My COVID Birth Story – Pt. 1
I approached birth with curiosity and trust in my body. In preparation, I cultivated an understanding of birth as a normal biological function and did not fixate on fear or pain.
This is a very real and raw story of a birth at the outset of the COVID pandemic. I’m still processing the unanticipated changes and medical interventions – some of which I am joyful about, and some of which I hotly resent. Even so, I write from a position of trust over fear.
I’d painted the words ‘Trust,’ ‘Patience,’ and ‘Surrender’ in grey-blue and hung them above the bed in anticipation of our home birth. Trust my body. Practice patience with the process, as nature is in control. Surrender to the power of my surges and allow them to open my body for the passage of my baby.
In our last official meeting with the doula, I asked if she’d be willing to snap a few photos if she had bandwidth during the birth. I didn’t need photographer-quality images but wanted a few photos to jog my memory of the experience and to just see what I looked like as a person giving birth.
As my due date neared, so did the threat of COVID-19.
Supermarket after the first lockdown was announced. The green surface is usually piled high with produce.
Contrasted with this soup and the many others we’d cooked and stocked in our freezer, the grocery food-grab didn’t alarm us.
Friends and family worriedly checked in, and I gave them all the same, giggly response: preparing for postpartum left us – funnily enough – extremely well-prepared for quarantine. We hadn’t put any events on the calendar. We’d purchased an extra freezer and spent months filling it with ready-to-eat meals. We’d mentally committed to remaining home and limiting visitors for the first forty days of our baby’s life. Since everything went virtual, I even got to take a yoga class with my teacher from Portland – the one I’d peppered with questions about parenthood for years before we moved away.
What I hadn’t prepared for was the swirl of information and dizzying changes to hospital policies.
My doula checked in and frantically told me that she was quarantining and taking her probiotics and would wear gloves and a mask in our home to show the midwives she was taking it seriously so they’d allow her to attend our birth. Great! Sounds logical to me; I wasn’t worried.
Friends sent messages about their friends having home births cancelled. Sure. But nobody has told us that yet, and our baby is coming soon.
At 39 weeks and some days pregnant, I refreshed the hospital website and finally saw their new home birth protocol: we must be symptom-free, and we must limit the number of people in our home. Sweet relief. They’d thought about it and still decided against canceling them.
Regardless, I hoped Baby would come soon, before the hospital had a chance to change their mind.
Friday, March 20th, 2020 – 40 weeks pregnant
Alas, my due date arrived. I ate my yogurt for breakfast while blissfully batting away thoughts that sparked stress. Bring on that oxytocin, I thought. I need to birth today!
Then my phone rang. A number I didn’t recognize. All the optimism exited my body.
“We’re calling to tell you that, unfortunately, home births have been cancelled. You can birth at the hospital and bring one support person.”
I cooly engaged with this news at first. But slowly, my face grew hot, and I said, “I understand that the midwives don’t want to enter an environment they can’t control, but we’ve completely avoided social contact for the past two weeks. Can’t you understand our resistance to entering a strange space (the hospital) that we’ve had no control over? How is it possible that the best option for us is to walk into a place with thousands of unknowns – the place people go to when they catch the virus – instead of remaining home, where we know it’s safe?”
I knew arguing was pointless. The decision was made. It wasn’t up to me, nor the person delivering this news. I succumbed to this reality, and the tears burned. The stress I’d successfully kept at bay released onto my cheeks.
“Thi…This means I can’t have my doula with me, doesn’t it?” I blubbered. My doula – the familiar face I’d hoped to have by my side as I birthed in a foreign country, in an unfamiliar healthcare system, with midwives switching in and out per their shifts.
“I’m sorry, yes,” the voice replied in a tone that matched my state, “but we midwives can be your doula. I promise, we’ll do everything we can to give you a good birth experience.”
That was that. There was nothing else to be done or said. I hung up and the tears poured harder. I walked down the hall and knocked on Bjarke’s door. When he saw my face, he dropped his work and spent the rest of the morning consoling me. I just needed to grieve for half a day (the clock was ticking after all; Baby could arrive any time) in order to mentally make space for this different kind of birth.
I’d spent six years learning about — no, obsessed with – birth and how it can calmly unfold when the birthing person is in a place they feel safe. For me, hospitals do not offer that comfort; quite the opposite, actually.
Frantic to get my head on straight, I grabbed my journal and made two columns: A) What is changed, and B) What remains the same.
In Column A there were several items that had me nervous, but there were a few perks to the venue change, including an upgrade from a blow-up tub for a possible water birth to a sturdy spa-like tub. Bjarke would also have fewer set-up and clean-up tasks.
In Column B, I wrote all the things that were coming with me, no matter where: trust in my body, Bjarke as my birth partner, and my positive attitude.
