Category: pregnancy

Part one

Part two

I was stalled out at 6 cm and my doctor was telling me she needed to do something to help me along. I wanted to keep things natural, but I had been having terrible back labor for over ten hours after a full day of work, no sleep, and nothing to eat. There was only so much I could take. She listed several different things that we could try, including breaking my water, putting in an internal monitor to measure contractions, and giving me Pitocin. But first I knew that if I was going to have any of those interventions I needed to get an epidural.

If I could have pushed anytime soon, I know that I could have given birth without pain medication. But I absolutely couldn’t handle more labor with Pitocin or my water broken, which only makes contractions more painful. Through tears, I asked my doula Kelly if she’d be disappointed in me if I got the epidural. She had been with me all night and reassured me that it was the right thing to do. So that’s what I did. Mercifully, once I asked for it they were ready to put it in right away. But getting it put in was another horror, as I had to sit up straight on the side of the bed and hold completely still, all the while having death contractions. The medicine itself felt very strange going in, but soon enough I couldn’t feel anything. This was at 8:15 a.m.

First smile in twelve hours

I could still move my legs and I felt some pressure, which I thought would be good when it came time to push. What I mainly felt was relief. Now I could finally interact with the people around me, use my phone, and try to rest. I also made everyone else go to sleep for a little while. As for me, I was being turned every ten minutes from side to side in the “runner’s position” where the top knee is brought up to the chest and the upper torso is twisted the opposite way. This was to try and get the baby to rotate, because even my doctor was pretty sure that she was facing up. We were hoping that with the epidural relaxing me and the change of positions, she would turn and engage in the pelvis without further interventions.

Over an hour later, my doctor returned and did an ultrasound. The baby was still facing up, and she estimated her to be close to 8 pounds. She checked me again and I hadn’t made any progress. At this point I had already given up on not having medication, and my primary goal was to avoid a C-section. I had been stalled for many, many hours by this time and my doctor wanted to start being more aggressive.

I told her to go ahead, so first she broke my water and placed an internal monitor. This wasn’t the kind that attaches to the baby’s head, it was just inside to measure the strength of my contractions more accurately. Soon after that I had a catheter placed (I didn’t feel any of this other than pressure because of the epidural) and then Pitocin was turned on. Now we just had to wait for my body to establish a good pattern of contractions and see if I made any progress.

A little while later I started to feel some pain from contractions in my right lower back. I asked the nurse what was going on and she said when they put in the epidural they gave a loading dose to get me comfortable, and I might just be feeling that wearing off and switching to the maintenance dose. I had a button to push to get an extra boost, so I pushed it and decided I’d wait and see if that helped. But ten minutes later and I was writhing and groaning with pain again worse than ever. They called in the anesthesiologist to take a look. He said, “This is really rare, but it seems to be backtracking. For some reason this always seems to happen with people in the medical field.” In other words, instead of the medicine going INTO me, it was going back the other way. Perfect. I was feeling everything full force – with my water broken and Pitocin and everything. This was a low point.

Putting in the second epidural wasn’t quite as bad as the first, but it was still miserable. It worked though, and soon enough I was calm again. After an undetermined amount of time (it’s kind of hazy) my doctor came to check me again. She told me that where before I was 6-7 cm, now I was a solid 7 and perhaps a little bit more effaced. She said, “I want you to know that most doctors would have recommended a C-section a long time ago.” I told her, “Well I like you because you’re not most doctors.” She smiled and said, “Sweet-talking won’t get you everything you want in this situation.” I told her I understood, but I wanted her to know that anyway.

I knew that my doctor was ready to do a C-section, but I wasn’t mentally prepared for that yet. I asked her if we could wait longer, because technically I had made some progress. She agreed and said she was okay with waiting as long as the baby seemed healthy. Inside, though, I felt doomed and was just coming to terms with everything.

