Pain Scale 10: A Father's Reflections on Natural Childbirth

I believe only those who have actually experienced the pain of natural childbirth can know what it is like, and there is no point in their trying to describe it to the rest of us - especially we guys who are at a biological disadvantage to comprehending it. Regardless, there is something to be said for the way natural childbirth changes the nature of a relationship between a man and a woman. Granted, this is only our first child so I have no direct knowledge of the effects of other methods of childbirth (caesarian, epidural, etc).

Even before we went off birth control, Chelsea and I had long been discussing our plans for children. The more we talked, the more we found ourselves in agreement on a great many things concerning how we wanted to approach each aspect of it. These talks led to a building excitement about the days to come. Chelsea has always been quite a researcher, she never makes any big decisions without having done her homework first (one must wonder, then, how on earth she could have chosen me as her husband). Car, house, baby ... all of these decisions were reached only after a lot of information had been gathered. So, when all of the pregnancy and childbirth books started showing up - one on the coffee table, two by the bed, four more to be returned, etc - I was not surprised or unsettled at all. When we did finally figure out an insurance plan (my Insurance Plan Comparison Chart in excel is a thing of beauty), we were both more than ready.

Of course, once we learned that we were pregnant, the baby books invaded like the Huns - a swift, brutal, and complete takeover. From time to time, Chelsea would point out something that she found interesting in whichever book she was reading. Mostly I smiled and nodded, figuring that there was plenty of time to learn this stuff later. Then came the ultimate request - homework. That's right, she wanted me to read a few sections out of a couple books. Bleh. I put it off and put it off until the week before our all-day childbirth class (something else I was obviously totally psyched for). I simply did not want to deal with the extreme hassle of gathering new information. Obligatory information gathering is something I find incredibly repulsive.

A few days before the Saturday childbirth class, I finally knuckled down and braced myself for the horrors to come as I opened the first book to the conveniently pre-marked spot. I think it took me all of 30-45 minutes to read everything she had marked for me, and I began to realize just how ridiculous I had been for being so mulish about doing that reading. I say that I "began to realize" on purpose, because I don't think the full weight of this knowledge really sank in until the day of the birth. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The following Saturday, we made the short drive to the hospital for the class. More than anything, the class served to solidify through repetition that which I had just read. Hmmm, maybe Chelsea was right ...

The next thing I know, it's May 3rd and Chelsea is telling me that the cramping she's experienced over the last few days is getting worse. I still have the text message that reads simply, "About 45 sec of ouch." About a half hour later, I headed home and we started seriously timing contractions. We took a walk - no change in the frequency or duration. I said it's time for us to head in to the hospital - but wait! How could I know such a thing? Yup, you guessed it - the books and the class.

When we arrived at the hospital, we were sent to a small room where Chelsea was hooked up to about 54,536,275 machines to see if she was really in labor. The test results came back positive about 15 minutes later and we were officially sent to a birthing room. Up to this point, contractions had been mild, barely causing Chelsea to wince when they started. Now things got serious. She couldn't really sit down due to pain and/or discomfort, so she was constantly walking around, only stopping when the contractions would start. Carol, our midwife, was in and out from time to time as was Teresa, our nurse. Since we had stated at the beginning that we were planning on a natural childbirth, they barely mentioned any analgesics or epidural or anything, just simple coping techniques. Basically it boiled down to doing whatever her body was telling her to do - if it's uncomfortable, change your position to be more comfortable. The holy-hand-grenade, hail-Mary, wait-until-you-can't-bear-it-anymore option was the shower/hot tub. They said if she chose this option too early, then when the real pain came, going back to it would be much less effective. So we waited. Well, I waited. Chelsea wandered around trying to deal with whatever pain she was feeling at the time. My job was to remind her to go to the bathroom at least every hour and to help her find comfortable positions. Then she looked at me and said that it was time for the shower. She was in there all of 20-30 minutes (during which time we were blessed with the reappearance of her spinach salad from lunch) when she said she was starting to feel a lot of pressure "down there." I called Carol and Teresa back into the room and they determined that Chelsea was complete and 9.5cm (if you don't know what that means, go read a baby book, sheesh).

