It was the final day of my fortieth week of pregnancy, and my excitement was swiftly morphing into anxiety as I wondered, “What’s taking so long?” and began googling unhelpful, worry-perpetuating phrases like “risks of going past your due date.”

Eventually, I realized that fretting was doing nothing to kick-start labor and willed myself to relax. I worked out. I took Zelda our giant schnauzer out for her daily walk and listened to my favorite birth story podcasts[1]. I watched YouTube videos on hypnobirthing and The Bradley Method to prepare my body and mind for the forthcoming labor. I prayed. I went to the gym with Ben and played basketball (Horse, specifically) for an hour. I took a long shower and talked to my baby boy and told him we were going to work together as a team to bring him into the world the following day, at which point he started squirming and I knew that he’d understood.

Why was I so eager to deliver him the next day? Well, it would mean his birthday would be on 3/14, which of course is Pi Day, as well as Einstein’s birthday! Given my husband Ben and I are mega nerds, it seemed like the best day of all to have our firstborn ;-).

I went to sleep, woke up around midnight desperately needing to pee (as usual), and about an hour later, I felt an intense menstrual cramp. Only it wasn’t a menstrual cramp. It was a contraction, one that began in my abdomen and wrapped its way around me, gripping my lower back where it lingered for approximately thirty seconds.

At first, I was giddy with excitement. This contraction meant baby boy was on his way! But after a few more contractions over the course of an hour, I started thinking to myself how much this already sucked, and it had only just begun…

I woke up my husband and asked him to apply counter-pressure to my back whenever the contractions reached their peak. After each contraction, we’d fall asleep for another fifteen to twenty minutes, only to be woken again when another contraction rose like a tidal wave and forced me to put months’ worth of labor prep into practice, mostly by focusing on deep, diaphragmatic breathing and relaxing my entire body one muscle group at a time (both of which are easier said/read about than done…).

Early labor progressed slowly and steadily from 1 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. During that time, I tried my best to rest in bed, knowing that active labor would require every last bit of my mental and physical energy. Ben encouraged me to get up every few hours to walk around, get some sunshine outside, and eat a bite. I was perfectly content for seven- to ten-minutes intervals, at which point a new contraction would surge and I’d either lean over a tabletop or counter and call Ben over to press on my back, or I’d drop to my hands and knees and concentrate on working with, not against, my body’s sensations.

When it became tougher to stay on my side in bed, I turned on Christopher Robin on Netflix, knowing the voices of Piglet, Pooh, and the rest of the Hundred-Acre-Wood gang would comfort me, even if I wasn’t nearly as interested in being entertained as I was in breathing, visualizing, and “relaxing” through what felt like the fiercest period of my life.

At around 5:30, the contractions were five minutes apart and lasting well over a minute. We called my midwife, Erika, and she said she could tell by how well I was talking on the phone that it wasn’t quite time for me to go to the birth center.[2] I told her I’d stay at home a while longer, hung up, and half an hour later I was shaking uncontrollably on the kitchen floor, praying to God for strength and endurance and a whopping, nonstop overflow of grace.

Unbeknownst to me, Ben called Erika and put her on speakerphone. She listened to me breathe through a contraction and I told her about the sudden bouts of shaking. She said, to my surprise, that she was getting “excited.” The active-labor phase was approaching, and it was finally time to go to the birth center!

We arrived at Birth Center Stone Oak[3] at 7:20 p.m. Erika checked me (aka, gave me a vaginal exam) and I was 90 percent effaced and five centimeters dilated (babies are pushed out once the mother’s cervix is 100 percent effaced and 10 centimeters dilated). Had I been less effaced, I would’ve been sent home; I can’t tell you how relieved I was when she said I could stay!

Next step, she escorted us to the birth suite of our choice, the largest one in the back of the center, and helped Ben unload all our stuff, i.e. toiletries, essential oils, diffusers, a Bluetooth speaker, cellphone chargers, snacks, electrolyte drinks, baby gear, a change of clothes for baby and me, and three books on natural childbirth in which I’d written notes, thinking Ben could read them to me if my mental game went south (I now know there was no possible way I could have paid attention had he read from one of those books, no matter how motivating the message!)[4]

 

 

I wanted so badly to curl up on the comfy queen-sized bed, but Erika reminded me that being vertical, with feet in a squat stance, was the best way to encourage progress. She rolled an exercise ball up to the bed, told me to have a seat and spread my legs, then stacked two pillows on the edge of the mattress and suggested I lean onto them.

I remained on the ball for maybe fifteen minutes, but when Erika saw I really wasn’t enjoying the position, she guided Ben and me into the bathroom and told me to sit backward on the toilet. She put the pillows on the back of the toilet, placed little yoga blocks under my spread-out feet, and Ben squatted behind me so he could resume his uber-important job as Chief Counter-Pressure Provider. This position was infinitely more comfortable, in my opinion, than the one on the exercise ball, but what I was really looking forward to, and had been, oh, for about 18 hours, was getting into the bathtub…

I was on the toilet for about an hour, at which point I felt a warm gush. Erika verified that it was indeed amniotic fluid and checked me (such a lovely euphemism, right, mamas?). I was now eight centimeters dilated, which meant, well, I didn’t really know, but Erika seemed to think it warranted relocating to the tub, and I wasn’t about to object; bathtubs are the happiest places on earth (yes, happier than Disney Land/World! I’m convinced a Bathtub World would give the Disney parks a run for their money ;-)).

