My Daughter’s Birth Story

“There’s no more space in there”, I say to Alejandro as I crawl into bed Friday night April 3, 2020. I am bone tired. The past 9 months have been a trying time. I launched Practice With Clara, my online studio, the same month I found out I was pregnant. Over the course of the next 9 months I gestated a child and business. I am bone tired.

By April 3rd, we have reached full term, a little over two weeks until my due date, April 21st, the anniversary of my mother’s passing. The irony was not lost on me.

At 4am Saturday morning, my water has broken…or at least I think it has…it feels like I peed my pants but only a little, not like what I’ve seen in the movies. We page the midwives. Jill answers. She’s already at the hospital, just wrapping up another birth. She asks me to come to the hospital to test the fluids to see if indeed my water broke. I strap on a pad and walk around to catch more fluid. We head to Women’s hospital to meet Jill.

Yep, my water has broken. The clock has started. I tested positive a few weeks back with GB, a bacteria that is found in some women’s vulva’s that can cause an infection to the baby during delivery. Which means that once your water breaks, momma gets an IV of penicillin every four hours to ensure that the bacteria doesn’t get passed to the baby. It can also mean that once we reach 12 hours after the water breaks, if I’m not in active labour, they may want to induce to lower the risk of infection.

We come back at 8am, get another round of penicillin. The midwife also offers to give me some gravel to help me sleep to prepare for labour. At 12pm, we head back to the hospital where Irene, our doula meets us. Julia reminds me that we need to start getting this show on the road as the next time I come to the hospital, it’ll have been 12 hours since my water broke. Irene gives me a mini acupuncture session to help move things along. We walk up and down the hill just outside our house. We have a dance party. We’re doing all the “inducing” activities.

As we pull up to the hospital at 4pm, I start to feel contractions. We meet Jill in the parking lot and she confirms that my labor has started. They get us a room in the admitting area. My contractions are getting stronger and faster. Irene introduces me to the tensor machine. It’s a machine with a pad you place on your body that vibrates, stimulating the muscle or area it’s touching. Irene placed it on my sacrum and had it vibrating on low. When a contraction would come on, she recommended I turn it up. The effect is as the contraction is bringing all my attention to the front of my pelvis, the vibration widens my awareness, spreading my attention to a larger area and making it more manageable to ride the contraction.

Each contraction took me on a journey. I would bear down and rest or press my face into Alejandro’s back and off I went. At times I was deep in the earth, other times, I was in water, other times I was in deep dark outer space. I’d come out and sway. I hummed and moaned. Alejandro and Irene were very supportive. Sharing words of encouragement when I came out and giving me space when I was moving through a contraction.

Around 6pm, an OB/GYN came by to see how I was progressing and to make the call on whether or not to induce me. She observed a few of my contractions and felt like I was right on track. She wanted to leave me be for a few more hours to see if I could progress on my own.

We were moved from the admitting floor to the labour floor. I remember walking through the halls in a daze. Alejandro and Jill bonding over basketball. We got to the labour room, Irene and Alejandro set up an altar with some battery operated candles. Irene played Danit on repeat. Listening to her today brings me back to that room. I lay down for a bit and my contractions began to slow down. At this point, they had an IV in my hand and another nurse was there holding a baby heart monitor to my womb the whole time to monitor the baby’s heart rate.

At 9pm, it was decided they’d give me a whiff of oxytocin to help the contractions ramp up again. I was having a pee and when the induced contraction came on – the oxytocin had worked. I went from 6 centimeters to 9 in one contraction. I fell off the toilet, as if something had rattled my bones from the inside. I thought I was going to break. I started to cry, I can’t do this. If the contractions are going to be this intense moving forward, I won’t be able to do this. I yelled for drugs, for help. This is usually the point in labour that’s known as the “transition”, which means we’re nearing showtime. They had drawn me a bath but at this point, I could no longer get in. I was on the ground on my hands and knees trying to manage the waves of pain during the following contractions. A few contractions later, I realized they weren’t going to be that intense each time. Whew.

My experience of contractions was they were intense but manageable if I dropped into them with my awareness, if I met them instead of braced when they came. Relaxing my body and allowing myself to be pulled into them. When I did, I journeyed. It was shamanic.

Jill was a great midwife. She sat back for most of the labour, letting me do my thing and chimed in when she felt it was appropriate. “Clara, I like that you’re on hands and knees but I want to get you off the floor. I’d like to move you to the bed. After your next contraction, I’d like us all to lift you and plant you on the bed. Can we do that?”

