The Best Laid Schemes

The best laid schemes of mice and men – and apparently, women – go often askew. Or in our case, entirely askew. Sure, I had a birth plan. In today’s developed world, this is quite common. An outline, detailed or not, of how you’d like to see your birth experience play out. My birth plan was to have a natural, unmedicated birth. The goal was to use Hypnobirthing techniques (meditation and breathing) to remain calm—the basis of Hypnobirthing being Grantly Dick-Read’s book Childbirth without Fear, which advocates the idea that fear of birth leads to tension and this tension leads to pain.

As it turns out, either I was full of unrecognized fear that led to pain, or quite simply, childbirth is painful. The truth is, I was under no illusion that it would be easy or entirely pain-free, but I was hoping that my months of preparation emotionally and physically (prenatal yoga) would help me come through the process with a beautiful baby girl and somewhat (at least a little bit?!?) unscathed myself.

Life, or nature, it seems, had other plans for me. As I look back at my birth plan now, I think EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF IT went ENTIRELY the opposite. Truly, without exception, everything I had envisioned did not turn out how I had thought I wanted it to. Well, the baby still arrived, but that was sort of an assumed part of the plan that I didn’t include in the written version.

And so, now, a short and hopefully not-too-graphic version of the day of Ella’s arrival into our world and lives:

Wednesday, 3am: Contractions start. They’re slightly uncomfortable and coming around every 10-15 minutes. I breathe through them just fine and let Nadav sleep a bit.

By 8 am they are coming more frequently, but I stop timing them due to the tediousness of timing 50 second contractions every 10 minutes.

As the day goes by, the contractions eventually get stronger, slightly longer and more frequent. Around 2:30pm, we decide to head to the hospital, a mere five-minute drive away, and call our doula to meet us there.

While in the women’s ER, with a fetal monitor strapped to my ginormous belly, contractions are getting stronger but it turns out I’m just under 3cm dilated, so they send me outside to walk around a bit, in the hopes that I’ll progress soon and be sent up to a delivery room. About 10 seconds later, my water breaks and I go back in to be checked again. They tell me that I’ll now be sent up to the delivery room—which I’m looking forward to, since there I can take a hot shower and hopefully get some relief from the increasing pain. Now is an important time to mention that the hospital we’re in—Ichilov in Tel Aviv—is a VERY busy hospital for births and has 15 delivery rooms, twice the amount of most other hospitals in Israel. Due to this, TONS of women go there. So, I only get into the delivery room around 4:30pm, thus enduring my contractions in the hallway, hanging on Nadav and moaning for the world to see.

Upon arrival in the delivery room, we tried a variety of methods to cope – hot shower, music, breathing, movement—in short, all the “typical” natural childbirth methods of dealing with pain. Around 4 hours later, and seeing I’d only progressed to 4cm dilated, I finally broke down and asked for an epidural. Unfortunately, for me and for another 12 or so women, the anesthesiologist was called away to anesthetize a woman having an emergency C-section. Which means, we waited and waited and waited and waited—and I moaned and groaned and contemplated just jumping out the window and ending it all—when finally around 2 hours later, I got the epidural—in the middle of a contraction (try holding completely still during THAT!). It helped. I could still feel the contractions, but it was like going back to earlier in the day concerning the intensity of them. I could breathe through them again and thought maybe, just maybe, I’ll survive this after all.

With my entire lower body now relaxed due to the drugs in the epidural, within an hour-and-a-half, I dilated to 10 cm and we were on course for pushing little (or big!) Ella out. It took 2 hours and 15 minutes and I can honestly say it was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. One thought that crossed my mind was, “How, if this little girl is supposedly coming out of me soon, can I still feel her feet in my ribs?” Another was, “Isn’t the epidural supposed to be helping this pain?!?”

Nadav and my doula, Michal, were amazing – helping me get through the whole process in one piece. Also, our supporters who held down the fort outside and popped in to give words of encouragement—my mom, and Nadav’s parents—were great. Afterwards, they told me that my mom, Linda, and Mina, Nadav’s mother, were standing at the door, pushing with me every time! At one point the midwife asked me if I wanted to touch her head. I must have looked at her with a strange expression (which meant, please no!), because she asked me again, in English the second time, and I said to her and Nadav, “No, that’s ok, I’m getting the full experience from this vantage point!” (Well, maybe it wasn’t quite so eloquent, but those were my thoughts)

As she FINALLY came out—after some Pitocin to help make my contractions more consistent and an episiotomy (dear G-d, this was TRULY my worst fear and I somehow survived it)—it’s like everything faded into the background as they placed her on my chest and her purple body, also exhausted from our efforts, wriggled up close to me. I exclaimed something like, “Oh my G-d, she’s amazing” and all the anguish I’d felt just seconds before was covered by a cloud of euphoria. The little girl that we’d been waiting for and dreaming about was finally here.

Everyone outside—the grandparents—cried. I don’t think Nadav or I did, but if I have to give an answer why, I think it has to do with the fact that they’ve raised children and they know, more than we can at this point, just how much of a miracle a child is, all the joy that she’ll bring to our lives.

In the week since Ella’s birth, I’ve experienced a range of emotions – marveling at her adorable facial expressions, which bring me a sense of calm and satisfaction, as well as letting myself breakdown at the thought of another painful breastfeed at 3am (thank G-d, we’re finally improving our technique).

Sometimes, I just look at her and wonder how this little 9lb body rode around in my body and in the end came out of me. Welcome Ella Miriam Rotem, to the world. We love you and wish you a lifetime of happiness and wonderful experiences.