Luke’s Birth Story

I was due March 27. Or March 24. Or? Honestly I’m not sure. Because my 2^nd and 3^rd babies were both 9 days late, my midwife pushed my due date back, so who even knows what the math was?

Regardless, I was supposed to have a baby at the end of March. And then the coronavirus hit the United States. And then it crept into Arizona. And then it was mid-March and the kids were on spring break and everything shut down. Church was canceled. Returning to school was postponed. And all we could do was wait.

Despite some mild Braxton-Hicks contractions, I never felt like I was close to going to into labor. With Margot, I could walk myself into regular, time-able contractions. With Ryan, everything hurt all the time but kickstarting labor felt impossible. Like his brother, this one was content to stay put.

Finally we scheduled an induction for Saturday April 4. David made arrangements for his sister to stay with the kids while we went the hospital. We went to bed Friday night, but I was too anxious to sleep. And around midnight, as I was finally drifting off to sleep, my water broke.

I was stunned. With my others, my water didn’t break until I was at the hospital and had been laboring for a while. This seemed completely out of nowhere. I wasn’t having regular contractions at all. Because of that, we decided to wait and see how it went. Worst case scenario, we show up in the morning as planned and go forward with the induction if labor still hasn’t started.

We let his sister know what was going on, and I texted my mom an update. David tried to get some more sleep. I was way too wound up, though, so I put on a maxi pad, grabbed a towel, and went out to the living room to distract myself and maybe time contractions.

Not half an hour later, I knew we weren’t going to be able to wait till morning. Labor started and it was already hard. I went to wake up David again and we got ready to leave. His sister arrived around 1 AM and we took off for the hospital.

In between contractions, I was fine. Excited and nervous, but awake and clear headed. David parked the car and I told him to sit tight for minute; I knew another contraction was coming and I’d have to wait till it was over to get out of the car. It came and went and off we walked, as fast as I could waddle, to the main entrance of the hospital. We almost made it inside before another contraction hit. The masked woman just inside the door said, “Well clearly you are going to have a baby tonight. Would you like a wheelchair?” Before I could even say yes, a sweet man had brought one for me to sit in. The woman took our temperatures, let labor & delivery know we were on our way, and the man whisked us off to the elevator.

The nurses in L&D had more paperwork for us to fill out. (I had pre-registered, so this was mildly annoying.) I started it but had to pass it off to David to finish because it turns out writing and laboring are not compatible activities. At last they wheeled me into triage.

A nurse handed me a gown and sent me into the bathroom to change. While in there, another contraction started. I sat on the toilet and thought, “Oh no. I’m not going to be able to get up. This is it. I’m going to have this baby right here.” It lasted for what felt like an eternity, but it ended, and I was able to get up and finish dressing. I peeked out the door, but the nurse had left. “Hello?” I called. I could just see another couple around a curtain, looking at me wide-eyed in silence. “Hello?” No response. I closed the door and had another contraction.

I opened the door again and the nurse was walking in. She helped me into a bed by the triage entrance and strapped a monitor around my belly so we could hear the baby’s heartbeat. I lay on my back and listened and breathed through contractions and rested when I could. She checked me and said I was only dilated to 4. “It’s gonna be a long night if I have to labor on my back like this,” I told David. At this point, the contractions were coming on top of each other. One regular one, a few seconds pause, then another bigger, longer, more intense one. Then a few minutes reprieve. It was awful. I was already exhausted.

Worse, the baby’s heartbeat dropped during every contraction. Try as I might, I couldn’t will them to go any faster so he could rest too. The nurses decided an IV might help, because dehydration can affect baby’s heartbeat. “Are we just having babies in triage?” I asked. Having seen hospital beds in some of the hallways on our way to L&D, I wondered if they were using the delivery rooms for other patients so COVID-19 patients could have more space. The main nurse laughed; I don’t think she understood what I was asking.

Then she suggested I roll onto my right side to see if it would make a difference for the baby’s heartbeat. She had to help me; I was too deep in contractions to move on my own, but I was thrilled to be able to shift positions. I’ve never liked laboring on my back.

