Kumquat is here! The unabridged birth story of the baby born on the stairs

*Disclaimer - there is quite a bit of delivery/physiological detail in the below.  Also this is a pretty long read.*

I was due on April 14, and boy was I ready to have the baby by then.  If you had asked me I was pretty impatient for my first born (Kumquat as we called her) to come.  I was hoping that she would come without any medical interventions (including natural induction methods) which is sort of not typical me.  I was previously one of those ‘epidural all the way’ girls as I have a low threshold for pain, but somehow I thought I could try.  I had hired a doula (my birth coach Lauren) and had studied up on hypnobirthing to increase my chances of a natural birth.   I wanted to have a birth in the hospital – if I wanted to do a home or a water birth I would have had to change obstetricians which I did not want to do.

Up until the 13th there was no indication that Kumquat was coming out any time soon.  On the 13th I went to the doctor and he said that I had bloody show after I had my cervical exam and I was all of 1 cm dilated, so I was due to have the baby any time over the next week.  I was happy that it seemed pretty imminent versus having to wait another 10 days.  The rest of the day there was no show and I was a bit impatient about that.

Overnight I had felt some belly tightening (as I had over the last few nights) but nothing that seemed like ‘labor’ – an activity I was assured I would know I was in when I was in it.  I thought my water had broken as I relieved myself but that was a false alarm.

On the 14th I woke up around 7:30 (when Matt did) and had noticed I had some blood, kind of a 1st day of a period blood.  It was red and some was in the toilet and I thought that it was supposed to be pink or brown.  I called Lauren around 7:50 and she was not concerned about the color or the volume as I had described it.  She said labor seemed like it would be soon (the next day or two) but to go about my day as if I were none the wiser.

I made myself some breakfast, a yogurt fruit shake with flax seeds and took the last of my antibiotics (I was at the very end of a mycoplasma infection), a pregnancy vitamin and a probiotic pill.  I wanted to call my best friend Nicole in Boston to catch up so I headed upstairs with my mobile phone (our bedroom is on the top story of a 3 story house).  I was debating going to pregnancy yoga but decided to just read in my room.  My mom and our domestic helper Imee were in the kitchen (on the ground floor) preparing some typical Korean post baby confinement food in advance of baby coming.  Just as a reference, it is difficult to communicate between the floors of our house, and our house next door is doing a full renovation which means 11+ hours of relentless day drilling. 

8:43AM – after settling in my room I felt like I had to pass motion (this is a term I wouldn’t use normally but is the euphemism used almost exclusively at the hospital I just discharged from).  I went to use the toilet and I felt like something exploded and the toilet water was gray with gray bits in it.  Maybe that is my water breaking?  Hmm, I need to call Lauren and ask her about that I thought to myself.  Then I suddenly felt really crampy/awful.  Ah, this is labor!  Indeed I knew.  Something was clearly amiss though.  I could not call Lauren.  I could not go downstairs for my mom.  I went from zero to a thousand with that one trip to the toilet.  Somehow I managed to call Matt and told him he needed to come back home as I was in labor.  I was having contractions constantly.  I felt the urge to pass motion constantly.  I turned on the hypnobirthing CD.  It was really quite amusing in retrospect – I was trying to focus on breathing and relaxing to the colors of the rainbow as I am wailing and on all fours.  I was oscillating among being on all fours on the bed (not easy to get up on the bed), being on all fours on the bathroom floor, and sitting face back on the toilet so my head would have something to rest on.  I was still trying to convince myself that this was not pain – it was surges as per the Hypnobirthing nomenclature – but I was thinking if this was to go on for 8 hours (as most first time mothers labors do) I would definitely need to look at medication.  This was so intense I knew I couldn’t call Lauren because I would not be able to have the beginning of a conversation with her. 

