August's Birth Story by Kathryn Montana Perkinson
I’m honored to share my birth story, and I do so with some trepidation. For me, it was the most impactful and important day of my life thus far, so it’s nice to commemorate my experience. And I write this for the version of me two years ago— for someone who is about to give birth and looking for inspiration and who is reading to see what it’s like. To find kinship and hope and solidarity. I did a lot to prepare and I’m sure that helped everything go well, and so much of it was good fortune, a random hand of cards that we were dealt. I hesitate because I know we were lucky, and I don’t take that lightly. I know you can do everything ‘right’ and end up with an outcome you didn’t want. I am not special. I’m not uniquely motherly or feminine or strong any more than whoever is reading this. You are opening yourself to the greatest joys and the possibility of the greatest pain of your life. We truly are not in control, and expansion and opening and letting go seem like the whole point of life.
I live in rural Wyoming, a small rock climbing town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Lander is known for its expansive sage brush high desert, granite peaks, limestone cliffs, and deep, clear riverbeds. In recent years, the OB birth scene has declined rapidly. My best friend, doula, and future godmother of my son worked in the labor and delivery unit locally and strongly advised that we have our baby elsewhere.
I found an obstetrician in Jackson, WY, which is a three hour drive. It was somewhat cumbersome to add six hours onto our OB appointments, but it felt worth it knowing that we were in good care. But the looming question remained– how would I give birth in a town three hours away? A friend scoffed, “Sounds like you’re having a baby at Togwotee Mountain Lodge,” (a rustic lodge on the mountain pass between our town and the hospital with no cell service and frequent bear sightings).
We have a lot of friends and community in the Jackson area, so I asked everyone I knew if they had housing ideas for us. Nothing clicked. It was looking more and more like we’d be staying at the hospital’s strange motel while we waited for the baby. I tried to keep my trust in the universe that it would workout. Was this all a bad idea? I was upending our lives to have a baby two hundred miles away when we had a hospital half a mile from our house. And we didn’t have anywhere to live. Maybe I was being too precious, too high maintenance. Then, three weeks before my due date, a friend of a friend reached out. Her house would be empty because she was going to another city to deliver her baby! She planned to rent her house while she was away, but offered it for free for as long as we needed. Floored by her generosity and perfect timing, we gladly accepted.
All along, I wanted to avoid induction. Having an unmedicated birth was really important to me, and I believed that would be much harder if I were in a hospital, being monitored, and with pitocin. I thought that I’d be able to go to 42 weeks before we evicted the baby. But then at my 39 week appointment, my OB said that an infant had died recently in the hospital at 41.5 weeks. Her head sank low and shoulders slumped. “I know an n of 1 isn’t a reason for a total overhaul, but for me it was so traumatic that I no longer want my patients to go past 41 weeks.”
This put a little fear in me. Would I end up getting induced? Would I be able to handle the pain of contractions with pitocin? I was scared already that I wouldn’t be able to handle the intensity of birth. I had heard of “the cascade of interventions”-- an induction leads to more monitoring leads to cesarean etc. Was I about to get swept away in the cascade? I felt a lump in my throat.
My doula and I made a plan– starting at 40 weeks, I’d do some *lowkey* induction methods, like membrane sweeps. Hopefully this would mean that he would be out and in our arms before 1 week past my due date.
My mother and sisters have all had babies at or after 41 weeks. Since this was my first, I figured there was no way I’d give birth before 40 weeks. At 39+5, I drove across to Continental Divide with my doula, Courtney. We drove through the bustling tourist center of Jackson and over Teton Pass into Victor, ID, where we would make our nest to wait for the little one. My husband owns a bakery and hoped to maximize his time off once our son was earthside. We figured birth would take a while, so he stayed at home and worked. He agreed to have his cell phone on him at all times, and we’d call him when the action started.
