Otto is six months old today! To commemorate, here is my labor and birth story that I never did get around to sharing. Warning: non-pithiness, gore, and the "v" word inside. ]]>
Even before the due date (June 3) we scheduled an induction date, and I wanted the last possible date the OB would allow, which would have been the 15th (nearly two weeks past the due date). I remember her telling me that's what she would do herself. With inductions you have a much higher chance of a c-section, and you are required to be hooked up to a fetal monitor, which restricts your movement to basically nothing. They didn't require an IV but did require the shunt. But I was very confident I would go into spontaneous labor before the induction date. I know some people beg for inductions, but I wasn't in any hurry. Except for the swollen feet I wasn't too uncomfortable.
The due date flew by, and I went to the OB twice the next week. The first appointment they told me, "we have your induction set for Tuesday the 12th." Wha?!? They cited scheduling issues with the original date. On Friday I came back for the non-stress test and an ultrasound. Everything was fine, and Otto was measuring about nine and a half pounds. All I could think about was one of my co-workers who had just given birth -- her baby also measured 9+ pounds but came out one pound lighter than that. I didn't appreciate the difference between a big baby, a small baby, and a normal baby anyway. I thought, well, big is big, it's going to hurt whether he's 8 or 9 or 10 pounds.
They still thought I would go into labor over the weekend -- I was already 2cm dilated -- and I was counting on it, but of course nothing happened. On Monday I was freaking out about being induced. I wanted to avoid being hooked up to all the apparati so I could at least *try* moving around or going in the shower or tub to manage pain. I also understood that induced labor is more painful, and overall I felt kinda put on the medical assembly line. So I tried to talk the OB to pushing the date back. She was pretty adamant that I be induced the next day considering what he was measuring, so I finally, reluctantly, agreed. My friend Beth came over with one of her beautiful twins -- this reminded me what the end results were going to be and it calmed me down.
We packed up Monday night, and recorded some nervous video. We drove in Tuesday morning at 5:30am. They took us to our room, which was very nice and roomy but ironically the only room with a bathtub, which I wouldn't get a chance to use. They hooked me up to the IV, pitocin drip, and the monitors. The parents trickled in. I watched the contractions on the monitor. I didn't feel anything much for about 5-6 hours as the dose was gradually increased. It was all fine except I was gradually getting more annoyed by trying to maneuver around the room with all the wires hooked up to me. We watched some episodes of The Match Game on DVD (Charles Nelson Reilly R.I.P.). I requested that the anesthesiologist come in for a debriefing before I became irrational with pain. I asked about the "walking epidural," no dice. I requested that if I get an epidural, to turn it down at pushing time so I could feel things enough to know what I was doing. That was doable.
The OB said she was going to wait till I was 7-8cm to break the water, but then for some reason (medical assembly line, probably) she decided to break it after her lunchtime, around 1:30. I was only around 3cm at that point. Shortly before that I started actually feeling the contractions, but they were very manageable. When the OB came in she told me to get up and go to the bathroom first. When I did, I had some drips running down my leg and I said, "hey I'm incontinent!" But it was my water breaking. I got up on the bed to be examined: GUSH. That was totally wild, I was laughing through it. You really feel like a river is running out of you. And the gush lasts a LOT longer than you expect. The nurses were all saying I would laugh my way through labor, and I felt very confident.
I was back up alternating between the birthing ball and rocking chair, when whoomp, the pain started coming on gangbusters. At first I listened to some music and cried, Bryan was rubbing my back like crazy. I sent him off to microwave the rice sock even though was scared to have contractions all by myself. Bryan and the rice came back. His massaging, the sock wedged under my belly, and rocking furiously provided some level of relief for a little bit. I tried to get on my hands and knees but the nurse came running in the room, saying that position screwed up the monitors. Shit. The contractions were coming regularly now with only ONE MINUTE of rest in between. I couldn't get my bearings before the next one came on. I had wanted to labor as long as I could before getting an epidural, but the contractions were so powerful. So, so powerful. There was just no "managing" possible, they were just overwhelming. If they could bottle that pain it would be a very effective torture device. And that is a cliche for a reason. It was at once indescribable and exactly what I expected. I don't know how long this went on before I asked for the epidural, it was definitely less time than I had wanted, so I felt like a big ol wimp. They dump a whole IV bag into you before you get shot up, which takes about half an hour. During that time I was panting fast and hard through the contractions, which felt just as bad as the pain itself. I thought I would pass out. I spent those tiny little rest periods terrified and whimpering. Then during the contractions I was moaning and screaming and swearing and punching poor Bryan so hard that I was hurting him.
