Birth Story: Part Two

Due to my Type A personality, check-in at the hospital was a breeze because we’d already done a hospital tour and I filled out all our admittance papers online weeks earlier.  I still wasn’t in pain and generally felt really on top of it! This is really key for people who want to have a natural birth. It’s important that mentally you feel prepared, calm, and like you can do it. Well, I may have gone into it feeling confident, but the odds were stacked against me in the first hour we were there. I think you’ll be able to see why.

To put it frankly, the first nurse I had did not seem to be a proponent of natural childbirth, mentioning only that she had done it both ways (without pain medication and with it) and preferring not to comment on what she thought was the better experience.  Then, to make matters worse, she asked me for my living will. Granted,  it was hospital protocol for her to ask me for this, but there’s no better way to freak out a woman in labor than to tell her that there is a possibility she is about to die and become rude with her when she tells you she’s a DNR. . . Nevermind .There is a better way to freak out a woman in labor. And that brings me to the lovely phlebotomist that visited me next. 

What this man was about to tell me was something I had seen circulating Facebook and had spent days trying to forget, as the first time I saw it I cried (blame the pregnancy hormones if you want to, it terrified me plain and simple). 

“So you’re gonna have a baby, right?”

Not exactly the confident and professional attitude you’d like to see in your medical professional. This guy already wasn’t impressing me and I should have known then to request someone else, even if all he was doing was a blood draw.

“Yep!”

“Wow.  I'm glad I'm not in your position! You know they say that the pain of childbirth is like breaking over 30 bones in your body at the same time. I’ve heard that there’s this like, pain scale thing. I don’t know how they do it, but they can measure pain. Well, most people can only take up to a 40 on the pain scale and childbirth is supposed to be like, 70. You’ll be fine if you get the epidural though. You’re getting an epidural, right?”

“Actually, I was planning to try to do everything naturally.”

“Wow. You’re crazy. I’d change my mind if I were you. Every nurse or doctor that walks in here—I’d be asking them for pain medication. More pain meds! That’s what I’d do!”

What do you even say to that? I wanted to throw something at him for being so insensitive, but unfortunately he was the one with the sharp object and not me.  I was already nervous, but this blow was really hard to push out of my mind. 

Susan, my midwife, came in to check how I was progressing. At around 5pm I was 3 centimeters dilated and pretty comfortable all things considered. Pleased with my progress, she said I’d be checked again around 9pm and hopefully I would be further along. She also told me (discretely) that she wouldn’t let the current nurse touch me and that I’d have someone different by 9pm when it was time to be checked again. In the meantime I was supposed to walk and relax. 

I did as I was told. I walked around. I watched the NCAA championship game (Louisville vs. Kentucky). I Facebooked. I walked around some more. I found it very difficult to pay attention to much of anything and every time I had a contraction I found myself evaluating how bad it was after my conversation with the Phlebotomist of the Year.  I was pretty nervous.

9pm came around and so did my new nurse.  The good news was that she was supportive of natural childbirth and a lot friendlier than my previous nurse. The bad news was that she went to high school with me! She was one grade above me during high school.  We weren’t friends, we weren’t enemies, we were just acquaintances .  Let me tell you—you don’t want to have an acquaintance as your labor and deliver nurse. When it comes to these kinds of matters you either want to know the people in the delivery room with you really well or you want them to be complete strangers that you won’t recognize or see again. Once more, my anxiety level went up.  To make matters worse, I wasn’t progressing well. In the four hours since I’d been checked I had only dilated one more centimeter. Not ideal, considering my water had broken nearly 12 hours prior. My nurse talked to my midwife about the situation and they agreed that if I wanted to, I could go until around midnight-ish without any medical intervention, but if I wasn’t making better progress soon after, I’d have to start Pitocin. 

