there were times I wasn’t TRYING to push, I was just trying to get through the contraction.

I turned to Jeff one time, mid-push and declared, “WE’RE ADOPTING THE NEXT ONE!!!!”

They told me they could see his head and they asked me if I wanted a mirror.  Heck no, I hadn’t wanted a mirror when they’d talked about it in our birthing classes…but I also hadn’t wanted an epidural and had asked for that (even though it didn’t end up happening), I hadn’t wanted anyone in the room with me but Jeff and now I had 3 out of the 4 grandparents standing over my right shoulder.   So, I figured I was probly wrong about this one, too, so I told them to bring in the freaking mirror.

Best thing I ever did. I think that’s largely why I don’t remember any pain, because I was SEEING him moving down and coming out, and that was my primary source of input about what was happening, so I wasn’t focused on how it FELT.

I looked in the mirror to see if I could see his head…and it just looked like darkness to me. Well, turns out that was because Baby Boy had one heck of a head of hair.  “He’s got SO MUCH dark hair!” the doctor said. I couldn’t believe it. MY BABY HAD HAIR!!!! First of all that, was miraculous because I WAS SEEING MY BABY’S HAIR! AND HE HAD IT!!! “I’LL BET HE’S EVEN GOT FINGERS AND TOES, TOO!!!” I thought to myself. Second of all, I was bald as a cue ball from birth though the better part of my first year and I STILL have about half as much hair in terms of volume as do most other women. That my baby should have a good deal of hair at birth was thoroughly a shock, seemed like it had to be someone else's baby. 

They guided my hand so I could touch his head for the first time. Woah.  What a trip!!!

It got really hard to push through the contractions, probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  It seemed like I pushed forever, but in reality it was probably only about ten or fifteen minutes. 

But, seeing him helped.  I could see more and more of his head with every push.  It also helped because, like I said, I had tuned out the annoying doctors and nurses.

I finally heard the doctor say that his head was crowning, one more push would do it.  It was a really hard contraction and there is no way I could have pushed through it if I hadn’t been able to see him, but I could and I did! I could SEE that he was almost there and if I gave it just a little more, I’d be able to hold him AND WOULDN’T HAVE TO PUSH ANYMORE!!!

So, I did.  I gave it ONE! MORE! BIG! PUSH! And out he came… at least part way.

“OK, stop pushing,” the doctor told me calmly, and grabbed some scissors.  I couldn’t see it, but apparently our little gymnast had gotten the umbilical cord wrapped around him in a five-point safety harness.  Around his waist, an x across his chest, and around his neck.  He wasn’t in any distress, mind you, everything was fine. However, that bad boy (the cord, not the baby) was not getting unwrapped, it required doctorly intervention, so she snipped it.  She told us she snipped it low enough that Jeff could still cut again and officially "cut the cord" if he wanted, but he'd been on the fence about that anyway, so he was OK with having that be it.

I must have pushed a little more to get him the rest of the way out, but I don't remember because THERE! HE! WAS!  

The little life we had see on the monitor so many times... the legs that had kicked me...the elbows that had poked out (yes, the was throwin' them 'bows left and right in there)... the precious little perfection that had been knit in my womb from one little microscopic speck of Jeff and one little microscopic speck of me.  Mind = blown.  Heart = filled.

Not only did have hair and those fingers and toes I had marveled at the possibility of, but he had ARMS! AND LEGS! AND EARS! AND A TINY LITTLE BITY NOSE…which was pushed off to the side… BUT IT WAS STILL THERE.  They ripped back my hospital gown (as they were supposed to, I knew they would), put him on my chest, and wrapped us both in a blanket.  And there we were…our family of three…

Sometime during the first few moments after he was born, the grandparents made their exit.  This was undoubtedly my mom’s doing, she always knows exactly what to do in the right moment somehow.  So, it was just the three of us.

“What’s his name?” Sarah asked.

I looked at Jeff, questioningly. We had a name, we had picked Cameron very early on in the pregnancy and nothing else even came close.  But, we were both committed to not finalizing it until we saw him, especially Jeff who had played enough baseball games over the years to be a tad superstitious. 

“Is he Cameron?” I asked.

“Yes,”  Daddy said, beaming.  “He’s Cameron.  Cameron Lauren Rask. Lauren, after my Grandpa.”

And Sarah wrote this on the board.

They weren’t done with me yet, I still had to pass the placenta and I had a “small tear” and so she had to stitch me up.  That, I remember.  That was ouchy.  She also asked if I wanted to see the placenta. I wanted to know what this thing my body had produced to sustain my baby looked like.  It was veiny-looking,  that’s all I remember. 

I just wanted to be DONE with the  pain of contractions, but they needed to hook me up to a Pitocin drip to encourage my uterus to keep contracting, because of the quick birth I was bleeding more than usual.  That hurt, too.  All you women who are given the full dose of Pitocin to induce labor… hats off to you ladies, that is some mean stuff. 

But, we had our baby. Our sweet little man.  After awhile…30 or 40 minutes, maybe, they took him over and bathed him and cleaned him up, they were able to do everything they needed to do right there in the room. Jeff went with him while the nurse tended to me.  The grandparents and Jeff’s brother and his girlfriend came in and everyone got a chance to see and hold Cameron. Pics here:

Then, everyone headed out…and we were a family.

So ends our birth story.  The saga doesn’t end here, the hard part was actually just beginning.  Cam didn’t latch that night. Or the next day, or the next day. We went home with a non-latching baby and so began a long, tearful, and arduous journey to establish nursing, which I will get to writing about eventually.  It all turned out OK, but we had to fight for it. Long and hard we fought, I think Cam was 2 months old before the nagging fear that we wouldn’t be able to nurse finally slipped quietly away.  Lactation appointments, pediatrician appointments, weeks and weeks without a day with no tears for me… but Cam stuck with me, and Jeff was behind us 100% all the way… but that’s a story for another time. I have to be emotionally ready to revisit those scary, painful, and visceral moments and I’m not quite there yet.  

For now, I’ll just say another prayer of thanksgiving for all of this.   God is good. Even if this hadn't gone as wonderfully as it did, He would still have been good. Even in the dark, painful moments of the days and weeks that followed, He was still sovereign in our lives and was still good.

And we now have Mister Cameron Lauren Rask, he may be our baby, our little man to hold and raise and love, but he is God's child.  And, even in the years to come when we have scary moments (which are unavoidable when one chooses to raise a child), He will always be sovereign and good.  May we never lose sight of that!