The Birth of Malcolm Orion

The first weekend in August was packed. We had two non-optional birthday parties on Saturday and a seminar on Sunday. My mother, who was watching the girls for us on Sunday, decided that we needed a third party on Saturday evening to round things out. I was 35 weeks pregnant and game.

The birthday parties were pleasant; the kids had a good time with friends and cousins. I got to have a long talk with my sister about the new baby. The drive was a bit tiring and I was fading by dinnertime, but I chatted with my uncle and grandmother and watched the girls splash in the hot tub. After a while, I noticed that the Braxton-Hicks I'd been having all day were stronger than usual and pretty menstrual-crampy. Then I noticed a glob of pinkish mucus when I went to the bathroom and realized that I'd lost my mucus plug.

I tried to act casual, not wanting to worry anyone. By bedtime, I was having good early-labor-seeming contractions. I `fessed up to Garry and my grandmother and retired to my mom's basement bedroom to try to get the girls settled for the night.

Garry stayed chatting with my mom and grandma for a while and the contractions got stronger. By the time he came down, they were getting uncomfortable. I was nervous because I was only 35 weeks along and two hours away from my midwives. We talked about it between contractions. Garry was confident that we could handle things if the baby came that night in my mother's basement and that the baby would be fine. I tried to imagine driving home in labor and the prospect was ghastly. I was relieved when the contractions faded.

The next Monday, I noticed a trickle of fluid down my thigh. It smelled suspiciously like amniotic fluid. I called Kate (the midwife) and she had me come into the office for an evaluation and Group B strep screen. Kate thought I smelled like amniotic fluid, too, but couldn't get scientific verification, so she put me on rest with strict instructions not to have the baby until August 19th. She also put me on infection watch. So, at 35 weeks, I was faced with the prospect of five weeks of no exercise, no baths, no swimming, no sex, no orgasms and no fun.

The leak, if leak it was, resealed and caused no more trouble. I continued to have irregular contractions, especially at night. This was all very reminiscent of my labor with Morganne, where I'd had dilating "false" labor for 4 weeks before my water broke and labor got serious. I was prowly and restless and unhappy with the prescription for rest.

Garry was wonderful through all of this. He took on most of my duties so I could rest and was encouraging and supportive.

I woke up at 5 am on the 19th with some pretty good contractions. They continued to happen during the day, but by evening hadn't become really serious. Garry and I decided to try to coax the baby out. We did all the things that are supposed to bring labor on and the contractions did get stronger. However, by midnight I was getting tired and decided to try to get some sleep. A few hours later, the contractions slowed down and stopped.

This pattern continued to for the next three weeks, with two or three serious false alarms a week. I was dilating slowly and the baby was starting to feel very big. The baby was also posterior, which made the contractions less pleasant and less effective at the same time. I had a feeling that, if the baby would just rotate to anterior, my labor would pick up and the baby would come. I posted inquiries about rotating posteriors to the pregnancy newsgroup and the parenting mailing list and received several suggestions. I tried the exercises. They gave me mammoth contractions, so that was out before August 19th. The baby sometimes rotated to anterior, but it soon rotated right back.

I was increasingly uncomfortable. The last month of pregnancy is always long, but this one was longer than the other two had been. I had a hard time sleeping, except during the day. Fortunately, Garry's schedule allowed me to get several naps per week. I was starting to joke about being pregnant until December.

All through the month of August, we heard a screech owl hooting outside at night. We had never heard an owl in the 8 years we'd lived in our house. The owl would start hooting each night around 10:00 and continue until around 5:00 each morning. I listened to the owl's hoo-hoo-hoots as I paced the living room at night, waiting for my baby to come. The girls would lie in bed each night, listening for the owl's faint hoots to begin.

My lunar due date was September 8th and the calendar due date was September 9th. By the end of August it was starting to look like I'd go to my due date. Kate thought I'd go early since I had gone early with both girls.

September 9th dawned without even a hint of labor. Garry was a whirlwind of activity that day, cleaning out closets and shelves, vacuuming, washing cars and working in the yard. I watched Garry and the girls through all this domestic activity, thinking that Garry was acting like he was going to have a baby that night. I sensibly took a nap.

