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Michelle was very calm and kind of deadpan. She looked me over and said that obviously she couldn't tell for certain without a vaginal exam (which she didn't at all recommend, given the circumstances) but she thought I was probably at 4 cm. She also said she thought I'd have my baby before morning, but since the last midwife had also been very optimistic that I'd go into labor, I didn't really believe her. Still, I was having contractions about every ten minutes, so I held off on taking the Ambien. But then one of the nurses wanted to monitor me through a contraction, and since I was moving around during the contractions (they were actually really quite intense by then) I kept knocking off the monitors, so she just sat with me until I had one and held the monitor in place. And it took about a half hour before I finally had one. At that point, I thought they must be slowing down again, and I thought I'd feel stupid as hell if I spent the night lying awake and then had to deal with trying to get labor going after another night of no sleep, so I asked for the Ambien and took it. It was right about midnight.

After that, my recollections of events get really, really fuzzy. According to Ed, what happened was this: I continued to have contractions every ten minutes. There were consistently ten to fifteen minutes between each contraction. The contractions themselves were extremely intense, much like the contractions I'd had during transition with Molly. I'd wake up, have the contraction, and then announce that I had to go to the bathroom. Except, I couldn't walk there on my own; the first time this happened after the drug kicked in, I insisted that Ed had to ring for a nurse because I didn't think he was qualified to help me. I don't remember that, but I do remember some of these later trips, with Ed helping me. I couldn't walk because the floor was tilted and my legs didn't feel like they were working right, and my sense of balance was shot to hell. Worst, though, was that I was hallucinating. Ed says that at some point I reported either a dream or a hallucination in which alligators and puppies were attending the birth. I don't remember that one, but I do remember the giant plant with waving multicolored tendrils in the corner of the bathroom. I also remember knowing that it wasn't really there, that I was having hallucinations. I said as much to Ed. I also muttered at some point that I felt like I was laboring on LSD. Having peed, I'd go back to bed and fall asleep for ten minutes until the next contraction hit.

At 2:20 a.m., I had two contractions right in a row and Ed decided to call Noelle and have her come back. But right after that, I said first that I needed the tub, and then that I wanted to push. (Mutually exclusive requests, as this hospital only lets you labor in water, they don't let you birth in it.) So Ed rang for a nurse. They got me back to the bed (I have this very vague memory of being in the bathroom when I started wanting to push, so I'm not sure how this happened) and I pushed for seven minutes and Kiera was born.

The midwife did check me when she came in; I was already pushing and the head was already descending. I reached in to check myself and could feel her little head coming down. With Molly, the pushing stage actually didn't hurt at all; it was really, really intense, but not painful. (Transition hurt like a motherfucker, though.) With Kiera, the pushing stage hurt a lot; also, I felt her crowning (with Molly, her head pressing against the perineum made the whole area numb). And with Kiera, I felt this incredible urgency of wanting her out, now that I hadn't felt with Molly.

Oh, and while pushing I had visions of these giant tube-like things falling from the ceiling. Sort of a birth-canal-themed hallucination.

Once Kiera was born, the hallucinations stopped, though I was still a little loopy from the Ambien. With Molly, I kind of went into my own little world for transition and pushing, so the hallucinations may have been as much a byproduct of that as the Ambien. Still, I think I will warn future medical providers that Ambien had some unexpected effects on me. If you give a patient a sleeping pill, you're generally going for sleep, not hallucinations.

One definite benefit of the Ambien, though, was that it completely kept me in the moment as I was dealing with the contractions. Without the drug, I probably would have been completely flipping out over the fact that I was having these incredibly intense, painful contractions ten minutes apart. I mean, everyone, everyone knows that you do not have contractions ten minutes apart during transition labor.

It's also kind of fortunate that I was already at the hospital. I'm not sure if I would have used the "I'm not going to want to ride in the car pretty soon" gauge with the contractions so far apart. And with a seven-minute second stage, well, shit. Never mind giving birth on the road; we'd have been lucky if the paramedics had arrived in time to catch the baby, and I almost certainly would have given birth somewhere like our (carpeted) bedroom.

Kiera was 8 pounds 4.6 ounces when they weighed her, 6/10ths of an ounce heavier than Molly was. She's 21 1/4 inches long, very slightly shorter than Molly, and had apgars of 7 and 9. She has a fair amount of dark hair, though it doesn't look like all that much compared to Molly's mop. She was born with a damn good ability to latch on (she nursed right away, and mostly hasn't stopped since) and some extremely strong opinions. (I asked for a pacifier on Thursday night because she was crying inconsolably and not wanting to nurse, though she'd been willing to suck on my finger. I put the pacifier in her mouth and she spit it out with this look of utter horror. She decided shortly after that that she wanted to nurse, and nurse some more, and then some more, pretty much all night long. My milk came in when she was two days old, she'd nursed so much.)

So. That's the story of my bizarre hallucinatory labor and Kiera's wonderful birth. With perfect 20/20 hindsight, I would have requested a tub at midnight instead of the Ambien, and called Noelle to come back to the hospital, but since we had absolutely no way of knowing what was going to happen I think we made very reasonable decisions and everything turned out okay. I am also really grateful that my HMO has a midwife practice that is (mostly) staffed with midwives with a ton of patience and willingness to trust in the birth process and the judgment of the laboring women. Apparently the doctor on duty had been a little disconcerted by the whole thing and had wanted to know if antibiotics every four hours for days and days were really better than pitocin, and the midwife had shrugged and said, "I don't think it's going to be days and days. Either labor will start, or she'll get sick of it and ask for augmentation."

Kiera is a beautiful, cuddly little bug, and Molly is dealing with big sisterhood pretty well so far.