Now we were into the transition phase. During these contractions, Chelsea would grab my hands/arms quite strongly and lay her head on them as I tried to keep her focused on breathing. This is where I started to understand that she was actually in pain. Not discomfort. Pain. The contractions became very close together, barely giving her time to recover before the next one would start. She couldn't really talk to me, either - if I asked her a question, the best I got was a barely intelligible one-syllable reply. Honestly, the time frame for a lot of this is muddled, but I think she laid down to push around 10pm or so. The pushing was, I believe, a difficult thing to figure out. Although her body was telling her to push, it didn't just do it for her. And tensing your whole body, a fairly normal reaction to pain, doesn't get the job done - it has to be focused. Now my role was becoming clearer. With each passing contraction, Chelsea was increasingly hazy and unfocused. I had to remind her to breathe, as weird as that may seem. I stayed right next to her, giving her something to concentrate on.

One of my favorite moments was when Carol and Teresa began scurrying around the room to prepare everything for the baby. I stole a quick glance at them, realized what going on, and turned back to Chelsea to tell her this exciting development. Progress was being made. There was an end in sight. The next 5-10 contractions are a blur of mixed memories for me: the bright lights pointed down at Chelsea so everything could be clearly seen as it was happening; the oddly colored and shaped crown of our baby's head; Chelsea's intense screams of pain as she pushed the baby out into this world, tearing in places that ought not be torn. I still can't quite piece it into a cohesive memory, but the fragments I have are enough to make me tear up.

And then, whiz-bam-bang, there was a mess of flesh writhing on top of Chelsea's stomach. I had been so engrossed in helping Chelsea through the last contraction that I had missed the rest of the body coming out. Or did I see it? Frankly, I can't remember for sure. I do know that I sat there, frozen, as Carol asked me to say what gender the baby was. I feel that the time between her asking that question and me comprehending it, looking at Riley, deciding what exactly I was looking at, and answering the question was at least a minute long. Clearly it wasn't, but it stands out to me so vividly. Riley was moved up closer to Chelsea's face so she could get a better look at the baby who had just started to use her own lungs and was letting everybody know what she thought of all this. At that moment, I remembered I had the camera in my pocket and, again, time froze as I frantically grabbed for it. I love that first picture of the two of them, mother and daughter. Will Riley remember it? No. But I could tell that Chelsea was 100% there, pain and exhaustion and joy and relief all wrapped up in that first look at our little girl.

With all of that said, here's what I really wanted to talk about: I have had a lot of time recently to examine the flyers hanging in the hospital, and one of them that shows up in nearly every room is the Pain Rating Scale. This is a fairly simple chart that explains how you should answer the how-are-you-feeling-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10 question. I've seen at least 3 variations, two of them grouping the numbers while the third broke down each number on its own. It was this third variation which caught my attention the most. 0 was "no pain or sleeping" and it went up from there, each number having a slightly increasing level of pain. Number 10, the highest level of pain a human can experience, was "incapacitating pain, similar to hard labor during childbirth." Wait, hard labor? Isn't that what Chelsea just .... oh. I get it now. Wow.

I don't feel like I was a superhero that day. I felt like more of an interested bystander. But Chelsea says she needed me and I was very helpful. I, on the other hand, can't help but be absolutely amazed by this woman whom I love. Watching her go through all of that for the sake of our child was mind-blowing. There is no doubt in my mind that our relationship has been greatly strengthened by this. And not so much because we're bound together by the life of our daughter (although this is clearly a factor), but because the very personal connection the two of us share has been forever altered. The absolute core of who we are has become so much more than anything I thought it needed to be. So much more than everything I ever thought it could be.