Introducing Benjamin Rhys Malone

Benjamin Rhys Malone

Born: Sunday, July 26, 2015

Time: 9:39 AM

Weight: 8 pounds 12 ounces

Length: 19.5 inches

I see so many similarities and differences in the labors and deliveries of my three children. Benjamin’s was my quickest and perhaps easiest labor, but if I had to rank them, I’d still say Adelaide’s was my favorite (if you can have a favorite tale of pain and baby birthing). But since I love birth stories, here’s Benjamin’s story.

I’d been having contractions on and off for nearly two weeks (sometimes with more intensity and frequency than other times) and I waited expectantly for true labor to begin at any moment. For nearly a week, I thought every day was going to be THE day. With each passing day of continued pregnancy, my optimism faded. I had myself absolutely convinced he would arrive on Friday, July 24^th, but after a day of nearly constant but intermittent contractions, I still found myself pregnant by day’s end. On Saturday, my contractions stopped. My sister predicted the baby would come Sunday since she had a very similar labor with her third child. Near constant contractions, 24 hours of nothing, and then boom. Baby.  I hoped she was right but didn’t want to get my hopes up again.

We spent our Saturday together as a family. We walked to Zara’s school and played at their playground and then came home to eat popsicles and lunch. We decided to introduce the girls to Star Wars and so settled in with some popcorn and Episode IV, which the girls seemed to like. (Adelaide especially liked Chewbacca, who she kept calling a bear.) Not being much in the mood to cook, we went to Panda Express for dinner. My fortune, fittingly enough, said “Remember yesterday, live for today, and plan for tomorrow.” After putting the girls to bed, I watched some TV, took a shower, and fell into a fitful sleep.

Around 3 AM, I woke up to use the bathroom but found I was too restless to fall back asleep. I had a contraction and finding it slightly more intense than usual, I decided to start tracking them. I laid in bed for about half an hour and then moved into the living room to use my exercise ball. The contractions were definitely harder but still only 5-7 minutes apart. By 4 o’clock, I thought it was time to wake up David. I didn’t want to delay going to the hospital since I knew it would take us a long time to get the girls situated and drive to the hospital which is 30 minutes away if there’s no traffic.

David was very disoriented since he had stayed up way too late watching a movie and hadn’t been asleep long. He hopped in the shower while I went to call the on-call midwife and his sister, Fiona, about watching the girls. By 5 AM, my contractions were now 3-5 minutes apart and growing more intense but still manageable. We packed up the car and woke up the girls to drive them to Fiona’s house about 15 minutes away. The girls were excited about the baby’s arrival and Zara excitedly kept talking about her baby brother. Adelaide seemed rather distraught when we dropped her off at Fiona’s house but Fiona assured me she didn’t cry for very long.

Back in the car, we made our way to the hospital, still another 30 minutes away. My contractions had now slowed down again, which worried me since I didn’t want to arrive at the hospital only to be told I was having false labor. The contractions were more painful, but back to 7-10 minutes apart. I thought part of the problem was the fact that I was sitting down. I just needed to get up again and move around to keep my labor going.

We pulled into the hospital parking garage around 6 AM and made our way to the Labor and Delivery unit on the 7^th floor. I’d never actually been inside the hospital so I had no idea what to expect. All I knew is that this hospital (in downtown Atlanta) is one of only two hospitals in the metro Atlanta area that specialize in natural childbirths and allow waterbirths at their facilities. My midwives only deliver at this hospital and have a strong partnership with them, which is why I had chosen to work with my midwife group and deliver at Atlanta Medical Center (AMC) in the first place.

Georgia unfortunately doesn’t have any birth centers and homebirths reside in a somewhat legal gray area which is why I ultimately opted to have a hospital delivery. I’d asked them many questions about what to expect at AMC and I had thought it would be more like my birth center experience but I was quickly to discover that they would operate like most other hospitals when it came to labor and delivery—lots of “standard measures of care” and little choice.

