Long form birth story:

Labor started either 4 weeks ago or yesterday at 4am depending on how you look at it. I've been having strong but irregular contractions with cervical changes for 4 weeks -- fingertip dilated + 50% effaced at 36 weeks, 1cm at 37 weeks, 2cm at 38 weeks, 3cm at 39 weeks. My doctor said early on she did not expect me to make it to my due date. If someone says that to you please laugh in their face and do not take anything they say seriously ever again. (Mostly kidding, I like my doctor, but waking up every day for a month thinking TODAY'S THE DAY is awful.)

So, 4 weeks of strong, somewhat painful contractions, lots and lots and lots of losing mucus plug, walking, bouncing on an exercise ball, eating pineapple and spicy foods, evening primrose oil, nipple stimulation, and bargaining with the baby did not get her to appear. Finally, yesterday morning, I woke up at 4am with a particularly bad contraction. Tried to go back to sleep, had another and another. At first they weren't really different from the ones I'd been having, but they got strong enough and frequent enough (6 to 16 minutes apart) that I couldn't get back to sleep. So I posted on /r/BabyBumps about it.

When I called my doctor's office and said they were irregular but extremely painful, she said go ahead into L&D and get checked out. Of course, as soon as she said this, the contractions stopped for about 2 hours and I started to second guess it. I made sure the house was semi-clean and brought our packed bags with us, but I was fairly certain I'd end up getting sent home. I hadn't had anything resembling water breaking, bloody show, or regular contractions. They just hurt like a motherfucker, probably a 6 to 7 on my internal pain scale.

At L&D they tell me my bag is bulgy, I'm 4cm dilated, 60% effaced, -2 station (about 12:00pm). Also, on the monitor it becomes apparent that in addition to the painful contractions I'm having, there are a lot more that I can't feel. They tell me to walk the halls for 1 hour and if I haven't progressed at the end of the hour they'll send me home. I end up walking for about an hour and a half (in circles...on one floor of the hospital). Toward the end of the walk (about 1:30pm) the contractions really pick up in intensity, and I start having a few that I can't walk through. One completely knocks me to the floor and I have to grab the railing and squat in the hallway in my hospital gown. But they are not getting any more regular or close together.

The nurse checks me again and, surprise surprise, no change. Except pain has moved from 5-7 range to 7-9 range. They are really painful. She asks how I feel about interventions (pitocin, breaking waters, etc). I tell her my only birth plan is to have a baby. She calls my doctor and eventually decides to admit me. I tell my husband to cancel his afternoon and come to the hospital. It is baby time.

At this point contractions are painful enough that I can't lie in bed through them and I try bending over the bed and squatting, both of which relieve some of the pain. I am also involuntarily crying out in pain. They really hurt.

Nurse starts an IV (also hurts), husband arrives, I am writhing in pain and the nurses are trying to talk me through the contractions. I throw up from the pain. The nurses call for the anesthesiologist. He places the epidural (also hurts) and I have to stay still through 2 contractions (see previous: hurts). Fortunately, once the epidural takes effect, I feel much much much better. I had thought an epidural was just a numbing thing but it turns out they added some fentanyl also which made the whole labor process a little more warm and fuzzy. Once the epidural was in I actually enjoyed it.

They checked me post-epidural (around 4pm) and I was at 7cm. Hung out and labored for a while, watching movies and stuff with my husband. By 10pm I was at an 8.5 and 0 station, but for some reason the nurse tending to me wasn't happy with that progress and wanted to start pitocin. She said if labor stalled too long the doctor on call would end up ordering a c-section. I thought that scenario sounded pretty unlikely and asked if I could talk to the doctor myself. The nurse was reluctant and it took a while to track the doctor down, but by the time she (doctor) got there, she said I was fully dilated and effaced except for a small anterior lip I could probably push past.

So I did an hour of pushing with the nurse. Push like you’re pooping, she said. I know I’m not the first woman to poop in labor and I won’t be the last, but it was still horribly embarrassing, especially with my husband right there. Worse, I made no progress whatsoever. She let me take an hour long break to labor down on my own. No progress. Another hour of pushing. No progress. Another hour long break. No progress. The nurse again brought up c-sections.

Finally at 4:30am the doctor came back and offered to try to help me push for 10 minutes. After one push she said that the baby’s head was transverse and she didn’t think there was any possibility it would come down past my pelvis. I was crushed. She was literally just inches away and I wasn’t able to push her out. I started crying as they wheeled me away for a c-section. As they prepped me I just got more and more upset until I was all-out sobbing on the table. I couldn’t stand any more pain, even the burning sensation as they added more drugs to my IV; I didn’t realize that being awake during surgery would terrify me; I was despondent at the idea of days/weeks of recovery time after so much pain already.

The surgery itself was pretty bad. I was shaking violently and uncontrollably in my upper body and mentally I just fell apart. I later learned that my husband looked over the curtain at the wrong moment and saw all my intestines splayed out, and he had to pretend not to react since I was already a mess. It wasn’t how I imagined meeting my baby girl -- exhausted, scared, cut open, in the middle of the night. It felt all wrong.

She came out and didn’t cry, just looked around at the world with big blue eyes. They put me back together, sewed me up, and took me into recovery for what was supposed to be a “golden hour” of skin to skin. Instead I was still shaking, still in pain, and threw up all over myself. My baby girl was finally out and I was too miserable to touch her or even really get a good look at her.

When all the nausea subsided my husband asked me to please take her for some skin to skin and try to nurse. I didn’t have much luck but it did feel better holding her. After a few hours of recovery, pain meds, and food, I finally was able to enjoy getting to know her. One of the many wonderful nurses who’s been taking care of us helped us get a good latch and she has been feeding well all day. So far she’s been a great baby -- healthy, easy to soothe, and best of all she has that velvety soft baby skin and hair. I can’t stop touching her cheeks. I still am kind of in shock and can’t really believe she’s mine and I get to keep her. And after the IVs are all out and the c-section incision has healed, she’ll still be my baby girl.

 

As if that isn't long enough...months later, I still think about this experience often. I think I really internalized this message that, barring an extreme emergency, a c-section is something that gets forced on you by a doctor who doesn't care. A c-section is what happens when you don't try hard enough, when you can't advocate for yourself, when you aren't educated about birth. And man, that message pisses me off now. I'll never know if there were other things we could have done to avoid a c-section, but effort, education, and good medical judgment were in ample supply. I will always have "what ifs" about my labor, and I'll always wish it was a more positive experience. But ultimately, a c-section brought my daughter to me safely and she is worth it all, a hundred million times over.