The Story of Sassy

This is the first half of my twin birth story. Sassy and Monkey may have shared a womb for 36 weeks, and they may have had 5 hours of labor in common, but their deliveries were so completely different I can’t help but think of them as separate births. And so I’ll write and post about them separately. This is Sassy’s; Monkey’s follows.

After three weeks of hospital bedrest, I was finally being induced. I had spent the last week doing breast stimulation and pressure-point massage in an attempt to start labor on my own, with limited success. I was able to trigger contractions as long as I was massaging, but as soon as I stopped so did the contractions. But they were doing something. I was dilated to a 2+ the morning before my scheduled induction.

I spent most of that night really working on triggering labor. By 4:00 that morning I was having regular contractions, but they weren’t strong enough to be considered active labor. I was, however, dilated to a 4+. I talked things over with the nurse (didn’t catch her name) and we decided to keep the pitocin on the lowest dose because it wasn’t going to take much to start my labor. My contractions quickly strengthened and we were on our way by 5:00.

At 7:00 the shift changed, and either Nurse Lori wasn’t informed of the plan or she chose to ignore it because she started turning up the pitocin without my realizing it.

At 8:00, Dr. S came in to break my water (just Sassy's bag). I was dilated to a 6 at that point. Things really picked up, and I lost track of time from then on. Because of my blood pressure issues, I was limited to laboring in bed. I had Papa Runner turn on the sound machine to Ocean Waves and use the massage vibrator on my lower back. With every contraction, I visualized things opening—flowers, doors, gates, etc.—while listening to the waves crash and doing my best to relax my muscles. I got up to use the bathroom, and after that things really got intense. I started vocalizing through the contractions, monotone humming. I had a couple really intense ones, and then came the big one.

I had read that most women who want natural childbirth are most likely to break down and ask for drugs during transition because they think it will be that intense for hours to come. In reality, when you reach the point where you think you can’t do it, you’ll probably be ready to push in 20 minutes or so. I had that one big contraction where I said I couldn’t do it, and immediately my mind replied, “Twenty minutes, you can do this for twenty minutes!” Little did I know, transition was over with just that one contraction.

As I came out of that contraction, I looked over and saw Nurse Lori turn up the pitocin. I was appalled at how high it was now set, seeing how labor had already been established for several hours and there was no need to raise the dose. No wonder the contractions had been so intense! I looked her dead in the eye and said, “You need to turn that off!” She said she couldn’t without a doctor’s order. I said, “You need to at least turn it down.” She wanted to wait through a few contractions to see how I handled this new dose.

Just then another contraction started, and I said, “I feel pushy.” WHAT?!? She went to check my cervix and instead found Sassy’s head already crowning. Guess what? She turned off the pitocin without a doctor’s order. DUH!

At that point, I completely tuned out everything around me and just focused on what my body was telling me to do. I know they moved me down the hall to the c-section room (the one thing my Dr. insisted on with the twin delivery—he was great about allowing almost everything I wanted.) I know the nurses were yelling at me not to push, to just pant through. Lucky for them, my body was also telling me to just pant through. I’d pant to the top of the contraction, give one push that I couldn’t have stopped if you paid me, and pant down the other side.

I had thought I would want to deliver on my hands and knees, since that was my instinct with Sweetie. This time, though, my instinct was to lie on my side pulling one leg up into the air. This was good, because I have a feeling the nurses wouldn’t have been happy with me getting on my hands and knees with as fast as things were moving.

I remember hearing someone say, “Dr. S is on the phone, he’s one minute out.” Push, pop, *waaaa* there was Sassy at 9:25 am, just 5 hours from the start of the induction. Aside from pitocin and breaking my water, she was born intervention free and pain med free! She weighed in at 5lb 2oz, 17.25 inches, with APGAR scores of 9 and 9. Her birth was really amazing and beautiful, as close to what I wanted as I’ll ever get. I'm so happy to have gotten one out of four that way.