Meet Louella Katherine
Born 4/6/11 at 9:10 AM at Sibley Hospital
8 lbs 10.5 oz, 20 inches

Lulu took her time in coming. I celebrated my due date by keeping our two year-old, Hazel, home from daycare and tiring us out at the park. I engaged in several weeks of wishful nesting, not so much responding to an urge to ready our apartment for the delivery but hoping that frantic, elbow greased scrubbing might bring on labor. No such luck. All the old wives failed us: we saw no results from spicy food, walking, jumping jacks and other unmentionables… I practiced prenatal yoga and even went to a couple of Adult Yoga classes at Lil Omm at 41-plus weeks.

My OB was supportive of my decision to wait for labor to start naturally, but at my 42nd week appointment, we had to set an induction date for that Thursday, exactly two weeks past my estimated date of delivery. I asked Dr. Footer what he thought about acupuncture; I had never tried much complementary medicine. He said his wife had back trouble and swore by her acupuncturist, so my husband and I headed out in rush hour traffic to Rockville to see Eun Hoffman, a doctor of Eastern Medicine, the nearest practitioner who took our insurance.

Dr. Hoffman gave us some tea and asked me several questions about my health and pregnancy. She understood my desire to rely on my own body and the baby to bring about labor. She mentioned that there were no acupuncture treatments that “induce” labor. In the eastern paradigm, she explained, the time and date of one’s birth play a major role in deciding a person’s destiny. Thus, if a baby was waiting to be born, it was because s/he had a special, fated role to fulfill in life. The treatment she gave me, setting several needles gently in my feet, ankles, hands and forearms, was meant to move energy down. I imagine a similar treatment is used for people whose digestive tract is stopped up.

Following the appointment, we returned home to DC, ate a simple dinner that my mother-in-law had prepared with Hazel. I headed to bed early. We had trained in Hypnobirthing when preparing for Hazel’s birth. This method includes self-hypnosis, breathing, and visualization. I tried picturing myself laboring that next day and thought positively about birthing the baby in the thirty-six hours before we were set to induce. My natural skepticism makes me wonder which, if any, of the alternative methods work, but I take an “it can’t hurt, and it might help” approach to alternative medicine.

Sure enough, I woke up contracting at 1:30 AM. I had downloaded a contraction timer on my iPhone and started timing. The waves were between seven and eight minutes apart. I laid on my side in bed and listened to the Hypnobirthing relaxation I had practiced with. After about an hour, contractions were about six minutes apart and getting more intense. I got up to grab the last few items we would need at the hospital—my bag had been packed and in the car for over a month already!—then I woke up Zach. He showered and called his mom to let her know she would need to watch Hazel. When she arrived, I wished her a happy birthday—apparently, the baby was waiting to share Gran’s birthdate.

We set off for the hospital just after three AM. By the time we were settled in the Labor and Delivery Suite at Sibley, it was four. The nurse checked my dilation and I was at 4 cm, already two more centimeters more than I had been around 2:30 PM the day before at the doctor’s. I was group B strep positive, so they started an IV and gave me the first dose of penicillin; I would need the second one at eight. My labor with Hazel had taken about nine hours, so I was visualizing a shorter labor but knew I needed two doses of antibiotics to avoid the slim risk of infection for the baby.

Around 5:30 AM, Zach and I both got really tired. He was resting with me on the bed and whereas the contractions had been growing in intensity from about 1:30-4:00, now they were lighter and shorter and didn’t seem to require much of my focus. I started to feel discouraged and rang for the nurse. When we had arrived, she had asked me what we needed from her and I had told her that, largely, we wanted to be left alone. Now, she came in and told me how different from each other her four deliveries of her own daughters had been. The most recent had been at home and had happened very fast. She reassured me that, if I was tired and labor was slowing, this was a sign that my body needed rest. She got Zach a pillow and blanket and he stretched out on the couch and slept for about half an hour while I relaxed on the bed and listened to the birthing playlist Zach had made for me.