We went out to dinner that night, but I wasn't able to eat much because the contractions were making me feel nauseous. The girls got restless, so I took them outside to run around. There was a man out there with two little girls who started giving me advice on handling labor. I looked up at the still-Full Moon and thought that the baby might well be on its way at last.

We got the girls bedded down and finished our nighttime routine. I got up to prowl, as was now my routine. My friend Tane had sent me email earlier that evening with yet another recipe to rotate posterior babies. It involved getting into a complicated position and then relaxing, so I decided to go to bed in that position and try to sleep. After about 10 minutes in the position, the baby rotated. 5 minutes later I felt a strong twinge and thought my water had broken. I tightened my pelvic muscles and managed to make it to the toilet before the amniotic fluid came gushing out. It was 12:25 am on September 10th.

I casually told Garry my water had broken. He'd already guessed by my mad rush to the bathroom and the long gush that followed. The water was clear, with no meconium and I was having no serious contractions. We debated calling the midwives. Throughout this pregnancy, they had encouraged me to call early, since third births can be fast. Also, I knew that Kate's back was acting up and that her partner, Roxanne, might end up being the midwife for this birth. With the girls, I had waited to call until labor was really serious. I decided to call Kate and check in and to call Nancy (who was coming to be with the girls) as well and warn her that we'd probably be needing her in a few hours.

Kate was bedridden with back spasms. We were both disappointed that she would miss the birth. She gave me all the appropriate phone numbers and suggested that I call Roxanne and let her know what was going on.

I called Roxanne. I still was only having mild contractions and I had no idea how long this labor would be. We decided to have her go ahead and come up, but to take her time.

We tried to rest. Garry rubbed my back, which felt good. We got dressed and went outside to look at the moon. It was foggy, but a pleasant night to walk outside under the trees, anyway. The contractions picked up a bit, but they were still lightweight. We heard our friendly owl hooting.

I soon got the urge to go in and nest. During early labor, I like to scrub counters, tidy up the living room and do other mindless domestic chores. I started tidying and Garry set to work on the dishes (the size of my belly prevented me from doing the dishes). Roxanne and Donna (the assistant) arrived in the midst of our merry domesticity, looking a little surprised at our energy. It was about 2 am. I'd known Donna for many years and it felt special to have her assisting at my birth. She used to work with my chiropractor and had been pregnant with her daughter Roxy when I was pregnant with Morganne. We used to compare bellies. I remember seeing her newborn daughter for the first time right before Morganne was born. Donna and I were both in Nursing Mothers' Counsel and had lots of similar interests.

Donna and Rox brought in all of their equipment and got set up. I showed them where all the important supplies were and watched as our living room was transformed into a birthing room. As the various pieces of midwifery equipment popped out of the suitcases, I thought, "No way will we need all this stuff.". We visited for a bit and Rox examined me. I was a nice, open 2 centimeters and Rox verified that the baby was anterior (a huge relief to me). The heartbeat was fine.

It was a tad discombobulating to have company so early in labor. In my previous two births, I had enjoyed laboring alone until I got to the point where I needed help. I showed the midwives into the bunkbedroom for a nap and sent Garry back to bed to rest, too. I tidied some more, but without much zest. Garry's whirlwind cleaning hadn't left me much to do. I knew I was puttering, waiting for the labor to get serious enough to require my full attention. I was restless. I read my email and sent Tane a note thanking her for the posterior recipe and letting her know I was in labor. I arranged cushions on the living room floor and tried them out.

The contractions got stronger, bit by bit. I had planned on doing an enema, but the baby's head was too low for me to get really cleaned out. I struggled with the apparatus for a while (maneuvering an enema bag around a 9 months pregnant belly takes a lot of dexterity), but didn't make much progress.

The attempts did cause my contractions to pick up, however, and I was soon at the phase of labor where I run around the house like a herd of elephants. This is apparently a phase of labor that is uniquely my own. Apparently most laboring women don't have the urge to run around at about 6 centimeters. I wonder why not. It always seems to help me.

Garry heard the running (or perhaps a bellow or two) and figured that I might be ready for his company. I'd been eyeing the shower longingly and had been thinking about waking him up. I grinned at his telepathy and was soon soothing my back with the warm water from the shower.