As soon as we checked in, I was taken to a triage room where I was required to put on one of those delightful hospital gowns that don’t close in the back even though I had specifically requested in my birth plan that I wanted to labor in my own clothes. I also had to have 20 minutes of constant fetal monitoring before they’d let me go into a labor and delivery room. This was also something I didn’t want because I knew having to lay in bed for 20 minutes would slow my labor once again.

The baby’s heartbeat was strong, but the nurses were concerned that my contractions were still so far apart. But when they checked me, I was already dilated to a 7, maybe an 8 and so they finally believed me when I said I just needed to get up and move around. It had been well over 30 minutes by this point and I was anxious to get into the labor and delivery room and into the promised birth tub to continue my labor since my contractions were slowly but surely growing more painful.

The on-call midwife, Gloria, finally arrived to deliver some bad news. Even though I had been told that my Group B strep results had come back negative from the lab, it looked like the results had been input incorrectly and my labs actually showed that I was positive for Group B strep and would need antibiotics. I had strenuously hoped to avoid this outcome since I hate getting IVs with a passion. I was positive with Zara and I found the IV to be the most painful and annoying aspect of the delivery. I was negative with Adelaide and really loved having the freedom of movement.

I also knew that getting an IV line with the antibiotics also had the potential to slow down my labor as well. They also need to deliver the antibiotics in two doses over 4 hours and I knew we didn’t have time for that. It was creeping closer to 7 AM by this point and for some reason, I was confident that this baby would come around 9 o’clock. After a lot of back and forth, Gloria finally agreed that we could decline the antibiotics (even though it wasn’t the “standard of care”) and that we would have to monitor the baby closely after birth for any signs of infection.

Finally they said we could move into a labor and delivery room and that they’d get a tech to start setting up the birth tub for me. But as with most things in hospitals, it seemed to take forever for anything to happen. Our 20 minutes of fetal monitoring had stretched to nearly an hour. The tub was inflated and brought into our room, but they wouldn’t start filling it up until the baby’s heartbeat showed enough “variability.” That took another 10 minutes of constant fetal monitoring (which they begrudgingly let me do standing up) while I powered through a few stronger and more intense contractions.

They started to fill up the tub but the water was barely even lukewarm. We cranked it up as high as it would go, but it never got very hot. They suggested moving to another room but I knew we didn’t have time for that. I just wanted to get into the tub for the last part of transition since I was already starting to feel small urges to push and my contractions were getting much more painful. Once the tub was finally filled, I climbed in and it provided some instant relief to my labor pains.

By now another midwife, Anna, had joined us. I’d only met with Anna once before (she’s one of the back-up midwives and not one of the regular members of the group) but I had really clicked with her at our one and only office visit and I was glad that she was there to help with the birth. Gloria popped in and out, but it was Anna who sat with us through the rest of the labor and who ultimately delivered Benjamin. 

We sat and chatted as my contractions came and went. My water hadn’t broken yet and my contractions, while definitely feeling more painful and intense, were still quite spaced apart. I was able to relax quite a bit between each one and as we neared 9 AM, a slight but not insistent urge to push started to accompany my contractions. The water was quickly cooling down. I knew I didn’t want to deliver in the tub, and I was just about to get out when a phlebotomist came into the room to draw some blood. (Why, I have no idea but it’s good she was so fast at her job.)

After she left with her vials of blood, I asked for help getting out of the tub so that they could check my cervix once more and possibly break my water and start pushing if the baby was in position. Anna checked me and was surprised to discover that the baby’s head was sitting low and that I was fully dilated. On the next contraction, she broke my water.

With both Zara and Adelaide, I felt an intense and sudden urge to push. With Benjamin, I just felt “pushy,” like I wanted to push but I could hold off if I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have this huge urge to push so it came as a surprise to both Anna and myself that on my next contraction, I started pushing and Benjamin just came flying out. With both Zara and Adelaide, I would push for a minute or two, rest for a few minutes and then push more. With Benjamin, it was five minutes of continuous pushing and then he emerged.