Around 6:30, the contractions started picking up a bit, moving closer together and getting longer and stronger. At 7:00, Dr. Footer stopped by on his way to the office. He checked my dilation and found that I was at 6 cm. I remembered laboring with Hazel and, when I had finally let the nurse check my cervix, I was at 7 cm. Those last three centimeters sounded like miles; this time, though, I knew that 6 to 10 could be a matter of mere moments and welcomed the intensity of the contractions knowing that each was a distinct, one-time experience and that each was bringing me closer to meeting the new baby.

I labored in the shower from about 7:00 until 8:00. This felt GREAT! I found a productive and strong stance that allowed me to breathe through contractions effectively. At this point, I was using my favorite pain management breath that I had learned during labor with Hazel and relearned in Janice Clarfield’s prenatal yoga teacher training that Lil Omm hosted: vocal toning. This involves lowing with open vowel tones and a mindfully open throat. It’s almost like “ohmming” through contractions. From a yogic perspective, the open throat invites expansion at the top of the shushumna nadee, the central channel, encouraging a similar opening through this major energy channel, especially at the bottom where the baby will emerge. In Hynobirthing terms, vocal toning helps break the Fear-Tension-Pain chain. Rather than mentally backing out of contractions because of a worry that they will be painful, tensing muscles and increasing pain and resistance, instead a woman in labor opens to the experience, welcoming strong sensations and meeting them with calm breath. “Ows!” are usually high-pitched and closed, coming through clenched jaws and hunched shoulders. The lower, ommmm-like sounds are relaxed and relaxing.

I had also “set an anchor” for myself, asking Zach to make sure my shoulders were relaxed through labor. Just assigning him this job helped remind me at the beginning of each contraction to relax my upper body, especially shoulders, throat and jaw, as fully as I could.

I made my way out of the shower with Zach’s help. While he was helping me dry off, I got short and snappish with him over some minor nothing that I can’t even remember; I turned on Zach for a contraction or two during the birth of our first daughter, too, and took it as a good sign. My favorite natural childbirth books are Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth and Spiritual Midwifery. (If you pick up these classics, be ready for a shift in thinking; they describe home births at a commune called “the Farm” in Tennessee. In my experience, they are great preparation for natural births in more conventional, western medical settings, too, if you can accept the majorly hippy vibe.) In many of the birth stories written by Ina May’s moms and dads, the birthing women get impatient with themselves or their birth partners right around transition. To me, my momentary snarkiness symbolized that I was likely nearing the finale.

I moved back toward the bed around 8:00 to get the second dose of penicillin and told the nurse that I was noticing a lot more downward pressure. I raised the head of the bed up so I could lean my forearms on it while kneeling on the mattress and taking advantage of gravity to help the baby make its way down. In another few contractions, I felt an urge to push, so the nurse called my doctor who had made it to his office a few miles away. I didn’t feel like waiting and told the nurse to grab another doctor, but I think I was unofficially holding off for Dr. Footer to fight his way through rush hour traffic; he joined us just after 9:00. Not finding my knee-down position as productive as it had been during my first birth, I flipped onto my back and Dr. Footer broke my bag of waters, still intact after 7 ½ hours of labor. Two contractions later, Lulu came shooting out! We were glad to see her and thrilled to learn that she was a girl, and a healthy one at that.

We were lucky that labor was relatively short, that the baby was in good position, and that there were no needs for medical interventions. Before both births, I had spent time considering our birth plan and also making peace with the idea that a healthy baby arriving by any method or delivery style was the ultimate goal. That way, I could avoid feeling disappointed if we weren’t able to realize our ideal birth experience. All in all, the second go-round at childbirth was somewhat quicker and less tense. I knew what to expect and how to face the strong sensations of labor. I also knew that labor wouldn’t last forever, that it would be an empowering experience, and that we would meet the new love of our life at the end of the journey.