While I was in the shower, the contractions picked up. I started bellowing, then mooing and then I started "singing". The singing reminded me a lot of a didgeridoo. I imagined Aboriginals with painted faces serenading laboring women with didgeridoos and saw images of sand paintings depicting labor.

It was getting difficult to stand during contractions, even with the help of my friendly shower wall. I tried kneeling in the bathtub, but the hard tub made my knees ache. I decided it was time to go back to the living room and get serious about having this baby.

Garry helped me out of the tub and turned the water off. I dried off slowly, laboriously, between contractions that made me sing. The Aboriginal images kept coming and the didgeridoo noises really seemed to help. The contractions were getting harder to handle and required my full attention.

Settled in the living room, I labored on all fours, leaning my upper body on the couch. Around 5:00, I started getting concerned that the girls might wake up because of all the noise I was making, so I asked Garry to call Nancy. Nancy dove into her clothes and came right over.

During the singing, Donna came out to see how I was doing. She observed me from the kitchen through a few contractions. She was trying to be subtle, but I could tell that she was trying to gauge how far along I was. I was getting sweaty and decided to shuck my bathrobe, a sure sign that the labor was picking up.

Nancy arrived in the middle of a contraction right after I'd shucked my robe. We told her that she could sleep in our bed, so she'd be available for the girls. When Matisse woke up to climb into bed with us that night, she found Nancy there and snuggled up close to her and they slept all cuddled up.

I was still running between contractions. Our house is designed so that I can almost run from the living room to the bathroom between contractions. So I was doing my running and singing and thinking that this was my hardest labor yet.

Roxanne appeared about 5:30. I was still able to talk, and even laugh, between contractions. We talked about all the home-born kids we knew. The contractions were starting to get very hard to handle. My back ached considerably during contractions, even though the baby was definitely anterior.

The breaks between contractions were getting shorter and, to compensate, the contractions were getting longer. I might have 10 or 15 minutes of solid, back-to-back contractions, and then a 5 minute break. Over the next hour, the breaks pretty much disappeared. I tried to ride the contractions and to remain a good sport about the whole thing, but it was definitely getting tough.

My last two labors have given me a taste of what a pitocin-induced labor would be like. With Matisse, the contractions lasted 5 minutes and then I'd get a 5-10 second break. With this baby, during the last two hours, the contractions were 10-20 minutes long, with perhaps a 30-second break in between them. During the last hour, I only had three breaks and they were all much too short.

At 6:30, I decided that I'd love an epidural, some Demerol, anything, and was not (at the moment anyway) glad to be home where it wasn't an option. I wasn't sure how much more of this I could take and I was pretty sure that I couldn't handle it if it got more intense. But I did, of course. The contractions got more intense. Roxanne kept saying, "Good. Come on, baby!", which was kind of nice, because it helped me focus on the fact that there was a baby coming and kind of not, because she seemed to cheer on the worst contractions the most and I didn't want them to get any more intense. Toward 7:00, I decided I was leaving. I stood up and screamed, for the first and only time in any of my labors.

That one was the crescendo.

I had been wanting to push for the last hour and a half, but my cervix wasn't open enough to let the baby come down. I'd been suspecting that I had a lip of cervix blocking the baby and I guess Roxanne was thinking along the same lines. She asked me if I wanted her to check to see if there was a lip of cervix and whether she could help massage it back, but I was too deep in contractions to imagine sitting still for long enough for her to check me.

At about 7:10, I felt myself go complete and I thought, "Oh good, now I get to push and it will stop hurting.". I was wrong. This was a big head trying to come down and pushing wasn't fun, either. Instead of feeling delicious progress with every push, I pushed and the head didn't budge. I complained a bit that I wasn't making progress and then plumpfth!, the baby's head came through the cervix and partway down the birth canal.

I reached up and felt to see how much further we had to go and smiled. I could feel the head, just through my cervix. I went through some more non-productive pushing and then was rewarded with another good solid advance. I reached up and checked again before reporting "Progress!" to everyone. The midwives laughed.

I told Garry that it was time to wake the girls up and then focused on getting this huge head out without tearing. I was pretty sure that I `d tear anyway, but I wanted to try to ease it out. I thought wistfully of my beautifully intact pelvic floor and how much I'd liked it. I forced myself to go slowly, to try to ease the baby out through my muscles.