Since Anna had just broken my water, I was lying on my back when the pushing started, which was not the position I wanted to deliver in. I tried to turn around on the bed to get into a squatting position or on my knees but Benjamin was coming out too fast and I couldn’t maneuver differently. I just had to keep pushing in the most awkward position ever and suddenly, I had a baby. I couldn’t believe how quickly he arrived. He was born at 9:39 AM, so my prediction that he’d be born during the 9 o’clock hour came true.

I had a first degree tear which required a few stitches (ugh) and I held Benjamin and tried to nurse as they delivered the placenta and stitched me up. It wasn’t until then that we learned that because I’d declined the antibiotics, we might have to stay at the hospital for 48 hours in order to monitor Benjamin and make sure he didn’t have an infection. We finally got the pediatrician to agree that if his 24 hour cultures came back clear, we could leave after a day. There was no way I was going to stay in the hospital for 2 days. I went home 4 hours after giving birth to Adelaide so the thought of staying even for 24 hours was torture.

We were taken down to our new room in the mother’s wing and I passed an especially boring 24 hours. I know some women seem to enjoy their hospital stay because they can lay in bed and just focus on the new baby, but I was itching to get home. The hospital bed was uncomfortable, the food was terrible, and I hated being constantly poked and prodded every hour or two. Why does my blood pressure and temperature need to be taken so frequently, especially in the middle of the night? The only bright spot was that my room had an amazing view of downtown Atlanta.

In any case, we finally got the go ahead to leave the hospital around 4 o’clock on Monday afternoon. I am incredibly thankful that Benjamin’s birth—despite some of the set-backs and inconveniences—went so smoothly and that he came so quickly once true labor got started. Overall, it wasn’t a bad experience but if I ever get pregnant again (which I don’t intend to) I think I’m ready to do a homebirth. No more hospitals for me. But at least I got to come home with one cute little boy.

Edited to Add: I realize this post may come off as whiney especially since my complaints are so minor in the grand scheme of things that could have gone wrong. I recognize my extreme privilege in having such easy and uncomplicated deliveries when so many other women have much different experiences. But I did want to document all the events of Benjamin's birth and my feelings surrounding it which includes a fair bit of whining.

Welcome Adelaide Grace Malone!

David and I are pleased to announce the birth of our second daughter, Adelaide Grace Malone. She was born at 4:28pm on Monday, May 20, 2013 and weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds, 12 ounces (yes you read that right) and measured 21.5 inches long. It seems quite fitting that she was born on May 20th, which, as my friend told me, is National Strawberry Picking Day, and Strawberry was the nickname that Zara gave her while still in utero.

I love birth stories. Everyone is so different and unique. Zara has quite the birth story and I thought Adelaide’s was rather uneventful in comparison, but now I think it’s just as special.

I’d been having mild contractions for a week or two preceding her birth and I was getting quite annoyed that they weren’t leading anywhere. I had already dilated to 3cm, but I knew I could walk around at a 3 for weeks before labor actually started. Still, I just wanted her to be born already and I hated getting my hopes up every day, only to go to bed that night still pregnant. The night of the 19^th, I started having some contractions which I felt were maybe a bit more productive. David helped me relax and get to sleep, but I fell asleep thinking that maybe I’d have a baby by the end the next day.

Monday morning, I woke up at 6am, feeling remarkably well-rested for the first time in weeks. I discovered that David was still asleep next to me. He typically wakes up at 5am so that he can leave by 6am to make it into work by 7am. I woke him up to tell him the time and he said that he had been too tired at 5am and had just wanted a little bit more time to sleep. He got up to shower and get ready for work, while I went in search of food and drink. Almost as soon as I stood up, my contractions came back. Contractions of early labor—at least for me—feel like mildly annoying menstrual cramps. They aren’t painful, just a bit uncomfortable. In many ways, this is extremely nice, but the lack of pain often leads me to erroneously think that they aren’t doing anything. I had these type of crampy contractions with Zara for several hours after my water broke and they did nothing to dilate my cervix. So while I didn’t mind these contractions, I wasn’t very convinced that they were useful either.

