Sweet Yet Sour

And Then There Was Cake

Saturday, March 27th, 2010 | Henry

As with all good stories, the story of Henry’s birth begins with a chocolate cake.

Last Friday we had a pretty decent snow storm and our lovely neighbor Darrel shoved our walk (all the way up our front stairs too), as he has kindly done all winter.  In appreciation for his hard work I decided I would make a chocolate cake for him on Saturday.

I started the cake early in the morning, since it was my mom’s sourdough chocolate cake, which needs to sit and get gassy before you finish the cake.  In the early afternoon I finished the cake and let it cool on the counter while I set out some butter for the butter cream frosting.

And then I started having contractions… At first, I ignored them, since for the past few weeks I had been getting contractions when I overdid it, and I had walked around a lot, chased Anna around and made cake that day already.  But as I sat and relaxed the contractions didn’t go away so I began to wonder if this wasn’t something else.  I was determined to finish the cake, so I proceeded into the kitchen to whip up the frosting and finish the cake.  Mike and Anna came home from a dog walk while I was making the frosting and I said quietly to him, “I’m timing contractions right now.”  I finished the frosting and got the cake put together while noting that the contractions were about 8-10 minutes apart.

Mike rushed around packing a bag for himself and getting a shower, since he had played racquetball that afternoon.  I finished packing my bag, Anna’s bag and called my sister.  We called the midwife, headed out the door, dropped off Anna at my sister’s and headed in to the hospital.  All the while I hoped that this was the real thing, it certainly felt real, but you always worry that you will be sent home with a “false labor” diagnosis.

Shortly after we arrived at the hospital at 7 p.m. my water broke (contrary to urban legend, the water rarely breaks at the beginning of labor) and it was determined that we were definitely not in false labor.  However, things were moving pretty slowly, cervix wise, so we spent a long time at the hospital with not much progress made.  When things got pretty painful I opted for the epidural, even though the whole needle near your spine thing makes me nervous. Pain will make you do things you didn’t think you could do, like allow someone to poke you with a needle in your spine.

Since I was (still!) recovering from a cold, I spent most of the labor and delivery with either an oxygen tube in my nose or an oxygen mask.  My blood oxygen level was so low that little alarms kept going off, and they were a little worried about the baby’s oxygen level because of that.  I kept hoping that the cold would clear up before labor, but no!

Sometime around 1:30 a.m. it was decided that things were moving so slowly that I needed a little help and I was given some Petosin.  Labor began to progress a little faster, but around 3 a.m. I realized that the epidural was wearing off.  The epidural actually slows labor, so for a while I tried to buck up and deal so that I could have the baby in the next few hours.

At 3:45 a.m. the midwife came in to check me and we had a discussion about the epidural. While I got some more epidural medication in my i.v., the midwife announced “we’re ready to push”.  I won’t lie, this part was painful, the epidural had not really had much affect at that point, but after some serious pushing the baby was born at 4:09 a.m.

When Anna was born I had been drugged up and down with various concoctions because her heartrate had dropped.  I don’t remember Mike cutting the cord, or seeing the placenta and certainly felt less pain.  This time I was in pain, but I was much more aware of everything, I watched Mike cut the cord, got to check out the placenta, and there were far fewer people in the room.  It was nice to only have Mike, the midwife, and two nurses in the room – it felt like there was a medical army troop in the room when Anna was born.

On Monday, while I was still at the hospital with Henry, Mike delivered the cake to our neighbors with the news of Henry’s birth.  If the frosting looked crappy and spread unevenly I had a really good excuse – I was finishing a cake and having a baby!

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