So about three months ago, I had a baby.
It was a boy.
His name is Milam (pronounced my-lum).

I visited my midwife the day before his birth because I knew the time was near. He was fully cooked, and so was I. Sure enough, I was three centimeters dilated which meant his birthday was coming soon. Chris’s parents came up to watch Eloise while we were at the birth house in Tennessee. I would have had him at home, but my midwife stopped delivering babies in Alabama because it is illegal and she  almost went to jail one too many times. Alabama legislation on he subject of midwifery is like an episode of Jersey Shore. Just when you think it could not get more ridiculous that these people aren’t in some sort of maturity rehab, you find out that they are actually paid money. Lots of it.

So things seemed to be following suit with Eloise’s birth so far. My midwife checked me at three centimeters in the afternoon, and by midnight my labor started in full force. I was expecting the same thing to happen this time. All I had to do was sit and wait for the contractions to start. But instead of going from no labor at all to “omigosh I am having a baby” and contractions 7 minutes apart out of the gate, Milam’s contractions started in the early morning of the next day, and didn’t really feel like real contractions. They were more like the pain you have when you eat too many burritos. I finally got out of bed around 4am, waiting for them to get regular enough for me to count them. By 6am, I had a few in a row that were countable at 8 minutes apart, so I went ahead and called my midwife.

We had been afraid that I was going to have the baby in the car, since Eloise was born in 5 hours and the second kid usually comes faster. So we decided to go ahead and go to the birth house, to avoid Chris having to pull over and deliver his son. I woke him up (he wasn’t really asleep) and we grabbed our stuff to head out the door. It just so happened that day was the coldest one we had all winter, and everything was iced over. It took about 10 minutes to scrape all the ice off the windows with a CD (because who in Alabama really has an ice scraper?) and about 20 minutes for the car to warm up. I was freezing cold, and noticed that my contractions got a little less regular. They weren’t very strong, either. More like period cramps than contractions. Still, we headed on.

We got to the birth house in about 30 minutes and I sat in front of an electric heater designed to look like a real fireplace to warm up. By this time I had noticed that my contractions had gotten further apart, and I was wondering if this was all just a false alarm. I bounced on a yoga ball, sat by the fire, and told Milam that it was okay for him to come on out. We were all waiting on him. And waiting… and waiting…

The contractions never picked up speed. Still 10 minutes apart. My midwife checked me again and I was 5-6 centimeters, so I was definitely making progress, just slow progress. We sat and told jokes. Chris and I went for a walk around the Tennessee countryside. My midwife gave me some blue and black cohosh drops (which tasted like skunk-flavored lighter fluid) under my tongue to get things rolling. Nothing seemed to make any difference. Still 10 minutes apart. Still not even that strong. We would be telling stories, joking, and I would just hold up a finger, as if to say, “Wait a second”, and thirty seconds later, the pain would be gone and we would pick up where were left off.

By 11am, I was starting to get frustrated. I felt like there was all of this pressure for me to have a baby and have it quickly. All of the family were on their way up from Montgomery. They had taken off work that day. So if I didn’t have this baby that day, they would have wasted gas and earnings by coming up. My midwives drove all the way to Tennessee with me. If I didn’t have this baby that day, they would have wasted a trip and gas money. I tried not to think about it, but I was stressed that my contractions weren’t closer together and that this baby didn’t seem to want to be born any time soon.

Finally, Chris decided to go to Subway up the road and get sandwiches for everyone. I was sitting on the sofa, just relaxing. As soon as he left, I had a contraction that knocked me off the sofa. With Eloise, the contractions were all very rhythmic and planned. The pain moved from my back into my stomach and then out of my stomach and back into my back. With Milam, it just felt like someone was stabbing me in the womb with a knife. No pattern, no rhythm, just pain. The midwives saw this happen and sprang into action. One of them ran out into the road and told Chris to come back- no time for sandwiches. The other began getting everything ready- filling up the birth pool, getting the bed ready, and getting the supplies ready. Chris came back inside.