My doctor waited there with me for quite awhile watching the monitor. While she was there Meredith’s heart rate started dropping. At first it wasn’t for long, but it kept dropping lower and longer and not recovering. We all got worried. They put an oxygen mask on me but it didn’t help. Eventually my doctor said that she didn’t want to mess around with this and it was time to do surgery. I was bawling, but I talked to David and Kelly and realized that I didn’t want to put Meredith’s safety at risk just for a stubborn preference for an ideal birth experience.

Once I agreed to the C-section they had me in the OR right away. I was extremely anxious. I had started to be able to feel some slight pain again and I was paranoid that they’d start cutting me and I’d be able to feel it. They weighed me down with blankets, and that plus the oxygen mask and the sedation medicine made me feel claustrophobic and short of breath. David came in and sat by me and started talking to distract me, and before they started my doctor came over and asked to pray with us which meant the world to me. My husband said a perfect prayer, and then it was time.

I felt some tugging, but that’s it. And before I knew it, at 3:46 p.m., I heard my doctor say, “Happy birthday Meredith; you’re still a girl!” followed by sweet baby cries. They cleaned her off in my peripheral vision while my husband looked on. He came over to me and said, “She’s not ugly at all!” Soon I got to see her adorable face for myself before they took her to the nursery.

At the time it didn’t even really bother me that I couldn’t hold her or nurse her right away because I was just. so. tired. I had been awake for 36 hours and all I wanted was sleep, so that’s what I did while they finished the surgery. I guess it was about an hour later that my doctor woke me up and told me that everything went fine. Turns out that Meredith’s cord was wrapped around her neck like a noose, so the C-section was probably a good choice.

I was wheeled back to my room in the bed, but on the way there I passed the windows to the nursery where my entire family was gathered looking in on my baby girl. It was a special moment, but the best was when they finally brought her to me to hold for myself. I was so happy to have everything behind me and my daughter safe in my arms.

Obviously nothing about this birth went as I’d hoped, and I still get sad when I hear about other people giving birth naturally or even vaginally. I never got to push, wasn’t the first one to touch her, there was no cutting of the cord, no holding her right away. Although not the most important thing, the birth experience has a tremendous impact on a woman and I feel that I’m scarred from mine, literally and figuratively. I don’t know what I’ll do with my next child, if I’m able to have one. But I know that this time I did everything I could, and so I have no regrets. I have a healthy baby which is an honor and a blessing, and I would go through it all over again in a second to be her mother.

Part one

The first thing I had to do once we got to my hospital room was change into a gown, and the next step was for the nurse to check my progress. For that I had to lie flat on my back which was probably the most uncomfortable position I could imagine. At that point she told me that I was 3-4 cm dilated.

I was really disappointed that I wasn’t farther along. My contractions were already extremely painful and frequent, and I had been having them all day. I discussed with David and Kelly the option of returning home for awhile, but we were 45 minutes away and I couldn’t fathom going through that car ride twice more, so I decided to just stay. The nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural, and I told her that I didn’t want to be offered any pain medication at all. I said that I knew what my options were and I’d let her know if I changed my mind. She asked if I had a birth plan, but I hadn’t written anything down. She said, “Okay, but if you start begging me to help you then I’m going to offer you something.” That was fine with me.

This first nurse that I had wasn’t exactly rude, but she was very inflexible and not really full of compassion. She started asking me some admission questions, and when my husband tried to answer for me she firmly told him that I had to answer for myself. Then she said that I had to be placed on the monitor. Kelly asked if I could have a break from the monitor sometimes, and she said, “Only when she goes to the bathroom. That’s just how we do it here.” I knew that my doctor didn’t require this, and I was worried about losing my mobility. Plus, the straps to the monitor were tight. However, this nurse was going home at 11 p.m. so to avoid an argument I let her put the monitor on and sat on the birthing ball at the bedside to labor there for awhile. My parents showed up somewhere around this time as well.

