On Giving Birth in the Car

My daughter, the Lady Katherine, is turning 3. In honor of her birthday, I’m sharing her insane birth story. 

From the moment I first went to the OB with a positive pregnancy test, everyone I talked to said  “Your second one will come earlier and be a lot faster than your first.” She wasn’t early, in fact she was fashionably late like her brother, but I had no idea how right they were about that second part.

This pregnancy was definitely harder on me than my son’s was. The labor was actually longer overall, too, despite the acceleration to 100mph at the end. I started swelling and having Braxton-Hicks contractions with Katie probably about two months before she was born. Stronger contractions started around 37 weeks, but nothing to write home about. At my 38 week appointment, my OB declared that it would be this week. At my 39 week appointment, he again declared that it would be this week. At my 40 week appointment, he said that I definitely wouldn’t make it past the weekend. (Right.)

After that appointment I went to a craft fair, hoping to walk her out. It seemed to be working – I had contractions all day, but they weren’t stop-you-in-your-tracks strong. Even so, I told my husband that we should probably go home just in case. Of course, the second I got in the car they started to weaken and eventually stopped. I spent the next 24 hours with nothing, not even a twinge.

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Around 3:45 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2014, I wake up with contractions for real. Jack’s labor started the same way, but these contractions are a lot stronger than I remember with him. I time a few, and they’re 10 minutes apart. About five contractions later I’m down to 5-7 minutes apart, so I wake Brian up and hop in the shower. By the time I get out, they’re a minute or two apart and hurt like nothing I’ve ever felt before. We rush to get dressed, and two hours after the first big contraction we’re out the door to the hospital. (In hindsight, I definitely should’ve skipped the shower, but Jack’s labor took 24 hours –we weren’t thinking in minutes.)

As we start down the hill hubs says “Sorry, but I’m going to drive fast,” because we’re scheduled to deliver at a women’s hospital about 20-25 minutes away. Our Subaru has a “sport sharp” mode, which we call the rocket launcher, and I tell him to Fucking. Use. It. The contractions are piling on top of each other and hurt so bad I think they’re literally going to take my breath away. I’m doing the math in my head about how long it will take to get to the hospital, get checked, and get the IV fluids before I can even get an epidural and think to myself “Well, I’ll be dead by then.”

Hubs is tripling the speed limit and blowing through red lights (which I think he secretly enjoyed), and I probably look exactly how screaming women in labor are portrayed in the movies. We pass by another, closer hospital, and when he asks “Do we need to go to this hospital instead?” all I can muster is “Yes! ER!”

Here’s where things get interesting. The sign to the ER entrance is not well lit and we end up driving past it. At the same time, I start feeling the urge to push. We first get to the main entrance of the hospital, and my water breaks with a huge gush that feels like a water balloon popping. I yell “My water broke!” and all of a sudden, my body just opens up and the pain stops. It’s now pure focus, pure confidence — it was the craziest mood swing I’ve ever felt. Hubs whips a U-turn as fast as he can to get back to the ER entrance, him shouting “Sorry! Sorry!” while he’s jumping curbs and me shouting “She’s coming!”

A few seconds later we find the ER entrance, and he goes in to grab someone. Another few seconds later there’s a nurse moseying out with a wheelchair — as if I have more than 30 seconds before this baby gets here. I yell “YOU NEED TO RUN!” which must be the magic words at an ER, because boy, do they run.

All of a sudden it’s chaos. I’m still sitting in the front seat of the car, they’re coming with a stretcher, and I’m ready to just deliver her myself. I’m not even pushing, my body has taken over at this point and I’m just along for the ride. My only plan is to catch her. (I’m pretty sure I said “No worries, I got this!” when the nurse first opened the car door.)

She looks at me with what was either shock or awe, or maybe a little both, and says (in one breath) “She’s crowning…the head’s out… she’s out!” Then that awesome nurse rips off her scrub jacket and wraps Katie tight to keep her warm as I just sit there, surprisingly relaxed, and watch as this excited gaggle of people keep repeating “Oh my god, it’s a baby! Hi baby!”

A bit later my tear starts to sting and jolts me back to reality. It’s 6:04 a.m. – we left the house at 5:55 a.m.

My next memories are of the ER team forgetting about that pesky umbilical cord and trying to move the baby (Um, y’all? Still attached here!) and a doctor casually saying “Keep her below the placenta,” which is still inside me, which is still inside the car. They cut the cord right there in the front seat, then hubs goes with the baby while they put me onto a stretcher. They take me straight up to a delivery room where the on-call OB meets me to assess the damage. I have a second-degree tear that needs stitches (lidocaine shots in your ladybits is an experience I’d rather not have again), and it takes a while because I have so much adrenaline pumping through me that I’m practically

shaking myself off the table.

This is as close as I’ve ever come to an out-of-body experience. But after about 45 minutes I finally stop shaking, and that’s when I crash back into my body, break down and ugly cry. I don’t get to see Katie for several hours because they have her under a warmer in the nursery, but I don’t even protest because I am wiped. out.

Once we’re together it takes a bit for her to start nursing, and she ends up needing her stomach suctioned. The nurse says that the pushing stage helps most babies get all the fluid out of their lungs and stomachs, but I didn’t really have that stage so she needed a little help. She was otherwise perfect and pink, weighing in at 7 lbs. 13 oz. And after 24 hours of “You didn’t even have a hep-lock!” and “Are you the parking lot mom?” at the hospital, we go home as a party of four.

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I had a lot of random thoughts during all of this. When my water broke I was sitting on a blanket and a garbage bag, but I had one second where I thought “Oh please don’t get any on my purse!” When they were wheeling me on the stretcher I got a glimpse of the elevator pulley system and thought that was so cool looking. And to this day I’m not sure what floor of the hospital we were on during our stay.

Lastly, I think a lot of my labor false starts were psychological. I had been working on a huge project at work and I would think “She can’t come today, I have to get this finished.” I ended up starting maternity leave early because I had to walk away. I also had a lot of fear about taking care of a newborn again at (almost) 40, and it wasn’t until I really admitted that to myself (and to Katie) that labor started. I couldn’t sleep the night of the 18th, so I did a meditation where Katie and I had a heart-to-heart and agreed that we we both scared, but we’d make it work together. I went to sleep finally, and 2 hours later I felt the first contraction.

2017 update: Things I’ve learned since I wrote this story.

~My husband managed to keep his wits about him during all this, which I guess means I forgive him for driving like a bat out of hell while I was in transition. And for taking pictures of me giving birth. In the car.

~Labor and delivery pro tip: If you have your baby in the hospital parking lot, but not actually in the hospital, they bill it as an out-of-hospital birth and you save money.

~My mother in law had come to stay with us to keep Jack while we were at the hospital, and thank goodness she did. Otherwise, Jack would’ve been in the back seat while I was having a baby in the front seat.

~As I was making my way to the car, that same MIL, who is a retired ER nurse, was apparently giving hubs a crash course on how to deliver a baby because she didn’t even think we’d make it down the hill.

~Taking care of a newborn at (almost) 40 was really difficult. I was right about that part.

~Nowadays, when facing a challenge, I say, “I had a baby in my car. I can do anything!”

~Speaking of my car, I will never part ways with that Subaru. It’s family now, and I hope it lasts until she can drive it. In fact, I almost named my daughter Katie Sue in honor of our first adventure together.

~This girl hasn’t changed a bit since her birth day. When she’s ready to go, you better be ready too.

TL;DR I gave birth to my daughter in the car.