THE PREGNANCY STORY
All of my babies have
come close to holidays (I went into labor on St. Patrick's Day with Nancy and
had David on Christmas Eve). Since my due date was May 31 (and later changed to
May 29, and even later May 26), I expected this boy to come on Memorial Day or
my mom's birthday (25th) or maybe on our anniversary (28th). I never dreamed he
would come three weeks early, right before Mother's Day. But in hindsight, I
should have been expecting the unexpected, because everything about Jesse, from
pregnancy to birth, has followed a pattern of subverting my expectations.
We had been trying to
get pregnant since early 2019, but I didn’t particularly want to have another
baby in December, so we avoided March. When we got a positive test in September,
I was excited. When nausea hit hard at six weeks, I was less excited, but was still
feeling positive because nausea was a good sign that things were well. I had
hardly any nausea with David, and had thrown up every day for almost six weeks
with Nancy, so I was already thinking this baby would be a girl early on—wrong.
I spent a lot of time dry-heaving over a bucket, but only threw up a handful of
times. I ate a lot of Cheerios and milk for lunch, and began having to sneak
snacks along for myself on my outings with the kids. We spent a ton of time at
Wilkerson Farm in October and I remember not having energy to do much beyond
doing the tractor ride.
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| 10 weeks |
At 10 weeks, I felt
the baby move. I was shocked because I had never felt a baby move that early.
The Internet helpfully suggested that I might be having twins. Since twins sort
of run in my family (my mom had two sets), I asked my midwives to do an
ultrasound check around 15 weeks to see if there was only one. They did a very
basic ultrasound with a small machine and computer, and then started asking me
if I wanted to know the baby’s sex. Again I was surprised. I’d never found out
the sex of the baby before 20 weeks. But I was curious, and the midwife said,
“Well that definitely looks like a penis.” Ha ha! So we confirmed that there
was only one, and he was a boy. Since I’d been convinced that my baby was a
girl at first, it was a bit of an adjustment for me to think of myself as a mom
to two boys. I have three sisters and had always just assumed that sisters and
girls and womanhood would continue to be a part of my children’s lives. For the
first time I realized that I would have more boys in my immediate family than
girls. It bothered me a little bit, but the moment Jesse was born, I knew he
was mine just as much as any girl could have been and I wouldn’t give him up
for the world.
My pregnancy continued
to surprise me in mostly uncomfortable and inconvenient ways. I had naively
hoped that this being my third time around would be the easiest. Surely my body
was used to this by now and I could handle everything that came my way. Ha. I
began getting back pain early on, early in the second trimester, and started having
pain in my pelvic and groin area soon after, making my hips hurt whenever I
walked and eventually making it painful to even lift one leg off the ground.
That had come with my other pregnancies, but not until I was well into the third
trimester. My second trimester with David had been so easy I had forgotten I
was pregnant most of the time. Not so with Jesse.
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| 20 weeks |
I wasn’t sure how I
would make it to the end of May. When the pools closed, I took up riding my
bike since I could barely walk for a few minutes without needing to rest. Halfway
through the third trimester, I had trouble just standing long enough to cook a
meal or do the dishes. I had one episode where I was lying down in bed and
suddenly couldn’t breathe due to pressure on my ribs and lungs. I had never had
this before and had to walk around the house until Jesse settled down low
enough again that the weight on my lungs relaxed. Jesse was also the first of
my babies who somehow kicked me in the ribs and at the same time put pressure
down low on my pelvis. This made me think that he was or would be a big baby
(he was actually my smallest, but I’ll get there). I also had a feeling early
on that this baby might come early, but I squashed this thought down since I
didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of reaching my due date and not
having a baby.
