Preterm Farm Labor

The January day was gloomy, yet unseasonably warm for Kansas. Our next door neighbor (who lived about three miles to our East) had promised my husband and me that he would open our eyes to the wonderful world of farm auctions that day. By 6:00 in the morning the three of us were settled on the bench seat of my pick-up truck and on our way to the farm auction in a town about an hour away. We found the seating a bit snug, not because any of us were over-weight, but because I was 31 weeks pregnant at the time.

By the time we got there, the rain had stopped and a light mist had settled over the rolling landscape. Climbing out of the truck, we found ourselves in a veritable farming wonderland. As we walked about, large tractors, stock trailers, water troughs and feeders loomed out of the mist. We could hear the auctioneer, on a mobile microphone set-up that trailed him from object to object, rattling off semi-recognizable numbers to an excited crowd. Had one chanced to see an aerial view of the process, I’m sure it would have closely resembled a swarm of locusts, consuming large farm equipment as it wound a path over the mist covered field.

We were there to find and purchase a hog feeder. That’s right. My city-raised Jewish husband who had a full-time job with the US Army thought raising hogs would be a great idea for supplemental income. Like a kid with a puppy, I had known prior to the venture who would end up taking care of the smelly, rooting beasts. I knew who would end up chasing escapees, which I had already had the pleasure of doing twice the month before. I’m sure it would have paid for my son’s college education if we had thought to capture “Pregnant Woman Chasing The Three Little Pigs” on a video camera and sent it to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Though I was one of the lucky few who did not experience morning-sickness during my first pregnancy, being greeted by those creatures first thing each morning simulated what I’m sure other not so lucky pregnant women feel. Pig-stench tends to hit right in the stomach like a good left hook. The hope was that the hog feeder would reduce my number of necessary visits to the pig pen.

By 12:30 that afternoon our hog-feeder mission had been accomplished, but my husband was fully caught up in the excitement of the auction and wanted to stay a little longer. I started to feel a little funny and decided to go sit down in the café area that had been set up in an old shed on the property. I purchased some hot chocolate and sat down. Just sitting felt good as I had developed a bit of a back ache from standing for so long.

After a wile I began to notice what I thought were Braxton-Hicks contractions. After the third one, I decided to peek at my watch. Hmmm – odd. They were coming every ten minutes. I tried relaxing a bit more, and purchased some bottled water to sip on. Hmmm – every seven minutes. When the contractions began growing a bit stronger and coming every six minutes with no sign of stopping, I figured perhaps I should let my husband know.

I wandered out into the throng and finally located my husband after two more contractions. He was gazing lovingly at a large, green and yellow John Deere with a hay-bailing attachment.
I tugged his sleeve, saying, “Um, honey?”
Not breaking his gaze, he responded, “Six cycle 466 CID engine with 181 PTO horsepower…”
“David, I think we should think about leaving pretty soon.”
“Three hydraulic valves, air-conditioned and heated cab, eight forward and four reverse shift transmission…”
“David!”
“Two Snyder 250 gallon side tanks…”
Thwhack! “David!”
“Hey! What do you want?”
“We need to leave!”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m having contractions.”
At this our neighbor Brian, who happened to be a father of three, perked his ears up and asked, “How far apart?”
“I don’t know. I guess about 5 or six minutes.”
Taking matters, and my annoyed husband, into his own hands, Brian marched us over to the truck.
“You wanna see something that runs better than a Deere?” Brian asked David. “I suggest we run this here Dodge truck towards a hospital, and fast!”
“But the hog feeder…”
“Let me show you something. This here move is called throw and go. You get that end.”
The two men tossed the large hog feeder into the back of the truck, laid it on its’ side and quickly took their places on either side of me on the bench seat. With that, we were on our way… or so we thought.

