Our Birth Story
Our daughter, Eloise Lucille Shindel, was born on Saturday, April 11, at 11:03 pm. Here is her birth story.
On Friday, April 10 (my due date), I went to my doctor's office early for a membrane sweep - something that can kickstart labor but is not guaranteed. As soon as we left the office I began to feel cramps and contractions, but I knew since a membrane sweep is a cervical irritant, it could have been nothing, so I didn't get my hopes up. We went back to the coffee shop - Elliott had to work and I didn't want to be too far from him - where I began to have intense contractions. I breathed through them for a few hours, then went out to walk on the trail by the shop to see if movement would help with the pain. It was unwise of me to go alone, because about half a mile in, the pain worsened and I had to turn around and go back. The return trip took me twice as long as the trip out, with several stops to lean on a tree and breathe through a contraction. Once I got back to the car, I drove to pick my brother up from school and drove us both to my parents' house, where I laid down and tried to rest, but was woken up frequently by the intensity of the contractions.
Elliott and I headed home once he was off work, where I sat on the labor ball and we began timing my contractions. I tried to sleep, but by midnight the contractions were close enough together and intense enough that we decided to go to the hospital. Once there, I was checked for progress and we discovered I was dilated to 3 centimeters - double what I had been at my appointment that morning, but still not enough to be admitted. The triage nurse advised us to walk around the unit for an hour to try and make progress, and after that I had progressed to a 4. Another hour of walking later, though, and I hadn't gotten any further, so we were sent home with a confirmation that yes, I was in early labor. The nurse gave me a shot of morphine to allow me to sleep through the contractions for awhile.
I got about three hours of sleep when we got home, then Elliott's mom came over and made us breakfast. She and Elliott went to the grocery store for a little while, and my mom came over to help us get things ready. Around 1:30 I laid down to try and nap, and managed to get a couple hours of sleep. When I woke up at 3:30, my water had broken and then we knew it was go time. We loaded up the car, made some calls, and headed back to the hospital. The triage nurse confirmed that my water had broken and we were admitted. I had not progressed past a 4, so the delivery doctor recommended we start pitocin. This wasn't exactly part of our birth plan - but neither was the back labor. I wasn't sure I could handle another several hours of painful back labor, so I was considering getting an epidural anyway. We agreed to the pitocin and a little later, the epidural.
From about 7:30 p.m., I continued to labor with the epidural, except when we had a problem with the pump/drip and I didn't have pain meds from 9 to 9:45. At 9:55 my labor nurse called the doctor in and I pushed from 10 p.m. until Ellie was born at 11:03. It was incredible. Pushing was the most empowering experience of my life; it was terrifying and exhilarating and the hardest work I've ever done.
Elliott was the best labor partner I could have asked for. He walked me through everything and was right next to me the whole time - except when he was going out between contractions to get me ice and water and whatever else I asked for. In my moments of insecurity and doubt, my few seconds of "I'm not sure I can do this," he encouraged me and reminded me of why we were there - why I was working so hard and what we had to look forward to.
When the doctor laid Ellie on my chest, my whole world cracked wide open. They say that giving birth changes you and they say it's a kind of mind-altering experience that you can never really recover from, but in the best way. It's beyond what I can describe, and I know it must be a completely different experience for each mother. I couldn't stop crying, and I was a totally new kind of content. It was wave after wave of gratitude and peace and relief and responsibility and if you had asked me to then, I would have lived in that moment for the rest of my life. She's incredible. She's a miracle. And over the last two and a half months, my love for her has, impossibly, grown.
First Impressions of Motherhood
In the days following Ellie's birth I wrote down a few of my first impressions. I'll share a few of them here.
My center of gravity has shifted completely. The weight of the world has simultaneously been lifted and placed on my shoulders.
Every ache, every pain, every whirlwind of emotion during the last nine months proved to be entirely worth it, a thousand times over. I would have endured much worse for her sake.
Over the first two weeks of her life, when we were home getting to know each other and learning how to be a family, the whole world was contained in our little house and I never wanted it to change. I would stay in that miraculous little cocoon forever.
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