Maks’ birth story

Maks O’Brian was born on the most beautiful, sunny, warm October afternoon, ten months ago today. Once he made his decision to come into the world, he set his determined little mind to it and got it done quickly. And as we know now, that is just so Maks.

My labour pains started at about 4 a.m. on Thursday morning. I wasn’t exactly sure at the time that I was in labour, due to the increasingly painful Braxton Hicks contractions I’d been having that week. I got out of bed (which was no easy feat at 37 ½ weeks!) and watched a little TV, hoping things would subside. It quickly became apparent that this was it. It it.

Just the day before, my midwife told me I could take Tylenol and Gravol during labour to help take the edge off. But I figured I had a few more days or even weeks to stock our medicine cabinet with these. Ooops. So I woke Brian up around 4:30 a.m. and asked him—as nicely as a woman in labour can—to run out to the drugstore for some pain relief. In the meantime I paced the living room. And paced. And paced. Where was Brian? More importantly, where were my drugs? I tried his cell phone—no answer. Maybe he really didn’t want to change diapers again and high-tailed it out of town. Who was going to hold my hand during the birth...Kaylin? Finally, about an hour later, Brian reappeared. With regular strength Tylenol and English Muffins?! ENGLISH MUFFINS? Oy, this was going to be a long day.

By 7 a.m. my contractions were mild enough that I could still grin and bear it, but regular enough that it was time to call Grandma and set the take-care-of-Kaylin plan in action. I called her on her cell, only to learn that she was driving OUT of London, in the opposite direction of me and my contracting belly! This was not good. First Brian ditches me to shop for English Muffins, now his mother is leaving me too. But she assured me she would over to help with Kaylin well before Kaylin's little brother arrived. And she was.

By 10 a.m. my contractions were still 12 to 15 minutes apart, but completely manageable. Grandma was here now and kept Kaylin occupied while I paced around the room, trying to carry on small talk while clutching the furniture with each painful contraction. Brian thought now would be a good time to install the car seat. Thankfully Brian is a car seat pro, so I wasn’t too worried. Just VERY ANNOYED that he was out in the driveway while I was in labour. But I digress.

At 11 a.m. I decided a warm bath would ease some pain and help keep my mind off things. That worked for about 3 minutes when I suddenly seemed to transition. A particularly terrible contraction caused me to shoot up out of the tub, my head knocking the suction-cupped toy holder behind me off the wall. As quickly as I could I hauled my bulging belly out, got dressed and went back downstairs. Following a few more difficult contractions, I told Brian to page the midwife. People ask how you know it’s time to go to the hospital. Well, you just know.

My wonderful midwife Binh called back immediately and surveyed my condition by listening to me go through a couple contractions over the phone. Somewhere in between those contractions I broke down sobbing, telling Binh, “I don’t want to do it again!” The “it” being give birth. But Binh, always a calm, soft-spoken woman convinced me that everything would be fine and reminded me to take deep, long breaths. Those deep breaths are what got me through the birth. I’ll get to that part in a minute.

Binh told me to go to the hospital, that it was time. As luck (or fate) would have it, she was already there and made sure there was a room ready for me. Brian and I hugged our first baby, Kaylin, good bye and headed out. When we got to the hospital, I incorrectly instructed Brian to go the wrong entrance. (He correctly decided to not question the woman having the baby.) But that entrance had no place to park the car, so he dropped me off and left for what seemed an eternity to park. While I waited I double checked the location of the maternity floor with the info kiosk. I was dismayed to find out we were at the wrong end of the hospital. Brian met me a few minutes later and we proceeded to walk the LONG walk to the other side of the building. It didn’t occur to us to grab a wheelchair! Looking back, maybe that walk helped things along.

At about noon, my midwife met us at obstetrics and took me into a room to see how far along I was. By this time the contractions were coming pretty strong and hard, but I was breathing through each one and still able to talk a little in between. I think we were both shocked to discover I was already 8–9 cm dilated! The baby was coming sooner than we thought. Crap. Binh told Brian there wasn’t even time to go back to the car for the camera.

Binh wheeled me to my room and began prepping for the birth while Brian helped me through each contraction. As with Kaylin’s birth, I had made the decision to not get an epidural. The way I see it, billions of woman before me have given birth without epidurals, so I could too. I wasn’t comfortable with some of the risks associated with epidurals and I certainly didn’t want to slow down this labour or decrease my ability to get this baby out in any way. I wanted him out ASAP!

Now, the next hour is a bit of a blur of moaning, deep breathing and sweat. Sounds like a dirty movie, but trust me, it was not even close. Between each contraction, I barely had enough energy to keep my eyes open. I sat quietly on the bed and tried to conserve all my energy. The room was pretty quiet. By this time a second midwife, Jennifer, had come to assist with the birth. Binh and Jennifer were alternately checking on me and preparing for the baby’s arrival. It was nice, if I can say that about labour and delivery. The sun was streaming through the window. The four of us were all relatively calm (maybe not me, so much). There were no doctors or nurses coming in and out of the room. And that is exactly how I wanted things.

By 1 p.m., it was time—time to push. It was a bit like a Hollywood birth; there was a lot of screaming, I won’t lie. But my midwives were amazing, instructing me to scream as loud as I needed, whatever I had to do, just do it. At this point, I just wanted to stop the pain and meet my son. Finally meeting my baby boy was all the motivation and pain relief I needed. So for 20 minutes I pushed. And I knew I was almost finished when I looked up at Brian and saw his tears of joy. That meant he could see the baby’s head. The hard part was done. A few seconds later, my beautiful son Maks was born—1:20 p.m. on a beautiful, sunny Thursday afternoon. Seven pounds, four ounces, and twenty-and-a-half inches long.

The post-birth high is something I’ll never forget. At the time I thought I was elated because the labour was over and the pain was finished. But looking back, it was the pure rush of giving birth, plain and simple. The high lasts a good day or two. There is really nothing like it on earth.

As with Kaylin’s birth, we chose not to stay at the hospital overnight and instead take the baby home after a three-hour recovery period. The baby was fine, and except for a few stitches, I was great (see the "post-birth high" above), so we gladly bundled Maks up and proudly brought him home, a little less than 5 hours after we had arrived at the hospital that afternoon. We went in at lunch and were home by dinner. Not bad for half a day’s work! Not bad at all.

Happy 10 months, my little man.