WARNING - No details spared. Not for the faint of heart. This is a real birth story.
It will be a week tomorrow that my second daughter was born so I want to get this down before the details get too hazy.
This birth story really starts with the birth of my first daughter who was stubbornly breech and gave me no option but to have a c-section. While I am incredibly grateful for a healthy child and a healthy me, it was not the natural water birth I had dreamed of or planned for. I knew when I got pregnant again I would do everything in my power to have a VBAC.
Fast forward to July 2012 and a niggling feeling in the wee hours of the morning, I found out I was expecting unexpectedly...again. We were living with Daniel's parents and I had just taken the position as Children's Ministry Director at Big House Church and we were trying to build a house and just decided to wait to have more kids.
This pregnancy was different from the start. Most of all we were just much busier and with a toddler and the mystery of motherhood revealed you just don't have time to sit and ponder much. The months passed far more quickly this go round. I desperately wanted to have a home birth as I knew I would be pegged "high risk" as a VBAC. Unfortunately the home birth didn't work out for our particular circumstances or set of risk factors and truth be told my husband wasn't super comfortable with the idea.
So my next best choice was the midwives at the Woman Care Center where I was previously. Everything was going well and as expected until somewhere around the 35 week I started to feel a general feeling of unwell. My blood pressure was on the cusp and I had trace proteins in my urine. Labs showed elevated uric acid and slightly lowered platelets. For all the medical novices such as myself this was a sign of possible developing preeclampsia.
Arrow to the heart I had made it through so well. No swollen ankles, a slight scare with the first failed glucose test but in the end no gestational diabetes and I was still working and mobile and handling it. Of course as soon as they suspect preeclampsia you are on high alert. I had to start going in for two a week visits and weekly ultrasounds lots of labs etc. Not my idea of a natural time. Each time it seemed like there was something else to talk about. "Your placenta is enlarged oh wait no its not" "You don't have protein in your urine oh wait yes you do". The whole ordeal was a bit frustrating. I saw a different person every week and nobody gave me a straight answer as to what was going on with me. As the weeks passed and I took some good natural advice from a midwife friend to eat an entire rotisserie chicken by myself and chug water, I began to feel better. The baby looked beautiful on all the tests they did and the weeks rolled right into my due date.
I had been having painless contractions for a couple of weeks before my appointment on April 1st and was hoping it was doing something at least. As I was very gingerly examined and deflatingly told absolutely nothing was going on in that department, I had my heart set on just waiting the process out. It was when I was brought into the midwife's office and conferenced in with the OB and told that a repeat c-section was the wisest choice and that it should be two days later that I had a hard time holding back the tears. This is not at all what I expected.
I felt God whisper to me again, "Do you trust me?" I just knew I was made to birth my own baby. So my courage rallied and I began to stand my ground ask lots of questions and tell them I needed time to discuss the decision with my husband. As soon as I left the office they began to call me to convince me this was the best decision. After prayer and a talk with a few important people I convinced them to let me wait until the end of the week and that I wanted to try and induction first. So they scheduled me for an induction on April 7th. I would still need to go in for checks twice that week.
***OK THIS IS WHERE THE LABOR PART STARTS SORRY***
On April 2nd I went in for an ultrasound (baby still looked great) and a non stress test and she seemed to be a little sleepy which of course they make out to be a bit scary. Then I saw Dr. Dixon for an exam and was told I was 1cm and 65% effaced. She assured me I had more than enough room to birth the baby and that she didn't feel a c-section was as urgent as previously thought. She said an induction would be long and hard but she was willing to try it if I wanted to. Thank you Dr. Dixon for your factual advice and respect for my instincts to make my own decision.
The rest of that day I went home and had uncomfortable contractions that were irregular. Daniel was starting night shift that night and that made me a little nervous. I sent him off to work and then put Simone to bed watched a little TV on the ball while drinking red raspberry leaf tea. I was still having uncomfortable contractions so I decided to go to bed. At around 3:30 am I awoke very uncomfortable and my belly felt very tight. I was passing what seemed to be my mucus plug (sorry if TMI) and the tightening seemed to be coming quite close together. I was so tired and tried to drift off in between but the pain was waking me up. Having never experienced a contraction with Simone I wasn't sure if this was labor or Braxton Hicks. I called Daniel and told him I thought he should come home not necessarily because I thought I was going to have the baby anytime soon but the thought of laboring with an almost 3 year old while my husband slept away the day was terrifying. He came home and I called my mom just to give her the heads up and she decided to come as well to help with Simone.
Everyone got there as I continued having contraction around 4 and half minutes apart with a fair amount of discomfort. They kept asking if they could do anything but I realized I just had to do it myself there was no really "helping" any of this. Thoughts kept going through my head of, "this better be real labor because if this is just the beginning I am not sure I can do this". Around 7:30 am they started to ease up and get further apart and deepen my fear that I was not in real labor and that real labor must be really really terrible. I fell asleep for a bit and then got up to start my day as normal and try not to over think things.
