I am a stay-at-home-mom-in-training and apparently one very important part of said job is writing up a blog post of what your birth experience was like. Not because it's at all unusual or interesting but because you, as a mother, tell yourself that it is. You also tell yourself people care enough about your "interesting" and "unique" birth story that they will actually read said blog post. If you turn on TLC at any point in the day you can witness how people actually make television shows out of these "birth stories." It's a real phenomenon.
Baby Mila was due on January 3rd. And as anyone will tell you due dates are arbitrary but my ultrasound tech was insistent that that date was as accurate as humanly possible. I thought I was due earlier and based on my daughter's skin when she was born I think the last week of December was closer to her actual time-stamp but nevertheless she arrived on January 7th. While waiting for her arrival I spoke to (complained to) my mother numerous times asking when her children came. My sister was two weeks late, my brother a day early and I was due September 3rd and arrived on September 7th. As soon as she told me that I knew Mila was coming on the 7th just like her mommy.
The entire week prior to her arrival I started having big contractions during the evening. I'd go to bed at nine hoping to sleep between them and wake up around one in the morning and the contractions would have stopped. On January 6th I drove to pick up my older daughter from day care and as I made the turn into her lot a huge contraction made my legs numb and I quickly parked to avoid an accident. My husband drove us all home and I continued to have contractions for the rest of the night.
At one in the morning or so I got up because there was no way I could sleep through them and I wanted my husband to rest. I had started bleeding so I knew it was real labor and it was only a matter of time until the contractions got close together. At 4 am they became so painful that I had to wake my husband. I was in so much pain and the contractions were still only 11 minutes apart but I couldn't do it on my own any longer. I asked him to call the midwives to see if that much pain was normal but they suggested I wait until the contractions were closer but also call my in-laws to come and take care of my other daughter in the meantime.
My in-laws, joys that they are, asked if they had time for breakfast first and arrived a very casual 1.5 hours later to me having contractions 6 minutes apart and ready to rip their heads off. So we promptly left for the hospital with my husband calling on the way to let them know we were coming. When I arrived I was eight centimeters dilated and admitted immediately. From the time we arrived, a little after seven, until 10:30 I was good. The contractions hurt but I was doing my best to get through them. My nurse and midwife were in and out, waiting for me to get to 10cm so I could push. At 10:30 I decided to stand up to help the baby along. Bad, bad decision on my part.
My contractions immediately started to come one on top of the other and the pain was so intense I called the nurse and said I had to push because I didn't know what else to say... I was dying? She called the midwife who helped me back onto the bed and said I was only 9cm but that she could break my water and that would drop the baby enough to get to 10 very quickly. She broke my water and then left the room.
I'd rather forget the next 20 minutes. I was screaming in pain, sweating uncontrollably, my husband was so overwhelmed by my pain that he had to go sit down. My blood pressure got so high that they were worried I would have a heart attack but I was only worried I would faint. I thought if ever there was a time to pass out from pain this was it. I kept thinking this is why epidurals were invented you stupid stupid woman. What are you trying to prove?
And then I could feel the baby coming out, almost like she was stuck and the midwife slipping her fingers around the baby's head and I thought "Jesus Christ! No room at the Inn!" And then the head was out, and then I felt the shoulders which hurt equally as bad and there was the baby.
I needed less stitches this time although I had a lot more bleeding. The hospital's solution to this is to press hard on your uterus to make you gush. When you gush less they let you go to postpartum. After a couple of hours and several painful pushes on my gut I was allowed to leave. And over the next 36 hours everyone kept pushing on me trying to make me bleed. Since then I have bled like crazy even having to go to ER at one point, vomited, had the chills, and all the while tried to care for my toddler and newborn.
Yay for babies.
So there's my birth story. Beautiful isn't it? After my first baby I watched women on television and thought, you wuss, the pain isn't that bad. I sailed through that labor with a couple of swear words. But after this one, oh boy, women are amazing creatures to have been doing this for centuries. And the pain is the worst thing I could ever wish upon anyone. I think I'd rather be burned alive then go through it again. Here's hoping.