“Yes, you can”.

Contraction.

1 – 2 -3 -Lift.

I was picked up and placed on the bed. At this point the damn baby heart monitor was back, I’ve got, what feels like a bunch of tubes attached to my right hand and I feel chained. After each contraction, the young nurse is saying something like “good job”. By the third one, I’m ready to punch her. Everyone who is in the room, I chose except this lady. After the next “good job”, I say “shut up please”. I was proud of myself for not saying “shut the fuck up please” which is what I wanted to say. The nurse didn’t seem to take ofence and stopped talking.

At this point, Alejandro is seated in front of me on the bed, I’m on hands and knees. Each time the contraction comes I bury myself into his chest or into his neck. I remember him saying “esso” a lot. He moaned with me. He leaned in and held me each time I needed him to. Irene was a soft voice that felt like it whispered into my ear and Jill would speak directions in a clear and concise manner. It was the perfect team for me.

I start rocking back and forth and can feel the baby’s head moving back and forth, almost crowning then going back in.

I remember one mother telling me to remember that all other women who gave birth will be in the room with me. And at one point, I will scream, connecting to that lineage.

And when it came, I felt powerful as I yelled from somewhere deep inside me. I felt as though I had shaken the whole building with my sound. It was liberating and empowering.

“Clara, I like what you’re doing but I’d like to shift you so that you’re more in a squat. I think this will help the baby to crown. After your next contraction, can we move you over the bar behind you and have you squatting?”

“Yes”.

Contraction.

1 – 2- 3 LIFT.

I’m there for, I don’t know how long, it could have been 5 minutes, it could have been 15 minutes but at some point, Jill is looking up at me and says, we’re here. I want you to lean back and when I say push, I want you to push as hard as you can. After, don’t push again but instead pant like a dog and wait for me to say push again.

P – U – S – H

Pant, pant pant.

P – U – S – H

I felt Karmen’s head some out, with something more. That’s more than a head I think….she came out head and fist! My little aries!

I can’t remember if I pushed again, but she was out.

They put her on my chest and covered her. They gave me another shot of oxytocin to help the placenta come out. I lay back and my body started shaking uncontrollably. This is normal after your body goes through something traumatic. It’s a mechanism to help shake out the trauma. Irene asks, is it a girl or a boy? Alejandro and I have no idea. He’s just holding me and I’m holding the baby. Alejandro lifts up the blanket and announces it’s a girl!

It’s April 2020, so no one comes to visit us. The hospital feels empty.

I went there recently to visit a friend who had just given birth and it was surreal to see the hallway again. I walked by the room I gave birth in. It felt like a dream. Being there now, having been there before.

I loved giving birth. It felt natural. It was empowering.

People asked if I was going to have more kids and the answer is no.

I wasn’t sure if I’d have a kid. I love what I do. I’m married to my work in a lot of ways and know that my focus will always be there. More children felt like it would pull me away from it or I wouldn’t be able to give as much to the children.

I had a vision the summer of 2019 that I would have a child. I told Alejandro. He said he was game. A month and a half later, we had conceived.

My pregnancy was probably one of the most challenging times in my life. I know now that I was over worked and that led to complications in my pregnancy. My pubic sphysis dislocated in my first trimester, that’s something that usually happens in your third trimester to prepare for child brith. This caused my pelvis to be unstable, I couldn’t walk for long periods of time. I had shooting pain going down my legs. I had an irregular placenta so I was told I could not do strenuous exercise, which had been my saving grace. I had morning sickness from the get go until about my 7th month. It was rough.

I’m happy to have such a strong, confident, sweet and caring daughter but one and DONE pour moi.

Two of my dear friends were pregnant at the same time as me and we’d practice yoga together often. Our practices were affected so differently. One’s practice kept up until the very end. From the nausea, I couldn’t do down dog, I couldn’t have my head lower than my heart so my practice changed dramatically. That being said, I loved moving my body when I was pregnant, as much or even more than I do in my “regular” life.

The first few months of Karmen’s life were surreal. The world was on full lock down. We were on baby lockdown. Friends would come by and we’d visit in the hallway at a “safe” distance. They brought food. Every night at 7pm we’d go onto our balcony and clap, and bang as an act of gratitude for the health care workers. I cried every night after the clapping stopped. It was a trying time for all of us. And I feel like I crawled out of that time on my hands and knees. It was hard. Two years into parenting I felt like I could slowly stand up. By year 4, I felt like I had come back from that journey, coming back to what my life was like prior to Karmen but now I had a sweet child walking with me.