February 16

Understanding the events of this day seven years ago is just a little more meaningful if we consider again my original granola-style birth plan: me and the midwife listening to music and generally keeping me relaxed while I walked around the labor and delivery ward getting ready to dilate to 10 and give birth to my baby. That was the original plan. Reality proved to be a much greater challenge than I had expected.

Reality was me in bed with a mag sulfate IV to keep my blood pressure in check, a baby monitor on my belly, and a blood pressure cuff around my arm at all times. Reality was pretty uncomfortable and on my third day in the maternity ward, I would grow tired of it all.

I woke up that morning at 6:30 am, when the nurse flipped on the light in my darkened room to announce that the baby was showing some distress after each mild contraction. Though the pitocin wasn't causing much in the way of contractions, the midwife was on her way to get the show on the road. At 8 am, the midwife arrived to break my water. And she had a new plan: they would crank up the pitocin to get the contractions going and at around 10 am I would receive an epidural. That would allow them to take me off the mag sulfate, because the epidural would take away the pain and help to lower my blood pressure. We'd have a baby today, she said.

The combination of breaking my water and increasing the pitocin had the desired effect and I started to feel some real contractions. At 10 am they wheeled me to the labor room to wait for the nurse anesthetist to start the epidural. I was contracting pretty regularly at this point and though I was tired, I was also excited. The anesthetist numbed my back with lidocaine and tried to put in the epidural. The trick with an epidural is that you have to hold still ----- even through a contraction ----- so that the block can be inserted. It's tricky. So tricky that she tried 4 times without success. At this point, I politely asked if we could take a break. It was 11:30. I was still on the mag sulfate, the drug that makes you feel like you've just swallowed a six-pack, so it took all my powers of self-control to keep my self-control. The anesthetist left. We were all pretty frustrated.

A new anesthetist was summoned and she did the job on her first try (my fifth!). However, in the excitement, as the epidural was turned up and the mag sulfate was turned down, the mag sulfate wasn't turned downed fast enough and my blood pressure plummeted as did the baby's heart rate. The last thing I remember is my midwife saying that the baby's heart rate was down to 40. Normal is 180. I passed out and the next few hours were a blur.

When I next joined the party, it was nearly 4 pm. The sun was setting and a snowstorm was coming in. The midwife explained what had happened and said that the epidural was still in but had been turned off. I was still on the pitocin. They wanted me to dilate to 5 and then they would slowly turn up the epidural, while lowering the mag sulfate. No one wanted a repeat of the afternoon's events. And to keep track of the babine, they had inserted a monitor in his head. I was more chained to the bed than ever.

Let's just say that getting dilated to 5 wasn't the best time that I've ever had in bed, but I managed and by 7:30 the epidural was working it's magic. But I was too tired to stay awake, so I slept on and off that evening. By 10 pm, I was dilated to 9 and getting close to being ready to push. The problem was that I was so physically exhausted that I wasn't sure I could deliver the goods. Literally. The midwife kept reminding me to stay awake.

By 11 pm, I was dilated to 10 and ready to push. At that point, it seemed that dozens of people joined me in the room, all of them trying to keep me awake and pushing. And push I did. But guess who was having none of it? Stubborn and willful from the start, my boy.

By midnight there was still no baby was on the scene.