Introducing Faris!! - GUEST POST BY ANNO

Above: Nairobi, January 21, 2012 @ 412pm - One small step for man...

Faris means (literally) horsesman and (figuratively) one of upright bearing in Arabic (Farasi also means horse in Swahili), and Rai means ‘bearing lightning and thunder’ in Japanese. An unlikely combination of languages, but we liked that it gave Faris a superhero-ish name, and it reflected the intensity of his arrival.

My guest post is intended to help consolidate the experience of Faris’ birth for our collective memory, since it was a very positive experience, and one likely to fade with time. We spent a lot of time trying to make the experience a bonding one for our family, having just moved to Kenya and feeling a bit adrift in the bustling city.

My water broke on Thursday January 19^th, a day before my due date, while we were in the green grocer (named Mama’s after the portly and suitably bossy matron that runs it) buying melons. With a melon in each hand, I looked across the tomato display at Aki, trying to convey what was happening without outright saying it … we were in a 4 ft square store with helpful attendants everywhere. Aki understood after some considerable eyebrow sign language, and quickly paid up. (Aki: Extra points to Anno for having the presence of mind to make sure that our shopping basket wasn’t left in the shop!)

When we get home, we confirm that in fact my water has broken, that the fluid is clear (i.e. all-clear with baby), and that there are no contractions yet. In accordance with our plan, we decide to not call the doctor until labour has begun in earnest. The theme of much of our planning was ‘NOT NEW YORK’ – as in:

• no going to the hospital early,
• no being told that your labour is failing to make progress,
  
• no to getting hooked up to a hospital bed,
  
• no to unnecessary medical interventionism.
  

For Sofia, my water broke early and in our excitement and naivete we promptly called the doctor, who then immediately informed us were officially on a ‘deadline’ to deliver within 24 hours for fear of ‘infection’ as per NY state law.

Flashback to Sofia's birth in July 2008: Midwife suggests I try to naturally induce labour with castor oil and acupuncture to avoid chemical inducement in the hospital (a much more brutal process), I do this, it helps a bit but not enough and when this doesn’t work, I get kicked out of the natural birthing centre (report card reads; FAILURE TO PROGRESS). Inducement begins with Pitocin in the main ward, countless physical exams by every nurse, intern and midwife who happens to walk by our room (the primary vector of all manner of infection to an otherwise totally sterile womb, creating a catch22 which further galvanizes the medical professions’ need to get baby out by any means necessary!). Inevitably, under the circs, I come down with an infection and narrowly avoid a c-section. Thankfully my wise midwife (the most experienced and respected in Manhattan) shows up at the 11^th hour, sees the situation, assesses that rather than cut me up, she can deliver the baby in 30 minutes the ‘normal’ way.

Success, and beautiful baby Sofia is brought into the world without the need to unsheathe the scalpel set (much to medical resident’s chagrin). The downside, mother is comatose from Pitocin, epidural antibiotics for 2 weeks post birth, baby Sofia is in intensive care for a week, breastfeeding off to a rough start as hospital does not allow ‘rooming in’ with mom or breastfeeding, insists on formula feeding baby for first week mom is told she will starve her baby if they don’t do this…Aki is not allowed in the hospital beyond visiting hours, and I am alone in a room shared with a drug addict mom who is awake all night ranting about invisible spiders crawling over her face. The hospital scene is so unappealing that Aki and I actually deliberate smuggling Sofia out of hospital, but ultimately decide that we will endure present situation and just try to avoid this at all costs in future.

Fast forward to Nairobi 2012: So we decide we don’t want to be on a deadline for birth and want to distance ourselves as much as possible from physical, emotional and social aspects of the first birth experience - that breaking of waters is not the calamity that the medical profession makes it to be. In fact, we discussed this at length with our doctor during our medical visits and her take was similar inasmuch as we would be given 48-72 hours to see if labour kicked in naturally before we then decided the way forward. So following her advice on this (and not totally trusting the medical establishment to stick to this advice), we decided to give ourselves 48 hours of at-home laboring before triggering the broken-water stopwatch.

Above: Emotional signpost: excitement - we're in labour!

Above: Sofia helping me through a contraction on Saturday morning.

Thursday night, about 10 hours after water breaks, mild contractions begin. I am able to sleep through them but wake up on Friday with them ongoing – about every 20 minutes. Friday we go to the mall(Aki: I love that Guava frozen yoghurt!), take Sofia to swim lessons and try to take our minds off the contractions which we know are early stage and the real show has yet to begin (and we don’t want to exhaust ourselves by thinking the labour has really begun as yet). We know in the typology of labours I’m unflatteringly a ‘putterer’ – that is, it takes a long time for things to get in high gear. By Friday night (now about 36 hours after water has broken), we get some serious contractions, about 10 min apart now. We try to sleep but they are too painful so we end up awake all night with Aki coaching me through contractions (we practised and endorse the Bradley method of childbirth – husband coached labours). It works beautifully – who would have thought that relaxation and power of suggestion were so effective at pain relief? Seriously, I doubted it but having practiced much of this, Aki was able to guide me through some rough seas that night! I’m sure he’ll blog more on this soon… By 6am, contractions 6 mins apart and now 41 hours post water breaking we decide to let the doc know what’s going on.

We get our story straight like a couple of bank robbers about to be interrogated in separate cells, and call her – bald-facedly lying about when the water broke, saying that our water broke the previous evening (not two evenings ago) and that we’re in a good labour now… Despite our Rumsfeldian ‘truth-management’, she tells us to come in right away and that she’s caught up somewhere all morning, and that she will pop in when she can that morning. Seeing as the doc wouldn’t even be at the hospital, and with the hope that Saturday morning traffic wouldn’t be too bad, we decide to hold off going for another few hours.

