We got pregnant when our first son was a little over a year old. We decided to move into a home with this little Indian family named the Singhs...a little family in a huge house, and they rented the basement apartment to us. It was much more affordable than the apartment we had been living in, but as soon as I moved in, the smell of the curry that permeated the house made me nauseous for a time. Still, it was a peaceful place to live, and we were grateful to have it.
I was still working from home for the National Restaurant Association in Washington, DC, but our insurance coverage changed. We couldn't use the midwife center in Bethesda anymore, like we did with our first birth. This time, it would have to be in a hospital.
I prepared for this birth like I was preparing for war. Our doula/childbirth teacher helped us put together a birth plan for the hospital. We tried to think of every contingency, and what to do under every circumstance. We still had a midwife for care, but this time she worked under an obstetrician, who was going to be in charge, and I felt very threatened at the prospect that this birth wouldn't go like I hoped.
As soon as the contractions started, I took some castor oil in orange juice. Nasty stuff, but we'd been told it would speed labor along, and that's what we wanted.
We went to the hospital, and I got dressed in those gross hospital gowns...and we waited. The doctor came in for an examination, and said we were only an inch or two dilated. Breathing a warning, mostly to himself, that I would be induced if I didn't make progress, he left.
And then Sam and I went to work.
Mostly we walked around the silent hospital floor. It freaked me out - the thought that all these laboring women, and no one was making noise. The nurses laughed at me a little, oh look at that, that's cute, that pregnant lady going for a walk. I was the only one.
To my mind, it was not cute. This baby was coming out, and it was coming out today, without pitocin!
Between the walking and the castor oil, my labor sped up significantly, to the point where I couldn't walk anymore. I managed to get back to the bed, and I held onto a bar over my head and squatted, so gravity could help me. The nurses didn't know what I was doing, but they humored me. They liked my birth plan, thought it was cute, and then did what they wanted.
Eventually it worked, and the OB who was threatening me with labor induction I didn't want never came back. My oldest girl was born about 6pm, again, after about six hours of labor.
Pam was a champion, protecting me from too many interventions from the hospital staff and reminding them of our birth plan when I couldn't speak, and Sam again made a great and supportive coach. She was a beautiful baby, blond and pink this time, and I loved her right away. The nurses marveled, saying they'd never seen a women give birth without medication before (which set all of us on edge, while we smiled and laughed outwardly).
At some point, I don't remember when it happened...I think it was while I took a shower (showers after birth still remain a highlight of life for me), but the baby went away. We asked where the baby was, and Pam told us the nurses took her down to the nursery and gave her a bottle of formula and put her under a heat lamp.
This was almost exactly NOT what we wanted to have happen. I realize they thought we wanted a rest, but I wanted my kid. Sam was furious, and we got our heads together with Pam about what to do - these sorts of things had to be done delicately, since hospitals are very political places.
I got in a wheelchair, even though I didn't need one (hospital rules) and we went down to the nursery to look at my baby. I wasn't allowed to hold her, I could only touch her with my hand. Sam went to the nurses and asked about how we go about getting released, which ruffled some feathers. They wanted to keep us both for days, but we were determined to get out of there as soon as possible. After signing a stack of release papers an inch thick, and promising the hospital we wouldn't sue them if anything went wrong, we got our baby and got out of there.
When I got home, something did go wrong about a day later. I started cramping in a way I couldn't relax through, like I'd been trained to do with my labor contractions in our birth class. We went to the emergency room, and it turned out I'd come down with 'childbirth fever' - something that could have killed me if I'd been living in the age before antibiotics. The doctor said it was from a nosocomial infection - from a bacteria I could only get IN a hospital. I took a round of antibiotics, and it went away.
I went home, simultaneously grateful for modern medicine, and newly determined to avoid it again at every opportunity I could.
Where did her name come from?
We named our girl Aubrey, from the song by 60's group Bread. Sam had listened to it as a kid, and really loved it:
Her middle name was Anatalia, to honor my mother. Anatalia is also her middle name.
I would have sued the hospital for hurting my mommy! >:(
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