Thankfully the next nurse who came on was a lot nicer and more flexible. She had also received orders from my doctor, who was willing to bend hospital protocol for me in order to have as natural a birth as possible. So from this point on I only had to be on the monitor for 20 minutes out of every hour until I reached 7 cm.

I had to have an IV put in, but I didn’t have to be hooked up to any fluids unless my water broke. The process of putting in the IV was painfully long. My veins were bulging, but they had a lot bifurcations apparent (like a fork in the road). The nurse took a really long time selecting the best spot to put in the IV, and it was made longer because every time I had a contraction she had to stop what she was doing and start over. Eventually she got it in on the underside of my left forearm.

Now it was really just time for me to labor, interrupted every hour for monitoring and vital signs, and every two hours for the nurse to check my progress. Let me take this opportunity to describe to you how my contractions felt: like someone was stabbing me in the lower spine and twisting the knife. And after every contraction I was overcome with nausea that left me dry heaving all night, plus some bad diarrhea. I tried to relax into the pain and recover afterward, but it was extremely difficult because I couldn’t stop shaking severely even though I wasn’t cold.

I tried so many positions to ease the pain. I walked. I held onto David. I sat on the birthing ball. I squatted. I got on my hands and knees. Mostly I sat on the ball or stood up and leaned against something when I didn’t have to be in bed for monitoring. And for every contraction throughout the night Kelly was there pushing against my lower back with tennis balls, and when I started to get bruised from the counterpressure she just placed her hands there which grounded me. She was a rock star and I know she was super sore the next day.

Midway through the night I began to seriously struggle. Remember that I had worked a full day that day without rest and hadn’t really eaten since lunch. I had a spoonful of honey to give me some energy, but I couldn’t really notice a difference. The pain was killing me. I began to be unsure of whether I really even wanted a baby. I felt like I would never not be in pain again. I didn’t ever yell or scream, but I moaned and groaned a lot, and I might have verbally wished to die once or twice. The most comfort I ever got was when I begged the nurse to let me in the shower, and I was allowed to for fifteen minutes.

My progress was slow. Every time they checked me I was crushed that I wasn’t further along. Finally in the early  hours of the morning I reached 7 cm and I had to remain on the monitor constantly. David had begun falling asleep sitting up so I told him to lie down and take a nap. My mom took over his job, while my dad left the room from time to time because he couldn’t handle seeing me like that. I alternated between sitting on the birthing ball and lying down on my side in bed. All I wanted to do was sleep, but it was impossible. I knew that I should stand up or move around in order to help labor progress, but I didn’t have the energy. There were several times where I thought that I might be nearing transition because the contractions came right on top of each other. I never felt the overwhelming urge to push, but I thought it might be coming soon.

Around 4 a.m. my nurse checked me and told me I was about 8 cm. I wasn’t happy with that, but I knew that the last two cm could go by very fast so I tried to remain positive. Throughout all this time I never once asked for pain medicine and I declined nausea medicine several times because I knew it would make me sleepier and I needed to focus. Because I was feeling all the pain in my lower back I had a strong feeling that Meredith was turned face up, and I was concerned that this was inhibiting her from engaging in my pelvis.

My doctor showed up around 6 a.m. and checked me a lot more thoroughly than any of the nurses had. I began having a contraction in the middle of it, and when she was finished my husband asked what she thought. She said she wanted to wait until I was done with the contraction to talk to me, and then I knew the news wasn’t good. Once I was ready she said, “I think saying that you’re 7 cm dilated is being generous. It’s more like 6.” The fact that I was only 6 cm, not to mention that I thought I was 8 cm, was enough to crush me. I also was only about 70% effaced. My doctor said that I was stalled out and at this point she needed to do something. I began to cry as I saw my dreams of having a completely natural birth slipping away.

