Labour.

Claudine was in labour for over 36hrs. I can barely do anything for a two-hour stretch. (With the exception of drinking wine. I can do that a lot.)

The early stages of labour started late at night on Tuesday (April 5^th). They slowed down during the day and by around 5pm on Wednesday (April 6^th) the contractions were steady but far enough apart to not warrant alarm, yet regular enough to not facilitate sleep.

Adrianne, our AMAZING Doula, came over at around 7pm to check in on us. Because despite having a mostly easy-going personality, my core nature is deeply engrained with a propensity to leap to panicked conclusions.

Conclusions like “If you sit on the toilet the baby is going to fall out.” and “I am going to have to catch this baby. I can’t catch a slippery baby” became primed in my brain. Our doula noted the timing of the contractions – that I had been religiously mapping in my very official looking app – and said it was best if we all tried to get some sleep as we still had lots of time to go.

Trying to sleep while your person, your life and your love is being slashed with all-consuming pain at uninvited intervals is difficult to say the least. But we did manage to rest and when things started to get past our comfort level around 2am, Adrianne came back over to help Claudine work through the discomfort and to mitigate my worry that a slippery baby would somehow fly out at me at any given second.

Being able to spend those hours of early labour in the comfort of our home, being coached on how to manage the pain by a caring professional was priceless. We turned the lights down low, made a comfy nest on the couch for Claudine and put music on for us to try to get some sleep in the stretches of time in between the then half hourly contractions.

Side note: It turns out that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a pretty great album to labour to. Though sadly I will probably never be able to listen to it in life again.

From the get go Claudine slipped into a rhythm and pattern. The time for her during contractions was almost Zen like in her calmness and focus. Adrianne has been a doula for over 10 years, as such she is able to sleep kneeling down (and did) I mostly sat wide-eyed, waiting iPhone in hand, to track everything into my app. I was still not totally convinced my daughter was not somehow on a direct trajectory to land at my feet at any moment. In hindsight I should have slept more.

As things began to progress we had tea and ate toast for breakfast, deciding to head to the hospital around 7:30am on Thursday morning. It is a short 10 – 15min drive to Mt. Sinai from our home, but I am pretty certain that sitting, belted in a car while your uterus, back muscles and pelvic floor are mercilessly contracting is an experience Claudine will not want to rush into again.

We arrived at the hospital and were admitted to a room in triage for Claudine to be assessed and monitored. While we waited to be assigned a delivery room the three of us walked the halls as Claudine gracefully worked through the increasing pain.

By around 10:30am we were relegated to our palatial and handsomely well equipped delivery room. The staff led us from triage announcing, “here comes the birthday brigade” along the way. I would be remiss to not take a moment to very, very highly commend all of the health care professionals we encountered during the delivery process. I honestly can’t say enough about how compassionate, professional and wonderful the staff at the Labour & Delivery ward is.

We got settled into room number 11. Number 11 is my best number. We were married on the 11.11.2011. So I took this to be a good sign.

By around noon Claudine had championed through all the increasingly rapid contractions with awe-inspiring focus and ability. It crushed me to see her in such abject discomfort. Yet I was completely amazed by the magnificent capabilities of the human body to go through so much. She handled it all with stealth, grace and poise. I was, and will forever be humbled by her.

In life you choose a partner because of the magic found in the love and respect you build together as a team. This journey shone a floodlight onto the fact that we live at the very tip of the iceberg in understanding how much more love we are truly capable of.

Room #11 had a massive soaker tub and we both got into the water later that afternoon to help with the pain. Being somewhat suspended and surround by warm water was a huge relief for me and Claudine liked it too. Kidding, it was just ok for me, but she really liked it until she got a foot cramp. Being in labour and having a foot cramp is a real double whammy.

The doctors decided to break her water around 1pm and after another 2 hours of almost constant contractions and not much progress in dilation, exhaustion started to set in. Claudine gave in to her first request for pain management around 3pm and she finally asked for an epidural. The challenge of having to sit on the edge of a bed and hold deathly still during active labour contractions, while a stranger stealthily inserts a needle into your spine is nerve shattering. The procedure is so specific and requires such a fine tuned skill set that it really made me ponder who actually came up with it in the first place and exactly how much absinthe they had consumed before thinking “Let’s insert a needle between the vertebrae into the volatile tissue and fluid around the most import nerve center of the body to inject a little temporary paralysis. Yes, that sounds like a splendid idea! Bring in the lab rats.”

Mercifully the relief was smooth and encompassing. Instead of only being able to focus on her breathing Claudine was able to smile and interact for the first time in hours. I joked with the anesthesiologist that his epidural cart should have a drinks component to it so that everyone in the room could feel a bit of relief. (I could have straight up murdered a gin and tonic at that point personally). Hopefully he takes this suggestion to hospital management.

