Birth Story

I saw Ricki Lake on the Rachael Ray Show a while back discussing her new documentary, “The Business of Being Born.” I haven’t seen it yet, but I went to the web site to find out more. You can submit your birth story to be included in an upcoming book. Even though I wrote a brief recap when Miles was born, I decided, why not share the whole sordid story? You lucky readers, you.

So you might recall that during my first prenatal visit, my ob/gyn looked at my chart, saw that I was a vegetarian and did yoga, and said, “You might do well with HypnoBirthing.” Hypno-what?! I thought. She explained that it was a method of childbirth preparation, like Lamaze or Bradley.

And that’s how, with visions of patchouli and Birkenstocks dancing in our heads, my perfectly normal husband and I found ourselves in somebody’s living room practicing massage techniques and visualization, listening to nature sounds, and learning a whole new vocabulary. Instead of contractions, HypnoBirthing refers to “waves of energy.” Your water doesn’t break; your “membranes rupture.” It’s a kinder, gentler approach to birth, we learned. Your body knows what to do if you and all those doctors just stay out of the way and let it.

So my due date came and went. I tried everything to jumpstart labor, but nothing happened. Then my ob/gyn quit and my doula went on vacation. Fortunately, it was a group practice and my doula had a back-up. Still, I was getting more anxious by the day.

Finally, reluctantly, I allowed my doctor to schedule an induction. I was almost 42 weeks pregnant. Then, the day before I was to be induced, I woke up with contractions. Hallelujah! Per our HypnoBirthing instruction, I labored at home as long as possible. I rolled around on a birthing ball. Took a warm bath. Walked around the block a few times. When I couldn’t take it any more and my contractions were 4 minutes apart, we headed to the hospital at about 6 p.m. I was proud of myself for holding out as long as I had.

Well, guess what? I was a measly 1 ½ cm dilated!! A while later, they started me on a Pitocin drip. The doctors explained that active labor is technically defined as contractions plus dilation, and I appeared to only be experiencing the first part. They didn’t cover THAT scenario in HypnoBirthing class!

By this time, my doula was back from vacation. She arrived with homemade cookies, massaged my back during contractions, and brought me water. She and my husband slept on hospital chairs while I lay on the bed wishing the baby would hurry up already.

Sometime during the night I requested an epidural. I was exhausted and in pain. The brusque anesthesiologist administered my epidural like he was performing an oil change. It gave me some relief, but I continued to feel pain in the lower left part of my abdomen. Another thing I’d never learned: there can be “pockets” where the epidural doesn’t work.

My doula left to take her kids to school. Time passed ever so slowly. Then I started feeling the urge to push. I was 10 cm at last! We called the doula and told her to come back to the hospital. I was in labor for so long that several shifts of doctors and nurses had come and gone. I couldn’t even keep track of all the people who were in the room. Thank God for my doula, who was a calm, soothing presence throughout it all.

At some point, a pair of midwives came in. One said, “What’s that frown for? We’re having a baby here!” I wanted to punch her. The other said, “No, no, honey. That’s not effective pushing. You’re doing it wrong.” I cried and possibly cursed. My doula said, “Tuck your chin and hold your breath.” Her advice helped.

Then the baby got stuck. “You’re going to have to push harder,” they told me. I was crying and exhausted. It was close to noon. “I can’t do this any more,” I sobbed. My husband and the doula held my hands. “Yes, you can. You’re doing great,” they said.

The doctors went and got a suction cup that they jammed on the baby’s head to pull it out. Later, my husband said that was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. They kept trying; it wasn’t working. Then, someone leaned over and said to me, “We’re going to get another doctor to try the forceps. If that doesn’t work, we’re looking at a C-section.”

Screw that, I remember thinking. Another push, and the baby was out. It was covered in meconium (that means it had pooped in the womb), so a team of nurses and pediatricians swooped in to make sure the baby got cleaned up and could breathe. “What did we have?” we asked. “Oh,” said the nurse, clearly startled. “It’s a boy. See?”

They held the baby out to me. He had the biggest, darkest eyes I’d ever seen. In that moment, I didn’t care that all my plans for a calm, easy birth had gone out the window hours and hours and hours before. I had my baby at last. I was a mom.

LINK O’ THE WEEK: If you can’t get enough birth stories or want to post your own, Sarcastic Mom has a Birth Story Carnival going on. Sounds like there should be rides and cotton candy, doesn’t it?