Part 3 - Finally Meeting My Baby

The last installment of my intro posts!

This post contains real talk about giving birth and c-sections, so if you have a traumatic birth experience and might be triggered, please proceed with caution. Also, if you’ve never had kids, maybe skip it, cause everyone’s birth is different, and I swear kids are worth it! I wouldn’t want to scare you off having kids!

TLDR: Everything I didn’t want is what happened, but I got more than I could ever fathom.

Recall that I switched from an OB to a midwife practice because I hate hospitals with every fiber of my being. I wanted to go through as much of the labor as possible at home and only do the delivery at the hospital. I hate hospitals so much that I even looked into a home birth and natural birthing centers, but ultimately decided against them. I personally know of women in my family that died in childbirth and I know a few seconds’ or minutes’ time can be the difference between life and death for both mom and baby. So, as much as I hate hospitals, I wanted help to be right there in case of an emergency. And in case I haven’t mentioned it, I was 36 at the time, which unfortunately is called a “geriatric pregnancy”, which meant my hips and my eggs are considered old. So, I really didn’t want to take any chances.

As a pregnant person, wherever you end up doing your delivery, you are often encouraged to come up with a “birthing plan” before your actual delivery day. This is a great idea because you can make your decisions known and in writing so that when you’re incapable of anything but moaning in pain trying to get through the labor (or God forbid worse), your whole team knows your wishes already. Let me tell you, there is a lot to decide. I could probably write a whole post just about that. But instead, I will just tell you part of what my “birthing plan” was.

In addition to not wanting to labor at the hospital, I also did not want an epidural for the following reasons:

1. Big needles are scary, especially when they go directly into your spine.

2. Since it’s numbing you from the waist down, I was told you wouldn’t be able to get up and walk around.

3. If you can’t get up and walk around, then you can’t take advantage of all “natural” techniques to help the labor progress and to help manage pain that I read about like yoga balls, squatting, sitting in a warm bath, walking, etc.

4. The drugs could potentially affect the baby.

5. I’ve heard too many stories of women who got the giant needle and it wasn’t effective and they still felt all the pain of labor and pushing.

So, yeah, if there’s one thing I hate as much as being in a hospital, it’s being stuck or tied down to the bed in a hospital. My only consolation, in my head, to being in the hospital was that I would have the freedom to get out of the bed and move around with my doula however I saw fit. Epidural did not allow that so I didn’t want it.

Another part of my plan was to push out the baby and do everything possible to avoid the c-section. Hence the no epidural, because the midwives also convinced me that epidural = c-section because it stalls the labor etc. The midwives also convinced me that the c-section was the worst option ever in the world because it’s a major surgery and recovery takes much longer compared to a vaginal delivery. I admit, the c-section still looked mighty tempting given the other horror stories I had heard about breech babies, level 3 perineal tears, stitches, episiotomies, pooping on the table, etc. Let’s suffice it to say I was terrified of the pushing-the-baby-out part, and having them just cut it out of me sounded way more simple. But midwives said no no, you absolutely don’t want that.

Of course, as often happens in life (especially mine), not a single. damn. thing. went according to plan.

It all started during a routine office visit. I was 38 weeks along. I painfully waddled into the midwife clinic per usual and sat down to get my blood pressure taken. The reading was high. Not alarmingly so, but enough that they sent me to the hospital for a “stress test”, whatever that meant. I went to the hospital and basically, they checked on the baby’s vitals and she was fine, and my blood pressure had come down. So they sent me home and told me to monitor my blood pressure and call them if it was high again.

I went home for the weekend, nothing remarkable happened. I did check my blood pressure with a cuff I had at home. The reading was super high, but it was high enough that I chocked it up to me having never previously used the cuff. I figured it was likely user error or the thing needed to be calibrated. I didn’t trust it, and I felt “fine”. Or whatever counted as “fine” in my state of constant pelvic pain, back pain, ankle pain, wrist pain, and finger pain.

I went back to the midwife clinic, as ordered, on Monday for another check up. My blood pressure reading was high again and unfortunately, given that this was the second time, they officially diagnosed me as preeclampsic and therefore they needed to induce labor ASAP. ASAP!? Lady, I have not showered, I’m basically still in my pajamas because this was just supposed to be a routine check up! I didn’t even have my hospital bag fully packed!