So I was extremely irrational when the anesthesiologist came back. I don't have the needle fear that a lot of people do, so that wasn't an issue. He witnessed a contraction or two and remarked on "feeling my pain." I was insisting that there was no way I could stay still during a contraction and can't you please get all the business done during a break. It all went quickly and easily, and the pain diminished back to nothing through the next three or so contractions. When it went in it was like cold sunshine spreading through my lower half. I didn't enjoy the numbness in my legs but I wasn't freaked out by it or anything.
I rested in the bed for a few hours, tried to sleep but couldn't. I was shaking (even though you don't feel it, thank you modern medicine, your body is doing really intense work and the shaking is caused by that
My mom came back in. I guess a nurse had been rude to her, 1. telling her she couldn't stand outside my room and 2. refusing to update her on my status because of HIPAA. The same nurse told me my mom was upset, and when that info got back to my mom, she got really upset and wanted to report the nurse to the supervisor. I was trying to talk her down, telling her that the nurses are awesome and please don't do anything that would set them against me. But come on. You'd figure labor & delivery nurses would be more adept at handling emotional family members, and you'd figure that they'd have the patients SIGN A RELEASE AHEAD OF TIME so that family can be updated. This was one nurse (or intern, who knows) on an otherwise wonderful staff, and this nurse apologized later. I felt bad that my mom was upset, but (and this is horrible) I was also thinking that maybe this would end up being the biggest problem of the day, and feeling relieved!
I progressed quickly and somewhere close to 6pm I was ready to push. Bryan is diabetic and at that time he was eating on a strict schedule. So during my first few pushes, he had my leg in one hand and a sandwich in the other. It was hilarious and again the nurses told me I was going to laugh my way through the labor. Otto was moving down pretty quickly. They told me they could see the head and that he had hair. I was very happy and excited that it all seemed to be moving along. It is pretty weird and out-of-body to find yourself doing this thing that you've rehearsed in your head a million times and seen in the media another billion times.
A half hour stretched into an hour ... Otto wasn't getting any closer. The very deflating and frustrating labor coaching began. They would tell me to "push the same way you did before" and I would think that I was doing just that but apparently I wasn't. They were contorting me into all sorts of positions to try to make pushing more effective. You mostly don't care about the dignity loss, being an anesthetized lump, mostly naked and splayed about, but I certainly didn't enjoy it.
I was starting to feel like a failure at this whole thing. I knew the slow progress was at least partially due to the epidural so there was guilt mixing in there too. They did turn the epidural down so I could get some feeling back, and maybe I could have told them to turn it off altogether but the memory of the pain was still fresh and I was still terrified of it.
They told me that he was getting closer, and Bryan said he could see the head. I thought this meant that Otto was crowning. The OB brought out the mirror to give me visual feedback, but it was the opposite of encouraging. There was just the littlest sliver of head at the peak of my contractions. I was totally exhausted by this point, and all the pushing had given me the most severe heartburn. It's very odd to be screaming for Tums during labor! I was also horrified by my thigh-cellulite and the horrible things that seemed to be pushing out of my back-end. I knew that this was counterproductive thinking and I should have ordered the mirror away but I thought maybe it might start being helpful at some point.
The OB told me that babies tend to stop tolerating pushing at around three hours and that in a little while we would need to get him out by forceps or c-section. I must have looked so sad and horrified because she asked me what she could say to make me believe that was not a threat, but something to motivate me to focus and find a new wind. I tried to believe her! But I was half unable to push anymore and half utterly defeated and just. wanted. him. OUT. and didn't care how it happened.
The crowd started gathering and everyone started putting on the surgical caps and masks. I thought this meant I was going in for a c-section. But they told me I was pushing really well now and that he's coming but could they help him along with forceps? I said -- screamed? -- yes PLEASE. I thought I knew what was involved with forceps but never considered how it might feel. I had always envisioned the moment of birth as a beautiful, relieving, easy sliding-out and never imagined it could be any other way. Unfortunately for me, with the forceps it felt like my hipbone was being pried out through my vagina. Pretty awful. I don't want to imagine how that would feel WITHOUT an epidural! Bryan reports that he heard the forceps action, if that gives you any indication. It took a couple contractions + yanking before Otto was born.
But then he was here and they handed Otto up to me and he had his arms out toward me and his eyes open. I will never forget that. There must have been lots of shouting and squealing but that's all I remember. Here was my baby. He was beautiful and looked both nothing and everything like I thought he would. I held him. The gore you see all over newborn babies is surprisingly sticky. Then he was away for all that examining etc., which I didn't want, but was too much in shock to care or protest. He was born, he was alive, he was out, oh my god he's HERE! It was 8:30-something, so I had been in the hospital for 15 hours. Even though labor technically started at 6 I would say it really got rolling at 1, so I'd say I labored for 7 1/2 hours.
