Ezekiel 'Zeke' Callahan :: Birth Story

The Story:

Everyone has been asking for the full story of how “Backseat” Zeke, as my best friend Ashley has dubbed him, came into this world. So here is a full recount of how I ended up delivering Zeke myself in the backseat of our SUV as Ezra drove like a madman to the hospital.

First, some background…

I had been preparing for a natural delivery, so our birth plan had always included trying to labor at home as long as possible. This was the advice of almost every birthing professional, book, and blog we had encountered during pregnancy – it minimizes pressure for unneeded interventions to speed things along, and allows you to try natural techniques for relaxation and alleviating pain in the comfort of home.  The goal was to get to the hospital sometime near the end of active labor or the beginning of the transition phase of labor.

I also had a very experienced doula, whose 15 years of experience was preceded by a long stint as a midwife. She worked with me throughout my pregnancy and was going to be with me throughout labor. In addition to her help, we’d taken a number of classes on natural birth, so we were pretty well educated and prepared for what (we thought) Zeke’s birth would be like.

On the day before Zeke was born, I had a regular check-up with my OB. I’d been having a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions and had lost my mucous plug a few days before, so she ended up doing a cervical check. She told me I was 1cm dilated and 80% effaced and should expect to go into labor sometime in the next week. So we knew the show was coming soon.

Sooner than we realized…Lo and behold, the next morning I wake up to the sensation of my water breaking.  Now most doctors would insist you go to the hospital at this point, but from all our education, we felt confident waiting at home to see if contractions would start naturally soon after. We of course monitored me for fever and knew everything to do, and not to do, once my water broke. But the decision seemed right as my first contractions came just a couple hours later.

My early contractions were really mild – barely any different from the Braxton-Hicks I’d felt for months. I was able to go about my morning without much difficulty. Throughout this stage, my contractions were always about 3 to 5 minutes apart. In retrospect, this probably was a sign that my labor was progressing faster than “normal” for a first time mom, but at the time it didn’t register as being too out of the ordinary. And we were keeping our doula up to date on what was happening in case there was anything special we needed to take into account.

Around noon, Ezra and I took Bellini for a walk around the neighborhood, which wore me out some and quite well may have accelerated my labor some. I decided to try to squeeze in a nap, expecting that I could have anywhere from 6 to 24 hours of labor to go. For first time mothers, they expect things to progress quite slowly. And the only decent indicator they have is how long your mother’s first pregnancy took. With me, my mom was in labor for 20 hours. So all indications were that there was quite a long haul to go.

Around 2pm, after taking a nap and eating a delish pb&j sando, there was a noticeable increase in the intensity of my contractions. I figured this was me going from Early Labor to Active Labor based on everything we had learned. I was still able to move around and do stuff between contractions, but I definitely had to focus more to relax through each contraction as the pain started increasing markedly.

By 3pm, the contractions had already become really intense, and Ezra and I were already going through just about every relaxation method we had learned. Our doula said she was on her way and said that it sounded like things were progressing nicely.

By 4pm, things had reached a whole new intensity. Even between contractions, I was having trouble doing much of anything. The contractions themselves were now getting to be a minute long. Our doula arrived and immediately started helping me try different positions to get through the contractions more comfortably – which definitely helped a lot. I had already found that being on all fours was about the only way I could bear the pain. She tried a number of massage techniques that helped a ton. Oddly, the best help came when she pushed in and up on my hips and butt cheeks, which I think helped the baby start to descend faster than we realized.

After spending just about half an hour with me, our doula said that she thought things were progressing much faster than she had ever encountered with a first time mom, and we started getting ready to go to the hospital. She didn’t want to rush things to keep me comfortable and relaxed. From her experience, while we were moving quite fast through labor, she still figured we had at least a couple hours left and thus didn’t need to go into any sort of panic mode. She kept check to make sure she couldn’t feel the baby at the top of my pelvis, which would’ve been the biggest red flag that delivery was more imminent than we realized.

