I must say that I actually enjoyed the experience of giving birth to Marie-Hélène – something I didn’t think I would. When I ask my own mom what it was like for her, the answer is relatively short; a very long labor that ended in a c-section, and paved the way for the three other round-headed siblings. My dad has his own weather-related anecdote involving a shinook on Christmas day. But for Marie-Hélène, the weather was beautiful.
If there is one thing Christian always talks about, it is the TIMING – contractions started on his last official day of school and I only called him in the evening as his staff party was ending. Between 1:30 pm when they started and 8:00 pm when we headed to the hospital, I packed our bag and wrote down the time of each contraction. When John came home, he cancelled his plans for the rest of the day just to make sure he’d be around in case my water would break. To pass the time, we watched King Kong.
Christian came home all excited, but once we were admitted at the hospital, I was dilated a mere two centimeters. Despite the nurse’s encouraging “good progress!” she sent me to walk the corridors of the maternity ward for 30 minutes. When we came back, a new nurse was on duty. With her, there was no beating-about-the-bush, she was the “unless-you-need-morphine-go-home-and-take-a-bath” type. So that is what we did, and it felt good. But at 3:30 am the contractions reached a point where from 1 to 10, it was a 10,5 and thoughts of morphine flashed through my mind like advertisements along the highway. We were back at the hospital just after 4:00 am.
I caved… I requested an epidural. All I wanted was an epidural. How can women do it without an epidural? What are they made of, those women who don’t need an epidural? Oh please, bring the epidural before this gets any worse! As a consolation for all the hard work, the nurse was impressed to see I’d made it to 6 centimeters. And at 6:30 am I got the epidural. And wow, what a lovely thing that epidural. I relaxed like I hadn’t relaxed in hours.
By 9:00 am it was time to push. I could still feel pressure with each contraction and as things started getting exciting the number of people in the room started growing. A nurse and a nursing student, a student doctor, and eventually the doctor who would deliver and the senior doctor who supervised, were all at attention everytime I’d push to their encouragement. At 11:01, just as the doctor was about to do an episiotomy, Marie-Hélène slid out and Christian cut the umbelical cord. She was so pretty and calm, and she was ours.
Day 1 Marie-Hélène from Jacinta Palud on Vimeo.