We end up arriving at 11:30am, when contractions are close to 3 min apart. When we arrive the nurses excitedly proclaim, 5 cm dilated…’we’re going to have a baby very soon!” . This is great news, and we’re vindicated in our home-made risk management stratagem, and proud that we’re close to the finish line. In Sofia’ s birth 5-10 cm went very fast so our thinking was that it would happen again that way.

However, our doctor, whom I’ve really liked up to this point, then conducts a quick exam of her own, shakes her head gravely, and delivers the following bomb: “Oh, only 5 cm, you’re very slow! Considering that you’re water broke last night, you should be further progressed. We’re going to have to think about inducing you if things don’t pick up.” She then pronounces my contractions to be ‘not productive’ – things are suddenly looking grimmer for Team Faris! Doc suggests I take a walk to speed things up. She’s obviously keen on having her Saturday back and in the process I’m worried has all but stopped my contractions in their tracks – again power of suggestion (‘You call this labour??!! This is a joke!’ she seems to be saying to my uterus and my uterus seemed to be replying ‘errr, maybe you’re right’).

So Aki and I decide to take a walk, and as we’re just on the verge of hatching an escape plan from the hospital (notice the trend of escape plans from health institutions as part of every birthplan thus far!), my contractions take on a seriously painful new approach. I can barely stand through them and we accordingly return to the hospital room. Contractions are now coming in a seemingly endless, break-less pattern, and have switched to the torturous sort with nothing providing any relief except a hot shower which is broken and intermittingly spitting out cold water (almost the only developing country taste in the hospital. Ok, that, and the pair of white gumboots left mysteriously lying in the tub in the bathroom).

I’m having back labour and the contractions are now pushing the baby in the wrong configuration (posterior). I keep saying “this is not normal pain!” which undoubtedly unnerves Aki (ed. – I was cool as a cuke the whole way through, hehe nervous laugh), and the doctor is still out on her Saturday errands. I can only describe the pain in the last two hours of labour as ‘hanging from the chandelier’ type pain – it made me crazy. I was beside myself, and thought this would end either in my death or in the birth of our child – with slim odds favouring the latter.

Nothing seemed to relieve this pain other than the knowledge my labour was in fact progressing quite fast, or so I was told. The doctor returns at last, declares that I’m in fact almost ready to push and within another hour or so, baby is in my arms! I go from a delirious hollering wretch in the last hour to my wise-cracking self in about 30 seconds flat – the baby out of my body is a huge relief, I feel as though I’ve completed a half-ironman (which I’ve done, and can therefore empirically assure you this is harder and the stakes are higher given the fact that here, not only can you actually die but the course duration/difficulty is not predetermined, so as trained as we were we hadn’t prepared for the back labour and had no idea what the pain level would be). I’m elated and able to make phone calls within a half hour of birthing to anxious sets of (grand)parents. We really were in awe and wonderment of our new child in a way that I wasn’t capable of when drugged up and delirious the first time around. Aki, Faris and I spend the first night in hospital together.

In fairness, we are very grateful for all the care and tests to which we and Faris were subjected. After a 48 hour stay in the hospital (for observation purposes, and during which he and I ate, slept and played together constantly), Faris was declared fit to join gen-pop.

Note to my future self on what we enjoyed most:

- We did most of our labouring at home, with humour, fun and in a supportive environment (Aki: Thanks also to American Analog Set for a great playlist!).

- We spent as little of the experience in the hospital and offered very little opportunity for doctors to go nuts with needless interventions

- We were hyper-educated and trained, and knew what to expect and where not to freak out

- We felt that we controlled the narrative not the doctors – we were never corralled into a situation.

- Aki stayed with me in the hospital.

- We had a private room, roomed in with the baby, had visitors and weren’t tightly controlled in that environment.

- The hospital staff supported and were knowledgeable about breastfeeding.

- The doctor’s intervention was limited to catching the baby, and administering/backstopping all medical clearances etc.

- The consistently glorious weather allows for comfy dressing, walking, and breast feeding

In retrospect, we did lie to our medical practitioner which ultimately reflected that we didn’t trust her surgeon’s worldview, but it paid off. In the labour room, everything she said in the consult room didn’t hold – our risk management must trump any other person’s (given that it is my body, my baby, and my role to solely bear all consequences). It seems in labour and pregnancy everything is about the baby and mothers, are simply a carrier, that can be split open, diced and sliced in any which way all in the interest of ‘the baby’. I find this approach to childbirth a bit of a George Bush approach – if you’re not for the baby and willing to completely surrender to our inadequate ill-informed and knee-jerk approach to childbirth- then you’re against the baby.

This no-nuance perspective is unsustainable and intolerable. Childbirth is tough and physical – there are great medical advances that can help, but it doesn’t need to be either a highly medicalized spectator sport where you are railroaded into procedures you don’t want/need (all in the notional and extremely short-term interests of the baby), or else have to go totally granola natural in order to avoid all of this. As in all things, there is a spectrum of experiences, and a vast middle ground, which, in our case, warranted lying to care providers to be reclaimed. Good (and, candidly, lucky) for us that we achieved what we set out to, but shame that that’s what’s required to have a decent birthing experience in this day and age.

In any case, we are as happy as clams with Faris (hereinafter, F.). S. is proving to be an excellent big sister, with the need to curb her enthusiasm by only 30-40%. Watch this space – I think so F. is just getting started (Aki: that phraseology is one of S.'s patented grammatical enhancements to the English language)

Above: Minutes after the birth - happy, mindful and lucid.

Above: Nurse: "Hmm, as I suspected, your boy is a genius..."

Above: Proud big sister at the hospital seeing Faris for the first time.

Above: Getting a little carried away with the affectionate sentiments...