Kai’s Birth
I took a childbirth preparation class that was about 6 weeks long (1x a week for 6 sessions). It focused on various breathing/concentration skills (not Lamaze), included a tour of the hospital birth facility, and covered topics like diaper changing and breastfeeding. It also discussed medical pain control options including epidural. I had decided that I was going to try NOT to have an epidural, but I was open to some of the other drug options that didn’t take away but supposedly just “dulled” the pain and still allowed me to walk around. We were told that the downside to an epidural is that you have to lie down and be hooked up to all kinds of monitors, and it can slow things down.
I woke up at about 3:00 a.m. on June 8, 2000 with the need to urinate. I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom, returning a minute or so later.It was the day before my official due date of June 9, and I had been told the last time I saw my doctor that I was already dialated to about 3 cm, so I knew I could go at any time. At that point, I was so big that I could not simply get up or lie down in one movement, but had to do it in stages. So when I returned to bed, I first had to sit on the bed and then lower myself onto my side. But this time, when I sat down on the bed, I felt a gush of liquid as if I had urinated again. I was annoyed because I had just been to the restroom, but at that point I was also peeing constantly (or so it seemed).
So I got up again and walked to the bathroom but this time when I pulled down my pants I noticed a bloody stain on my underwear. I called to my husband and said that I thought my water had broken. He was used to false alarms so he wasn’t really concerned, but he got up and asked me if I could feel contractions. I was walking around again and at that point I felt another gush of liquid and what felt like a contraction. We started timing them, and they were coming about every 4-5 minutes.
My mother was staying with us at the time in the guest room, so we woke her up. At this point, I was still leaking fluid so I finally got the good sense to go put on a maxi pad at least. I was nervous and excited, but I also wasn’t really in any pain. We were told to go to the hospital, so we left in two cars – my mother in one car, and my husband and I in another. The whole way to the hospital I could feel myself leaking fluid and I was more worried about getting it on the leather seats than about my contractions. We arrived at the hospital shortly before 4:00 a.m. and went through the emergency entrace as we had been told to do. Luckily, check in went really quickly, and I was wheeled down to the birthing center within minutes. I don’t remember that much about settling into the room. I was given a gown to put on and then I went to the bathroom again. This time I noticed that in addition to blood on the pad, there was also a blackish stain that seemed to be the meconium staining we had learned about in childbirth.
I knew this could mean that my baby was in distress, so I took off the pad and brought it, rather embarrassed to the nurse and asked her if that’s what it was. She said yes, so that meant I had to be hooked immediately to a fetal monitor to see how the baby was doing. Baby was fine. I don’t remember being told I could walk around the room or the halls, and I think I chose to just lie down on my side and breathe through the contractions. I asked at one point if I could sit in the tub they have, but they said because my water had already broken there was too much risk of infection and I couldn’t do it. I was disappointed. Initially, though,
I seemed to be able to handle the pain of the contractions through breathing. Every time I felt a contraction come, I would close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing, and it made the pain seem very manageable. It didn’t matter if a nurse was in the middle of asking me a question or if someone was talking to me, I would just close my eyes, tune them out, and concentrate on my breathing.
This seemed to work well for a while, and I remember thinking that childbirth wasn’t really all that hard and what a rock star I must be to control the pain so well. At that point, the only people in the room were my husband and my mother and the nurses who flitted in and out to check my vital signs and stuff.
Every once in a while one of them would don a rubber glove and make my lie on my back so they could check my cervix. I was still at a 3, which was frustrating. Then eventually I made it to 4, and I remember thinking, “OK, here we go!” Unfortunately, as time went on, the contractions became more intense and I still wasn’t getting above a 4. It was getting to be late morning now (I think 10 a.m. or so) and I was still at a 4. A nurse came in the room and informed me that they were going to give me something called Pitocin that would help me “progress faster” because they were concernethat things weren’t progressing and that my water had already broken and there was meconium staining.
I had heard about Pitocin in the childbirth class but didn’t really understand the implications of it. I also didn’t know that as a patient I had the right to refuse the Pitocin. The nurse didn’t word it as an option, she said, “This is what we’re going to do…” and I thought I had to go along with it. So they started an IV and I began receiving Pitocin. As a result, my contractions became much more intense and a lot closer together. It began to get very, very difficult to breathe through them. Also, I couldn’t walk around or move a lot because I was hooked up to the IV pole.
They also had a fetal monitor on. It seemed there was no break in between contractions and I was always in pain. I started to become very cranky (understatement). My husband was worried and asked if someone could give me something for the pain. I believe I ended up getting something in my IV that was supposed to diminish the pain but still allow me to feel my legs, etc. It didn’t seem to do a damn thing, and I was in excruciating pain. I then remember another nurse coming in and checking my cervix and announcing that I was still at 3 cm.
At that point, I burst into tears because it seemed like I was going through all that pain and all that time had passed and NOTHING WAS HAPPENING! So at that point I said I wanted an epidural and they said they would send the anesthesiologist in.
However, it took forever. Apparently, there was only one anesthesiologist working the maternity ward, and he was with another patient at the moment.
I began to go pretty crazy with pain, to the point that I was throwing things across the room and striking at anyone who came near me. I am pretty sure I hit my husband several times, and he was nice enough to just take it. But he began yelling at the nurses to “get the damn doctor in here and do something for her!” There was a lot of tension in the room. I thought I was going to die from pain.
Finally, the anesthesiologist came in and administered the epidural. Very quickly, I lost all sensation below the waist. I can’t even explain what a relief it was. I went from full-on pain to nothing in a matter of minutes. At that point, I was exhausted. I could see on the monitor that I was still having contractions, but I could not feel them. At all. I might add that at point I also had a catheter put in because I could not go to the bathroom by myself anymore.
