Introducing: Andersson Kiefer Helquist
Here is the birth story ...
My labor with Andersson was wonderful. It started in the morning and ended before bedtime. My water didn’t break until the very end, so the contractions were cushioned and the pain was manageable. For most of the day I was relaxed and having fun.
With Ginny’s labor, I felt nary a contraction until labor began. This time, I had two false labors. Both lasted for hours and the contractions were regular and decently strong. Knowing that second babies can come fast, we were afraid to wait too long to call Anders’ mom, who lives 90 miles away and was slotted as the babysitter.
As soon as we called, she came. She drove an hour and a half in the snow, in the middle of the night, twice. The second time she stayed. She was here for days, right before Christmas, giving up her time at the busiest season of the year so she could be with Ginny when we needed to go to the hospital.
And then I kept not needing to go to the hospital. I hadn’t reached my due date yet, but I was going bonkers. Those two nights of false labor tricked me into thinking the real thing was going to happen any moment. I lay in bed each night, hoping and praying that labor would start again before morning. And day after day, I got up and went to work and came home and nothing happened, and if you’ve been there you know exactly what it’s like, the waiting, and how tough it is.
Andersson was due on December 29. The day after Christmas, my sister Elisa flew into town from Arizona. She came alone for a week-long trip, leaving behind her three boys, the youngest of which was just over a year old. That’s a long time to be away from one’s family, but I’m so glad she made the sacrifice, because it was fabulous having her here, and her timing turned out to be perfect.
My mother-in-law passed the baton to Elisa and went home, after being with us for nearly a week. The next day was Friday. I went to work. By this point I was bored at work. A few days earlier I was scrambling, worried about leaving a mess for my coworkers, but I’d finally done the best I could to wrap things up, and it was killing me to stick around. What is the point of leaving instructions if you’re going to be there to do it anyway?
Friday night we went out. We ate dinner at the food court at the mall, and there was some odd confusion at checkout over whether it was possible for me to get a smaller plate of spaghetti or if it only came in large. In one shop, a friendly one-armed carpenter was selling a beautiful, child-sized, handmade wooden rocking chair, and Elisa bought it for Ginny. We went to Best Buy to exchange my brand-new touchscreen laptop because it was being finicky, and the customer service associate was grumpy and told me there was nothing wrong with it, so we returned it for money and walked out computer-less.
And that’s the end, almost, of the story of my life before Andersson, because Saturday morning labor began for real. I noticed the first contraction around 7:00. I knew we were in business this time, because standing up and moving around made the contractions increase, rather than go away, like they did before.
As I said, my labor was wonderful. We opened Christmas presents while I timed contractions using an app on my phone. I kept looking at sweet Ginny, happily playing like everything was normal. Anders went to the grocery store and came home with big yummy muffins. It was weirdly warm outside, so Elisa and I took a walk, pausing mid-stride every time a contraction hit.
After the walk it was apparent to everyone that the time had come to head to the hospital. The pain was getting worse and the contractions were close enough together that we sensed the end was near. So we left in the mid-afternoon. I think we got to the hospital around 4:00. Elisa stayed home with Ginny.
And then things happened fast. I was five centimeters dilated when I arrived, but the contractions from that point on were awful. Things became a blur while I focused on getting through the pain. A nurse was in the room when suddenly I started pushing with contractions. The pushing part for me is involuntary; my body just does it.
The doctor who was on call had already been called elsewhere, so they had to call up another one. While we waited for the second doctor they brought in a midwife. Her name was Annie and she was just what I needed. She spoke firmly, gently, reassuringly. She told me what to do and what was happening. My water hadn’t broken yet. She said it would break soon and the baby was right behind it. Moments after I felt a pop and a warm gush. The baby, however, took some time to complete the journey. Annie told me how to breathe, how to push, how to hold my legs, and she reported on the baby’s progress after each push. Anders’ voice was in my ear the whole time—I am pretty sure he repeated the line “you’re doing great, you’re doing so great” about two thousand times. The contractions were two or three minutes apart and I went limp between them, trying to rest, to save up my strength for the pushes, because I put everything into each push and for the longest time it felt like nothing was happening, and here’s the thing: I knew Andersson was gonna be a big baby. He was measuring big at my prenatal appointments and he felt big. I’d gone into the labor experience half expecting that he wouldn’t fit and I’d have to get another C-section. But if that happened, first there would be a long period of fruitless pushing.