Around 10:30 p.m., I was sitting in the tub, leaning against a cushion, legs in a butterfly stretch in front of me.[5] When that got old, I turned over onto hands and knees, which is the position from which I let out the loudest, longest, most primal yell of my life. The pushing stage had introduced itself, and this introvert wasn’t ready to make new acquaintances…

After a few more out-of-control, banshee-esque noises, Erika crouched beside me and told me to look into her eyes. “Hey, Mama,” she said. “Hey. Calm down. You won’t be able to talk tomorrow if you keep yelling like that. Don’t lose control.” She coached me on my breathing, reminding me of all the things I’d read and learned over the last nine months but had obviously lost sight of during the course of this marathon.

 

 

During a few of the pushes, the world around me tunneled. I informed Erika, and she said I should get out of the hands-and-knees position because my face’s close proximity to the hot water was likely responsible for my lightheadedness. Slowly, I returned to the original position with the soles of my feet together, and a few minutes later, Erika could feel our baby’s head. “Feel your baby, Mama,” she said. “His head’s right here.” She guided my hand to his head, and after a few more contractions 25 minutes’ worth, all told), his head was out, followed shortly by his body.

 

Words fail to describe the feeling that accompanied Isaiah’s birth. The emotional feeling, that is. Physically, I was shaking (due to fabulous hormone shifts), crying, smiling, laughing, praising God aloud for graciously shepherding us through the happiest day of my and Ben’s life. I looked down at the baby, then up at Ben to see he was smiling the sweetest, proudest, most love-filled smile I’ve ever seen, joyful tears glistening in his eyes. I just kept repeating to our son, “Hello, my love. Hello, my beautiful boy. Thank you, God… Thank you, Jesus…”

I’d wanted to delay clamping and cutting the umbilical cord until my placenta was delivered, but because I was shaking so badly I asked Erika to go ahead and do it. She positioned the scissors for Ben, at which point Isaiah lifted a hand and with surprising strength, tightly gripped the scissors’ handle. Ben joked, “He likes tools like me!”

Ben took off his shirt and carried Isaiah over to the bed where he sat with him for some time while Erika helped me out of the tub and made sure all was well with me. Thank God, all was. With all of us.

Another midwife, Yesenia, had come in during one of my primal yells to help Erika with the various post-delivery procedures. She covered me with a sheet and held onto my shaking legs, which helped a great deal, especially as I was overwhelmingly eager to hold my baby to my chest. Shortly after, and with a little encouragement from Erika’s hands, my placenta, aka Isaiah’s former condo, was delivered.[6] I then held Isaiah to my chest so breastfeeding and mother-son bonding could commence.

Around 1:30 a.m., Ben texted my mom and stepdad who were staying at a nearby hotel, waiting to hear the news. They hurried over and stayed for just under an hour, long enough to hold Isaiah a while and watch Erika and Yesenia weigh and measure him, do the Apgar test and get his sweet little footprints.

We stayed in bed with Isaiah until 3:00 a.m. while Erika stitched up a small labial tear (which made peeing super-duper fun for a week!) and went over all the after-care instructions with us. Then, around 3:30, Ben brought in the car seat, buckled up our newborn, and Erika discharged us.

We walked out into the crisp March air, got into the car, and headed home, our hearts bursting with thankfulness, awe, and most of all love – a pure, all-consuming, unconditional, indescribable love. The feeling is still just as strong today, ten days later, as it was the night Isaiah was born, and I don’t expect it will ever wane. It’s been a tremendous gift to experience what I’ve heard so many parents tell me, namely that the love you have for your child is unlike any other.

It’s rare that you meet someone and know, at once and without question, that you would lay down your life for them in an instant, that you would literally do all the epic-sounding things the love poems talk about to see them, talk to them, care for them, or, if needed, save them. I’m reminded of this line from one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride:

“[We] are joined by the bonds of love. And you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.”

 

It’s a godly, God-given love we feel. It gives us a glimpse of our Creator’s love for us, a love so immeasurably deep and unfathomably vast that it moved Him to give up His only Son so that we might be saved from the curse of sin and eternal separation from Him.[7] The love I have for my son far outweighs the hours of labor that brought him to us. I would go through it all again in a heartbeat, as I know Jesus would suffer and die all over again for you and me, even if we were the only two people on the planet. He loves each one of us infinitely more than any parent loves his or her child, and that, to me, is an astounding thought.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Isaiah’s birth story. If you have any questions for me regarding anything I talked about, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You can do so via:

Twitter: @dandersontyler

Instagram: authordianatyler and dianaandersontyler

Facebook: facebook.com/dianafit4faith

 

 

[1] Birth in God’s Presence and The Birth Hour

[2] If you arrive to a hospital or birth center too early, that is, you haven’t progressed enough yet in your labor, they’ll send you home! And let me tell ya, contractions in the car are no bueno…

[3] For those of you in the San Antonio area, I cannot recommend this birth center highly enough!

[4] If you’d like to see a picture of one of the Birth Center Stone Oak suites, click HERE!

[5] If you’re wondering about my attire, let’s just say I was dressed to match my baby boy. I’d come into the birth center wearing a loose-fitting pair of pajama shorts, a sports bra, and a CrossFit 925 tank top. Over time, every last article was discarded as the animalistic part of my brain took over. It felt great!

[6] Erika told me the placenta is often called the “Tree of Life” due to its uncanny appearance. Go Google it – it’s true!

[7] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16