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I would have liked my story to begin with water breaking and end in a beautiful birth - with contractions, candles, and fierce labor overcome in between. I would like to say that I dug deep and relied on my innate ability as woman to manage pain, triumphed over what felt like the impossible and found an inner-strength that pushed through. I wish I was one of those happy couples who left the birth center with a perfect baby, eager and ready to face the world of parenthood. But my story isn’t like that.
Against all odds for this woman, who isn’t into pain and couldn’t be further from a hippy/crunchy gal, I chose to give birth at The Midwife Center. My reasons were simple, you can read about my progression of thought and research here. I was focused on the natural birth – the kind highlighted in the documentary The Business of Being Born and in the book, Your Best Birth. So focused was I on doing it naturally, that I never allowed myself to think about other alternatives.
Since I’m not the hippy-sort nor am I exactly a go-with-the-flow kind of person, you can imagine that I had a very specific, well-written birth plan that I fully expected would come to fruition.
Labor started at 1am on a Friday morning and for the first several hours as planned, at home and early on at TMC, I was blessed with laughter between contractions, the ability to sit on my birth ball, cope with pain in the tub, and roll with the punches to my gut.
But as the pain increased and I wasn’t dilating, my dream labor – the one I so thoroughly planned and prepared and focused on for months - was slipping out of my control.
After 16 hours of labor, I was only 3cm dilated. I had so much scar tissue in my cervix from a previous procedure that I required an epidural to undergo the painful process of my midwife literally, digging out the tissue to allow my cervix to dilate. Off to Mercy Hospital we went, through city rush hour traffic, while I cussed out my husband every time he hit a bump or had to stop at a light.
The pain mixed with defeat was unbearable.
Despite my disappointment in needing to transfer to the hospital and have intervention drugs, I thanked my anesthesiologist about 1,000 times after he relieved the pain and about a million times more in my head as I watched tissue be ripped from my body to allow dilatation over the next several hours. I didn’t feel a thing.
About 9 hours later, I was ready to push. And push I did… for 3 hours. But baby boy was turned wrong and stuck in my pelvis. Defeat struck again.
After trying everything under the sun for 33 hours to avoid a c-section, I was taken to the O.R. Saturday morning, August 7, 2010, where I ended up giving birth by way of operation...the least expected way I planned on meeting my first child.
Frazzled from lack of sleep, drugged and overwhelmed, I wasn’t able to hold my baby for hours. The shaking and total shock of it all was just starting to sink in.
After a 5 day stay at the hospital with a jaundice baby who would not breastfeed and a painful cut through my abdomen, I felt stripped of my power as a woman and a mother. What I had set out to do, backfired. I wasn’t empowered, I was disabled. I wasn’t happy and glowing, I was tired and pissed off and so, so sad. Unmet expectations can be a real bitch. And boy, was she bitchy to me.
I wish I could say this story gets better. But the truth is, it doesn’t. Recovery was hard. I don’t think I fully bonded with my son in the way I imagined until weeks after his birth. I had the baby-blues and battled every day for three months to breastfeed before giving up.
Nothing about my birth experience was beautiful, except him.
My son was a gorgeous baby. As c-section babies tend to be, he had a perfectly round head. He had deep, beautiful blue eyes and when his jaundice went away; his creamy olive skin glowed like my husband’s. He was 8lbs, 4oz and 22 inches long. He is my favorite thing in the world and I tell him frequently that I’d do it all over again! He just turned one and is healthy and happy, whole and complete. He lacks nothing. He smiles at everyone and loves life.
How he came into the world didn’t seem to faze him or alter his existence or personality in any way.
But it changed me.
I’m a black and white thinker. What I plan for is usually what I expect. I’m not controlling necessarily, I’m just well-prepared. I believe that hard-work and effort pays off. (Give me a break, I’m German – it’s in my blood. Ha!) But this experience taught me some valuable lessons that I think should be heard by anyone with a clear birth plan.
Just because you WANT something or even BELIEVE IN something, doesn’t make it so. All the best intentions and plans can be set in motion but babies and life for that matter, don’t always so perfectly fit into our world-view or our template for event planning.
Shit happens…even to the best of us.