The day was pretty uneventful, I thought about the looming induction on Sunday and decided to do some walking to see if that would get things started again though I welcomed the break because I was exhausted and a little scared of the pain to come. I had some back pain and lots of pressure most of the day but nothing to regular or serious. I ate quite a bit which made me a little worried for impending labor but I was starving. We had dinner all together and I ate a ton of homemade kale chips which I had been craving for days. Then towards the end of dinner I couldn't sit still in my chair as the contractions came back hard and fast. I decided to start timing them at around 8pm and in around an hour they went from being 7 and a half minutes to 4 and half minutes apart again. Once the contractions started bringing me to tears my confidence began to waiver especially because I wasn't convinced I was really in labor. I couldn't get comfortable and I could not use any of those visualizations I had read about this was way more painful and in a different kind of way then I had anticipated. For all the moms to be wondering like I was what it feels like the best way I can describe it is the worst menstrual cramps, constipation and some sense of bone pain. Sorry just keeping it real. Labor is not for the faint of heart and it is terribly real and raw. Amazing in retrospect but I am sure that is thanks to the nice hormones that you get after birth. Anyway, I digress.
I began to say with just about every contraction, "I don't want to do this anymore" and I knew I was fantasizing a little about an epidural especially because I didn't know how long this was going to take. We called the midwife and she said, "you sound like you are in a fair amount of discomfort go ahead and come in."
I still had not packed a hospital bag and I couldn't think of what I needed in that moment. I didn't need much of anything but I did forget my wallet and had to have a friend run it up to me. Contractions in the car suck that is all I can say. We had to enter through the ER and that was embarrassing cause it was packed full of people and I just wanted to moan and cry but also felt I needed to hold myself together. So I closed my eyes and pretended nobody else was around on the entire wheel chair ride up to labor and delivery.
They checked me I was at 3-4cm which told me I had a long way to go. They tried to get and IV going which is always terribly painful and unsuccessful. Nobody wants their veins dug in whilst having contractions. Three separate nurses tried and finally they got a line. Every contraction would come and I would grip the sides of the bed and raise my bottom because of the intense pressure. The nurse kept telling me to welcome the pressure and open my hands. I just felt frustrated at that. I was on a monitor and all sorts of machines and had to go to the bathroom all the time but couldn't. Laboring on my back reclined seemed like the most unnatural thing to do and I quickly started doubting my decision to come and my resolve to go drug free was quickly deteriorating. They asked me my pain management plan and I didn't really have one and barely whispered I think I want an epidural and they had anesthesia paged. They had to check my platelets and get a full bag of fluids before I could get this magical drug and everything began to happen at warp speed. Around this time I also started to get extremely nauseous and proceeded to throw up my entire dinner. Finally Dr. Dave came in and gave me and epidural which was totally different and way better than the spinal block I had gotten with the c-section. I had no idea they were different. I could now feel no contractions and only a tiny bit of pressure. I was however shivering like crazy and steel feeling nauseous and dry heaving every once in a while.
The midwife checked me as soon as the epidural took and I was at 7cm and I remember thinking I progressed really fast but that the worst was yet to come. I wasn't sure if I regretted my decision but the relief was over riding the thought process and I started to dose off. The midwife broke my water without asking me which again was a fleeting disappointment Then they insisted they put an internal monitor in the baby's scalp which I wasn't fond of but they made it sound like it was necessary and I wasn't in the mood to argue.
This is when the drama started. The internal monitor kept dropping the baby's heart rate and they couldn't decide if it was a faulty lead or if she wasn't tolerating labor well. Every time I threw up her heart rate would disappear or drop to the 90s the doctor was paged and the big "c" word was dropped. My heart sank. They said they didn't like the way the baby was looking the nurse was trying to tell them she wasn't sure if the lead was working. They kept switching back and forth to the external monitor re-positioning the internal monitor trying a different one etc. Each time a c-section looked like a definite her heart rate would stabilize and everyone would leave the room as they waited for me to get to complete. This song and dance happened a few times so much so that Daniel was dressed in scrubs and I was prepped for surgery. Finally they checked me I was complete but they were going to wheel me into the OR just in case. The midwife asked me to give a practice push and informed us we were having this baby right here right now. They dropped the table and lifted my legs and I was told to hold my breath and push as hard and fast as I could. I pushed a couple of times. They told me I was a great pusher even with an epidural and then I started to throw up. The Dr. informed me he was sorry I was throwing up but that it was even more effective then pushing. As my last dry heave came and went her head was born and with one more push she was out and in my arms. A beautiful, healthy, pink, baby girl. Daniel cut the cord and got blood everywhere including his face. I had a small tear and got stitched up which hurt the worst out of the whole ordeal. Fiona scored a perfect APGAR and then latched on to nurse for a good 30 minutes only moments after she came into the world.
I am convinced the throwing up helped me avoid a looming c-section. Though it wasn't the all natural birth I was picturing I can say for sure that giving birth the way God intended is far better than being cut wide open. I feel awesome not even a week later and I have even had thoughts that maybe just maybe I could do this again. Which is nothing short of a miracle.
P.S. My next door neighbor had her son the very same day as me. What are the odds of that? But hers ended in the umbilical cord being birthed first in a knot and an emergency c-section and almost loss of her full term son. I am grateful for the Dr's and what they are able to do when necessary. The baby and momma are both now home and healthy.