Around 5:15, I felt the first sensations of really having to go #2, which is often the sign that the final stages of labor have arrived.  Our doula definitely realized that this was going to be a very, very short labor overall and we began moving towards getting into the cars for the hospital. Her and Ezra began discussing what options were available. Our target hospital (we’re Kaiser members) was going to be about an hour away due to traffic. Our doula was confident we’d make it in time – and would likely go right into pushing, which in a lot of respects would’ve been ideal for our overall birth plan – but she was concerned about how I would fare during the drive itself.  We talked about maybe going to Huntington Hospital, just a few minutes from our house, or calling ambulance to help us get to the Kaiser hospital faster. But by 5:30 we decided just to go for it and get to Kaiser ourselves.

It took a good 20 minutes to get downstairs from our room and into the car. The contractions were unbelievably intense, as the pain stopped me dead in my tracks every couple minutes and I fought hard against the sensation of needing to poop my pants. It took a few minutes to find a position in the backseat of the car that I might have been able to withstand during the drive.  I basically ended up on all fours in the backseat, mimicking the position I’d been in throughout much of labor. We had the foresight to get some towels down over the seat, just in case various fluids or other emissions came out.

Right around 6pm, we were off to the hospital with the doula not far behind in her car.

Just about three minutes into the drive, I had a huge urge to go to the bathroom and became convinced I was about to deliver, screaming to Ezra, “The baby is coming! The baby is coming!” Ezra did his best to try to get me to relax and continue the breathing techniques we’d learned, thinking it was just the same sensation I’d had for a while that would last for some time til the baby came.

But with the next contraction, and whole new feeling came through me.

“The head is out! The head is out!” I screamed. Ezra, not thinking it was possible, turned around to look, and utter shock came over his face as he saw that Zeke’s head really was sticking out of my underwear, which I was still wearing and would be throughout this whole experience.

Ezra frantically changed direction, screaming “We’re going to Huntington!” and trying to get the doula on the phone. This was really the dark part of the whole experience. I was in total shock, seeing Zeke’s head between my legs, and not seeing him move or breathe. Of course, he was still getting air from the umbilical cord, but at that moment, all I could think was that the baby wasn’t breathing and wasn’t going to make it. I burst into tears, screaming that he wasn’t alive. Ezra, who had gone into commando driving mode, did everything he could to try to reassure me things would be ok, as he weaved around traffic, blaring the horn and trying to get help from the doula on the phone.

It felt like minutes passing, though it may have been only a few seconds. But another contraction then set in, and in a split second, Zeke came flying out of between my legs and into my arms. I caught him, in total disbelief as to what was happening. The umbilical cord was everywhere, there was blood all over the place, and here I was, now holding my brand new baby.

And before any other thoughts could pass, Zeke started crying.

Zeke’s screaming immediately changed the mood of the entire situation. Our terror and horror that we had lost our baby and messed everything up transformed into a flash into an absolute shock – almost a happy, hilarious shock – that I was holding our baby in the backseat of our car.

Ezra continued his stuntman driving, flying down the center median, driving on the wrong side of the road at times, honking his way through red lights and stop signs. Just a couple blocks from the hospital, he came up on a motorcycle cop, who somehow hadn’t heard his frantic honking and yelling behind him. Ezra paused for a second and rolled down the window to talk to the officer, spitting out some gibberish along the lines of “We-just-had-a-baby-in-the-car-we’re-going-to-the-hospital-aaaah!” The officer simply waved us along, sadly not providing a police escort that might’ve been pretty helpful, but at least not stopping us or caring as Ezra blew a redlight right in front of him.

Moments later we pulled in the ER, with our doula now pulling in right behind us. We hadn’t really been able to hear much from her over the phone as the connection wasn’t great. But she immediately ran up to me in the backseat with a look of happy shock on her face as she found me holding the baby and everything looking ok. Ezra ran into the ER, screaming at the nurse’s desk something similar to what he’d said to the cop moments earlier and then ran back out to the car, getting his first glimpse at our baby and the bloody scene in the car.

