Esther Violet Ricks

Anyone who has been pregnant will tell you that every week of pregnancy over 36 weeks feels like a year. Anyone who has gone over their due date will tell you that every day over 40 weeks feels like an eon.

As you can therefore imagine, I was less than pleased when March 8th, 4 days after my due date, was coming to a close and all I had experienced were those go-nowhere, low-grade contractions. Frustrated and feeling fat, I set about making these cinnamon rolls (her freezing method is genius!) at around 9 pm. A bit after midnight, I pulled them out of the oven (which broke during the baking process and didn't get fixed until Esther was over a week old), left the rolls to cool, and went to bed.

I had really bad sciatic pain during pregnancy, and by February, I was waking up every hour or hour and half with crazy leg/bum pain on whichever side I was sleeping. I would flex my legs a bit, maybe go to the bathroom, and then start sleeping on my other side. I hated whenever someone told me to sleep as much as I could before the baby was born because sleeping was so painful.

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Around 5:40 am on March 9th, I woke up with the aforementioned sciatic pain. I sat up in bed, debating whether to go to the bathroom or not, when a gush of liquid told me that my body decided for me. I rushed to the bathroom, pretty sure that the liquid was not urine. It felt different, and I had never peed on myself during pregnancy (unless I was throwing up). Sure enough, I wiped and saw some of my mucus plug on the toilet paper. Knowing that I was in for a long day, I changed my underwear/pajamas, told Spencer my water broke, and went back to bed.

Every now and then, I'd wake up with a contraction, and then I'd fall back asleep once it had passed. This continued for a few hours until 8:30 or so when I called my OB to let them know that I wouldn't be coming in for my appointment today since I was in labor. After that, Spencer and I got ready for the day. (Piece of advice - shave your legs before going to the hospital. I did that on a friend's suggestion, and I was so glad I had! I didn't have the time or energy to shave them again for weeks.) I finished the cinnamon rolls, Spencer did some work, and we let my doula know that today was the day! All the while, I'd get contractions, timing them with this app and enduring them by kneeling in front of the couch. It's funny now to think about how I thought those contractions were strong, and I was so proud of myself for enduring them well. Hahaha! I guess ignorance is bliss, right?

Around noon, we told my doula, my amazing friend Hannah, to come to our apartment so we could head to the hospital. My contractions were about a minute long, coming 5 to 4 minutes apart, and had been doing this for at least an hour. Hannah arrived, we took a longest cab ride of my life to the hospital, went up to the labor and delivery wing, and waited. And waited. And waited. I spent close to two hours, sitting and waiting to be admitted to triage. Spencer and Hannah would periodically ask at the desk when I would be helped, and they would be somewhat rudely brushed off. Maybe it's because I dealt with my contractions by being quiet as opposed to screaming? Who knows but it was RIDICULOUS.

A bit after 2 pm, I finally got admitted to triage. They set up monitors for my contractions and Esther's heart rate, checked my cervix, and ran two tests to see if my water had actually broken. I was 1 cm dilated, and both tests came back negative. I was devastated. What were all those contractions for then? And I knew my water had broken! Thankfully, the physician's assistant who checked me agreed with me since she couldn't feel my bag of waters and my fluid levels were low. Not to mention that the monitor showed my contractions coming regularly and getting more intense. She conferred with my OB, and they both decided that I should be admitted to labor and delivery. BUT they wanted to give me Cervidil.

My heart dropped like a rock. I had wanted a drug-free birth. The PA said they'd give me 12 hours on Cervidil (which "augments" labor by softening your cervix. doesn't induce it) before giving me Pitocin, which I wanted to avoid like the plague. Going on Cervidil also meant getting an IV and having continuous monitoring - two other things I wanted to avoid. Heart-broken, I sent Hannah home since it seemed like the baby wouldn't be coming for a long, long time. I got moved to an L&D room, and Spencer and I settled in for the long haul.

Thankfully, I could still move around and labor in various positions until I got the Cervidil. I preferred kneeling on the floor over a birthing ball or on the toilet. Around 4 pm, they inserted the Cervidil behind my cervix (which was still only dilated 1 cm), and I spent the next hour laboring in the bed (a requirement with Cervidil), listening to This American Life. What, Ira Glass isn't on your birthing playlist as well?

The next couple of hours were a blur. Once I was able to get up, I spent a lot of time laboring on the toilet, bringing all my monitors and IV into the bathroom with me. Poor Spencer kept checking on me through the doorway, making sure I was ok. At one point, I looked into the toilet and realized I had peed out the Cervidil, which meant I had to alert the nurse so it could be reinserted. The PA took a while to come check on me, but by the time she finally did, she said I was dilated to a 6 or 7 and no longer needed the Cervidil. This was 7 pm, a mere 3 hours after the last time I was checked and declared 1 cm dilated. Hallelujah, my contractions were doing something after all!

Shortly thereafter, my OB checked on me, and bless her soul! As you can tell, I am not a big fan of the hospital at which I gave birth, but my OB? My OB is absolutely incredible, and I love, love, love her. She had the nurse cap my IV, said I could eat food, and switched me to intermittent monitoring. Basically everything that I had wanted to facilitate an epidural-free birth. She also said that the baby probably wouldn't come until Tuesday. However, it was also around this time that I had Spencer tell my doula to come back. Thing were getting intense down below, and I knew I needed my entire birth team.

Here's where I need to say a few (or a million) words about Spencer and Hannah. I cannot imagine a better birth team than these two; I honestly don't know how I would have delivered Esther without them. Spencer was THEE best birth coach, so encouraging and loving. So many times I cried out in agony, doubting whether I could continue. I was feeling especially low right after I got the Cervidil because I hadn't dilated anymore, and omg, how could I continue on for hours or even days? My labor had begun almost 12 hours ago, and there was still no end in sight! How could I survive? Each time I expressed self-doubt, Spencer would buoy me up, telling me that I was doing great and that I could get through one more contraction. Yes, I thought. I can do one more contraction. By giving me a concrete, short-term obstacle, Spencer gave me the mental and emotional strength to carry on. He also aided me physically by giving counter-pressure throughout hours of contractions. He followed my lead perfectly and never left my side.

And then Hannah. Oh, Hannah! She is not a doula by trade and hasn't attended any other births. She's a close friend, and it wasn't until I was over 30 weeks that we even discussed her being my doula. She read The Birth Partner (as did Spencer), spoke with family members who had had natural birth, and that was the extent of her training. But she was fantastic! She didn't bat an eye when I was short with her, followed my instructions, and filled my non-emotional needs (ice chips, water, birth music, massaging my back) so that Spencer could focus solely on getting me through contractions.

Sometime between 9 and 10, after experiencing the most intense pain of my life, I felt my contractions changing. At the end of each contraction, my body would bear down, pushing hard. I told the nurse that I felt the need to push, but when they checked me, I was only 9 cm dilated. Because of this, the doctor told me to resist the urge to push, and that right there was the hardest part of labor. All along I had been giving into my body's urges, relaxing into contractions instead of resisting them. But now I had to fight my body? This is when I grabbed Spencer by his waist and wouldn't let him go. This is when my moans turns to screams. Nothing was worse than resisting that intense urge to push. I could not longer labor in various positions but had to sit on the bed, which allowed me to fight my urge but only made my back labor worse (pretty much all my labor pains were in my back).

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