Birth Story: the good, the bad, and the bloody

Is there any event in our lifetime that is more consequential than becoming a parent? Everything you've learned and done until that moment builds up to the parent you're about to become, and it is such an emotional, raw experience - regardless of how your child comes into your world. During my pregnancy, I listened to and read birth stories from friends and strangers on the internet alike. Some of these women had traumatic births. Some had a very long labor, and others were done with the whole affair pretty quickly. Medicated, unmedicated, in a hospital, at home, with a doula or midwife, there are so many factors that go into actually bringing a baby into the world that it can feel like that meme where the lady has a bunch of numbers and equations spinning around her head trying to decide what you will do!

Pregnancy can definitely be rough, but I'd agree with all my mama friends - it is still the easiest part of this whole affair. I had no idea what "preparing for birth" really meant until my husband and I came across a 6-week childbirth course that covered a whole slew of topics. This course covered late pregnancy care, stages of labor, positions/movements that helped at those stages, knowing your rights as a patient, developing an informed birth plan, vaginal birth versus C-section, postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, and newborn care basics. It was a TON of information, but being able to take it in over the course of 6 weeks gave us a chance to make sure we were both equally informed and to talk about our own opinions and preferences and make a decision about what we felt would work best for us. I was and am still very grateful for my husband consciously taking a very active role in the birth of our daughter and my recovery afterward. Having a solid, informed support person can make or break your birthing experience, whether it is your spouse, your mom, or a friend. Emotional support is great, but having someone there to knowledgeably advocate for you when your mind is focused solely on those labor pains is HUGE. So if you're about to pop out a baby, I would 10/10 recommend educating yourself in whatever way works for you - a class, reading books, watching videos, talking to a medical professional/midwife/doula - or, if you want to be an over-achiever like me: all of the above! In the meantime, I wanted to once again document my own experience with the birth of our baby girl just a few months ago.

On January 3rd just before 9PM, my water broke while we were just watching TV at home. Except I thought it had broken a week before and we ended up getting checked and sent right back home, so I hesitated believing that it was real this time. As a first-timer, there's a lot of uncertainty about what is normal and what is actually a cause for concern, and it can be hard to fully trust your instincts. This is why knowing what to expect is helpful. Like losing your mucous plug, which is not necessarily an indicator that labor is close. It could be anywhere from hours to weeks until you actually go into labor. It's weird and gross and fascinating all at the same time when it happens. Your water breaking, however, is definitely an indicator that labor is around the corner. I had learned by that point that it was unlikely to be a huge gush like they show in movies, with the woman standing feet apart with what seems like the contents of a water balloon on the floor under her. For me, it was more of a steady trickle. Honestly, I thought I had peed my pants the first few times, but once it kept coming, I knew it was go time. 

My husband grabbed our hospital bags (which had been packed for a few weeks, just in case), loaded up, and we headed to the hospital 35 minutes away. Funny enough, we live literally down the street from a different hospital, but I was adamant about sticking with the OB/GYN I've seen since forever and that office only worked out of the farther hospital. Looking back, it was more than worth the drive to be a patient in a hospital system with providers I was already familiar and comfortable with. I was triaged to make sure that my membranes were, in fact, ruptured and taken to our delivery room where we would spend the next 15 hours. Up until I started pushing, those 15ish hours felt like forever and we were tired, hungry, and feeling all of the emotions. The best thing we did for this part? Bring your own snacks! Hospital snacks are limited in variety and you have to keep asking for them - it's just easier to have things you know you like and be able to grab them whenever you want. We even had a small fridge in our room so I could grab that ice-cold Sprite when the nausea started to kick in.