At the bottom of this page, I wrote:
3 Success Criteria:
Bjarke is there.
Healthy Baby.
Healthy Gina.
+ Cake!
[You should know that having cake to celebrate my baby’s original birthday was top priority. I recipe-tested a chocolate cake that could be made in early labor if I needed a distraction. I also made a back-up bundt cake and stuck it in the freezer so that Bjarke could grab it on the way to the hospital if necessary.]
My task ahead, over whatever number of days I had left, was to peel back the build-up of decades of experience that had me pale and nauseous each time I set foot in a hospital.
Sunday, March 29th, 2020 - 41 weeks + 2 days pregnant
The voice on the other end said, “I’m calling to see if I can convince you to come in and talk about your birth and your options for the week ahead.” I hesitated and she added, “I will not pressure you to induce.”
That sounded harmless enough, so I started to offer potential times in the next day or two when she said, “Want to come in now?” And with that, we were on our way. Within 30 minutes I found myself in a room that resembled no hospital I’d seen – it was more a meditation center.
I sat nervously on the bed, and a midwife named Lene (the one from the phone) sat at the other end. We talked through how I was feeling and she listened. Then, with my explicit consent and very gentle hands, she checked my cervix. This was much more uncomfortable than the unassuming phrase “checked my cervix” lets on, especially when one’s cervix is still hiding up high.
She said that for some folks, acupuncture can bring on labor, and that, if I wanted, she could ring to see if any of the midwives who practiced acupuncture were on shift.
Now, I’m an avid hater of needles. It’s part of the reason my birth preferences included no epidural – I’d rather feel my body open up to birth a human being than get pricked by a needle. (I never claimed to be rational about this!)
But now 41 weeks + 2 days pregnant, I was feeling the urgency. I gave Lene the go-ahead. She said goodbye and in walked her colleague with the needles. The new midwife propped me up on an exercise ball and placed needles on my hands, ankles, and toes. Then she dimmed the lights, turned on calm music, and left me. Those twenty minutes were the first in which I’d actually stopped to breathe in a week. I let my body melt into the supports under me.
When the acupuncturist-midwife returned, I told her how wonderful that felt, and how I really hoped I’d be able to birth in this room. My body shrugged off the possibility. It would be too good to be true, considering I was showing no signs of imminent labor 4 days before I’d roll into the ‘high risk’ category and out of the chance to give birth in this room with the forest wallpaper and twinkly lights. She looked at me, perplexed, and said, “Why wouldn’t you birth in here?” I left with that possibility hanging in the air, though I didn’t really believe in it.
Pregnant Purgatory
The rhythm of the days beyond my due date rotated through the following:
Rebozo against the wall
Walk in the cemetery next to our building (which is like a park)
Eat dates
Rebozo on the floor
Call doula to discuss strategy for my next hospital check-up
Rebozo on the bed
Drink mug of bone broth with spoonful of miso
Catch an episode of the baking show
Bouncing on the trampoline to try and get things moving.
Hot chocolate pause in the cemetery during Pregnant Purgatory.
I turned off all phone notifications. I did not need anyone’s inquiries to remind me that I was still very pregnant and still very much on the clock.
In lieu of induction, I opted for extra monitoring (called a CTG), to make sure Baby was doing alright. I was adamant about not getting induced unless there was a concrete medical reason. I felt that being ‘overdue’ was not a reason in and of itself. I wanted to wait until my baby was ready and my body was ready. I’d painted a mantra used by my great-grandmother: “When the fruit is ripe, it will drop.” I leaned on that.
I clung to an anecdote about wartime women hanging onto their babies longer due to stress. It was easy to draw parallels here – my baby, the intuitive little being, could sense that our pandemic-stricken world was iffy at best, and they chose to remain in the safe cocoon of my womb.
I remember wandering through the cemetery, feeling like this was not real life, but rather some in-between dimension few people experience. We’d gone off-timeline and were suspended in this middle world – the one between pregnancy and parenthood. A purgatory. Pregnant purgatory.
Tuesday, March 31st 2020: 41 weeks + 4 days pregnant
In the morning I went to the hospital for a CTG check-up. They strapped a belt around my belly and left me alone in the room for twenty minutes (Fun perk: I could keep the belt and re-use it for my next monitoring appointment!). Me and the babe both looked good. Then the midwife announced that she needed to perform a cervical exam.
Now, for personal reasons I won’t go into, it is written in my medical notes that caregivers are to perform minimal exams. I went back and forth with this midwife, questioning the necessity of this exam. She made her case, and I reluctantly agreed. Again, this exam was no walk in the park – actually, this one was much more uncomfortable than Sunday’s, as she tried with all her might to reach a cervix that still did not want to be found. I told her that it felt like she wasn’t going to find what she wanted, and that was probably information enough – my cervix hadn’t moved. What more did she need to know?
