Don’t worry, folks, there’s nothing too gory here. But if a frank discussion about bodies and functions of bodies upsets you, this page is not for you. Feel free to leave comments at the bottom.

Because Cheryl’s first birth (Blair) was so late and so difficult, we decided with our doctor that if we were going to try for a vaginal birth we would have to do it very near to the due date. Elliot was due on the 13th or so, and though Cheryl had had a week and a half of Braxton Hicks contractions by then and had dilated to 4 cm, labor had not started. We decided to break Cheryl’s water, and if that didn’t induce labor, to try a little intravenous oxytocin, too.

At roughly 8:30 AM on Wednesday our doctor performed the amniotomy, or amniotic sac puncture, which often starts labor within a couple of hours. We waited for an hour and a half with a monitor on Elliot’s heartbeat and on Cheryl’s abdominal muscles. She had regular contractions, from five to seven minutes apart, but they were not very strong, and after that time her cervix had not dilated much. We decided to start the oxytocin drip around 10 or 10:30 AM.

The “whiff” of oxytocin got things moving a bit better. The contractions came a little closer together and were a bit stronger. Every once in a while we would bump up the rate at which Cheryl was receiving the oxytocin. By about 12:30 or so Cheryl was growing uncomfortable during the contractions and we struggled to find comfortable positions in which to labor. She ended up on her side for the second half of the hard labor.

Cervixes commonly dilate in the neighborhood of 1 cm / hour, but we weren’t seeing progress that swift. Our good friend and nurse, Annie, checked Cheryl around 1:00 and announced that we were only at 5.5 cm. It looked like we were in for a long haul.

Around that time the contractions reached the insanely-powerful stage. This is the stage at which the mother loses interest in choosing her words carefully, and the father feels maximum guilt. This stage lasted an hour or so, and we settled into this new routine. But around 2:00, we took note of a particularly powerful and jagged contraction on the graphing monitor. Someone asked Cheryl if she had pushed, and she admitted she might have. Annie rushed into the room and said she’d noticed that same contraction on her monitor in the nurses’ station and asked the same question. Annie checked Cheryl’s cervix again and announced that she was fully dilated. Cheryl had gone very very quickly from 5.5 cm to 10 cm. Things happened rapidly after that.

Our doctor was called and arrived like a ninja with a couple of extra nurses. Cheryl’s bed was re-arranged and sheets were placed all over the bed and the floor and the doctor. Under Dr. Friedman’s direction and encouragement, Cheryl began to push Elliot out. For each round of pushing, Dr. Friedman would count to ten while Cheryl pushed, she’d have Cheryl take a deep breath, have her push for another ten, breathe, push for ten, and then rest. After a few of these sets Elliot’s head became visible from a certain angle. After a few more rounds his head was flush with Cheryl’s labia. He came a little further out on each round, and on the last round, Cheryl felt like it was just time to get him out.

Elliot’s head came out face down, and Dr. Friedman guided Ben’s hands underneath his head while she expertly moved the cord around and pulled the rest of his body out into Ben’s waiting hands. He was lifted immediately to Cheryl’s bosom, and everyone laughed and cried their eyes out in excitement and relief.

The rest of the tale is wonderfully typical: the five-minute trip into the support room where Elliot is suctioned, wiped, tested for oxygenation or whatever… Ben giving him a little sponge bath, shampoo, hair combing… his first experience with a nipple (which I understand he took to)… the weighing and measuring… And then a little lunch with all of the visitors and participants, the transfer to another room, a couple more tests (PKU, bilirubin, hearing, palpation by a pediatrician, etc.) and then Cheryl and Ben took Elliot home, the same evening, at around 11 PM. Blair and Patricia were waiting up for them for one last look, and after a short time all were in bed, sleeping soundly.

update: as I read this account aloud at dinner to the extended family, everyone laughed when I said “The End” because they knew, as I did, that Elliot woke us up after just fifteen minutes of sleep. But that, I insisted, is rightfully the beginning of chapter two.