After we settled into the delivery room was when the real fun began. My contractions were building, but very slowly and I had only dilated to about 3 centimeters over the course of several hours. My ideal birth plan initially involved little to no medication or intervention because I got this idea in my head that having a "natural" birth was somehow more...honorable? The reality is, all forms of birth are natural and sometimes your body just needs a little help. There's also no trophy for causing yourself more suffering when we have tools available to make the process easier. So they started me on Pitocin to get things moving and whoa, did they move. Initially, I wanted to try an unmedicated birth, which I quickly realized takes a LOT more preparation than I had done. Part of my plan was to first try nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) before deciding whether to take the epidural. For that first stage of labor (and early part of the second), NO2 was a great choice for me. You control the flow, it helps you relax rather than actually numbing you, so the pain kinda just doesn't bother you, and quite honestly it's just a good time. I was just hanging out with my thoughts at 4am just making myself chuckle and trying to tell my husband how funny I was while he was trying to get some sleep before game time. Eventually though, it wears off as labor intensifies and I ended up asking for the epidural.

Around noon the next day (Jan. 4th, baby girl's due date), I was told it was time. Ten centimeters, 100% effaced, and 0 station. I honestly felt no difference from the previous few hours since the epidural numbs everything waist-down, but the nurse insisted I try some "practice" pushes. Side note: the quality and warmth of your nurses during labor/delivery cannot be understated. I had a travel nurse - which there's nothing innately wrong with - but she seemed very distracted and uninterested in the whole thing. Even worse, it felt like she wasn't listening to me. We tried several different positions - side-lying, all fours, using a bar - and she seemed to feel that the most effective was using a knotted sheet and playing tug-of-war. What she didn't seem to grasp was when I kept telling her that I had no grip left in my hands from the crippling carpal tunnel I developed in the last trimester, and that trying to tug on this sheet was extremely uncomfortable, difficult, and even a little painful. My contractions were lasting quite a while, so they started to wait until the peak of them to tell me to push. I still couldn't really feel them, so I depended on the nurse to tell me when to push. After a while, she kind of stopped doing this and left my husband and my mom to hold my legs and keep me pushing. Having a nurse who just didn't seem very friendly or involved was just a whole 'nother level of frustration. 

Anyway, back to the biggest lesson. Looking back, I wish I had followed my instincts and asked to labor down. Being a first-timer, I didn't really understand the possible implications of pushing just because they said to, and ended up pushing for THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Knowing that it was an option to include "wait for urge to push" in your birth plan might've saved me a lot of unnecessary energy and recovery time. It can be trickier with an epidural, but eventually I did feel that uncontrollable urge and it became more uncomfortable not to push. Unfortunately, having already had my water broken for 18 hours, being GBS-positive, and being utterly exhausted, the OB said it was probably time to consider a C-section. As a last-ditch effort, because baby girl was OP (also known as "sunny-side up"), the OB tried to manually flip her over to help get her through the birth canal. That was probably the most painful part of the entire affair - I felt everything - every movement, the pressure, all of it. After the exhaustion of pushing for so long, coupled with the frustration of not making much progress and the generally vulnerable and emotionally grueling nature of labor, I decided I was done. I just wanted it to be over. I screamed for her to stop and gave my consent for a C-section. 

In that moment, I felt so incredibly defeated. I felt like I had failed. Interventions and medications weren't my first choice, but I had been very open to them depending on how I felt in the moment and what was a medical necessity. I hadn't planned on IV antibiotics, pitocin or an epidural, but I had been flexible. But now here I was, exhausted and in tears, and being told that the only part of my plan that I really felt passionately about (a vaginal birth) was no longer an option. The staff very quickly wheeled me off and prepped me for surgery while they got my husband ready to sit by my head. A big part of me still feels that if I hadn't been so exhausted from what felt like premature pushing, I might've been able to avoid a C-section altogether. The other part of me knows that it all happened the way it was meant to. 

Either way, what felt like very shortly after, there was a wrinkly, swollen, teeny-tiny human laying on my chest wrapped in a blanket. Everything else faded and, in that moment, nothing else mattered. Everyone was okay and she was finally here. 

Pregnancy, labor, and childbirth is a wild ride to say the least. Postpartum recovery is also rough (though it doesn't have to be), but I'll get into that in another post. The even wilder part of it all is that it's only the beginning of an even more emotional, raw, wonderful, challenging, and incredible journey through parenthood. And I'm just getting started!