My Birth Story - Part One

I want to write this story but am having a bit of a difficult time remembering how things happened and figuring out how to capture the moments that led to the birth of my daughter. I want to write this for myself, for my daughter, for my sanity, for remembrance. Everyone says that women forget the pain of labor and so this needs to be written before I forget how painful it was, so I don't ever choose to do it this way again. Just kidding. I don't think I'll have any other children, but if I do, I sure hope I forget the pain of natural childbirth so that I can muster up the courage of doing it naturally again.

I'm going to be all over the place with this story. I can already tell this before I've even gotten into the second paragraph. There's so much that happened during labor and deliery, and so much that happened before and after, and so much that went through my head before, during and after. It's all crazy, but then there were several moments where I thought I was the only crazy one opting to do this in this way, what with so much Western medical intervention available to me. Top that off with the fact that I am adequately insured in a time when so many in this country have no health insurance, I know that I piss some people off with the fact that I decided upon natural childbirth.

I never thought I would piss so many people off with my decision. I assumed that women would gather around me, arms open and comfort me and perhaps congratulate me on my courage and bravery. It's been quite the opposite. Most of the people I've talked to about my delivery have quickly changed the subject, or ignored that I had said anything at all, or worse, looked at me as if I were crazy. And, I fully admit that there were several moments that night that I myself thought I was crazy.

Definitely, I got a lot of eyes rolled at me when I mentioned my birth plan to do it naturally. There was a lot of skepticism and perhaps that is why I went ahead with the crazy plan, thinking I'd show them. Ha! Noone cared anyways, so that bit of gloating went out the window. Noone cared except myself and my husband and my doula (of course!) and now, hopefully, my peaceful baby.

But, that's all stuff that happened before and afterwards. Right now, I'm going to try to focus on the beginning of the end of my pregnancy, that happened suddenly and before either of us were prepared.

So, here's my birth story. It was the most beautiful experience. It was also the most traumatic experience of my life. It was the best of all circumstances. I am profoundly graateful that it went the way that it did. Things could not have gone any better and in the end, I have the most beautiful, most precioius gift - my daughter.


Hey, I Wasn't the Only One!
It's true. At 4:00 Tuesday morning, the morning of February 9, 2010, a low pressure system came into the midwest region, causing a snow storm. The drop in barometric pressure also caused many women in the area to go into labor. We were told at the hospital later that day that they had not been busy for weeks, then suddenly all these women started coming reporting that their labor started at 4:00 in the morning.

For me, it was that my water broke at 4:00 in the morning. People say this only happens on television, that a woman's water breaking doesn't typically start the labor and delivery process. But, it did for me. I got up to pee and found I dripped the whole way to the bathroom. A trail of fluid is what they call it. D had to mop the wooden floors later that morning. Each and every time I got up to pee, I dripped. I didn't understand what was happening to me. D mentioned that he thought the baby had moved lower in my belly, they call that "lightening" and so, I thought, perhaps, the baby had just moved onto my bladder and the result was that I had lost complete control of my bladder.

D called Angie, our doula. And she mentioned that I might have had a change in my cervix. I did have some bloody show and I was nervous remembering that my mother had some bloody show the night before I was born. I was in shock. Could this really be happening, more than a month early?

I always have my pre-natal appointments on Tuesdays. We decided to go there before making the next decision. The appointment was at 11:00 and that seemed early enough in the day. I was not having contractions yet.

We arrived and told the nurse our story. She said to strip down and put on the robe. I was not able to give a pee sample, which was odd because I was still dripping. I was so confused! The nurse also said that the doctor was running late, nothing out of the ordinary. I waited to strip down and the doctor arrived before I even started to think about taking my clothes off. She said that she didn't want to examine and with the story that I told, I should be on my way to the hospital.

What? Today? We didn't have out bag packed. The house was a mess. No linens for the crib. No bassinet. No nothing except the car seat. I guess the one essential that we did need.