Well, some day I'll get around to writing it all out, but for now, I'll try to share bits and pieces as they come to mind. Eleven days before I gave birth, we scheduled a tour of the hospital. The hospital is about 40 minutes from where we live and we hadn't had a reason to visit it until the end of my pregnancy. Or so I thought. Up until that day, I hadn't thought too much about giving birth in a foreign country. I was planning to go as "naturally" as possible, meaning it didn't matter if they had epidurals or other pain meds. I had done it with Emma and loved how I felt the second she was born. Totally worth it. How hard could it be to give birth in a "different" setting. We've been here almost three years so the language wasn't an issue.
Over the last three years, I've learned a lot about the culture here. Over the last nine months, I've learned a TON about the birthing culture here. Main point - the doctors and women prefer c-sections over natural birth. I'm not even talking about natural birth with an epidural. The women simply do not want that baby to come out of you know where. There's a lot of fear of the pain and of what could change down there. It's much more convenient for the doctors and nurses to plan their day when they can schedule several surgeries instead of waiting for a laboring woman. I gave up trying to convince the women that a birth the way God intended it was so much better. (Side note: I'm all for a c-section in an emergency and I'm so grateful for the knowledge and wisdom doctors have to save babies and women. However, I'm totally against a planned c-section because of convenience or fear that the privates will look different!) OK, so we went for the tour. We were welcomed into the maternity ward and the nurses informed me my doctor wouldn't be able to join us due to his schedule. Fine. The nurses gave us the tour after doing a 20-minute monitoring of our baby's heartbeat. The room we were in was interesting, but I didn't think too much of it (third picture). After the monitoring, the nurses gave us sterile scrubs to put on over our clothes and the tour began. First we went to a small room with a flat bed and a few sterile supplies. We'll call it the "first room". Upon entering the first room, if she's insane enough to choose parto normal (natural birth) in the first place, the laboring woman is supposed to crawl up on the table, lay flat on her back, and let the nurses give her a full pubic shave. . . with a Gillette. Ouch. I had to ask the nurse to repeat herself when she told me this. I also had to ask her to repeat the word "gillette", which is the same word in Portuguese. Once I clarified, she went on. After the full pubic shave (front to back, I clarified, also), the woman (who is in labor, mind you), will then have a lavagem intestinal, or an intestinal cleansing. In laymen's terms, an enema. My jaw dropped. I almost laughed but realized she wasn't joking. OK, seriously?? I'm in labor and you want to try to take a razor and enema to my privates?? No thank you. I had to translate the intestinal cleansing word for Kevin. I so wish I would have had my camera to capture the incredulous look upon his face. We both almost fell over. So, after clarifying (and secretly starting to plan my home birth in a foreign country), we asked several more questions and then moved on to the "second room", which is the room we had been in prior to starting the tour (third picture). So, after being subjected to the lower region sterilization, the laboring woman (who might have lost all concentration by now), has to leave the first room and enter the second room, where she will labor until the doctor can check her dilation. Oh, the nurses?? They're pretty good at the pubic shave and enema part, but they're not trained obstetrical nurses, meaning they don't really know how to check the dilated cervix, nor do they really know the phases that a laboring woman is going through. Only the doctor here checks the dilation. So, in room two, where there are two beds, yes two, (for the two insane laboring women who've chosen not to have c-sections), the woman labors until she's fully dilated. Once she hits the magic number "10", she's complete and can then make her way to room number three!! Yes, there's a "third room". How? I asked. How does a fully dilated woman make her way to the third room, which is fifty feet down the hall, through the "sterile" doors, to the third room?? The nurse said she walks or she can have a ride in the wheel chair if she so chooses. The way she responded made me wonder if she had ever actually seen a laboring woman do what she just said. Once inside room number three, the nurse described what would take place. The laboring woman, who's now completely dilated and probably pushing her baby out, has to crawl up on the hard metal table, lay on her back ('cause someone once decided gravity works better laying down??) and place her legs in the crazy-large metal stirrups. (I jumped up on the table and tried to get my legs in the stirrups. No go. I couldn't even spread my legs that far when I wasn't in labor!) Then she can give birth, probably with one doctor helping the baby out while another doctor pushes on the woman's belly to help push the baby down the birth canal. Yes, it's true. They do that often here. I've read about it. I have a friend that it happened to. Apparently, the baby can't come out on her own. Now I was not-so-secretly planning my home birth, or at the very least, a car-outside-the-hospital birth. Anything to avoid the three rooms that felt so sterile and cold to me with way too much medical intervention. Here's the "third room" and the freakishly large metal stirrups. . .
