Birth Story

The baby's due date was either on Yom Kippur (Sept. 28th) or the day after (depending on how you calculated it). Yom Kippur is one of the most important holidays of the year, and a fast day. Like all other holidays, you aren't allowed to do any creative work (e.g., turn on lights, or drive a car). You are, however, allowed to break the holiday for life-or-death emergencies (labor being one of them).

Laura, being the strong women she is, was fasting all day, and even went to prayer services in the morning. She left a little early, and went home to take a nap. At about 3:45pm I came home to a very concerned looking Laura. She said she that when she woke up from her nap, her water broke.

We paced around the house as we decided what to do, and the water kept coming. If we were going to drive to the hospital on Yom Kippur, we wanted to make sure that Laura was actually going into labor.

At that point, two of our friends Victor and Michael stopped by the house. Because the water hadn't stopped, we were confident at that point that Laura's water was really broken, and it seemed like she was starting to get contractions. We told our friends about what was happening, and decided we needed to leave for the hospital soon.

Although we could drive if we needed, it was better to find a non-Jew to drive us to the hospital. We had told our neighbors beforehand, and gotten several of them to agree to take us to the hospital if Laura went into labor on Shabbos or on Yom Kippur. Unfortunately, since Yom Kippur was on a Monday, most of them were at work. I ran  over to some of their houses, but none of them answered the door.

We were starting to run low on options now, so Victor and I decided to go door-to-door knocking on all of our neighbors' houses to see if any of them were home. We finally found an older women, a couple houses down from us who was home and willing to drive us. She told us that she would get her things ready and drive over in a couple minutes.

Just as our neighbor was pulling up to our house to give us a ride, an old black van came barreling down our street and screeched to a halt diagonally across our driveway. Dwight, the non-Jewish head of maintenence at our Shul, popped out of the driver's seat and screamed "Eh Laura! You need a ride?"

Dwight is great. He ran out, grabbed our bags, and drove us to the hospital, along with our doula, Leah Robbins. We got the hospital around 5:30pm, and by that time, Laura's contractions were getting strong and were around 8 minutes apart. They checked us in, and we went up to our room.

Things from there slowed down a little bit. They hooked Laura up to monitors to watch the baby's heart beat and contractions, and started the penicillin drip. On her initial examination Laura was 1cm dilated and almost totally effaced.

We walked around the hospital a little bit to try to progress the labor. the contractions were coming about every 5 minutes, and Laura was doing really good breathing and relaxing through them. We weren't sure if we wanted to get an epidural, and it looked like Laura was handling the labor great.

When Yom Kippur was over, about 7:30pm, we made Havdalah and had some sodas. Shortly after that, Victor and Michael came with some food put together by Ms. Shmotkin. At this point, Laura's contractions were coming about every 2 minutes, and lasting about 30-seconds. She was still doing really good with them, and had a really positive attitude.

When the resident came in, she wanted to do another exam to see how far along we are. When she was done, she told us that Laura hadn't progressed at all – she was still at 1cm. The resident said that she didn't think Laura's contractions were hard enough, and if she didn't start dilating soon, they were going to start her on Pitocin.

That news devastated Laura. For the last couple hours she had a very positive attitude through all of the contractions because we felt like we were getting somewhere. After the resident told us that she hadn't progressed, she lost all of her motivation. Leah tried to give her a pep-talk, but exhaustion soon set in.

We really wanted to avoid Pitocin, if possible. Because Laura had heard that the contractions from Pitocin can be very strong and painful she wanted an epidural before taking any. However, anesthesia was just called into an emergency c-section, so they weren't going to be available for another 2 hours. We decided to wait for the anesthesia, and then see how Laura was progressing.

Hoping to start things moving faster, we took another walk around the hospital. The contractions at this point were getting very strong, spaced about a minute and a half apart and lasting for 55 seconds. Laura was starting to get pretty tired, and having a hard time with these contractions.

Finally, the anesthesiologists arrived, and gave Laura the epidural. She was apprehensive to get one, because she had a very painful spinal tap in high school. But, the epidural went really smoothly. After it kicked in, Laura started feeling much better. With the epidural in, the mood lightened a lot. Laura could still feel the contractions, but the pain was almost completely gone. This was a huge relief to Laura.

Right after the epidural, the nurse came by to check on Laura's progress, and see if we wanted to start Pitocin. When she started doing the exam she said "All I can feel is head." Apparently Laura had dilated completely in the 2 hours we had waited.

At this point, the baby was imminent, so the nurses and doctors began to set everything up. The nurse who examined Laura said that she wanted Laura to "labor down" for about an hour before starting to push. She said, in contrast to movies, most people push for about 2 hours, and Laura was going to need some rest. This was about midnight.

The lights went down, and everybody tried to take a quick nap while we waited. Laura was feeling fine because of the epidural, so she was able to rest comfortably. The nurse came back about an hour later and prepared everybody for the pushing. Laura said that she knew the nurse said "2 hours" of pushing, but secretly she was a "champion" pusher. Now that we had gotten this far, her motivation was way up again, and she was going to try her best.

The nurse told laura to start pushing on her contractions, and 3 or 4 pushes in, the baby popped out. The nurses cleaned up the baby, and handed him over to us. Shortly after, we moved up to the post-partum room.