Two days later, Courtney and I drove the one hour mountain pass back to Jackson for my 40 week appointment. When my OB checked my cervix, she asked what I wanted to do. “You’re almost 2 cm and 75% effaced, he’s definitely moving.” I sheepishly asked if we could do a membrane sweep. She agreed, and I grimaced and wiggled my toes. She lifted her eyes, smiling, “I think I’ll see you tonight!” “Jake is rock climbing in Lander,” I told her. “Should I call him to come over soon?” She laughed nervously. “LANDER!? Yes, tell him to come.”
I left the appointment and called Jake. He had gone to a crag with cell phone service, and put me on speaker while he belayed our friend Charlie. He said he’d be right over and that he was so excited to meet our son. I too was so excited and so ready to meet our baby and live the birth I had been visualizing for months. He began the drive to Jackson and Courtney and I prepared excitedly by buying the entire prepared food section at Whole Foods. We wanted to do something to get ready, and turkey chili and refrigerated quiche was our answer.
There are few moments in life in which I am fully aware of how much is out of my control. Knowing that I was about to have a baby in the next 24 hours was thrilling and also terrifying. I had done what I could up to that point, and now it was out of my hands. We were entering the most raw, vulnerable, and opening experience of our lives.
And the truth is so much of it was luck. Luck to have my health, luck to have the support team I did, luck to end up with a relatively easy and straightforward birth, and luck to have a healthy baby. I don’t want to minimize the gravity of opening yourself to a world of pain and a world of joy. Feeling the fragility of life– mine and the baby’s– and knowing that for how many times it all goes right, for some it goes wrong.
Back in Victor, we waited. We watched Mean Girls and organized and re-organized our bags. I did a few moves I had learned from the Body Ready Method to try and get labor going. Jake came in the door, calm and collected as always. I felt a rush of relief and joy and we decided to go for a (very hot) walk around town.
Throughout the day, I had Braxton Hicks, painless contractions with a hard belly, but I never once felt any real sensation. They were getting closer and closer together, so Courtney used the doppler and could hear that he was tolerating them well. Jake’s two friends invited him on a mountain bike ride around 6 pm. Since nothing was happening, I told him to go enjoy himself. There was no use in him going stir crazy with me. I sat at the dining room table feeling defeated, like maybe today wasn’t the day, and pulled the turkey chili out of the fridge. Courtney and I ate and finished Mean Girls when I started to feel some cramping at 7 pm. Is this it? I wondered.
The cramping quickly escalated. I called Jake and told him to come home and he told me he’d be right there. I got in the shower for some relief from the sensation. A good friend of mine had told me that making noise really helped her get into her body and out of her head so I made noise. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt already. Everyone had said that early labor felt like period cramps, but these were way worse than what I had experienced with my period. Was I strong enough to handle this? I had wanted to wait to use water for pain relief until later on in my labor and here I was ten minutes in, lying on the floor of the tub.
When the hot water ran out, I asked Courtney to call and reserve one of the hospital motel rooms. We had an hour drive and already that felt daunting to me. I wanted to be closer to the hospital so I could focus on relaxing and opening up my body.
The contractions escalated quickly. Within half an hour we were on the road. Every neighbor in the housing complex watched me ride the waves of contractions in the driveway. I had made a rule for myself to smile as much as possible, to express gratitude, and to continue to remind myself and Jake that we get to meet our baby! It sounds corny but I think it all helped. It was absolutely the strongest sensation I had felt in my life, but the more I reminded myself that my love was here to hold me and how many of my ancestors had given birth this way, the more purposeful and connected I felt. And it took all of my concentration. I wanted to curse and scream and squeeze my fist tight but I had been told that it would make it worse. So I did my best to relax, wondering if I had what it took.
The car ride was intense. I was kneeling in the backseat with a lime popsicle, holding Jake’s hand and yelling at him to drive slower no faster no slower! We put on a handed-down playlist, babyzen, and enjoyed the setting summer sun as we drove the steep mountain pass. Driving through the town of Jackson, cars were stopped in traffic. I had all the windows down and was making all of the guttural, loud, uninhibited sounds with tourists three feet from the car on the sidewalk. Even in the moment, I could see how funny the scene was.