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| 30 weeks |
The due date was a bit
of nightmare. I had originally told the midwives my due date was May 31 (based
on my cycle being longer than 28 days for the past few months before we got
pregnant). I was really hoping for a May baby rather than a June baby
(Matthew’s birthday and David’s half-birthday are in June). But I had been
pressured to be induced and have ultrasounds and interventions when David was
“overdue” and I didn’t want to deal with that again. So my due date started out
May 31. Then my initial ultrasounds and measurements put me at about a week
ahead at every single visit. Once I called the midwives to find out what date I
needed to get past to be able to deliver my baby at the birth center, just in
case he came early. That date was May 8. I was sure I could make it to May 8.
No problem, right?
Well, when I started
having what felt like labor pains on May 5, I called the midwives again—just to
be safe, this couldn’t actually be labor, right?—and managed to talk them into
changing my due date to May 26, which was the date one of my ultrasounds had
given me as my “due date” and technically put me JUST in the window for being
cleared to deliver my baby at the birth center rather than be sent to the
hospital. For the record, I was never once worried that Jesse was premature,
but was still surprised to even be considering that I might be in labor. I have
a bit of a tendency to put off thoughts of labor until the last possible
moment; denial is one of my coping mechanisms, I guess? The midwife told me to
try to keep the baby in until the 8th, but Jesse had other plans. I’ll just add
that even though Jesse was technically 36 weeks and 6 days (according to my
app) at birth, he hit developmental milestones for 38 weeks and didn’t have any
premature characteristics such as difficulty breathing (he came out with a very
healthy and annoyed scream). In conclusion, due dates are the worst and mine
keep screwing me over no matter what I do.
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| 36 weeks (one week and three days before Jesse's birthday!) |
THE BIRTH STORY
May 4 I remember as a
particularly good day. I had done a lot of Star Wars, May-the-4th-be-with-you-related
work stuff from home, which was fun, and then that night Matthew and I… um…
well… anyway, it was a good day. I also slept particularly well that night,
with fewer pee breaks and less discomfort than usual. May 5 started out pretty
normally, but somewhere in the morning I began noticing that I was having
contractions that I had to breathe through, and instead of wanting to eat
lunch, I was having some nausea. Then I started pooping. A lot. And still more
nausea. The nausea was a new labor symptom for me—surprised again! But the
pooping and the contractions by themselves were distracting enough to me that I
was concerned. I managed to get through my work meeting at 1 pm, and after that
called the midwives just to make sure I could deliver at the birth center so I
wouldn’t stress out, then took a warm bath to see if that would make things
calm down or go away.
The contractions did
not go away, but they weren’t very close together or very hard at that point
yet. The nausea and the pooping continued. I wasn’t able to focus on work. I
wasn’t able to eat much either, though I tried, really hard. Every time I ate,
I threw up. Once I threw up so violently I got petechiae. Finally I gave up and
just stuck to drinking juice, Gatorade, and water. The midwives recommended
vitamin C so Matthew went and got me some vitamin C powder packets. I was still
in denial—this had been a weird pregnancy, after all—but I started timing the
contractions that evening.
They were all over the
place, from between 2 minutes to over 20 minutes apart, from 30 seconds long to
almost 2 minutes long, and went on the whole night long. I got maybe a half
hour of sleep. On Wednesday, I still felt too sick to eat and threw up when I
tried. Contractions were mild and irregular throughout the day. I was too tired
to work or focus on anything, so I just lay around and tried to nap, but just
got maybe one or two one-hour naps because it was so hard for me to get
comfortable. Around 2:30 pm I went upstairs to talk to Matthew and then
suddenly fluid was dribbling down my legs. This was another new and baffling
turn of events for me. My water had always broken right at the moment my baby
was being born. I was barely having contractions when this happened. What could
it mean? We called the midwives again and they asked me to come in for a
check-up. I knew I wasn’t in active labor yet, but they did a cervical check
and I was 60% effaced and dilated to a 3. She offered to strip my membranes but
I declined—I hated the idea of interventions and the word “strip” is really
just awful, isn’t it? Since my water had broken, the midwife said she would
like for me to have the baby in the next 48 hours (obviously, we were past the “try
to keep the baby in until the 8th” advice). If I didn’t have the
baby within 48 hours, I would have to be induced.