9:20AM – where the hell is Matt?  His work is 15 minutes away but he says on the phone that traffic is really bad.  I know I sounded desperate because I am.  Ten minutes later he shows up and I am on all fours on the bathroom floor and there is blood splattered all over the toilet.  I am mentally incapable at this point yet notice but am unable to mention his shirt is buttoned wrongly.  He calls Lauren and says that I am in labor as I am moaning in the background.  My contractions blur into one superlong event.  Lauren had suggested before this morning to time the start to the peak of the contraction – well where is the peak?  It is just super strong and intense – not a wave ‘peaking’ at all.  Lauren thinks the baby is in the wrong position - which is why the contractions are super short and intense.  She wants the contractions to get longer – closer to a minute or 90 seconds each.  She suggests during the contractions that I wiggle Kumquat out of her position on all fours and also raise my left leg on the bed (with my right leg still on the ground) and wiggle her out by shaking my hips (sort of a hokey pokey move).  Raising my leg on the bed is rather difficult.  We try this a few times and luckily I have a bit of a reprieve, maybe 30 seconds between contractions (Matt has this iPhone application that times the contractions- the contractions were actually 15-20 seconds long and every minute apart).  I am wailing for 15-20 seconds and Matt is coaching me to breathe which is impossible during a surge.  I hang on to his chest trying to do the hokey pokey contraction maneuver and I tell him to take his shoes off as if this is somehow important (I am absolutely delirious at this point and am having difficulty standing). Lauren suggests to Matt for me to put a sanitary pad on to measure the amount blood coming out but I want nothing to constrain me and my continual need to pass motion.  The repositioning does not seem to work as the contractions do not get longer and I feel something coming down.  Matt calls Lauren and she suggests that I clean my hands and feel what is down there.  I do this on the bed and there is something and it feels like a knob.  As I have never been in labor before I do not realize that this is the head.  I cannot talk to her anymore so I pass the phone back to Matt. I am a crazed woman in labor.  My mom comes in at some point (she has heard my wails from the kitchen over the construction noise at this point), sees me on all fours and tells me I need to go to the hospital once the contractions are 5 minutes or less.  Matt and I are unable to explain where we are (with the contractions already being a minute apart) so we ask her to run a bath in her bathroom as I reason that this will help manage the intensity.  At this point Lauren asks Matt what I want to do and I decide we should go to the hospital and forego the bath.  Matt calls the emergency line of the hospital but they have to call him back.  Lauren is on her way to our house so we could all go to the hospital together. My mom comes in, Matt packs the rest of my things, he puts a dress on me and we head downstairs.  Imee meets us at the top of the stairs and Matt is leading me downstairs by my hand and arm with my mom holding on to my other side.  Matt asks if I am ok and I respond with an emphatic “NO.”  I ask if we can go back upstairs but am unable to walk up.  As we make our way down I stop and squat and he says that he sees the head and that the baby is coming, as Imee asked incredulously “The baby is COMING?”.   I am helped onto the 2nd floor landing and continue (instinctually) squatting.  I do not even remember pushing.  Matt reaches out and catches the head, then just like textbook the rest of the body waits, twists 90 degrees, then comes out.  Matt has our baby in his arms.  Baby is looking at us, we are looking at her, baby is not crying but is alert.  The pain of the actual delivery does not even register, as I am delirious and maybe high on my own endorphins.  I see that there is a lot of blood and membrane and mucus in a pool on the wooden floor below me.  Everyone lays me down on the landing, lying my head on the duffel bag intended for the delivery room.  Imee and my mom clean up the pool, the baby is cleaned up, surprisingly pink, wrapped up and put on my chest.  The cord is still attached and the placenta is still inside.  At this point Matt is calling an ambulance, then Thomson (the private hospital I was planning to have the baby in) call him back and they dispatch another ambulance.  Nobody bothered to look to see what time baby was delivered, as we are all in shock about having just delivered the baby on the stairs – we have since decided the delivery time was 10:29 AM as Matt was on the phone with Lauren when the baby was born (and had to put the phone down to catch the head) and this is the time that she tracked from that call.
Lauren arrives ten minutes later. She tells us that she called Thomson ahead to get a room prepared but all the delivery rooms were full so if we went to the hospital I would have likely not delivered in a normal room anyway.  She asks us to check to see if baby is a girl and in all of the commotion we forget to check that.  Baby has passed a motion and is ok.  I ask Lauren if I will need stitches and she says it looks like I will, which surprises me as I feel no tearing pain at all.  The first government hospital ambulance arrives twenty minutes later.  We decide that we will wait for the Thomson ambulance to take me to the hospital there but ask the first ambulance if they can check me out and wait till the second ambulance to come in case I go into shock or something.  They check my blood pressure and I am fine.  Half an hour later the Thomson ambulance arrives.  A nurse and midwife come in and ask if Matt wants to cut the cord.  Despite having just delivered the baby he wants nothing to do with the cord.  The nurse and midwife cut the cord but leave the placenta inside me.  I am led down the stairs and can walk some but am gurneyed the rest of the way to the ambulance in front of our house.  I ask for shoes which Imee packs for me.  Baby, nurse, midwife and I ride in the ambulance together.  Lauren drives my mom, and Matt drives alone but cannot find his car keys.  I am uncomfortable with the milder contractions due to the placenta still being inside me. 