And the "second room". . .
Well, after the hospital tour, needless to say, I was a little nervous. I laughed about it and joked about how crazy I thought the hospital was, but inside, I was wishing I could hop on the next plane to the U.S. and give birth in a more relaxed, comfortable environment. I was scared. I ran through all the scenarios and had a huge fear of an unnecessary episiotomy, forceps, or c-section birth. Don't get me wrong, all those methods could save a woman or a baby, but they are to be used in situations that call for them, not because it's convenient.
We left the hospital and I had about eleven days to pray and get a little anxious. OK, a lot anxious. Then it happened. I was having a very normal day. Monday. February 6. I was just over 38 weeks along. Kevin couldn't come home for lunch, so Emma and I walked to John Deere to get the car. It was about a 40-minute walk and I felt great. We had lunch, a normal afternoon and then it was time to get Kevin from work. 7pm. I drove to Deere and Emma jumped out of the car to run and meet her daddy. They both climbed in the car and then it happened. I looked at Kevin with my eyes wide open. He got a strange look on his face and frowned. "You OK?" he asked. "Um, no. I think I just peed my pants," I said. I looked down. I didn't feel like I had lost control, but sure enough, the seat was wet. Just a tiny bit. (Don't tell anyone here in Brazil that. . . it might affect the resale value of our car when we leave!) I squeezed my legs together and kept on driving, not really sure of what had just happened. We had planned to eat at the hotel for dinner and I wasn't in the mood to change plans. Plus, I didn't really believe the thoughts that were running through my head. Kevin was smiling and getting excited. I was nervously pretending to be normal. Ten times during our dinner, I went to the bathroom to check. Still not quite sure. Finally, after picking through my food, we decided to go home. I went to the bathroom once we got home and then I knew. Several times during my OB visits, my doctor said to let him know if "liquid was running down my legs". I pretty much ignored him because my water didn't break with Emma until I was pushing an hour before she was born. Well, sure enough, I wasn't peeing myself. My water had broken. I was twelve days out from my due date. The freaking out began. Kind of. I called my friend Courtney to let her know it was time for her to take Emma, but that we were going to wait until contractions began and I was further along. No need to hurry to room number one:) We put Emma to bed, showered, picked out our clothes, made sure the bags were all ready, and then decided to go to bed. No contractions. I woke up to pee several times during the night, but finally woke up for good at 6am, frustrated not to have had any progress. I sent Kevin to work. The CEO of John Deere was in town and that seemed to be more exciting than what was happening with me, which was pretty much nothing. Courtney came over and we went for a walk with Emma. Nothing. Kevin and I communicated throughout the day. No news. By that evening, I was a little frustrated. After gaining some encouragement from a midwife and nurse in the U.S., we decided to go one more night. We sent Emma to Courtney's and went to bed. 3am. February 8. I woke up feeling annoyed at the tightness of my belly. Then it hit me. I knew that feeling! It was a contraction!! I laid there smiling. Yes!! Ten minutes later, another one. Then another. Every ten minutes for an hour. Sweet! 4am. I woke up and told Kevin. "Praise God," he said, and smiled. I knew what to do to get labor going, so I got out of bed and started walking, telling Kevin to go back to sleep. 5am. Only two contractions that hour. Bummed, I sat on the couch. Kevin came out. We talked and prayed. 6am. Figured we might as well go for a walk. Emma had spent the night with Courtney and Matt, so we had the freedom to leave the house that early. It was a beautiful, clear morning. The sun wasn't up yet, but the sky was starting to lighten. We took a back road, the one that goes by Dom Pepe and Emma's school, and held hands. Contractions came and went, but nothing that made me have to stop. I loved that time Kevin and I had together. So personal and intimate. I could have walked for hours, but my bladder wouldn't let me. An hour later, we went home. I showered again. 10am. After a few hours of frustration and a few tears, we decided to wait until noon before heading to the hospital. Kevin tried to lighten the mood by suggesting we play pool. Yes, pool. So we went into our party room, across the hall from our apartment, and played a few games of 9-ball. Every time I leaned over to shoot, my belly would tighten and I'd have a short, light contraction. 11am. Game over. Finally, I laid on the bed and just closed my eyes and prayed. Kevin came in and we laid there talking. I got up to do something and a contraction came. Around noon, I realized that every time I laid down for a few minutes and then got up to walk around, a contraction would come. After about half an hour of laying down and getting up again, I felt like my body was starting real labor! I started getting excited when the contractions were less than ten minutes apart. 