So I was hooked up to a million things – Pitocin, epidural, catheter, fetal monitor. At that point, I started dozing off. I woke up a little later when my father arrived. He never saw the part where I was in pain – by the time he showed up I was calmly lying in bed and drugged to the hilt. He was going to just visit and leave, but I finally said he could stay for the birth since mom was there too. So at that point it was my husband, my mom, my dad and the medical personnel.
Finally, I got the news I had been waiting for – I was dialated to a 10 and could push. The only problem was – I could not feel a thing below the waist and had no idea how to push. I think for this reason the pushing took a lot longer than it should have. It seemed to take hours, but I really don’t know how long it took.
Eventually, Kai was born. He was really healthy, with 9-9 Apgar scores, a healthy weight of 7 pounds 14 ounces, and 21 inches long. It took hours before I could feel my legs again, though, so I could not get up to see him when they were cleaning him, etc. I was also so thirsty that I ended up drinking an entire pitcher of water and another five glasses of orange juice. I stayed in the hospital two days.
Apparently, I tore during the birth, so the doctor stitched me up, but I don’t remember any of that. I think my overall memory of the birth was the intense pain caused by the Pitocin, and a subtle feeling of disappointment that I wasn’t able to have the “epidural-free” birth I wanted to have. Oh, to add insult to injury, the catheter gave me a urinary tract infection.
Tor’s Birth
I vowed to be wiser with baby #2, who was born 19 months after Kai. I wanted to avoid an epidural and definitely avoid Pitocin. But Torsten was a very tough cookie. His due date was originally March 17 (St Patrick’s Day), but that date came and went with no sign of him. Actually, around his due date I was already dialated to a 3, but not having any contractions at all.
In fact, I even had a false alarm at one point, thought I was going into labor, and got checked into the hosptial around March 20th. I was discharged later that day when my contractions fail to come regularly. On
March 24th I visited the doctor and was told that if there was no baby by the 27th, they were going to induce me. That scared me a little. So I went to the herbalist shop downtown (on the advice of a friend) and bought a little bottle of blue & black cohosh. I was told that taking it would bring on labor. I put several drops in a glass of water (it tasted horrible) and drank this every few hours.
I’m not sure if that’s what finally did it, butwithin 24 hours of starting this, my water broke. It was about 6:00 pm on March 25. I had just finished up dinner and was preparing to go for a nice, long walk in the neighborhood (to help start labor) when my water broke. Again, I noticed there was meconium staining. So, we drove to the hospital.
This time they didn’t want to admit me right away, because they thought it was another false alarm. I finally removed my underwear and shoved them at the nurse – “See this!!!???” – and she quickly got me a room. At that point, I was having contractions (at least the monitor said so), but I couldn’t really feel them. So the nurse told me to just try to get some sleep while I could, because soon enough I would need to be awake and working hard. So, I did just that.
At that point it was about 8:00 p.m., and I just put on the hospital gown, got into bed, and fell fast asleep. I actually slept (with minimal waking every so often by nurses) until about 5:00 a.m. on March 26th, the next day! I woke up because they made me, but I could have easily slept more. The contractions were not bad at all – I still could barely feel them.
Unfortunately, I was once again “not progressing” and they told me that they were going to give me Pitocin. This time I said I didn’t want it because the last time it had caused such horrible contractions. Their answer was that they were concerned about the meconium staining and the “not progressing,” and felt that they had to deliver the baby within 24 hours of my water breaking, which meant by the end of the afternoon, apparently.
They were very insistent that they had to give it to me, although they promised that they’d give me just “a small” dose to start. At that point my husband said that they might as well give me an epidural too, because the Pitocin was going to make the contractions too hard on me and he didn’t want a repeat of what happened during Kai’s birth when I went crazy and began flinging objects around the room and screaming.
I agreed with my husband, and so I got both the epidural and Pitocin. This of course meant being forced to stay in bed, hooked up to a million devices. However, I did manage to sleep again for a little bit. Eventually, I remember being told it was time to push. This time my mom was there but not my dad. My dad was with my 1-year-old son at home. My mom was torn between being with me and being my dad and my son, but I convinced her to stay in case my husband fainted or something and I needed a support person.
The pushing part with Torsten went very quickly, but again I remember it being hard to push because I couldn’t feel very much. I felt more than with Kai, though (must have been less epidural). Torsten was born after about an hour of pushing. He showed signs of being “post-term” the doctor said, and his Apgars were 7-9. He weighed 8 lbs and 4 ounces and was 21 inches long.
I remember being thirsty again, and I tore again so had to be stitched up. I had no feeling below the waist, but I remember a nurse coming in to check me “down there” and she actually gasped and said, “Oh my god!” which of course made me feel just great. I guess things looked pretty rough down there. I only stayed in the hospital 24 hrs because I wanted to get home to my other son.
I again remember feeling frustrated that with both kids I didn’t seem to “progress” during labor, needed Pitocin, and that I had meconium staining twice. I asked my mom what would have happened to me in the 1800’s, before Pitocin. Would I have been one of those women who died in childbirth? She said, “I don’t know…”
My wish for this birth
I want, for once, to have a birth experience where I can WALK AROUND and use gravity to help the baby come out, not be tied to a bed hooked up to a million devices. I want to give gravity and exercise a chance and not be so quick to resort to Pitocin.
I would love the opportunity to use a birthingpool, as I think the warm water will be helpful with pain. However, I don’t know if birthing pools are allowed after one’s water breaks. I do not want an epidural, but I am afraid that if they give me Pitocin or another drug to speed up labor, I will end up having one because I can not take the pain of he forced contractions. I would like not to tear again.