Birth Story: Colleen Somerville

On September 18, 2014, the day after my due date, my doula and dear friend Anne and I went to Minnehaha Falls, a beautiful waterfall park in Minneapolis. I’d heard that climbing stairs could get labor going, and it was the perfect early fall day to stroll along the river and climb the stairs that lead to the water. We walked, we lunged, we hugged trees. We saw a blue heron and an egret in a dead tree together and remarked how strange it was to see the two birds together and in a tree as opposed to on water. We decided that they were my two sisters, there to encourage my baby to come out. It worked.

At 11:15 p.m., I went to bed, extremely tired from a rare nap-less day. I joked that I would go into labor since I skipped my nap that day. Whenever my mom tells the story of my birth, she laments that she had skipped her nap that day and was pissed when she went into labor.

At 11:30 p.m., my water broke.

It broke in the way it breaks in the movies. It broke in bed and in the hallway as I called down to my husband Nicholas that it had broken, and in the toilet as Anne came up from her “apartment” in our basement. It broke, and my adrenaline shot through the roof.

We called my midwife just to let her know my labor had started, and I was encouraged to sleep.

In all the reading I did about labor, it was often recommended that Mom should sleep when labor first starts to preserve energy. I find this to be the most laughable idea on the planet.

I did try to sleep. I laid down with Nicholas and was literally giggling as I felt my first contractions. We turned off the lights, said good night, and 45 minutes later decided to start packing our hospital bag since I was obviously not going to sleep any time soon.

The three of us snuggled up in the living room and watched Hello, Dolly! as I breathed through those first contractions. We watched Clue as I breathed through more intense contractions. Anne went to the gas station at 6 a.m. to get eggs as I was craving a breakfast sandwich. We turned off the tv and I tried to sleep in between contractions, which had increased in intensity. Nicholas tracked them on his phone. We were doing everything “right” for laboring at home as long as possible.

At 11:30 a.m. we left for the hospital. There had been a handful of contractions that took my breath away, and they were more frequent at this point. I was positive that I was about halfway through labor.

We were admitted and somehow Nicholas charmed a nurse into getting us a huge, beautiful labor room. He still hasn’t confessed how he did it. He says he’ll tell Josiah on his 18th birthday.

My midwife Heather checked my dilation at this point and I was at 2 cm.

There really isn’t a way to describe the feeling of hearing the news that at this point, 12 hours into labor and no sleep to speak of, that I was only 2cm. I cried. I wished we’d stayed home longer. I wished I knew how bad it would get since it seemed pretty damn bad already. I wished for sleep.

The rest of the day was spent laboring. Contractions ranged from 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. Sometimes many minutes passed between them, sometimes they piled on top of each other. I took baths and showers. Anne rubbed my hips. Every nurse and midwife who observed my laboring told me how awesome and strong I was. And though it was so very hard, I felt like a bad-ass. I had a great system for dealing with the pain, and was able to self-soothe better than I had expected. At 7 p.m. I was in the shower experiencing some extremely intense contractions, and my midwife mentioned that it sounded as though I was going through transition. That the baby was finally making his way toward the finish line.

I got out of the shower and she checked my dilation.

3.5 cm.

Fuck.

At this point the contractions were intensifying even more, and my best girl friends and I decided to take a walk. We went to the lobby of the hospital. I walked in circles around a big, round couch, stopping once a lap to breathe through a contraction. We went outside. It was literally electric. There was a lightning storm and drizzle and it was eerily hot and still. It seemed like an excellent night to have a baby.

We went back upstairs and I continued to labor. Each series of contractions sent me deep within myself. It was exhausting in away that I’ve never experienced. Yes, because of the pain, but more due to the extreme amount of concentration it takes not to lose your shit while your body slowly opens from the inside.

At 10:40 p.m., Heather checked my cervix again.

4 cm.

At this point we had all been awake 38 hours. Heather suggested a shot of morphine to give me a break. I had hoped and prepared for a drug free labor, but she explained that this would simply give me a stretch of 4-5 hours to sleep, and that I’d likely be in “active labor” (because…it hadn’t been active yet?) when I woke up. I agreed to the morphine shot and was ecstatic thinking of the reprieve it would bring.