Apparently, more, as she said that because she hadn’t found the cervix, she needed to ask her colleague to perform another exam for a second opinion. I was not happy about this, but it seemed to be immovable hospital policy, so it happened. Spoiler alert: the second exam offered no more information than the first, and was just as uncomfortable.
The midwife offered me pills to kick off the induction process. I declined. Out of growing desperation, I asked her how many people who still have such a high cervix this late into pregnancy go into labor on their own. She looked at me and casually told me she didn’t believe my body would go into labor naturally.
With that, I shoved the stupid re-usable belly belt into my bag and left.
Now way deep into this ‘post-dates’ period (that NO ONE talks about), I received a call from my doula. Would I like to receive some ‘remote Ayurvedic first aid’ from a fellow practitioner?
I popped in ear buds for the phone call, walked through the thick trees of the cemetery, and found a bench. Sun streamed into the clearing, warming my face and a massive stone sculpture in direct view. Once settled, the woman on the other end of the line opened by singing a prayer. Baby danced in my womb.
That evening and the one after, I stripped down to my underwear in my dark bedroom and massaged my belly and thighs in a downward motion with sesame oil. Then I sat on a towel in a chair and dipped my feet into a bucket of warm water with pools of sesame and lavender oils. I breathed in deeply, looking out the window at the sky and the budding trees, and talked to my baby.
I told Baby that we were a team, and that I really needed their help. I didn’t know if I was making the right choices. I pleaded with them to show me a clear sign if I needed to do anything differently. And I asked nicely if they would please come out already – I mean, they could totally take their time – but also, it would be nice if they would just come out.
Thursday, April 2nd: 41 weeks + 6 days pregnant
By this point, our routine was rehearsed: we hopped into the car on loan from our neighbors (had no idea how grateful we’d be for this!), drove the worn 15-minute route, pulled into the underground garage where Bjarke dropped me at the door and then found a spot to wait. I would go upstairs, open the lobby door with my sleeve, douse myself in sanitizer, pee on a stick, douse myself in more sanitizer, settle into the exam, room, and get Bjarke on speaker phone (no partners at appointments, COVID policy).
On this day, the results of my monitoring were not quite as good as they’d been previously. The tech seemed disappointed that my baby hadn’t kicked more. Never mind that the baby flip-flopped the whole ride over and was probably napping now. But the doubt had been planted, and I began to wonder if I’d imagined all that movement.
She advised me to get an ultrasound, just to double check that everything was ok. It was this moment that I felt an undercurrent begin to pull me, unwillingly, toward a birth I wasn’t ready for. I met the umpteenth new-to-me hospital personnel, this time an obstetrician, and she smooshed that plastic wand into a blob of jelly on my belly and told me that my uterus was running low on amniotic fluid. She said that if I were her sister or daughter, she would tell me to get induced right away.
The room changed. I sunk back. I questioned it all – how do you measure fluid on a screen? How do you know it’s not just that I haven’t drunk enough water today? I mean, I’d only had a small glass with breakfast.
Once again, from a place of desperation, I accepted a cervical exam. Still hiding high. They pushed the cervix-softening pills on me again, and I inquired how often the pills alone are enough to kickstart labor without further intervention. She gave me a wishy washy ‘sometimes.’ I pressed for the odds of the best case scenario, holding out hope at every turn.
With this sliver of optimism but otherwise utterly out of options, I accepted the box of pills. They instructed me to take one every two hours and come back that night at 9pm for more monitoring.
I started crying as soon as I hit the seat of the car in that dank basement garage. The tears continued through the afternoon. I called my doula, again to seek help muddling my way through a pile of options, none of them what I wanted. She told me that I could start taking those pills when I felt ready – and not any sooner.
By late afternoon, I’d spent more of the day crying than not. But I tried to put on a brave face, take a deep breath, and swallow that first pill. More tears came anyway.
This was taken right before we went to our evening check-up at the hospital; I wanted one last belly photo just in case. I can see the uncertainty and decision-fatigue in my eyes.
At 9pm I grumbled back to the hospital. The CTG scan was glowing, as if nothing had been wrong that morning. Already frustrated, you can imagine how I received the news that there had been a miscommunication. Apparently, I needed to stay at the hospital if I continued taking pills every second hour through the night. I had understood that, given the CTG scan was good, I could continue the pills as home and hopefully spend early labor in comforting surroundings.
Unprepared and running low on oxytocin, I decided to pause the pills and sleep in my own bed that night, still crossing my fingers that my labor may begin uncoaxed. Almost as soon as we left the hospital premise, my body unclenched and I experienced several Braxton Hicks contractions, which continued through the evening.
Before bed, I lathered myself in sesame oil, pressing my fingers into my middle and pushing downward with resolve. I went to sleep hoping to be woken.