During Otto's cleanup and examinations they sewed me up. I had a monster tear. Otto weighed nine pounds, six ounces with one of the biggest head circumferences my OB had seen born vaginally. They handed him to me all wrapped up in his blanket, and I think the first thing I said to him after "Hi oh my god hi" was "what was your APGAR score?" I hope this doesn't set a precedent of me being score-focused, but nobody had told me anything about his status (or they had while I was off in shock-land).
After my, uh, surgery, and some baby awe and awkward breastfeeding, my parents and in-laws got to come in to see him. Bryan had taken some digital pictures and went out to show them before they were allowed in. It was really wonderful. We revealed to my dad that Otto's middle name was Robert (my dad's first name). My mom was a big ball of happy and tears. She had been SO worried about me, and her happiness helped bring me back to reality. Everyone was cooing, my father-in-law was hanging back and filming. There is a lovely part of the video with me gnawing blank-faced on some food, saying "THAT'S THE HARDEST THING I'VE EVER DONE." Then they handed Otto back to me, dressed in two hospital-issue long-sleeved shirts (one turned upside-down for pants) and his little hat. So great.
The next day the OB told me that yeah I had a little trouble pushing, but mostly I just had a huge baby that got stuck. All these six months I have mourned a little bit for not being more mentally/emotionally present when he was finally born, but in writing this, I'm realizing it's OK. All told my labor and birth actually went very well. There are better births, sure, but there are far, far worse experiences too so I have no complaints. And as most of my mother friends said, "It's not how you get them out, it's what you do afterwards." There is such a monumental buildup to labor your first time around, and I knew it was better not to have any expectations but you can't help having a few unconsciously, and you can't help thinking "I should have done X, Y, Z". But everything about labor is quickly and powerfully overshadowed by this new baby in your life, the cartoon hearts bursting out and fluttering around your head, the sleep-deprivation/hormone-induced dementia. The physical recovery I went through would be a major setback in normal life but at the time just felt like a drop in the bucket.
A few postscripts about the postpartum recovery, because nobody told me anything about this stage, and I was mentally unprepared for it! In addition to the copious postpartum bleeding, I was completely numb and severely swollen for weeks. I didn't want to touch anything so this stuff called epifoam (hydrocortisone foam) was my best friend. The Boppy pillow made a great pillow to sit on, the hospital provided a hard foam toilet seat-shaped pillow which was too hard, as was the blow-up one they recommended we buy. Going to the bathroom the first couple weeks took a LONG time, between sitz baths and piling my underwear up with clean padding and medications. At my six-week postpartum appointment my stitches had dissolved and my doctor-ordered vaginal rest (that is, no sex or tampons) was lifted, but it was at least a few weeks more that the numbness subsided enough to venture down there for any reason whatsoever.
I don't want to leave you with that image, so here are some better ones.
Otto then
Otto now
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I bought three colors of procion MX dye from my local art store: chocolate brown, avocado green, and pearl gray. You also need soda ash, but the art store was out so I went by the pool store for some. When I asked the guy there for some, he asked me immediately if I was doing some dyeing, so they are familiar with this request.
I gathered a bunch of cotton onesies, new big ones and old small ones, and bought three yards of Robert Kaufman kona PFD. All together it weighed 2 1/2 pounds. Each 2/3 oz bottle dyes one pound of fabric so I figured I was good. You also need salt -- a lot of salt -- two cups per three gallons of water. We had a big box of coarse Kosher salt on hand and a container of regular table salt. Now that I (duh) read the instructions on the Jacquard site, I see you're supposed to use non-iodized salt. I knew the coarse salt would probably not dissolve well, and thus cause problems, but I forged ahead anyway.
I'm not too into the mottled, variegated hand-dyed look; I was after more solid colors. Apparently the mottled look is best achieved by the low-water immersion technique, so I opted for tub dyeing and pretty much just followed the directions on the bottle of dye. However along the way I referenced pburch.net and Lisa Call's great series of posts on her process.
I got the fabric wet, then filled three buckets full of hot tap water and dumped in the salt. I didn't pre-mix my dyes or use urea, just (carefully) dumped each jar into the salt water mixture. You have to use a mask and gloves as you do this, as the dyes are very toxic in powder form. Then I put the fabric and some of the onesies in and stirred. The soda ash goes in next. I realized I was supposed to have already dissolved the soda ash in water. I decided to just dump it straight into the dye solution. It is coarse, about like laundry detergent, so it probably didn't dissolve all that well.
However, the brown and green looked great immediately, rich and deep. The gray looked bad from the get-go, more purple than gray and with lots of spots all over.
(yuck)
I let it sit for a little while then added more onesies, so that they would come out a shade or two lighter than the first fabrics I put in. (They did.)