We got to the Motel and at this point I was having contractions lasting a minute with a minute or less of a break. I followed my body’s lead with Jake and Courtney’s steady assurance. I wanted to be in the shower swaying with Jake (where I threw up all of the turkey chili) and I wanted to face backwards on the toilet and I wanted to be on my hands and knees on the bed. No position provided any relief, but I kept moving trying to slow things down. Courtney put up Christmas lights and diffused lavender essential oil. Jake squeezed my hips and danced with me and told me I was so brave and so strong. I asked Courtney how to space out the contractions, how could I make the pain stop? She said we couldn’t, but that I could handle it. Contractions got longer and with less time between them. I could barely get any words out between each one. I wanted the tub. The tub was at the hospital.
Courtney was a labor and delivery nurse, and she is now a midwife (don’t try this at home! She’s a trained professional). She went to check my cervix for the first time that evening. I braced myself, ready for her to say I was only two centimeters dilated. “We should go now.” She calmly said I was “6 to 7, but very thin.” She’d later tell me that she had felt a cervix like that once before and that things moved quickly.
We got in the car for the two minute drive. In the car, I thought that I peed my pants but later realized my water had broken. We got to the hospital at 10:45 pm. Went to the wrong door, had two contractions before I could get back in the car, phew found the right door. Right after we walked into the building was a young man stumbling between two parents. He had a concussion from being thrown at the rodeo. The whole scene was out of a movie about the West. His mother held him back and said “SHE’S IN LABOR!”
They asked if they could wheel me to the hospital room but I wanted to walk. Sitting sounded too painful. About forty feet into the walk I squatted down on the ground and yelled that I needed to push. A nurse came behind me and whisked me away in a wheelchair, at a sprint, to the delivery room. I asked Jake to fill the bath with hot water. I needed to get in.
Courtney had taken a Gilligan’s Guide training months prior and had me doing certain exercises at the end of my pregnancy in order to get the baby in the optimal position for birth. She said that he was positioned correctly, which helped everything go down so quickly.
The nurse checked my cervix. I was 9 cm dilated and wasn’t allowed to get into the water. I continued to feel like I needed to push and just as the nurse was telling me I had to wait (and Courntey whispered that I should listen to my body), my OB walked in.
I felt so relieved I could cry. She was safety, trust, security. With Jake and Courntey and our OB there, baby and I would be fine. Better than fine. We’d be great.
She explained pushing to me and told me to start with the next contraction. It was 11:08 pm. From the birth class I took, I had planned to “breathe the baby out.” That quickly went out the window with by far the most intense physical effort of my life. I was on my knees with my arms holding onto the upright hospital bed. After a few pushes I started to black out. I shouted “I CAN’T DO THIS!” I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but I thought I might die. I felt so out of control and was seeing stars and felt wobbly. The only way I can describe pushing is ‘fucked up.’ She quickly spun me around and had me hold the squat bar in a deep squat. I was there for five minutes and I asked to lie down. I lay on my left side, Courtney held my right leg, and I pushed with all of my might. I felt the relief of his head come through. We waited for the next contraction, and his shoulders came next. Jake caught him and carried him to my chest with tears in his eyes.
A squishy, vernix covered little purpley blob came to my body. “Hello creature,” I said to him. Ten fingers, ten toes, one very tiny wiggly body. It was 11:23 pm, four hours and twenty minutes after my first contraction, on the full Sturgeon moon. We looked out the giant windows overlooking the elk refuge and saw lightning strike and heard thunder clap, and knew all was right as the Earth welcomed our baby August into her arms.
Kathryn Montana Perkinson is a mama, writer, and pre and postnatal fitness expert living in Lander, Wyoming. Find more at kathrynmontana.com and @kathrynmontana. Her online prenatal fitness course for athletes will launch soon! Follow @themountainmethod for updates!