After keeping the truck at a reasonable rate of speed over the two-mile gravel road up to the black-top, David hit the gas as the tires hit the black-top.
“THUNK! Creek, creek, creek”
The bottom-heavy hog feeder suddenly stood itself up in the bed of the truck and was rocking wildly like one of those weighted blow-up punching toys after a good slug from a toddler.
We pulled over to the side of the road, and in a variation of a Chinese-fire-drill, the men sped out and laid the thing back over and jumped back into the truck.
“How far apart are they?” Brian gasped as soon as he’d caught his breath.
Puff, puff, “Four minutes.” I responded, recovering from another vice-like contraction. “But no pain – it just feels like a gorilla is giving me a bear hug from behind, right around my belly.”
David sped the truck back onto the road.
“THUNK!! Creek, creek, creek, creek.”
“Damn it!”
Again the truck was pulled onto the side of the road and the hog feeder put back in place.
“We shoulda got some rope.” One grumbled.
“Well, if SHE coulda just waited…” The other grumbled back.
“Just keep’er slow.”
“How’m I supposed to do that?”
“The truck, stupid.”
“Who’re you calling stupid?”
“Could we just get towards the house, please?” I interrupted. “They’re getting stronger.”
We found by trial and error that the magic speed was 45 miles per hour. What was a one-hour trip at 70 miles per hour in the morning turned into a two hour journey homeward.

It crossed our minds to stop at a local hospital on the way, but unfortunately there weren’t any. We even considered a veterinary hospital alongside the road, but it appeared to be closed. (I was not overly upset as I was currently entertaining images of some manure-covered man with a plastic glove up to his shoulder approaching me to “Hep out a bit.”) Five miles from the house, my contractions were two minutes apart, but still not causing me any real pain.
“I just want to get up and walk.” I whined.
“You want that baby to drop out of you like groceries out of a torn Wal-Mart bag?” Brian warned me. “You best stay off your feet!”
“I think it would make it better.” I quipped back.
“Wetter.” Brian corrected me.

Once home, I lowered myself out of the truck gingerly. I was instructed to go lay down while they put the hog feeder in the pig-pen. As I started towards the house, I heard David yell, “Pigs are loose!”
I yelled back, “Well I’m not chasing them this time! You can do it yourself!” And turned and began walking again. As I had suspected, the walking seemed to ease my contractions. After a few minutes (and a slow waddle around the house) they were down to five minutes apart. By the time David came back in, smelling strongly of pig-poop, they were down to seven minutes apart.

I called the army hospital and was told that a nurse would call me back in about an hour. I laughed and said I would start heading that way. The receptionist explained there was no guarantee I would be seen without talking to a nurse first. I figured I’d take my chances, and heaved myself back into the truck for the hour drive to the hospital.

When we arrived, they were kind enough to allow us to go up to Labor & Delivery. There, a nurse sat us down and lectured us on the procedures of the army hospital and teach us about Braxton-Hicks contractions.
“Braxton-Hicks contractions are the body’s way of rehearsing for actual labor. Everyone has them and I get so many first-time mothers in here, all afraid that they’re really in labor. It’s a waste of your time and ours.” She explained sternly.
To make her point, she showed us a chart that compared “real” contractions to Braxton-Hicks. She explained that if mine were real, I would know it and so would everybody around me.

She then hooked my belly up to a nearby monitor and asked us to watch what my contractions read. As the next one hit and crested, she quietly got up and left the room. Shortly thereafter a doctor appeared and checked the paper record of my contractions coming out of the monitor.
“We’re going to do a pelvic, and if you’re even a tiny bit dilated, we’ll be doing a C-section tonight.” He told us.
“But I thought this was just a rehearsal…” I stammered. “Maybe a dress rehearsal, but not the actual show!”
Suddenly it was like a spotlight had been turned on, and was aimed at me. Well, come to think of it, it had, but a little further south than the spotlights I’d been in during other productions.

Finally the doctor stood up, and removing his gloves, said, “No baby tonight, but we need to stop those contractions!”
I was given some kind of medication through an IV that made me very drowsy. The contractions lessened but did not disappear all the way. True to army form, I was released two hours after arriving and instructed to go home and go to bed.
“For how long?” I asked through my drowsy stupor.
“Until you wake up.” I was told.
“But shouldn’t I do some bed-rest or something?” I queried.
The doctor looked at me like I was an imbecile and said “What for?”
I was far to drugged to pursue the matter and ended it with, “Never mind.”

Later I learned that the primary reason I did not end up having Jake that night was because his fanny was firmly planted over my cervix like a big plug, and there was no way he was going to fall out “like groceries out of a torn Wal-Mart bag.” I was also lucky the contractions stopped completely by morning and I did not have any repeat episode of pre-term labor… even after chasing those stupid pigs one more time before giving them to Brian. I even threw the hog-feeder in the deal for free!