I really didn’t want Pitocin. I knew that if I had it, it would make it even more difficult to have the natural birth I was hoping for. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pitocin, it causes your contractions to go on steroids. I would be looking at a more painful labor. Since Pitocin comes with some side effects including increased heart rate and decreased blood pressure, it also makes it more likely that one will have to have birth interventions including c-section, vacuum, and forceps delivery—all things I was trying to avoid by putting up with the pain of a natural birth. 

My stomach sank.

END PART TWO

Birth Story: Part 1

Of all of my blog entries, this one was the hardest to start and I think it’s because my birth story didn’t really have a definitive starting point. 

My birth did not go as planned or predicted, but in the end, all turned out okay. Please be advised that this blog entry may be more “graphic” than other entries and if you’re turned off by words like cervix and episiotomy, you should probably stop reading here. 

***

On Sunday ,April 1^st I went to bed exhausted and yet unable to sleep. Perhaps I should think of that as Aidric’s first April Fool’s Day joke on me--that the night before I would go into labor, I wouldn’t be able to get any rest. Instead, I laid awake in bed unable to turn off my mind or get comfortable. At 2am on April 2^nd  I gave up, padded into the living room, turned on the lamp and began reading some travel guides about Ireland for Chris’s and my anniversary trip next year. I read for an hour or so, drank some tea, and attempted sleep again but between contractions and being uncomfortable it was still a pretty rough night. I fell asleep around 4am and got up before 8am on April 2^nd. 

Being a teacher, I took maternity leave two weeks before my due date--partly because I was afraid of going into labor at school, partly because of my rib pain, and partly because it was the week after spring break and that made planning and a transition to a long-term sub easier on my students. In hindsight I’m VERY glad I did it this way, because if I hadn’t, my water would have broken at school during the Iowa Assessments (formerly ITBS).  I’m guessing one or two of my kids would have been “left behind” so to speak had I been the one to give them the test that day. 

As it was, I was at home folding a load of laundry shortly before lunch when all of a sudden I felt as though I had peed my pants. Although it had never happened to me before, I read that many women experience some incontinence during the later stage of pregnancy, due to a small person sitting on their bladder. I was annoyed, but changed my underwear and tried to forget about it. Until it happened again. 5 minutes later.  

The third time that I “peed my pants” it dawned on me that my water may have broken. I’d read that when a woman’s water breaks it is often more of a slow “trickle” due to the baby’s head acting like a plug in a drain, though a woman's water breaks before the onset of active labor only 10% of the time. I decided to call Midwife Services at my hospital and let them know what happened. They insisted I come in and get checked. I emailed my husband at work to let him know what happened and to tell him that I had to go in and be checked, though I was extremely embarrassed to do so. I really didn’t want to have to confess to another person that I may have peed my pants three times in a row during a half hour—even if that person was married to me. 

It didn’t take long at the office to discover that my water was broken. After changing  and laying back on the table to be checked, both my midwife and I were surprised by a large gush of “water” all over the exam table and the floor.  Susan looked up and smiled at me, “Yup! You’re in labor. Technically I’m not supposed to let you leave—hospital protocol says you need to get into a delivery room right away. But you seem comfortable still. Call your husband. Go home and grab your things. I want to see you at the hospital in no less than two hours.”

At that moment I felt excitement, fear, and relief. I was going to have my baby soon and thank goodness I hadn’t actually peed my pants.  I called Chris at work. 

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“I was right. My water broke.  We need to be at the hospital in less than two hours.”

“Really?”

I remember that response from Chris vividly because I was a little annoyed that he assumed I had just wet my pants three times in a row. We worked out the details and agreed to meet at home ASAP.

I went and grabbed lunch at a drive-through on the way home, though by then it was almost 2:30. I came home to see Chris systematically gathering our things. Both of us were excited, yet calm, a little flighty and yet, well-planned.  I was glad that as we pulled out of the driveway I was still not experiencing much pain and that our trip down I-235 would not involve screaming. . . 

END PART ONE

(My son is crying, so you'll have to wait to hear the rest until later)

A picture of my birth bracelet and belly at 39 weeks gestation. . . the first photo we took at the hospital.