I started timing my contractions on a handy phone app I downloaded while David was in the shower. They were growing more consistent in frequency, though still not in intensity. After getting Zara, who had just woken up, situated with her morning juice and cereal, I hopped in the shower while David finished getting ready for work. He was ready to leave, but I asked him to stay a little bit longer just to see if my contractions kept going. I really didn’t want him to drive all the way to SLC, if I was just going to have to call him to ask him to return.

By 9am, I’d been having contractions for three hours, so I called my midwife to let her know what was going on. I was still convinced that nothing was actually happening but she told me that I could come in to the PG birth center to get checked if I wanted to. My midwife has two birth centers—one in Pleasant Grove (PG) and one in Provo, which she just opened about 4 blocks from our house. We planned on giving birth in the Provo birth center, but she was doing pre-natal appointments in PG that morning, so we had to drive the 20 minutes to PG if we wanted to get checked. We got the car all packed with our bags just in case and I called around to a few friends to see if one of them could watch Zara. Luckily, my friend Elise got back to me just as we were about to head out, so we stopped by her house on our way to drop off Zara. (Luckily, I’d already packed a bag for Zara so we had that all set to go.) Elise had already said she could watch Zara for as long as we needed and wished us luck.

We’d only been to the PG birth center once so we got a little lost on our way there but we finally made it into the birth center and waited to see Heather, the main midwife (she has multiple midwife assistants/students). When she finally checked me, I was surprised to learn that I was now dilated to 6cm. I really didn’t think my contractions had been doing anything so it was really encouraging to hear that we were making progress. Heather instructed her assistants to head down to the Provo birth center to start getting everything ready for us (it takes them about an hour to get the tub and other things set up) while she would finish up the prenatals in PG. She told us to go grab something light for lunch (as it was around 11:30 by then) and meet them there.

We hopped back in the car and drove back to Provo and stopped at Café Zupas to get a lunch of salad, soup, and sandwich which we then took back to our house to eat. The baby was still a little posterior so Heather had recommended that I get on my hands and knees to encourage her to get in the right position for an easier delivery. So we ate lunch at Zara’s little toddler-sized picnic table, which was just the right height for me to eat while resting on my knees. After eating our lunch and grabbing other incidentals, we headed to the birth center where we were greeted by the midwives at around 1pm. They were still setting up in the birthing room, so we went off to another room to get back on my hands and knees. They checked the baby’s heart tones again (all good) and my cervix (now to a 7cm) and we went back to the exercise ball and hands and knees.

My contractions seemed to decrease in intensity on my hands and knees which was slightly frustrating to me, since I wanted to continue to feel like I was making progress. My contractions were still just kinda crampy and not terribly painful and Heather said that if this was what labor was like for me, then most other women would hate me. She suggested that we could use a breast pump to help ramp up my oxytocin (the natural hormone Pitocin mimics) which helps increase the intensity of contractions or she could break my water. We opted to try the breast pump first and they helped me hook up to an electric breast pump and get that going. It did help pick up the intensity of my contractions but still, we weren’t getting anywhere (or so I thought). Heather’s sister, a massage therapist came in at one point and gave me a short little massage of my back and legs which was incredibly relaxing.

A little before 3pm, I asked Heather to check me again and possibly break my water. I was hanging out at around an 8 so we opted to have Heather break my water which was almost guaranteed to speed things up. Almost immediately, my contractions kicked it up a notch to the painful contractions I had remembered from Zara’s birth. I got into the birthing tub at that point, which helped to relax me a bit as I tried to breathe my way through contractions. As much as I had wanted to feel more intensity from my crampy contractions, the contractions of real, active labor are no joke. It didn’t take long before I was in “laborland,” as Heather calls it, struggling—sometimes rather unsuccessfully—to breathe my way through intense contractions and manage my pain. I had one intense contraction which was quickly followed by another very intense contraction, but somehow I was able to breathe right through it, slowly and calmly. It was a nice little reprieve before a third really intense contraction knocked me over.