1:45pm. We began getting things together to leave, without even saying a word to each other. We just knew it was time. Almost 2pm, we headed out the door and into the car. Our car is like a little mini-van. We folded the back seats down and I crawled in the back door with my pillow and some towels. . . just in case. I'm not sure what I yelled at Kevin during the 35-minute drive, but I think I was pretty critical of his driving. A friend once told me it would not be fun to be laboring on these Brazilian roads while dilated to a 10. She wasn't kidding. I felt every curve he took and every time he pressed on the brakes it felt like he was jamming his foot to the floor. I know he was being careful; it just didn't feel like it. We arrived at the hospital around 2:30pm. The way people were looking at me, I wanted to yell, "What? Have you not ever seen a woman in labor before?" People looked like they were scared of me or for me, not sure which. We made our way to the maternity ward and I took my time, knowing very well I wouldn't be entering room number one. I put in my trusty John Deere earplugs and pretended I didn't understand Portuguese. I made the nurses talk to Kevin and he filtered what I said back to them. We finally entered Room Number Two and to my surprise, there was another pregnant woman in there. The way I was laboring, I knew I couldn't be in the room with another woman as calm as her. Either she had just had an epidural or she was being prepped for a C-section. Either way, she was just way too calm and staring at me way too much for us to share a room. I made my way to the bathroom and labored over the toilet for a while. When my doctor showed up twenty minutes later, the other woman was gone and I took over the room. When he checked me, I was dilated to a 9. Twenty minutes later, I was at a 10. Our doctor went back and forth between our room and another room and then finally called another doctor in to help him because he didn't know which of his patients was going to deliver first. So, less than half an hour before giving birth, I got a new doctor, one I'd never even met before. I'm going to skip a few really private details here, but at 4:45pm, about two hours after we walked into the hospital, labor was over and I heard the most beautiful sound in the world - our crying baby girl. Our new doctor, Dr. Cinara, was our delivering doctor and she pulled Adri up onto my chest immediately after she was born. I cradled her and kissed her head and held her close to me as the rest of the room faded away. For a few moments, it was just our baby girl and me. People were coming and going and I can't remember any of their faces. I wasn't looking. My eyes were settled on the tiny little new one I held in my arms. Seconds after I began talking to her, she quit crying and just stared wide-eyed at her surroundings, calm as could be. Five minutes after she was born, my doctor came in with the pediatrician. Nobody expected Adri to arrive so quickly. (I'm guessing it's because there are so few natural births that they don't know how to judge the time). Twenty minutes after she was born, I nursed Adri and we had some time alone together. I was amazed - for all the medical intervention I had seen, nobody seemed to want to bother us after I gave birth. I showered and then we went to a recovery room. A nurse took my temperature and blood pressure and then we didn't see another person until the following morning (other than Emma and Matt and Courtney coming to visit). My OB came to check on me and the pediatrician checked on Adri. Then, sixteen hours after she arrived, Kevin and I walked out the front door of the hospital with our little Adri Ann.
One week later, we returned to the hospital for a peditrician visit. Afterward, we took a little detour back to the maternity ward. I just really wanted to have a picture of the room (and bed) where I had given birth. I also wanted to have the picture of the room where I could have given birth. We thought maybe we should get a discount because we only used one of the three rooms. Pretty sure that didn't happen. Two nurses (pictured above) talked with us about our experience. The one on the left had been on duty when Adri was born but didn't get to be a part of her delivery. The nurse on the right said she had heard about it and said she really wished she could have seen it. It sounded like she had never witnessed a natural birth. We were shocked. Kevin asked her what the C-section rate was for the hospital and she said it was over 80%!! We walked away, grateful to have been a part of the minority. Overall, our experience here was good. I had a lot of fear about what could have happened, but we felt so taken care of. Even through the scary times, I just felt like God was providing people to encourage and love us through. Kevin was an amazing support, both emotionally and physically, and I am so very grateful for him.
I feel like I'm missing several details, but I think this will do for now. I wanted to write it out so I don't forget. I love looking back at my journal from Emma's birth. It's important to me to share with the girls. I never really asked my mom about her birth experience with me. By the time I was interested, she was gone and my dad's memory is shady in that area (likely, because it happened fifteen times and he can't keep us all straight, or because he was at home with the other kids while my mom gave birth). Anyway, that's Adri's birth story minus a few details. And now. . . more pictures to come!!!