Before this birth, I “knew” there was a chance it wouldn’t work as planned but I never, ever allowed myself to really think through transferring to the hospital, an epidural or a c-section. I felt it was a betrayal to myself and my plans to allow those thoughts of “escaping” to the world of “pain-free.” If I didn’t fully focus on pain management and birth-endurance, I was scared I would chicken out and beg for relief.
In the end, the few things I did NOT plan for ended up saving me and my child however, my rigidity did a tremendous disservice to my birth experience. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge or rule out medication and surgery. What I now realize is this; there is a fine line between setting out to do what you believe is right and leaving room for the flexibility the birth experience requires. Staying so focused on plans and high-expectations that when they don’t come true your ideology is crushed, is really unhealthy. Judging other people’s avenues of birth and pain-management is wrong; we rarely know the whole story or the journey they traveled.
After a year of processing this experience, getting good therepy from a counselor and coming to terms with the grey in the situation - my inability to plan every detail of motherhood - I can NOW say, the birth of my first child was beautiful. I dug deep and relied on my innate ability as woman to manage pain. I triumphed over what felt like the impossible and found an inner-strength that pushed through... the unexpected and unplanned and hard.
I am currently 9 months pregnant and have a 60% chance of having a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). I stayed with TMC because I love the relationships I have with the midwives and front office. I feel valued as a person and a client. And I want to try again. I will go to Mercy Hospital and try for the second time in a little over a year to have a natural birth. But this time, I’m prepared to follow my body and my baby, not my plans alone. I’m not trying to be a hero. I have no judgment calls to make about how anyone else does birth and while I still have plans and ideas and hopes and wishes, I am prepared to give birth vaginally or by cesarean, without medication or with an epidural.
Because any way it happens, it's still birth. A bloody war with a beautiful triumph. Life Giving!
But it changed me.
I’m a black and white thinker. What I plan for is usually what I expect. I’m not controlling necessarily, I’m just well-prepared. I believe that hard-work and effort pays off. (Give me a break, I’m German – it’s in my blood. Ha!) But this experience taught me some valuable lessons that I think should be heard by anyone with a clear birth plan.
Just because you WANT something or even BELIEVE IN something, doesn’t make it so. All the best intentions and plans can be set in motion but babies and life for that matter, don’t always so perfectly fit into our world-view or our template for event planning.
Shit happens…even to the best of us.
Before this birth, I “knew” there was a chance it wouldn’t work as planned but I never, ever allowed myself to really think through transferring to the hospital, an epidural or a c-section. I felt it was a betrayal to myself and my plans to allow those thoughts of “escaping” to the world of “pain-free.” If I didn’t fully focus on pain management and birth-endurance, I was scared I would chicken out and beg for relief.
In the end, the few things I did NOT plan for ended up saving me and my child however, my rigidity did a tremendous disservice to my birth experience. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge or rule out medication and surgery. What I now realize is this; there is a fine line between setting out to do what you believe is right and leaving room for the flexibility the birth experience requires. Staying so focused on plans and high-expectations that when they don’t come true your ideology is crushed, is really unhealthy. Judging other people’s avenues of birth and pain-management is wrong; we rarely know the whole story or the journey they traveled.
After a year of processing this experience, getting good therepy from a counselor and coming to terms with the grey in the situation - my inability to plan every detail of motherhood - I can NOW say, the birth of my first child was beautiful. I dug deep and relied on my innate ability as woman to manage pain. I triumphed over what felt like the impossible and found an inner-strength that pushed through... the unexpected and unplanned and hard.
I am currently 9 months pregnant and have a 60% chance of having a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). I stayed with TMC because I love the relationships I have with the midwives and front office. I feel valued as a person and a client. And I want to try again. I will go to Mercy Hospital and try for the second time in a little over a year to have a natural birth. But this time, I’m prepared to follow my body and my baby, not my plans alone. I’m not trying to be a hero. I have no judgment calls to make about how anyone else does birth and while I still have plans and ideas and hopes and wishes, I am prepared to give birth vaginally or by cesarean, without medication or with an epidural.
Because any way it happens, it's still birth. A bloody war with a beautiful triumph. Life Giving!
2 comments:
Lins, I am very proud of you and feel belssed with Nico. He is a Man with a Purpose. You and Michael will be great parents for both him and your new baby. In remebering your first birth experience, please remeber to thank God you live in a time and place where this care was available.
Thanks Dadina!
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