Part three

Four days prior to giving birth

Meredith’s due date was approaching, and I was becoming increasingly swollen and tired. I planned to work up until I went into labor, but my resolve was weakening. On Monday, July 18 I saw my doctor. She checked me and declared me to be 1.5 cm dilated, and my cervix was soft. She stripped my membranes, but said that they weren’t very well attached to the wall of my uterus so she wasn’t sure that it would have the desired effect of sending me into labor. I certainly didn’t feel like I was going into labor anytime soon. I started taking herbs and doing natural remedies to get things started, because one of my biggest fears was having to be induced.

I guess I should mention here that having as natural as possible of a birth was very important to me. I took 8 weeks of The Bradley Method classes, I read The Birth Book, I got a doula, and I felt prepared. I still planned to have the baby in the hospital, however, because a) I work there and the insurance coverage would be amazing, b) I found a fantastic doctor that I wanted to stay with, and c) first-time parent nerves. So I was willing to be flexible and work with the hospital guidelines, and my doctor was willing to help as much as she could, too.

But back to the story. On Tuesday I decided to drive to work instead of taking the bus. My charge nurse had assigned me to give injections that day, which was a relief since it doesn’t require as much walking. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions on and off for the past couple of weeks, but as that day went on I noticed that they started to change. The pressure with contractions started to hurt a little bit to the point that I actually had to lean against a desk or wall a few times in the afternoon. I had decided that I would take Wednesday, my due date, off work one way or another; if I hadn’t gone into labor then I’d need a day’s rest to make it through the week. I finished out that day of work and my coworkers hugged me goodbye. I knew that something was starting to happen, but I didn’t know how long it would drag on.

As I was making the hour-long drive home I decided to time the contractions using an app I had on my phone. Turned out they were lasting 30-50 seconds and were approximately 5-7 minutes apart. That was a lot more regular than I thought. Before going home I stopped at my friend Sara’s house to borrow a bunch of baby clothes she had for me. While I was there I went to the bathroom only to discover that my mucus plug had come out. When I finally made it home my husband was so excited to get things moving, and at first I was, too. I was walking around, timing the contractions, but then all of a sudden exhaustion took over. I begged David to let me relax awhile because I had just worked a full day and I really wanted to get some sleep that night.

I ate some applesauce, then got in the bath tub. I dozed off a bit, and while I was there one of my best friends, Carmen, called to ask me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. After the bath I settled on the couch to rest. I thought I might catch up on some TV, but my contractions began to get more and more painful. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to relax. I called my mom and asked her and my dad to come over and pick up our dog Oliver. I knew it would be good to have him taken care of even if nothing happened that night. While my parents were on their way, I began timing the contractions again. They were now almost a minute long and coming about every four minutes. It was to the point where I couldn’t focus on anything else other than getting through the pain while I was having one.

I now knew that it was time to call the doctor. It was 7 or 8 p.m. by this point, so I paged the on-call. While we waited for the call back, I finished packing my hospital bag and then experienced the only real nesting instinct of my whole pregnancy. I began tidying things up and issuing cleaning orders to my husband and to my parents when they arrived. By the time the doctor called me, I was ready to go. When I described the situation he told me to “shake a leg” and get to the hospital. He said the nurses would check me and be in touch with my own doctor, who would most likely be taking over. I had been in touch with Kelly, my doula, and Cio, my birth photographer, and at this point I let them know that we were ready to go. My parents left to take Oliver home, Kelly met us at our house, then we headed out.

I was excited to be in labor, but it felt surreal – until a contraction came, then it became very real. It hurt a lot more already than I expected it to. The drive back to the hospital was shorter than usual because there was no traffic, but it was still about 45 minutes. David wasn’t driving too fast because Kelly was following us, but occasionally I had to politely encourage him to speed up a little bit. We finally got there and parked in the garage, and decided to just bring all of our things inside. I led them to the labor and delivery floor and we were let in. I filled out just a little bit of paperwork and then we were escorted to our room, 617.

Part two