At the time they broke her water she was 6cm dilated. They estimated it could take another additional hour per centimeter to full dilation of 10cm. From then on, and for many more hours it was a waiting game. With Claudine now unable to feel her contractions the mood relaxed a bit and we were able to eat, joke and even nap. Or pretend nap in my case. The dilation waiting game was on.

Around 3am on Friday (April 8^th) morning she was fully dilated and it was time for her to finally push.

Pushing. That is a whole other story. Why humans were set up to have such a particularly exhausting action as the chosen biological way to expel a baby from the body is really questionable. I hate to question evolution and biology but this whole pushing thing really needs a review.

Two hours later it was apparent that our baby was stuck. No progress had been made. I could sense the mounting uncertainty as the staff rallied around to get this situation resolved. The saving grace was that our baby never faltered with a strong heartbeat and active movement on the monitor. Evidentially she was as keen to meet us, as we were to meet her.

By around 5am when things started to look grim we were given the option of using the forceps to assist and if that didn’t work to then do a C-section.

Each had their own bucket load of risks and the doctor was not confident that enough of the head was available to make the forceps a success. The other concern was that if her head was restricted in passing through, her shoulders might also get stuck posing an additional issue. Forceps can also, in rare worst-case scenarios, cause facial nerve damage and skull fracture to the baby amongst a plethora of damage to the mother including 4^th degree tearing.

The other concern aired was that the C-section was now much higher risk as the baby was already so far down engaged, so it was potentially very risky both for baby, but especially for mum as excessive bleeding could happen.

Our grim options were presented in professional and very constructive ways, but nonetheless none of these options were what we wanted to hear at this very exhausted, sleep deprived late stage of the game.

At 6am on Friday (April 8^th) we were wheeled off to the operating room where the plan was to ‘try’ the forceps and then go to the C-section if that failed. Claudine’s epidural had been stopped at this point so the pain was back in full swing while everything was being set up in the spaceship like Operating Room. The lights they use in there are basically from the future.

At that point, I put on my bravest most supportive eyes, but literally hiding behind my surgical mask I was in true panic mode. At this point I was fairly convinced that the worst-case scenario was inevitable, and that that we were all going to die.

Myself included.
The end. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

At that point I decided to call off the forceps option and just get the baby out. Our amazing night nurse agreed that we should just get it done as quickly as possible.

The doctors used something called a reverse vacuum to PUSH the baby BACK UP into the uterus as she was too far down for a safe removal via C-section.

THEY PUSHED HER BACK UP. Marinate on that for a minute.

The tool for this looked like a large orange ribbed rubber handle of a heavy-duty flashlight and I have never been happier to see the blue sheet that they erected to block us from the rest of the carnage, I mean the rest of the procedure.

They asked us what type of music we wanted to hear. I jokingly said Adele – because I had been singing that to the belly for months – and within minutes there she was serenading us through this completely surreal experience.

Our baby was born at 6:27am on Friday April 8^th with a 2/9 Apgar score; meaning she was not initially too jazzed about being on this earth. They resuscitated her with the CPAP machine and from behind the blue curtain of uncertainty I heard, after what felt like the longest minute of my life, the first whimper, then stifle, then cry, then wail of veritable desire for life. At that point the cumulative exhaustion, relief and joy reduced me to sobbing tears. “Our baby is ok” I wept onto Claudine.

In the brightness of the room and the whirlwind of motion I heard someone say “come look at your baby” and I saw her face for the first time, except it felt like a million times seeing something that I always knew forever from forever. Words in my head suddenly said, I knew it was you, there you are. I have never had such an otherworldly feeling of recognition before.

My tears flooded into the eyes of the hardened resuscitation tech, our nurse and anyone else who saw me cut the cord – which incidentally was described as being like cutting raw chicken, and it was. They asked if this was my first baby and I answered a wide-eyed, yes.

They handed my daughter to me wrapped like a tight little pink burrito and I tried to show her to an exhausted, spent, almost unconscious Claudine as they finished the closing up part of the surgery. She was so completely drained and I just sat with her and showed her our tiny screaming burrito, as she drifted in and out of the drugs they had administered. We found out later that Claudine had lost a liter of blood during the surgery and her hemoglobin had plummeted. But my two superheroes had done it and we would all be ok.

As I try to recall and understand everything that happened after that it just seems like I was caught in a tornado. Frozen in the middle of every emotion in turmoil of overtiredness, shock, disbelief, elation, relief and overwhelming love for my little family. My sister had flown in and was in the waiting room when we were wheeled out to recovery, her timing was impeccable. Adrianne was waiting with her for us outside and together we sobbed in the bittersweet victory of it all. I told her I was brave because she had said I needed to be as they had wheeled us away.

The truth is that I did not really feel brave. I was terrified and devoid of any control over anything that was happening. The power of life and circumstance had swept us all away. We were blessed with a healthy outcome. But the one thing I did know was that my heart had completely splintered and inexplicably reorganized itself to make room for this new universe of love.

Averie James, you broke my heart in the best way possible.