I let it all sit, stirring occasionally, for a few hours more. The dye jars say 50 minutes but I let it go longer. Then I removed the clothes and fabric from one bucket and ran them under the faucet a little bit. I squeezed them out, put them aside, and dumped the bucket of dye solution down the drain. I was worried about staining but there was none. Then I transported the fabrics in the empty bucket to the washer, which was filling with cold water. I repeated the steps for the other two colors. You can wash them all together without worrying about color transfer.
Last, I ran two more cycles on hot. Lisa Call recommends turning your water heater up to max before you do this so the wash water is as hot as possible. The heat is what removes the leftover dye at this stage, so you want it as hot as possible. I didn't bother with synthrapol, a special detergent that dyers use that bonds with the remaining dye molecules and wisks them away.
The results:
The gray was all but disastrous. Clearly the dye powder didn't dissolve very well before I put the fabric in. I think there was a layer of powder still on top of the water that hadn't busted through the surface tension before I added the fabrics. Although, the second round of onesies turned out great! (Oops - no picture of those.) The brown and green turn out lighter than I thought they were and far less than solid. Turns out I didn't stir the mixture enough. Still, Otto wears it well.
I want to try again, if only to do it right! I bet the washing machine method would yield more solid colors.
Now to think of something good to do with the fabric.]]>
I don't often buy multiple fabrics from one line, but I loved Come Quilt With Me by Pat Yamin for Marcus Brothers. I'm thinking of making a semi-traditional quilt with it ... like this or this. I ordered it from Z & S Fabrics -- this was my first experience with them and they get the big thumbs up.
Bill and Weeks sent the color card and patterns to me long ago (thanks!) before they were released. I don't know exactly when they were made available to the public, sorry! That's the baby tunnel for you.
The patterns and kits can be purchased at the Funquilts site. Which one are you going to make first? I'm thinking Leaves.
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Goodbye, $100-on-sale-for-$45 Rowenta DE880 "commercial professional" with easily-scorched faceplate that no longer holds water (fill it up, watch water flow straight out the bottom!). To be fair, this iron has fallen to the floor a time or two, but many people agree that their Rowenta is lousy.
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Which of the haven't-seen movies below should I see immediately because if I don't we can't be friends anymore? Which ones should I not bother with? I have seen exactly half of them -- can you beat that? (Probably.)
legend:
black=seen
red = never seen
orange = seen but need/want to see again
1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Raging Bull (1980)
5. Singin' In The Rain (1952)
6. Gone With The Wind (1939)
7. Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
8. Schindler's List (1993)
9. Vertigo (1958)
10. The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
11. City Lights (1931)
12. The Searchers (1956)
13. Star Wars (1977)
14. Psycho (1960)
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
16. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The General (1927)
19. On The Waterfront (1954)
20. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
21. Chinatown (1974)
22. Some Like It Hot (1959)
23. The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)
24. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
25. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
26. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
34. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35. Annie Hall (1977)
36. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
37. The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
38. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
40. The Sound Of Music (1965)
41. King Kong (1933)
42. Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Shane (1953)
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48. Rear Window (1954)
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
51. West Side Story (1961)
52. Taxi Driver (1976)
53. The Deer Hunter (1978)
54. M*A*S*H (1970)
55. North By Northwest (1959)
56. Jaws (1975)
57. Rocky (1976)
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933)
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973)
63. Cabaret (1972)
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen (1951)
66. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68. Unforgiven (1992)
69. Tootsie (1982)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
74. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
75. In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994)
77. All The President's Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969)
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997)
84. Easy Rider (1969)
85. A Night At The Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982)
92. Goodfellas (1990)
93. The French Connection (1971)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do The Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben-Hur (1959)
Or, to boil it down, I haven't seen these 50 films:
Raging Bull (1980)
Gone With The Wind (1939)
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
City Lights (1931)
The Searchers (1956)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
The General (1927)
Chinatown (1974)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
High Noon (1952)
All About Eve (1950)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Shane (1953)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Intolerance (1916)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
M*A*S*H (1970)
Rocky (1976)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Duck Soup (1933)
American Graffiti (1973)
Cabaret (1972)
Network (1976)
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Unforgiven (1992)
Tootsie (1982)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
Modern Times (1936)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
The Apartment (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Sunrise (1927)
Easy Rider (1969)
A Night At The Opera (1935)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Swing Time (1936)
Sophie's Choice (1982)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Ben-Hur (1959)]]>
- Al Q's Vintage Kiddie Record Graphics, via Drawn
- Vintage playing card graphics (click "playing cards") at Kelly English ... relatedly, I am crazy about Kelly and Kindra's letterpress stuff at Studio on Fire
- Sugar Frosted Cereal Museum pool on Flickr]]>