I got the shot at 12:01 a.m. Heather assured me that it would kick in within 20-30 minutes.

At 12:45 a.m., the contractions had multiplied in intensity and the relief from the morphine was nowhere to be found. My labor, my body, my baby all ignored this medicine and continued on like a freight train. I cried again.

At 1:15am, 26 hours into labor, I decided to get an epidural.

Heather eased my hippie mind by assuring me that this was precisely the type of labor that this drug was invented for. I was able to let go of my hopes for a drug free labor and felt very good about the decision.

I’m choosing not to write about the experience of the epidural procedure in detail. I won’t soon forget it. I’ll just simply say that I hated it. It was nothing like the movies. I hesitate to say “never” about anything regarding pregnancy/birth/parenthood, but I will never get another epidural.

I will say that it took three tries for the nurse to get the IV into my hand and it was then that I found out that I am the most patient person in the world regarding getting shots. When all was said and done, it took five nurses eleven tries to get the two different IV’s I ended up having, and it didn’t bother me one bit. At one point I was cheering for the nurse in training as she tried to find the vein.

At 6:45 a.m. Heather broke my forebag of waters. Apparently there are two different waters that need to break? Who knew?

For the next 10 hours I napped, I visited with family and friends, I ate jello and drank broth. I also labored but I couldn’t feel any of it. They administered Pitocin to increase my contractions and speed up the process. I also couldn’t feel or move my legs, so an entire team of nurses had to come in and turn me over or sit me up every time I wanted to change positions. I hated the feeling of numbness in my legs.

At 5:15 p.m., my new midwife (as I’d “outlived” Heather’s shift) John informed me that I was officially dilated 10cm. For two hours we waited as my body moved the baby down the birth canal on its own. During this time, he was on a different floor checking another patient and called my room to tell me to open my blinds and see the rainbow that had appeared outside our window. Forget yesterday. THIS was an excellent night to have a baby.

At 7:30 p.m. I began pushing.

The experience of pushing was intense. It was so difficult. I pushed for 30 seconds every three minutes. Nicholas counted seconds for me as I pushed. I threw up from working so hard. I pooped and the nurses quietly swept in and cleaned up. I was put on oxygen to keep from passing out.

After two hours, John told me that I had an unusually strong pelvic floor. Yay! Which was making it hard for the baby to get past my pubic bone. Boo.

Some nurses came in and took some blood in case I needed a C-section.

John told me I had two more hours of pushing before another strategy had to be employed.

I pushed and pushed and pushed. It felt like my head would explode.

Finally, at 11:30 p.m., after 48 hours of labor and four hours of pushing, a doctor came in and informed me that we should try a vacuum extraction. However, if we pushed three times with the vacuum and the baby wasn’t born, it would lead to an immediate emergency C-section.

So, I had three tries.

I only needed one. I was fine with getting the baby out by any means necessary, but I was also stubborn and refused to have wasted FORTY EIGHT hours of labor all for a C-section.

She put the vacuum on, pulled one time, his (enormous) head finally came out, and I pushed the rest of him out on my own. Halfway through, she told me to look down, and I watched my son’s (seemingly never ending) body come out of me.

Josiah James Leeman was born at 11:53 p.m. on September 20, 2014; 48 hours and 23 minutes after labor began.

Nicholas and I laughed and cried and held our son as he cried and shivered and opened his huge, steel colored eyes for the first time. He weighed 9 lbs 6 oz, he was 22 inches long and had a 14 cm head.

Nicholas cut his umbilical chord, and he curled up on my chest.

It was the most exhausted and elated moment of my life.

I immediately requested a turkey sandwich.

My birth plan was very different from what ultimately became my birth story. It was the first of many times I would learn that planning for anything with a child is the road to insanity. But it also taught me that I can do anything. And that was something that I didn’t believe before September 20, 2014. I have my son to thank for that.