I felt slightly stressed
about feeling like I was on the countdown clock, but was feeling so tired and
sick of the ongoing nausea and lack of sleep that I was feeling ready for labor
to just come on hard and get it over with already. At this point, I expected
things to pick up Wednesday night, and maybe for us to have the baby during the
night. At first, they did. I had regular contractions starting around 12:15 am,
and they were hard and they were consistent and they were close together. For
four hours. Then they got gradually farther and farther apart, until I was only
having two contractions an hour. I was so disappointed. Another sleepless night
and no baby. The word “stripped” was starting to sound not so bad after all. I
was so, so tired, and tried to rest during the day. Family members were worried
about the baby and kept asking me for updates. My mom called to tell me I
needed to get up and go have the baby, and I knew she meant well, but I was so
exhausted I couldn’t deal with her worrying and nagging, so I hung up on her—sorry,
Mom. Later, I found out she also called my midwife to make sure my midwife knew
that I needed to have this baby. Oh Mom. I continued to have about two contractions
(hard, labor-like contractions, that lasted about a minute) an hour throughout
the day. Eventually, after Matthew put David down for his nap, we decided to go
see the midwives again and try a few methods to get this labor thing going. I
remember having a bit of a foreboding feeling hanging over my head as we left
the house, thinking, “You know, this could be and probably is the last time
you’ll leave the house with this baby inside of you.”
We arrived at the
birth center at 3 pm and they checked me again. I was effaced 90% and dilated
to a 4, which was encouraging. My contractions, however, were still irregular.
I had one or two in the waiting room, but they didn’t feel very strong to
me—not as strong as the ones I’d had in the night for sure. And even the
nighttime ones had never progressed to the point where I needed Matthew’s help
to get through them. So it all still felt very early stages to me.
They offered again to
strip my membranes and this time I agreed. I was expecting something horrific
and painful, but I actually didn’t feel a thing. Maybe the student who did it
was just incredibly gentle? Anyway, afterwards she reported I was dilated to
between a 5 and a 6, and then they went to get the room prepped and ready for
me to hang out for a while, as they put it. I texted Sarah, my sister, to come
down at this point, still thinking in the back of my head that the baby was
probably hours and hours away, but better safe than sorry, you know?
I had a few
contractions while we hung out in the room, but nothing to get excited about.
Sarah showed up, we chatted, I drank some water and was surprised to find I was
hungry and able to eat some cheese crackers without throwing up. The midwives
suggested trying to relax to get labor going, so they left us alone for a while—maybe
30 minutes?—and Matthew downloaded Superstore season 4 for me to watch on my
phone. I watched maybe 3 minutes of it when the student came in with a breast
pump and suggested I try pumping for 15 minutes. I did, and boom—the contractions
were back. I didn’t go back to watching my show, and I stopped chatting with
Sarah and Matthew—I wasn’t able to focus on the conversation any more. The
contractions were hard and coming more regularly. I began needing more help to
get through them. The doula came and introduced herself. I liked her a lot. She
was calm and strong and encouraging and did everything I asked her to
immediately. She and Matthew both pushed on me for counter pressure and it
helped me get through the hard contractions.
Since things were
getting harder, I asked to get checked again. I remember thinking, “Hurry up
and do the check before another contraction comes—I don’t want to have one on
my back!” I was between a 9 and a 10 at this point. Crazy! At this point,
things get a little foggy. Certain memories stand out though: The student
filled up the bathtub, but the water was way too hot. I could barely stand in it
for a few seconds. I decided against the tub anyway, since they had helpfully
hung a rope for me to hold onto in the doorway, and it was easier for me to be
surrounded by people pushing on me out of the tub. They brought me a couple of
different birthing “stools” to try sitting on, and I ended up falling off all
of them and onto the floor during every contraction. Curling my body, not “pushing”
at all, counter pressure, and a warm cloth right on my lower back helped me
manage the pain, which was getting worse. I began to moan deeply and tried hard
to bring my moans low down when they went high-pitched, though I’m not sure how
much of a difference that actually made to the contraction. After giving birth
three times, in my opinion the biggest thing regulating your screams does is
that it keeps the other people in the room from freaking out as much because
they can tell you’re not suffering from a complete panic, lack of control, etc.