The head came through and the body followed immediately. I caught this slippery, silvery little being who opened its eyes and started crying right away. I'd never caught a baby before and remembered Garry telling me how slippery the girls had been. He was right. I tried to get a grip on this eel-slick being so I could bring the baby up onto my chest. I got my hand under the bottom and between the legs, feeling, to my shock, a soft round bump between his legs.

"Just what we wanted." said Garry, who had noticed, too.

"A little boy." I said, stunned.

I looked at Garry for a moment, knowing that he had wanted another girl. I'd had some hints that this one might be a boy, but had tried to convince myself that I was wrong.

Then I had my loud, yelling, pink son up on my chest and covered with towels warmed in the oven. He was crying so lustily that Roxanne never even opened the new bulb syringe. The girls came to see their new brother. Matisse's eyes were round like saucers. The baby's Apgar was 10/10, a perfect little boy. He cried for quite a while, telling everybody who would listen his own version of his birth story.

I held this enchanting new being as I finished up the business at hand, glad to get rid of the placenta (the midwives noting, approvingly, that it was a big healthy placenta, all in one piece and with a nice centrally-attached cord). Roxanne checked me for tearing, noting a few rug burns, but nothing serious.

I got the baby started on the breast and sat in the rocking chair, watching the clean up. I was tired and sore and amazed, glad to be in my own home with my own sweet family. Nancy and the girls had missed the birth, running out when they heard the baby cry. The post-birth ritual felt cozy and familiar. Garry and the girls had some new family bonding time while I took a shower to clean off the birth gook and I bolted my breakfast. The midwives got packed up and on their way to the next adventure (Roxanne did a lot of births the next few days). I took the baby back to bed.

I was extremely sore, much more so than I'd been with Matisse. I couldn't roll over from my back to my side, which made maneuvering in bed and getting up extremely difficult. It was hard to get out of chairs and difficult to walk. The baby would start to cry at night and it would take me five minutes or so to roll over, sit up and pick him up. My muscles didn't obey me well. I would try to tell my body to execute a simple maneuver and my body would just lay there, inert. If I ever lay flat on my back, I would be stuck there, like a turtle, waving my legs in the air. Very strange, not something I noticed with either girl.

I feel very fortunate to have birthed three babies without having been subjected to drugs or surgical incisions. I'm very lucky to live in an area where women can get skilled help to deliver their babies at home. After my son's birth, I marveled at how unusual it is for an American woman to deliver three babies with an intact pelvic floor and an intact abdominal wall.

I did start my postpartum exercises the day he was born. After Matisse, I had regained my muscles quickly and I feel that those first few postpartum weeks are important to muscle recovery.

When the baby was a day old, I noticed that he had several problems sucking. He didn't open his mouth very wide at latch-on, he had a receding chin, he tended to cup his tongue rather than bringing it down over the gum line and he had a bit of a flutter suck. I was glad to have all my breastfeeding counseling experience. I started working on suck training with him right away (primarily getting him to open his mouth wide) and he learned how to suck effectively within the first week. I never did have sore nipples, although I definitely would have had I not treated his problems.

He slept an awful lot, which surprised me (neither of the girls were big on sleeping) and worried me a bit. Breastfeeding counselors know that fussy babies get their needs met; it's the "good" babies who sleep their lives away and happily fail to thrive. I made sure that he nursed whenever he was interested (despite our loving family's attempts to comfort him). At three weeks, he's definitely grown.

The girls squabbled a lot right at first over who got to hold them. We had to set the timer for their turns and I sometimes felt terrible about taking a hungry baby away from his doting sisters to nurse him. For the first few days, we contemplated naming him either "Baby-Who- Sleeps-Well-for-the-Benefit-of-His-Grateful-Parents" or "He-Whom- Older-Women-Fight-Over".

We all had our adjustments to make. Matisse picked a lot of fights with her sister the first week. Morganne at almost 7 was able to do a lot with the baby. Not quite 3 year old Matisse wanted to be able to carry him around the house, too. It was hair raising to see her pick him up and stagger around under his weight. She picked him up every chance she got, refused to let go and once jumped down from the changing table (taller than she) while holding him.

