As I sit here and write my labor story, I can’t help but glance up at my two-day old daughter who entered this world fast and furiously and feel overwhelming love for her. The kind of love that makes me shed tears of joy as I write this, and trust me – I am not usually a suck for this kind of thing. I am still in absolute awe and disbelief when I think about bringing a child into this world and what that really feels like. I’ve heard from many women that their memory of childbirth fades quickly – “labor amnesia” it is apparently called. So I wanted to put my experience into words, to remind myself and share with others just how incredible it is in every which way – incredibly painful and scary, but also incredibly joyful and fascinating.

On May 14th, 2021, I was eight and a half months pregnant and doing a whole lot of yard work. Preparing to have a baby during a pandemic is no easy feat, and with over a year of lockdowns and restrictions with no end in sight, we were hauling ass trying to get our outdoor space as nice as possible before the baby came. This included the arguably more intensive task of laying sod. My stubborn self took on this task and ignored my wife’s request to take it easy. Keep in mind that I had been strength training 5-6 days a week right up until I went into labor, and I justified the muscle memory coming back easily from doing a few years of landscaping work. I felt perfectly fine despite ending up with a 22,000 step count of “farm strong” exercise by the end of the day. In retrospect, I am almost certain this played a role in inducing my own labor.

At 12:30am the next morning and 11 days before my due date, I woke up with strange abdomen pain and my wife Catrina asking me if I was okay. This wasn’t the first time I had moaned and groaned in my sleep. Discomfort while trying to get some shut eye becomes much more prominent in the final weeks. But this time was different, so I got up to pee and sat down in the living room for a few minutes to see if the discomfort would pass…it did not. I quickly downloaded an app on my phone to track contractions, and for the next 15 minutes I rocked myself nervously in our glider chair as the pain escalated and the app told me it was time to go to the hospital.

I woke Catrina up and said “I’m having contractions”. She got up to finish packing our hospital bags which we had failed to complete thinking we had a bit more time. I proceeded to say, “who is going to water the sod three times a day?!” because apparently I was more worried about our lawn than giving birth. The next hour of my life was hell, as the intense pain of the contractions had literally gone full tilt in a matter of minutes and were only 3-5 minutes apart. Because of how quickly things escalated, I was still in full blown denial that the baby was on the way. Every time I’d get through another horrific wave of pain in my abdomen, I’d be hopeful that it would eventually subside. Again, it did not.

At this point I was about just 60 minutes into labor and I felt like I wanted to die. As I laid on my side in our bed I thought to myself, “this is what torture feels like”, and would scream out in agony waiting for the contractions to pass. Despite the intense feelings, we knew traditionally it was way too soon to head to the hospital, so Catrina called instead. The triage nurse asked a few questions like how long was I laboring at home, what were my symptoms, and if it was my first baby. She implied that we should labor at home for awhile longer and there was no need to rush to to come in unless I had a fever or couldn’t handle things any longer. She also pointed out that coming in too soon could result in us being sent home. It had, after all, only been a little over an hour. It was then that I thought would be a good idea to turn to Cat and say “can you turn the hair straightener on? I don’t want to look like a caveman at the hospital.” Needless to say I never got a chance to straighten my hair, and I both looked and sounded like a caveman in the end, but was completely beyond caring at that point.

I didn’t think things could get any worse, but they did. The pain was so bad that I started heaving to throw up. Simultaneously, the pressure caused my water to break (although at first I thought I had just pissed myself). Collapsed on the bathroom floor, soaked from the waist down, sick to my stomach, and having my wife change me because I was in too much pain to do it myself…that was my breaking point. I said to her “we’ve gotta go!”, because I knew we had to get to the hospital pronto.

The 20-minute car ride felt like it took hours. The contractions kept coming, as if someone was slowly ripping apart my insides. I was oblivious to my surroundings as we made our way from the parkade to triage, except for to find a wall to brace myself on as the next wave of pain came on. Catrina grabbed the single wheelchair sitting by the entrance and wheeled me to check in as I screamed bloody murder. In a panic, she had forgotten the health cards in the car so I was left to try to remember my own name, which was asking too much of me at the time. Several nurses poked their head out to see what the commotion was about, and I heard someone say “we’ve got someone in distress here!”. Yeah, no shit.

I got through quickly and the nurse helped me undress to check things out. With one swift move to my cervix, she yelled out “she’s 8 centimeters dilated!”. It was about 3:00am at this point, just two and a half hours after my labor had started and all I could think was “God dammit, I’m going to miss my window for an epidural!”.

Catrina had joined me at this point (Covid rules prevented her from being with me until I was officially admitted) and they quickly moved me to a delivery room. At this point I was begging for the epidural and had sinking hopes that I would get one in time. The head nurse gave me the laughing gas mask, which only made me feel like I was suffocating. I threw it off in frustration, saying “this thing is stupid! I can’t breathe!”. I finally got some Fentanyl which took the edge off a little, but mostly just relaxed me in between contractions which had peaked at basically a 50/10 pain scale.

Shortly after 4:00am, we were still waiting on the anesthesiologist when my body got in full fledged push mode. Basically, it felt like I needed to take a giant poo out of my hoo-ha that my body could not voluntarily stop from happening. I was still pleading with the nurse about the epidural despite my body telling me it was time because I was scared of more pain (if that was even possible?!). After some back and forth, Catrina and the nurse convinced me to skip it – just minutes before the anesthesiologist arrived. The nurse waved him away and came to check me out. She took one look and then frantically pushed her intercom button calling for the delivery team stat – I was already crowning.

As the team of seven doctors and nurses surrounded me, I had the biggest break in contractions I had had all night as my body prepared to push out my little tiny human. I remember the doctors coaching me through this, and it took all of two big pushes for the head and two smaller pushes for the rest before our daughter was born at 4:46am – a four hour process from start to finish.

I can’t even begin to describe the bewildering sensation of the final push and feeling your baby exit your body. All I can say is that what a woman’s body is capable of doing is nothing short of remarkable.

Catrina cut the umbilical cord with one swift move, and our little baby was placed on my chest as we both tried to relax and absorb what had just happened. I did it! I birthed this beautiful child I could call my own! My brain was overwhelmed and my body was recovering, so it was hard to even think straight for the next little while. But I knew one thing for sure, and that was that life would never be the same. Never the same, but definitely better. Because I finally felt complete.