After about 45 minutes, I started to feel like I wanted to push but when Heather checked me, she said I was at a 9 and would need to hold off for a little bit longer and not push until I couldn’t fight the urge. I powered through a few more contractions but I was starting to lose my resolve. Why in the world would I have willingly opted to have a completely natural, drug-free childbirth? It sucks. Except that I think the alternative would suck just as much, just in other ways.

But soon, the urge to push was back and Heather confirmed that I only had a little lip left, which she helped move out of the way as I started to push once again. I was rather restless in the water, I kept moving around into different positions, before finally settling on pushing from a kneeling position. I had liked being in the tub during my contractions, but I didn’t really like it during the pushing stage, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to request a change of setting and I didn’t really like the alternatives either. I didn’t want to get out dripping wet and I didn’t want to get on the bed or the birth stool so in the birth tub I stayed.

Pushing out this baby felt very different than with Zara which may have been because of the position I was pushing in or because of Adelaide’s size. I felt it much more near the perineum and I didn’t feel that my pushes were quite as effective. I was also very vocal during the pushing stage. I hardly made any noise with Zara, but I screamed a lot this time around. Karen, one of the midwife students, had to keep reminding me to use lower tones. At one point, Heather said I was doing a good job and the baby was on the way out and I called her a liar because I seriously thought she was just messing with me to keep me going. I was ready to call it quits and just give up. I pushed a few more times and her head started to crown and with one or two more pushes, she was out. I was half out of the water and Adelaide was trying to cry, so they had me stand up so she could breathe and I had to push the rest of her out. I couldn’t tell what was happening, being rather out of it by this point, but I guess her shoulders got a little and I had to keep pushing even though I didn’t have any urge to push anymore and they had to pull her out. Everyone was quite shocked by how gigantic she was. But here she was, after only 30 minutes of pushing. I did tear, but not as much as I did with Zara. 

We stayed in the water until I delivered the placenta and we cut the cord and they moved me to the bed to finish checking me. It seemed to take forever to sew up my tears (which is one of my least favorite parts of the whole childbirth process) and get me situated. They finally turned their attention to Adelaide (aside from their initial assessments when she was first born) to weigh and measure her. We all knew she was a chunky baby but we were all surprised when we discovered that she was nearly 10 pounds. I knew she was going to be bigger than Zara, but I certainly did NOT expect that. No wonder I was so miserable the last 2-3 weeks of pregnancy. I had way too much baby in me. The newborn outfits I had brought to dress her in were almost too small and the pack of newborn diapers barely fit as well.

We stayed at the birth center for several hours and, after determining that both Adelaide and I were fine, we headed home around 8:30pm. My mom had arrived to help us out and Elise had dropped off Zara at our house. Zara was very excited to meet her sister (“The baby came out of the mommy!” is her new favorite thing to say) and hold her and so far seems to be transitioning well to big sisterhood. That may change. 

All told, I had about 9 hours of crampy contractions but I was able to go about my daily life and wasn’t in too much pain and I had an hour and a half of really hard and fast labor. I don’t know how women do it if they have hard contractions for a long time. My family has a history of quick labors which is why I have not been afraid to opt for a natural childbirth experience. Despite some of the difficulties of this labor, I do not regret our choice to use a midwife, birth in a birth center, or opt for a completely natural childbirth. I loved that I was able to move, eat, and walk around my entire labor, I loved not having to be hooked up to monitors or subjected to an IV and I especially loved that at every step of my pregnancy, it was always my decision what tests, procedures and care I received. My midwife respected all of our choices and allowed me to labor and deliver the way I wanted, not the way that was easiest for her. Pregnancy and labor is hard, hard work and it’s even harder if you are pressured into doing things you don’t want to do and I’m glad that Utah offers a midwife friendly environment.

So far, Adelaide is proving to be an easy-going, mellow baby. We love her triple chins and copious rolls (oh, her thighs!) and can’t stop pinching her deliciously round cheeks. She is a welcome addition to our family and we can’t wait to get to know her and her personality better.