We arrive at the delivery room before 1PM (I guess the room that I wanted with the bathtub inside has turned over since the morning).  Lauren is there already and baby is placed inside the room when I arrive.  Shortly afterwards my obstetrician shows up.  He makes a joke that he and Lauren are redundant in cases like mine.  He delivers the placenta (which has now been there for 2.5 hours post baby delivery) and stitches me up, which is slightly uncomfortable due to the initial local anesthesia.  I have second degree tears and am told that this was pretty inevitable given the speed of the labor and delivery.  I am given fifteen stitches – three layers of five, even in the muscle.  If this is the biggest issue in my delivery than I think that is pretty good.  My blood pressure and contracting uterus all seem to be ok. 

My mom is let in the delivery room which is cool – if we were to have had a normal delivery she would not have been allowed in the room during the birth and with our unexpected scenario she was right there with us.  A nurse asks when the water breaks – I tell her about the aforementioned explosion at 8:43 and she writes down that time as the water breaking.  The pediatrician comes in later and checks the baby – who just may be exposed to more cold because of the home birth but seems to be fine with all her vital signs and fingers and toes in order.  We wait a while to obtain another bed to transfer me into the recovery room. Lauren tells me I have a strong uterus and a high threshold for pain, which makes me laugh as no one (especially Matt) would have ever described me as that before.  At 3:30 the baby is weighed – she is 7 lbs 7oz but this is after 2 passed motions (one found right before she is weighed) so who knows what the actual birth weight was.  I am finally wheeled to the recovery room and realize that my belly is in more pain that I thought.  I take some pain meds in the evening (my first all day) just to help me sleep.

Lauren comes in the next morning and tells me that I had a precipitous birth.  These are births that happen in 3 hours or less from the time of the first contraction to the baby being delivered (as mine clocked in at 1:46).  Precipitous births are generally unheard of in first time mothers but can occur for subsequent births (I had never heard about this in all of my classes and research about birthing.  Even my obstetrician said that first time moms should expect an 8 hour labor as a best case scenario).  She tells me in retrospect if she had known that my water had broken at 8:43 (since I was in a bit if a stupor to relay the information at the time) she would have told me to go to the hospital right away.  My obstetrician told me that even if we did leave for the hospital the moment I started having contractions I still would not have made it on time given the time to leave the house, traffic, and the assessment at admissions (plus there wasn’t a room anyway).  So everyone who is part of the baby delivering process who is now aware of my story tells me that I need to get to the hospital the moment I start having contractions the next time.  I will definitely do that, as I feel like I should have the hospital birth experience!

Our baby Kumquat has a name now too.  Charlotte Moon Drake.  She has a nice round head for a naturally born baby thanks to her short time in the birth canal! Ours is considered an unassisted home birth since no midwife or doctor were present.  In the end I did get my natural, unmedicated birth, but just not exactly where I thought I would!  We are all back home now resting and trying to get to know Charlotte. Matt can also now add on his list of accomplishments that he delivered his own daughter on the stairs of our house!