The period of pushing lasted about an hour and a half, but it wasn’t fruitless! Halfway through, the doctor came in and took over for Annie, but I think she stayed in the room. The doctor barely spoke until the end, but when I heard him say “that’s how you push out a baby” I knew it was going to work. And then I knew for sure, because the baby’s head began to emerge, but he wasn’t out yet, and merciful heavens those couple minutes were uncomfortable to say the least.
Then out he slipped, so fast I don’t know how the doctor and nurses caught him. I was so happy he was out, so happy that I’d done it, and so happy to have my baby, that I could have sung the Hallelujah Chorus, exhausted though I was.
They put him on my chest for what felt like all of ten seconds before whisking him away again to get cleaned up. He was purple and he was huge and he had bountiful dark hair, and I was fiercely, fiercely proud of him. He was born at 8:22 p.m. on December 28. He was nine pounds, six ounces.
They gave him back to me, bundled in a blanket with that little nightcap on his head, and I told him how happy we were to have him. But our special bonding time was impeded by the tormenting process of getting stitched up, combined with my uterus being relentlessly pushed on by a nurse. This part seriously hurts. Mothers out there, can I get an amen.
The doctor said I bled a lot, and he had to carefully find and stitch all the tearing. At one point I caught a glimpse of an enormous metal instrument that I can only assume was then inserted inside me. There was also a flashlight involved. It felt like it took forever—45 minutes according to Anders. I wanted so badly to be left alone to gaze adoringly at Andersson.
Finally, finally, we were in the recovery room, and our big baby boy was in my arms instead of in my belly! The VBAC was successful! I’d delivered a baby with no meds! And Andersson was so snugly!
Anders and I had picked out our boy name before we were even married, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant that we began to discuss the spelling. Even when we wrote it down in the hospital that night, we were sort of shrugging at each other like, “two S’s? Are we going with two S’s?” and we did, because there are two S’s in “Anders’ son,” and because it looks cool and Swedish, but we still felt insecure about the decision, like maybe he would grow up disliking it.
We pronounce it with a short A, like the last name Anderson. And that’s confusing for everyone who knows Anders, and assumes it ought to be pronounced like his name, beginning with an “Ah” sound. Nope, it’s a short A. But honestly it strikes me as a kind gesture when people pronounce it “Ah.” I feel a little bad, because first everyone had to learn how to say Anders’ name, and now we’re making them relearn it for Andersson. The short-A version just sounds better, and will give him less grief in the long run.
I love being in the hospital. Our hospital, anyway. I love having sweet nurses at my beck and call, having food brought to me and dirty dishes taken away, doing nothing besides sleeping and holding a baby. For some reason I want to eat lemon meringue pie when I am in the hospital. I ordered lemon meringue pie with lunch and dinner the whole time we stayed. And I also get excited about the jello. I’m not kidding.
Elisa came with Ginny the next day. Anders snapped photos as fast as he could while Ginny held baby Andersson and kissed him. The ease with which she accepted him made me think that she understood more than I realized when we were talking about her soon-to-come baby brother while I was pregnant.
And the third day, we came home! It felt nothing like coming home with brand-new Ginny, when we sat there wondering what to do with the extra little person in the house, not sure at all how we would keep from breaking her, and what life was going to look like from then on. It felt normal to have Andersson. He just belongs here!
In many ways, labor with Andersson and labor with Ginny were quite similar. The at-home part for both was fun, exciting, relaxing, and somewhat lengthy. It seems my body dilates from zero to five centimeters pretty slowly, and from five to ten centimeters pretty quickly. We went to the hospital for both at the exact right time … and that’s where the stories become quite different. With Ginny, multiple nurses checked me for dilation and couldn’t find my cervix. Finally one said I was only dilated a centimeter, and they recommended I go home since I might not have the baby for a few days. I’m certain now that I was around the five-centimeter mark or so, and the nurse was measuring the dilation of poor Ginny’s bum, not my cervix. The end of that story of course is that I got home right around the time transition started, which was completely awful, and two hours later we were in the car rushing back to the hospital because I was pushing with each contraction and they were coming hard and fast. When we got there, a nurse checked me for dilation and said “Hang on, I think I’m feeling a baby butt”—which meant a breeched baby (surprise!) and an emergency C-section.
Now that I feel like I’ve got the labor process all figured out, we will probably have a third child and things will probably be radically different.
Nope, we're not talking about more kids yet … two is absolutely great!