Morganne lorded it over Mati a bit and basked in the importance of her helper role. This didn't make Matisse's temper any better. Morganne also responded to her sister's hostility in kind. Garry had wanted a girl and was disappointed at first that our little guy was a boy.

I was a little overwhelmed by the demands of three children and somewhat surprised that I wasn't more overwhelmed.

We took our time finding a name for our new little guy. Many of the names we liked didn't suit him and we couldn't agree on the ones that did suit him. People react strangely when you don't have a handy label ready for your child. Many people are uncomfortable when you say that your week old baby doesn't have a name yet. Others nod, understanding that you're waiting for the right name.

I enjoyed having a little being in his label-free state (although it gave me flashes of anxiety). I knew that, after he had a name, he would no longer quite seem like the pure being-ness that he seemed in his newborn label-less state. We called him "Little Guy" and "Mister E." and it didn't seem awkward for him not to have a name.

The major adjustment to having a little boy came at diapering time. You have to be careful when checking a little boy's diaper because they have all this equipment hanging around and you might snag it with your fingernail. Girls are smooth and you can just stick a finger in without fear of hurting the baby. You also have to be careful taking the sodden diaper off that you don't also grab a little penis. And then, once the diaper is off, you have to clean all around the scrotum. There are a lot of folds on a little boy's bottom. It surprised me.

I was warned that little boys had wild hoses and were likely to squirt every which way, but our little guy's penis is pretty well-behaved. He does have a tendency to pee on his socks, but both girls did that as well.

I never thought much about circumcision before I had a little boy. My attitude towards possible circumcision was a lot like my attitude towards episiotomy ("Get that scalpel AWAY from my perineum/baby!"), but mostly on principle.

Having a baby son, though, I can't imagine why anyone ever came up with the idea of cutting off a piece of a little boy's penis in the first place. My little guy's penis is perfect just the way it is and certainly would not be improved by having a piece of it cut off. It seemed inconceivable that anyone could look at an innocent baby boy and choose to do him harm.

The baby's first visit to the family doctor was another familiar ritual. Dennis looked the baby over, pronounced him "perfect", gave me a mini-lecture on taking it easy for the next few weeks and weighed and measured him. At 5 days old, the baby was up 1 ounce from his birth weight and was 20.5" long. His head was a hefty 38.5 centimeters. By three weeks of age, he was comfortably wearing hats that Matisse hadn't grown into until she was 4 months old.

I got a lot of sleep, which was nice, but I definitely didn't bounce right back. I was very sore for the first two weeks postpartum and bled a lot, too (well, a lot more than I did with Mati, not a lot by obstetric standards). I had had images of being able to mostly care for the girls by the time the baby was a week old, but it was over two weeks before I felt I could handle the minimal daily childcare. My grandmother came to stay when the baby was a week old and I really needed her help. I was bleeding a lot at the time and feeling light-headed. So, instead of spending a lot of time visiting with my grandma, I spent a lot of time resting while she kept up my house and took care of the girls. I had planned on doing a lot more myself and having more help from Garry, who was unexpectedly busy at work.

When our little guy was two weeks old, we decided to get serious about naming him. We used consensus to arrive at his name. These are some of the labels he narrowly avoided wearing:

These were the finalists. Erasmus was a favorite of both girls. Morganne really liked Yorick and Ryan. Garry was pushing for Avatar, Darwin, or Merlin. I was pulling for Adlai, Ashley (an especially peril-fraught name since Garry's son has a half-sister named Ashley), or Tasman.

We named him Malcolm Orion when he was 15 days old and made it official a week later. He looks like a little Scottish chieftain. Sometimes we call him Mack or Malachi for short, but mostly he's just Malcolm.

Malcolm's a month old now and has grown amazingly fast. He's wearing size 6 months clothes. He's a pretty good-natured guy.

We haven't heard the owl hoot since Malcolm was born.

Each baby seems easier. Morganne was like a huge tidal wave sweeping over our lives. Matisse was a smaller wave and Malcolm barely a ripple. Our house feels fuller now, and our hearts have more than enough love for these three little people who have come to join us planet-side.

They get big so fast.