Anyway, they all gave me a ton of praise and encouragement when I made my deep
low moans and said I was guiding my baby out and I was doing an amazing job,
etc. I was glad nobody tried to tell me how I needed to sit or force me to
labor a certain way or that I needed to start pushing, blah blah blah. I did
most of it on my hands and knees or sitting between my knees, though I had to
have gotten up at some point so the baby could come out. My labor was low down,
not in my back or butt or anywhere else, fortunately, and I had no problem with
hemorrhoids afterwards (yay!). There was no talk of a cervical lip this time,
either.
At some point, I also
remember reaching in, feeling Jesse’s head, and getting emotional. This was the
moment I really accepted that I was giving birth and soon. It’s hard for me to
get to that point when in labor because it’s right before transition, and it’s
full of tension and fear as well as excitement and adrenaline. This had already
been such a long labor in comparison to my other labors, and I was so mentally
drained and weak and tired at this point that it was harder than even usual for
me to, in that moment, say, “I’m ready now. Come out, baby.” But somehow I did.
Then came the three or
four hard contractions, and my birthing noises got very disturbing and guttural.
I was even surprised myself by some of the sounds I made. I held back on each
of these contractions as much as I could—not pushing, not forcing, holding back
and away from the dreaded burning and tearing of the “ring of fire.” I’m so
glad I had the instinct to do this, as hard as it was, because I could tell
that the extra time I was able to buy gave my skin the time it needed to
stretch and open just enough. Around contraction four, there was a “pop” sound
and I heard somebody said it, but I knew what had happened without even looking—the
head was out. And I still hadn’t felt a ripping or burning. And I still had
never actively or intentionally “pushed.” The contractions did all the pushing
for me.
I waited for the next
contraction, and there was another pop. Shoulders and body. Then another short
moment, and another pop. Legs and feet! He was out! He was covered head to toe
in vernix (which I had never seen before—it’s like pasty, oily, white coating),
and was howling bloody murder—very loudly and indignantly. I felt that
wonderful relief from overwhelming pressure wash over me, and with it the
elation that I had not felt any ripping or burning. I hadn’t torn. I knew it
before they even checked me. It was wonderful to just clutch Jesse and feel
nothing but relief and joy in that moment. I looked at Sarah and told her “I
have a baby!” and we laughed and I asked her to take some pictures. I loved
having her there right at that moment.
After a few minutes of
holding Jesse and sobbing with relief this time (as opposed to when I sobbed
from the pain with David), I went over to the bed and delivered the placenta.
Then Jesse got to nurse a bit and we took pictures and called everybody. They
checked me and it was just like I thought—no tearing, except for a tiny 1 cm
tear that I’m convinced was already there from when I reopened my stitches
after David’s birth coughing in the night. They didn’t give me any stitches. I
felt amazing, the best by far after any of my births. What a wonderful, happy
conclusion to such a long and baffling labor that had frustrated and surprised
me at every turn. My recovery from the pregnancy felt like a piece of cake
(farewell, pelvic pain and pressure! I don’t miss you one bit!). Breastfeeding,
on the other hand, has been more challenging this time around as Jesse had a
painful latch on one side and I am, at 31, apparently too old and cranky to be
getting up every two hours to deal with engorged breasts and tender nipples and
a flailing newborn’s gums. So yep, I got mastitis after about a week and even
though I’ve recovered from it now, one of my nipples is still healing from the
first week of damage. Things are improving, slowly but steadily, and Jesse has
already soared well past his birth weight.
Jesse Valentine Covington
Born May 7, 2020
7:03 PM
6 lbs 15 oz
21 inches long
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| The Wild Bunch |
