The "Bathtub Mom" or the "Rockstar Dad"

It's been two months since Eleri finally made her entry into the world, and her birth now seems like old news. But every once in a while, I am reminded that the delivery was, as Dave put it, a tad unusual. At parties I am still sometimes introduced as "the bathtub mom." On the street not long ago, I was chatting with another new mom when one of our neighbors announced in a stage whisper, "9 pounds. In the house!"

Most people who read this blog likely already know that, after going 12 days past her due date, Eleri suddenly arrived so quickly that we did not make it to the hospital, and our second daughter was born in our bathtub. But many of you have not heard the details.

I've thought a bit about it in the past 9 weeks, and the truth of the matter is, I'm not sure what to make of it. We're legends on our block and its fun to be called "rockstars" (it's been a long time since we were "cool"), but I meet more and more people with a similar story (including a fellow parent at Clio's school!) That said, I'm not going to reframe it. I'm just going to share the story as I told it to my mom's group the moment I came home from the hospital (with a few details ommitted to keep it all family-friendly and rated PG).

I started having contractions at 3am, and by 4 it was clear that labor was setting in, but I didn't establish a pattern until 7. The midwives' shift changed over at 8am, so I figured I would just call then. Between 7 and 8, my contractions were still only five minutes apart, and while the intensity was increasing, it really seemed like there was quite a ways to go. But then my water broke. Okay, BURST is more like it, and immediately I started having what was basically like one huge ongoing contraction.

I had paged the midwife and she called back just as I was yelling at Dave to get Clio to Day Care and to RUN home. We agreed to meet at the hospital in about 20 minutes, but by the time Dave got home about 5 minutes later, I was starting to sense that there was no time. One of my favorite visuals from the day is Dave trying to put clothes on me to get in the car while I took them off (not unlike a toddler). I told Dave the midwife had to come to the house, but there wasn't time for that either. I stepped into the bathtub because I know someone who had a similar situation with her second baby, and it seemed like the logical thing to do. (Somewhere in the middle of this, there was what Dave later called my "Banshee screams" which probably alerted all the neighbors to the drama in our quite little house.)

Meanwhile, Dave called 911, and by the time he got back into the bathroom and on the phone, the head was out. (Later, Dave remembered making the declaration, "I guess we're just going to have to do this old school"). With the midwife on speaker phone (the cordless phone sitting in the bathroom sink), Dave and I delivered the baby. Babies are slippery- luckily Dave had thought to put the cushy non-stick mat in the tub to soften the landing (he tried to get me to lie down but there was just no way at that point). That part was all kind of a blur, but I remember looking to see if we had a boy or a girl, being slightly puzzled that she was a girl, and then focusing on the fact that she was a very unsettling shade of blue-purple.

The midwife walked us through getting her to breathe- holding her upside down by her feet, clearing her mouth, and rubbing her back- hard. It's amazing how hard it is to hold on to a 9-pound newborn. By the time she turned pink and started to cry, the emergency personnel showed up. Great visual number 2: I'm standing in my bathtub (which is of course a horror-show by now), holding the baby in a bath sheet wearing nothing but a bra, and there were close to a dozen EMTs, firemen, and police officers in the bathroom, hallway, and down the stairs of our tiny little house. Apparently one of the neighbors asked if we needed someone to take Clio, and a game of telephone came up to us and back down to the neighbor. (Also, I'm just remembering now, Dave didn't go right downstairs when they all arrived- because he was testing out his new skills as an OB- so they thought I was alone and almost broke through our front windows!) They wrapped the baby in something warm, cut the cord, sucked out her nose, etc.

Great visual number 3: they put me on a stretcher with the baby and carried me out to an ambulance. Our street had a fire truck, at least two ambulances, and several police cars, all with sirens going. I was barely covered by a sheet, holding the baby, and all these neighbors I have never met were out on the sidewalk calling "congratulations!"

It was wild. At this point, Dave and I were both thinking, Why do we have to go the the hospital? The baby's here. But obviously they still need to run tests, etc.

The midwife met us in the ambulance bay and took pictures of me on the stretcher- when I saw her for my 6-week checkup, she gave me the copy you see above (when I said, "wow, I look pretty good," she laughed and said "you look like a million bucks!")

Needless to say, this is not how we expected baby #2 to come into the world, but she seems pretty unbothered by it. She didn't even wake up when we transfered her to the car seat or got her home that first day. Of course, it's not such a big homecoming when she already took her first breath right upstairs!