I finally believed that I was actually having a baby that day, but the contractions were still only 10 minutes apart. They had gotten stronger, but not any closer together. I thought it would be hours before I actually had a baby in my arms. I went in the birth room. The lights were low, candles were lit, and my midwife had filled the tub with sprinkles of dried lavender. I am not usually a sucker for essential oils and candles and stuff like that, but it really was a great place to labor. It was quiet, relaxing, smelled nice, and the pool was really warm compared to the 30 degree weather outside. My contractions never really got any closer though. Still about 10 minutes apart. I kept thinking, “I am going to be in this tub forever! This baby has hours before he comes out”. The contractions were starting to be the real deal, though. I felt like someone was stabbing my uterus with a 1 foot wide knife, and then karate kicking the knife. But as soon as the pain was gone, it was really gone. Then I would have a few minutes to relax and rest and it would start again.

At some point, I felt the need to push, but only partially. My midwife checked me again, and I was 10 centimeters (push time) except for one little section that was still at 9 centimeters. So she had me labor through a few more contractions on all fours in the tub to get the 9 centimeter part to be a 10. Her plan worked. I was ready to push. With Eloise, pushing was a relief. There was pain, but at least you could do something about the pain. I was excited to push. I wanted the abdominal shanking to stop and to see my baby boy. So I pushed. It didn’t feel better. Another contraction came and I pushed again. It not only didn’t feel better, it felt a little worse. Instead of being knifed in just the abdomen, I was being knifed all over the bottom half of my torso. I tried another position. Still knifing. I tried another position. More knifing. This went on for a while I think (I am not really sure how long, thankfully). I would still get a break between contractions, but the pushing was very painful. During one push, my water broke. At one point, while I was pushing on all fours, I grabbed on to Chris’s jeans and was pulling on them with the intent  of ripping them off and stuffing them down his throat. He bent down to touch my back and I swatted at his hand and said, “Don’t touch me!”. Then I felt bad for sassing my baby’s daddy, and I didn’t want my child to come into the world with that kind of negativity in the room, so (once the contraction was over) I said  sorry.

The plan was to have another waterbirth. The baby was getting close to coming out, and my midwives checked his heartbeat with a doppler. It started to drop a little, so they quickly got me out of the tub and on to the bed. He needed to be born fast. Once on the bed, there was the knifing and fire going on from the contractions of course, but out of the water I could actually feel him coming out. Without trying to be too graphic, I could feel my skin stretching and tearing to make room for him. My midwives were coaching me to push, and Chris was at my head not saying a word, and all I wanted to do was kick somebody in the nose. I knew there was no getting out of this now, though. I had to push that baby out to make the pain stop, so the sooner I got him out, the sooner all of this would be over and I could take a nap, or maybe drink a fruity beverage on the beach, or go get a massage where I could actually lay face down on the table…

All of a sudden, there was a warm slimy thing on my chest. I grabbed it. The midwives were rubbing him with a towel and he started to cry. It was my baby boy! He was here! The knives were gone! But I couldn’t see his face. He was on top of me and I wanted to see his face. So I used the very last bit of strength in my body to lift him up and took a look at his pink and screaming face. He was really, really beautiful. I held him close to me and thanked God that he was here and safe and that this was over. They took him and wrapped him in a towel a placed him by my head while I delivered the placenta, and they assessed the damage. I held his little hand and stared at him. He really was a beautiful boy. I had taken on the Tennessee Abdominal Knife Fight and won.

We spent the next few hours in the birth house, getting sewn up, eating, nursing, and enjoying each other. But I missed Eloise. I wanted all four of us to be together. So we packed up our stuff and I hobbled back to the car. I was so excited to introduce Eloise to her new brother. We arrived back in Florence to the paparazzi. Every family member present (seriously) had a device of some sort to photograph or record Eloise’s reaction to her brother. She held him and touched his nose and tried to figure out what all of this fuss was about. She went to bed, and I ate a quesadilla explosion salad like a horse. I was hungry, tired, and happy. It had been a good day.

So and so that was it. My baby boy was here. Since then, we have had some trying days (more on that later), but I cannot remember life without him. Like the skin on my stomach, my heart will forever be stretched, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.