I asked if it was ok if I go home and come back later that night with my partner. They said no, and if I wanted to leave, I would have to sign this form saying I was leaving “Against Medical Orders.” Being the people pleaser and good student that I am, that really bothered me! But you know what bothers me more? Hospitals! Of course I signed the damn thing!

I went home to finish packing the hospital bag and to take my last shower I’d get at home for a while. I waited for my partner to come home and then I insisted we go out to one last dinner without kids before checking in to the hospital. We went to a burger place called Eureka. Ironically, it’s kind of a drinking place, but when I was pregnant I couldn’t get enough burgers and fries for some reason, and this place made a very juicy burger. I’m not sure I will ever forget that night, mostly because it was so poignant, like your last meal before death row. I was willingly about to walk into my least favorite place on earth and go through my worst nightmare.

This part gets a lot harder for me to write. I desperately want to breeze past this part, I’ve been avoiding writing it for weeks. But, I am trying to grow as a person instead of running and avoiding all things hard. And if this helps you, reader, then it’ll be worth it.

We checked into the hospital around 10pm and already the fun started. They told me I had to have an IV put in. I protested, thought it was the stupidest thing ever, but they insisted it was protocol and we couldn’t proceed without it. Something about safety and timing. The nurse inserted the line into the top of my hand. This was not only incredibly painful but brought back painful memories of the time when I was 8 and I got my tonsils out and they had to stick me 5 times on both sides to get the IV in properly. I remember complaining that all I got for that pain and suffering was a sticker. Anyway, after that, they started me on a pill to ‘induce’ the labor, and they said I’d take it again every 4 hours or something. Details are fuzzy, I just remember they gave me 4 pills and we waited 24 hours and nothing happened.

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

That first night was honestly the worst. The way the IV line was placed in my hand was agonizing. I couldn’t be comfortable with it just stabbing me and every time I complained to the nurse about it, she said to just give it more time and it would calm down. My hospital PTSD was already so bad, it made my skin crawl just to be there. I needed all the comfort I could get, but instead, this stupid IV felt like a snapping turtle got his jaws on my hand and wouldn’t let go. No position was comfortable, I just stayed up all night tense, worried, needing sleep in the worst way, and crying at the sorry state of things. No wonder my body didn’t go into labor.

The next day, after my last does of ‘miso’ did nothing for me, they decided it was time to move things along with a stronger drug. I can’t remember the name anymore, but it did need to be placed directly on the cervix. FML. This means they had to insert this patch or drug or whatever, waaay up inside of me. Thankfully (I guess), they allowed me to use nitrous oxide for the insertion. This, I highly recommend. If you’ve ever seen the movie Little Shop of Horrors, and Steve Martin on his gas, you’ll have a pretty good idea of me on nitrous, albeit not as sadistic.

No, I did not have a mask like Steve Martin, they just gave me a cup or mask to put up to my mouth, like the same way people get oxygen in an airplane. They said I was the only one allowed to hold it. I was to put it up to my face and breathe deeply, and I was in full control of when and how much of it I wanted to breathe. I took a practice hit, and then when they were about to insert the drug, I put the mask up to my face and held it there. The midwife insisted she would be as gentle and quick as possible. Yeah right. I distinctly remember that even with the nitrous making me high AF, it was painful enough that I violently gasped and had to keep huffing the gas more and more just to survive. It felt like she was shoving so hard up inside me that she might reach my brains. And here’s the messed up part… I was laughing about it. Hysterically. They joked about this the entire hospital stay, how goofy I was on nitrous oxide and the stuff I was saying, and how uproariously I was laughing. I was like the laughing mob weasel in Roger Rabbit.

I dunno, hilarity aside, here’s how I really feel. While I am thankful for the access to the nitrous oxide to get through stuff, to this day, I still felt violated by that whole thing. A bit like being date raped by your doctor. You can think I’m being overdramatic but it just seemed like the midwife didn’t seem to take any care or gentleness at all because I was so drugged up she knew she didn’t have to. They could’ve easily done whatever they wanted with me. Oh and in case you’re wondering, the high is HIGH, but it wears off almost instantly.

At any rate, the drug was in. Shortly after, shit got real. I started having major contractions and instead of them gradually getting closer together, they seemed on top of one another way too fast to me. Upon trying to stick to what remained of my stupid birth plan, I tried breathing through it with my doula. She was a lot of help but eventually I couldn’t take it any more so I asked if I could go to their warm bath. They got me in a wheelchair and took me to the bath down the hall. It was smaller than I had hoped, and incredibly painful for me to step into. But the hot water did help me tolerate the pain a lot. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t relax because they were required to keep the continuous monitoring devices attached to me even in the bath. They weren’t working properly, so I had to endure the nurse’s handles constantly fiddling on me trying to get them to work. I cringe even now just thinking about it. When I finally couldn’t take more of that, I asked to get out.