As soon as I rolled over, something changed. Everything became more intense. I had to really focus on breathing so I wouldn’t tense up with each contraction. I blew big raspberries and closed my eyes and tried to relax as much as one can when one’s body is trying to forcefully expel another human. Every ounce of me was focused on being calm and open. It would be okay, I told myself, because a) I’d done this before and b) David was right behind me. I was facing away from him but I just knew he was there.

Spoiler: he was not there. Another nurse had pulled him out of the room to sign some more paperwork. I’m glad I didn’t know that.

Because suddenly I was pushing involuntarily. “I’m pushing!” I yelled to the nurse. “Hang on, just hang on,” she told me, but I was like, “No you don’t understand, this baby is coming NOW, I’m pushing and I can’t stop!”

And then there were several nurses all down by my feet because I was yelling with each contraction and there was nothing else to be done but catch a baby. “Can you turn toward your back and open your legs?” they asked. “You have to help me! I can’t move!” I cried. At some point David appeared by my side. A big nurse coached me calmly, “His head is almost out, give me one more big push.” As the next contraction came, I heaved with all my strength, and his head was out. “Good! Now with the next one, give us another big push. He’s almost here.” Another big heave. That was all it took. He was here.

The big nurse lifted my giant purple baby up and he was silent. “Please cry baby. Just give me a little cry. Come on baby. You can do this,” I pleaded. They rubbed him and scooped goo out of his mouth and pounded on his back, and after the longest minute of my life he croaked and gasped and wailed.

“That’s a good boy!” she declared, rubbing him with a warm towel and handing him gently to me. I just held him close, my body wound up with adrenaline, my mind in shock. It wasn’t quite 3 AM. All I could think about was how that other couple across the room, who had gotten there before us, had just listened to me give birth to an enormous baby. “Sorry,” I whispered their direction as the nurses rolled us out to an actual delivery room to wrap things up.

I don’t remember nursing him, although I’m sure I did. At some point they cut his cord and helped me deliver the placenta. Honestly, it was all kind of a blur. They didn’t take him to be weighed or cleaned up for a while, though, which was fine with me. Everything happened so fast, my brain was struggling to process it all. I kept trying to count his fingers and getting it wrong. If you’d asked me at the time, I would’ve sworn he had six on one hand. (He did not. He just has REALLY big hands.)

When the on-call midwife finally showed up, we were happily snuggled together and mostly clean. “You look great for having a ten pound baby in record time!” She gave me one or two little stitches, congratulated me, and told me she’d check on us the next day. One of the nurses helped me into the bathroom to rinse off and put on a clean gown, and then we were wheeled to a recovery room to spend the night. David curled up on the recliner, baby was swaddled up tight in his bassinet, and we all slept for a few hours.

I don’t remember when we named him, before or after we slept, but we agreed on Luke Joseph pretty quickly. Because he’d come out so fast, his whole face was bruised dark purple. (One of the original nurses nicknamed him Bruiser, which I thought was funny, but for some reason it never stuck.) Because of the bruising, he had jaundice, so the pediatrician on call was very cautious about sending us home. He insisted we visit our pediatrician within a day or two to check Luke’s bilirubin levels. Because he was so big, he had to have a lot of heel pricks to check his blood sugar. Thankfully that was not an issue. If we’d had blood sugar AND bilirubin issues, I think they’d have kept us another day, and I was dying to get out of there.

Other than that, the nurses mostly left us alone. I think they were trying to limit contact with patients as much as possible. The women who brought me food were sweet and cooed over the baby, but nobody stayed long. It was nice, because they didn’t interrupt our naps or feedings, but it was awfully lonely. Especially after David went home. It was just me and Luke from Sunday around lunch til Monday afternoon. Late Sunday afternoon, David picked us up outside the front entrance, and we hurried home to meet the big kids.

I still have a lot of feelings about the whole thing. Long as this is, it’s a highly edited version of the story. A lot of it is just too personal and vulnerable to share here. And given the choice, I probably wouldn’t have done any of it this way. Speed birthing a giant baby? In triage? In the middle of the night? In a global pandemic? At my age? Thanks but no thanks.

But Luke made it here, safe and perfect and huge and wonderful. He’s been such a sweet addition to our family. I truly couldn’t ask for more.