Despite the terror of minutes earlier, we both could not contain the smile on our faces – as you can see in the picture our doula took just after we arrived at the hospital.

Within a couple minutes, a number of doctors and nurses had gathered out front by the car, assessing what was going on. None were in a rush to do anything, as baby and mom appeared to be perfectly fine. It took a few minutes to figure out how to get me and the baby on the stretcher, as the cord was still connected and all over the place. We got wheeled into the emergency room, me somewhat oblivious to everything going on around us, just staring at Zeke in my arms. Ezra was trying to keep up with me while answering a barrage of questions about what had happened, my medical info, our insurance info and everything else they needed to admit us.

It became clear that the ER wasn’t entirely used to dealing with deliveries. The doctor cut the umbilical cord a good three feet away from the baby. A nurse jabbed me with an IV in about the worst place possible in my arm.

Another nurse, trying to record all the birth details, asked, “What time was he born?”

“Pfft, I don’t know,” Ezra said. The nurse pointed up to the clock, showing it to be about 6:30. “I don’t know, maybe like 6:10,” he said.

“Wait, make it 6:11,” I chimed in, since 11 is my lucky number. The nurse was happy to oblige.

We hung out in the ER for about 10 more minutes as the doctors and nurses did a few checks to make sure there was no excessive bleeding. Finally, a team from the labor and delivery wing arrived to take us to their department to finish delivering the placenta and get back into a somewhat normal birthing process for the final stretch.

As we were being wheeled up to the delivery wing, a nurse near my feet looked back at me, and, startled, asked, “Wait, is your underwear still on?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I never had a chance to take it off.”

“How is that even possible?” she asked, eliciting shrugs from all of us.

We got into the delivery room, and things from there progressed fairly normally, except for the barrage of questions the nurses had to ask about me and my pregnancy, as they had no information on us whatsoever. As they put me in stirrups to deliver the placenta, I got my first look at my legs that were entirely drenched in blood and fluids. The OB walked in, fairly silently, and went to work on delivering the placenta.  Once that was out, they did a quick cleanup and everything basically paused for a good half hour as we happened upon a shift change for the nurses.

That gave me and Ezra our first real chance to appreciate what had happened and to bound in somewhat calm with Zeke. Our doula, who was in relative shock herself, gave us some time alone, and we had our first close moments as a family together. We couldn’t believe what had happened and had already nearly forgotten the absolute terror we felt when Zeke’s head first peaked out back in the car.

From then on, things progressed fairly normally for a birth. We made it to the maternity ward around 10pm and were finally able to start calling family to tell them Zeke had arrived. We hadn’t really had time to even tell people I was in labor – we never wanted to let people know until we were about to leave for the hospital to avoid having people come over to our house or the hospital too early or get overly excited when we wanted to relax. We definitely shocked my dad, my brothers, Ezra's parents, and Ezra's brother and sister-in-law when we told them that they were a grandpa, grandma and uncles and aunts. My mom and best friend, Ashley Cooley, who were going to dog/housesit for us while we were in the hospital, were two of the few people we had told we were going to the hospital, but were utterly shocked when we told them that they were already a grandma and an aunt and let them know how it happened.  

It was almost impossible to sleep that night, between the adrenaline of the situation still lingering, and the usual new-parent feelings and fears that were kicking in. I mean, how can you look away for a second, in case something happens to the baby.

In the morning, we started finally thinking about what comes next. Ezra went down to the car to see what sort of shape it was in. (We had just left the car with the valet at the ER – I imagine he’s seen some pretty gnarly scenes like that one before.) It actually fared pretty well, as the towels remarkably soaked up most of the damage. Our doula had done a bit of cleanup when she had gone to get our stuff for us, providing some extra services not normally part of her package.