The bath must’ve accomplished something because very shortly after returning to my room, my water broke. It was the weirdest thing, like uncontrollably peeing yourself, but gallons are coming out (liters for you metric system readers lol), and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, and every time you move, more liquid just keeps spilling out. I remember being caught so off guard, I kept trying to move or get somewhere, and the nurses were just trying to put a bucket underneath me, and my brain didn’t register, so they kept having to readjust the bucket. It’s strange, I feel like I am remembering all of this through a veil, like it didn’t actually happen to me, but I watched it happen to someone else.

I was not prepared for the level of pain I would feel after my water broke. It was providing some sort of cushion or lubricant for my pelvis, and once it was gone, I could no longer move. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t lay, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t do anything without pure agony. It felt as if my entire pelvis had been shattered to pieces. And yes, at this point, I begged for the epidural. I didn’t care about anything else in the birth plan or whatever, I knew without a doubt, I was not going to get through this without the epidural.

Now they bring in the anesthesiologist to insert the epidural. My need for relief outweighed my fear. I submitted to it, tried to remain as still as possible. And thank God Almighty, it worked miraculously. I could not only comfortably sit or lie down, but I could actually get up on all fours on the table and move around! Even the nurses commented how uncommon it was for the epidural to work so well. I started doing all these shimmies and shakes I had learned with the doula, thinking this was going quite well now.

Nope.

I made it to 8cm dilated (and yes, I took nitrous every time they needed to stick their damn fists inside me to check how far along I was) and then they started getting concerned about the baby’s heart rate. They waited as long as they could but my labor had stopped progressing and the baby’s situation was becoming dire. There was no time to waste. So after aaaaaaaalllllllllll that bullshit I described above, I still ended up having an emergency C-section. To this day, I still don’t know why things went wrong. They said something about an infection, but I don’t see how that would be possible unless they introduced it. So that part still bothers me a bit even now, the lack of understanding. Being so vulnerable that I couldn’t even tell you what happened to me nor why.

Suddenly, a cacaphony. Movement everywhere. Tons of strangers I’ve never seen in my life start pouring into the room and doing stuff to me. Someone’s putting a cap on my hair, someone else is shaving my pubes, while another hooks up my IV to stronger drugs and in minutes, I’m whisked away to surgery. I’m just worried about my baby.

The next part, I am told, lasted like 30-45 minutes, but in my recollection it all happened in like 5 minutes. I remember them putting up a curtain between me and my guts. I remember a lovely anesthesiologist being so incredibly empathetic, kind, and reassuring that I wanted to propose to him. He assured me I would feel some tugs but nothing more, and he was right. I felt like in a matter of minutes they had the baby out. She didn’t cry when she came out, she squeaked. I distinctly remember a squeak. They held her for a microsecond all gooey over the curtain so I could see her, and some of her goo dripped on my face. But I was so in awe (and I guess on very strong drugs) that I didn’t care one bit. It was the least bad thing to happen to me that day.

They took her to the side and cleaned her up, let dad cut the cord or something, while they stitched me back up. I am pretty sure he was the first one to hold her, which I’m pretty jealous of. He is the only one, besides the hospital staff, that has a memory of the whole ordeal. I’ll never know, I was just there for it.

What I do remember is being in the recovery room and having skin to skin contact with my baby girl for the first time. It was magical. It’s cliche but it couldn’t be truer. She was born at only 5lbs, the tiniest human being I’d ever seen. She had this slight fur on her cheeks and her arms. Her eyes were SO alert. She laid on my chest just looking at me for what felt like hours, fighting her sleep like her life depended on it. (She still does by the way) And that was it for me, love at first sight. I remember looking at this tiny, vulnerable, adorable, perfect, brand new human being and feeling so intensely that I will protect her with my life. Every moment up to then was not only worth it but was just a blip compared to the magnitude of holding my child. I’d do it again a thousand times over for her too.

If you’ve gotten this far, I cannot thank you enough for reading the whole thing. I know it was long, I know it was heavy and possibly triggering, but it means the world to me that you would read my story. Please consider subscribing for more personal essays.

With Love,

Mother Hood