Bathtub labor tunes!
by Adrienne Chow
My partner Keane and I sometimes do things together that maybe could have benefited from some extra planning—but things that just feel right at the time. For example, we bought a puppy that we named Tofu in November. That was how our family first expanded. We were overjoyed. Tofu was house-trained within a few weeks—it was all so easy and fun. So we bought a second puppy on January first. We named her Miso. Then our lives were turned upside down—two puppies in one household makes for extreme busyness. Due to the new responsibilities of caring for two puppies, Keane and I were intimate only once in January. My cycles are regularly thirty-five days apart. I knew when I ovulated, so I knew my due date was September 21—which was confirmed by an early ultrasound.
I knew so many things. My background is in nursing and I have also studied and practiced midwifery. I was so certain of my due date that I told my parents to fly from Ontario then. I was certain that I would have our baby and have lots of help for a few weeks. Little did/do I know.
My father is a family physician and knew that we intended to birth at home. I could sense some of his apprehension. Every day past the due date, he grew more anxious and told me to stop being my own midwife. Every day, I would reach into my vagina to strip my own membranes. Some days my cervix was easier to reach than other days.
By the end of September, Veronica, my midwife and former colleague, agreed that my cervix was ready and that I could choose to interrupt the pregnancy using an age-old German labor potion made with lemon verbena oil. On October first, I woke up at 5 a.m. and made the labor cocktail. I gagged as I drank it up. Yuck! My parents were staying in our house and noticed my labor pains at 10 a.m. Keane was showing our rental suite downstairs and wanted me to sign a ton of papers and meet our new tenants. I declined.
Brianne was the midwife on call. She came by at 11 a.m. She checked me and said that I was on the cusp of active labor. Almost four centimeters. That was the last time I saw the birthing room Keane and I had prepared. Brianne decided to stay. I asked Keane to pick up the dogs from doggie day care. My parents were nervous so they went to the Metrotown Mall via the Skytrain.
I didn’t plan on spending too much time in our Vancouver-sized watercloset (it is about five feet by eight feet) but I alternated between sitting on the toilet and being in the standard-sized jetted tub. Hurray for being only five feet and nearly one inch tall.
Keane came home and sang me three songs that he wrote while I soaked in the tub.
Bathtub labor tunes!
Then things got heavier and there was more pressure in my bum. I could feel my waterbag. Brianne came in and checked me and baby from time to time. Keane suggested that I turn the jets on in the tub. It felt good. I kept saying to myself, “I love you. I trust you. You’re perfect as you are,” to the baby. To me. To the universe. I asked Keane to call Julie, my photographer friend as well as an aspiring midwife. Suddenly, I was eight centimeters dilated. Veronica came to our house. I felt pushy. I was nine centimeters with an anterior lip. Veronica said I should get on the toilet and not push. That was hard. Repeat positive mantra.
I got in the tub. I pooed in the tub. Tub was emptied. Keane asked Veronica, “Aren’t we having a waterbirth?” Tub was filled again as I sat on the toilet. I can’t remember when, but I broke my own waterbag on the toilet with my fingers. Cool thing—clear warm fluid. I got back in the tub—so much bum pressure. So intense. I thought to try “J-pushing” from Marie Mongan’s HypnoBirthing. I almost lost it. I’d hit the wall. I almost cried. I said, “It’s so painful,” with tears in my eyes and a cracking voice. Veronica got Keane to put a towel on my asshole and apply some counter-pressure there. I wanted it over with. My hand was on the baby’s head. I could feel myself as I pushed—so carnal, instinctive, trance-like. I was in another world. It almost wasn’t me going through it—it was an Amazon-woman or something.
I birthed the baby’s head into my hands—the hair was so soft and long, the head a perfect shape. I looked down and opened my eyes for the first time since pushing. It didn’t hurt. Keane was crying—me too, it was so perfect.
We waited for the next push—about two minutes. “There’s a little hand there . . . ” Veronica said as Keane and I reached for the baby through our joyous tears. I lifted the baby to see. “It’s a baby boy!” Warm towels were thrown on us. The water was drained, the placenta birthed. Keane called my parents at Metrotown, then his parents.
Wow, baby boy Kason arrived at 3:32 p.m. Brianne declared that I was in active labor at noon. How long did I push? Maybe thirty minutes. It’s not an exact science. I didn’t feel a ring of fire. My bottom was sensing, but it was just my labia that hurt for maybe two seconds.
Kason weighed 61bs 14oz. I couldn’t believe it. How much love there is. We named him Kason because he is Keane and Adrienne’s son. “I love you. I trust you. You’re perfect as you are.”
Adrienne, Keane, and Kason.
Adrienne lives in Vancouver. She has worked as a midwife at North Shore Midwifery and currently works as a nurse with the birthing community at Burnaby Hospital.