A hospital case worker came in with information about the birth certificate. Unfortunately, she informed us, since Zeke was born “in the field”, the hospital couldn’t file the birth certificate for us. We would have to find some time to go to the County Hall of Records sometime in the next few weeks and go through an interview process to prove Zeke was ours. It’s actually pretty involved to get a birth certificate for babies born outside of hospitals, which makes sense in some respects when it comes to kidnappings or illegal immigrants. But we thought that since I showed up with the cord still attached that it should’ve still counted. The case worker informed us, “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.”

Looking back on it, we’ve thought about what we could’ve done differently, and there really isn’t anything we could come up with. Oddly, if we hadn’t done any classes or preparation, we likely would’ve gone to the hospital when my water broke, not knowing there were some good reasons not to heed conservative doctors’ advice on that one.

Given how long the hospital drive was going to be, we would’ve needed to leave for the hospital almost an hour and a half earlier than we did, to be sure that we would’ve actually arrived and gotten to the delivery room on time – and even then, it would’ve been incredibly frantic. The only way we would’ve had a “routine” hospital birth is if we had left when my contractions were only about 20- 30 seconds long and not terribly intense. That could’ve meant being stuck at the hospital in labor for a day or longer, or even of possibly getting sent home if I hadn’t actually progressed very far (Kaiser sends home moms who are not 4 centimeters dialated)

A lot of people have asked why Ezra didn’t pull over to help finish delivering the baby, but he says the thought never even occurred to him – he just wanted to get to the hospital as fast as possible. And me screaming “Get to the hospital, oh my God, oh no!” over and over certainly cemented that decision.

Some have asked if we feel like our doula messed up, but we really don’t feel that way at all. Right before we got in the car, she checked my abdomen and still didn’t feel the baby there at the top of the birth canal. And she has had years of experience and never had anything like this happen before. She helped me get through the worst of my contractions. And ultimately, she didn’t really delay us from going to the hospital at all. She has also been amazing since the birth, helping me a ton with breast-feeding and guiding us through some early issues with Zeke around jaundice and getting his weight up.

While we could, of course, have done any number of things differently that would’ve enabled us to get to the hospital earlier, ultimately it doesn’t seem like any of those scenarios were ever really going to happen given our birth plan. We didn’t really make any “wrong” decisions in our mind all day – no one really could’ve known that my labor would be bafflingly short for a first time mom.

And in the end, as one friend told us, any birth that results in a healthy baby is a successful birth, no matter how wild or hectic it may have seemed at the time.

Of course, since subsequent babies tend to come faster than the first, we’ve been told by just about everyone that for our next child, we need to go the hospital the moment I feel my first contraction.

As for lasting effects, we wonder if the birth experience has affected Zeke. He didn’t flinch at all during his circumcision or at any of the blood draws he’s gone through testing for his jaundice. Ezra thinks that means he’s poised to be a hockey player, ready to get stitches on the bench after getting hit in the face with a puck and then hopping back onto the ice. 

Everything since birth has been amazing. He’s feeding great, sleeping a ton, barely cries when he’s not being changed, and already such a smiley and happy baby :). Kaiser has so far handled us ending up at an out-of-network hospital reasonably well, and the doctors there have been great during our follow-up appointments. And we are filled with nothing but joy at having started this new stage of our lives together as a family.  We both love this handsome boy more than we could have ever imagined. 

Xoxo

Marisa, Ezra & Zeke

Ezekiel 'Zeke' Lee Callahan.  Born March, 14th @ 6:11pm(ish) in the backseat of our Mercedes SUV, weighing 6 pounds 4.9 ounces and 20 inches long.

Here's some pics of his birth and first week at home:

 

Zeke's first pic in the backseat of the                           first family pic in the backseat of our car :)
SUV!                            

 

heading to the labor room to cut the                           being born in the back of a car is tiring!
cord and deliver the placenta    

 first family pic in the hospital

Pics of Zeke's first 12 days: