Birth Story #3

The thought of undergoing a surgical delivery again--with all its sights, sounds, smells and feelings--filled me with nausea and fear.  I knew it was time for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean).  But a VBAC after one cesarean makes many doctors uneasy, and a VBAC after two cesareans is. not. done. So I went to a large mid wife practice that has also managed to partner with a few doctors and met with a mid wife who seemed open.  She suggested I meet with the senior doctor to be sure.  As he put it, being at the end of his career and understanding the honest facts about cesareans and VBACs, he didn't think either of us "have that much to lose."*

The other doctor "questioned" my choice, my husband questioned the risks/benefits, I questioned my resolve, but I felt nothing but peace--the kind that only comes from a loving Heavenly Father.
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It was a busy day. I stood in the dollar spot at Target around 8:30 AM comparing notes with another expectant mother; she was being induced the next day, the 6 and 3 year-olds in my behemoth cart were the only induction I could afford. Curiously, after a couple laps around the store to find a birthday present for a friend I began to feel twinges in my abdomen.  We headed to a picnic in the park with some other friends, and then the birthday party, which I spontaneously chaperoned. After making dinner and putting the kids to bed, my husband found me scrubbing the toilet at 11:00 PM. When the toilet was clean we went to sleep.

It seemed like I had scarcely been asleep when I was awakened by a *pop* which simultaneously expelled me from the bed, where I immediately felt very wet.  I waddled to the bathroom faster than a pregnant woman and sat and waited. A minute later my husband became vaguely aware of my being in the bathroom at 1:12 AM with the light on. "I think my water broke" I said.
"Are you sure?"
"Um. Yeah. I'm pretty sure." (Suffice it to say, I've never, not even in my pre-pregnant uncompromised bladder at full capacity state, seen that much liquid come out of me.)

Fifteen minutes and three contractions later, I notified the doctor and began cleaning, packing, and making up the guest bed, pausing for contractions along the way. My sister-in-law arrived with her pillow and my husband and I left for the hospital. I called my mom from the car, but told her not to worry about us until the morning. At 3:00 AM and 3 centimeters I sat in the hospital bed, waiting for the doctor, listening to the monitors and answering questions from the nurses.  I have group B strep and need my shots.  If I want an epidural, I will ask for it. The doctor appeared and the monitor lied about my contractions; "Get some sleep" he told me, "and well see what we can do to really get your labor going when the sun comes up..."  I stifled my daggers and waited for everyone to leave.  Trusting my body and my instincts, I assumed the hands and knees position, letting gravity take the brunt of my belly and contractions and help put my baby in the anterior position. Two hours and 2 centimeters later the doctor found me very awake and the monitors changed their story.  Under his orders I sank back into the bed and my belly and contractions sunk into my back. Then like a breath of fresh air the mid wife entered the room, pushed on my knees, and all was right in the world again.

The next two centimeters are a blur, there was heaving and bending and a brief debacle with a ball. Then 7 centimeters. In perfect timing the mid wife drew a warm bath. Curled up on my side in the cozy warm tub while my husband showered my abdomen, I slipped into a trance. I hear the water and my breath, I feel the wrenching and the warmth--like under water ocean waves during a storm, at once beautiful and terrifying.

And then it's gone. The urge to push gave my legs strength and I got out. I felt no more "pain" from the contractions just immense pressure. Again it's a blur of turning and lifting, my body knew what to do and I just had to let it. I was unable to speak and only remember mentally blessing the mid wife when she explained to my mom that often laboring women go into a deep state of meditation and are unable to respond to questions, but will let you know if there's something they don't like.

Two hours later, when meditation gave way to exhaustion, I cried with each break and grunted "Get it out!" with each contraction.  The baby was crowning but I was not stretching enough for the soon to be 9 pound 1 ounce child. Her heart rate started faltering and the midwife had no choice but to perform an episiotomy with no time for anesthesia. My husband winced. I felt the pressure's warm relief and the shaking sobs that ensued. I. gave. birth. The room erupted with movement. There were lots of irritating things to be done after the birth, and frankly after 9 months of pregnancy and 12 hours of labor I wanted nothing more than to be alone. But when we were all buttoned up, the nurse brought me a fruit juice cocktail that was like the nectar of the gods and both my baby and I drank to our new life together.

*In a nutshell: Uterine rupture is the number one risk in a VBAC that may result hemorrhaging, hysterectomy, infant brain damage, or death of the infant and/or mother. The risk of uterine rupture is <1% with 1 previous cesarean and <2% with 2 or more prior cesareans. Induction or augmentation of labor with drugs (Pitocin) increases the risk to 7% and is generally not allowed (good riddance). What the doctors do not tell you is that a cesarean also has similar and equally severe risks.

Birth Story #2

He was due May 10. But I elected for a scheduled c-section, routinely a week early, making it May 3. But then my husband's paternity leave began at the beginning of that week and since my first child was born on July 1 we asked the doctor if we pretty please might have the baby on May 1. :)

With everything planned and packed, we took our first born to my sister-in-law's the night before and enjoyed a restful night at home. At 7:00a.m. the next morning we drove to the hospital, showered, dressed, and prepared.  I walked through the hospital doors wheeling my luggage behind me.  I sat at the admitting desk filing out paperwork and answering questions. I walked to the pre/post op room where the nurse gave me a gown. I changed in the restroom then climbed onto the hospital bed and sat and waited. It was all very quiet and routine.

When my number was up, I was wheeled to the operating room. I heard elevator music coming from the speakers in the ceiling. I sat on the edge of the bed with my feet dangling, my arms and body hunched over a pillow, while the anesthesiologist administered the epidural and her assistant described everything I would feel just before I felt it. The cold alcohol, the poking needles, the pushing, the popping, the burning, the freezing...but nothing could prepare me for the blushing as the anesthesiologist and the assistant prodded and joked between themselves whether or not my husband really had only one wife.

I lay balancing on the operating table waiting for my body to go numb.  Meanwhile, I was painted, draped, taped, and tied. The doctor gave my stomach a pinch and a wiggle, "I felt that" was my eager reply.

When I could no longer feel anything, the operation began. Everyone looked at my abdomen, I looked at the ceiling wondering if there had been music the last time I was here. I tried to be informative with the anesthesiologist, she half-heartedly gave me more or less of whatever was making me complain. I tried to be knowledgeable with the doctor, "nothing like the smell of burning flesh again" but they had more interesting things to talk about.  I did get the heads up when they were going to push the baby out of my stomach and the nurses draped a warm blanket on my chest for the chills. I heard his cry and the doctor raised the little wrinkled beet-like head over the shield for me to see.

Over the sides of the incubator table I watched his hands and feet. While I was being put back together (apparently it's easier out than in), my husband got to hold him. But with the last staple stapled, the staff swooped my numb body off the operating table into an awaiting bed, where this time I was able to sit up. And finally, like a special delivery from the stork, they placed the clean and bundled baby boy in my arms.  We sailed back to post-op and sat and waited. He was perfect and his head was round. Still fresh and alert, he ate easily at my breast. With routine and control I was calm and collected. And together we slipped into a sweet sense of euphoria.

Birth Story #1 Part 2

I picked up the cold pay phone receiver, pressed the cold buttons, and shivered as I told my husband the news.  The pay phone made our conversation difficult to understand, he rushed to the hospital while I stopped by home to pack my bag and put some laundry into the washing machine.  When I finally arrived to reassure him, we were unceremoniously admitted to the hospital.

At 4 pm the nurses applied prostaglandin to my forbidding cervix (50% effaced and not even 1 cm.) The prostoglandin burned into my tissue, the IV dripped into my veins, my bladder swelled, and my sciatic nerve cringed as I was ordered to lay on my left side and not use the restroom for an hour--the longest hour of my life. The procedure was repeated at 10 pm for the second longest hour of my life.

My last childless night's sleep ended abruptly at 6 am with the nurses administering pitocin. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan was my breakfast.  While Captian Kirk was threatened by the earwig zombies the pitocin took hold of me.  Violent cramps gripped me every minute, just as one taperd off another began.  I'm was at 3 cm now and the doctor cleared me for an epidural at my will. H'e'd also like to break my water.

Okay...

(I was niave and uneducated. And it pains me to this day.)

The doctor sat with one knee up on the foot of the bed. And with a long, thin, flexible hook my baby's only world was penetrated and all our hopes of a normal delivery drained onto my socks.

Almost immediately the baby showed signs of fetal distress. The pitocin was sharp while the oxygen was smooth.  But nothing could comfort my baby now.  The doctor said this is the moment he's been preparing me for, it will have to be a c-section.  Inbetween overlapping contractions I signed the consent forms.

The mustardy operating room bustled with a dozen staff.  I felt like I'd been thrown back to the 80s when women pushed the boundries of femenity and roles.  I was stripped, preped and poked while nature looked on through the unbreakable hospital glass. The bustle died down and the surgery began.  While the doctor talked about golf and asked for pliers, I lay drugged while the smell of my cauterized flesh wafted in the air. I so wanted to be a part of my baby's births, but my utterances and questions were met with polite tolerance.  The doctor found the problem; there was a knot in her umbilical cord.

The baby was born and my husband was at her side. Eventually she cried. Like a bottle of wine she was shown to me, but the operating shield was up to my chin and the drugs made my head feel like lead so I had to cross my eyes to see her and then she was gone. My vital parts were replaced to their "approximate anotomical locations" and I was sown up and wheeled to my room.

Hours later the baby was finally brought to me for her first feeding.  I was too nauseous to move.  The nurse forced the sleepy head onto my breast like a child forces Barbie and Ken to kiss.  She would quicly learn to latch the next day (though her low blood sugar kept us in the hospital for a week) but at last I lay dreaming and sleeping with the 4 lb 7 oz bundle tucked in my arm, she was finally mine and I was a mother.

Birth Story #1 Part 1: Birth and Burgers

After 4 births, whether by a sense of nostalgia, maturity, or appreciation, I feel it is finally time to write my birth stories. I feel like the poster child for methods of delivery having had an emergency c-section, a planned c-section, a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) and a miscarriage. I hope my experiences will enrich yours be it past or present.


Birth Story #1 Part 1

I lay in the quiet darkness of the cavernous ultrasound room at the regional hospital. I listened to my deliberately slow breaths to ease the beating of my heart. The ultrasound technician hadn't said much, but I watched the calculated measurements flash on the screen: gestation 37.5 wks, head 37 wks, abdomen 32 wks, total weight 5 lbs 7 oz.

7 1/2 weeks earlier I stopped by the community hospital for a quick amniotic fluid leak test. The nurses routinely hooked my "fluffy" abdomen up to the monitors. My "angry" cervix contaminated the samples, but the nurses were reassuring: that fluid is likely not amniotic. Embarrassed and starving I was eager to leave. But my intuition manifested in the form of hypochondria had brought me here for a reason: the baby's heart showed intermittent patterns of non-reassuring fetal distress. Dinner would have to wait.

Hour by hour we waited for a reassuring heart beat, unable to leave and unable to eat in the event the baby should need to be delivered shortly. By the next morning the community hospital had done all they could and ambulanced me to the regional hospital for ultrasounds, more monitoring and in the unfortunate event, the NICU. In the end, the only thing that was determined was that the baby should be monitored indefinitely. And so 24 hours later I sat in a tiny triage room making love to my cafeteria food.

After that week in the hospital (with 2 steroid shots), followed by non-stress tests twice a week for 7 weeks, plus another afternoon in the hospital, this ultrasound shouldn't have been different. But the perinatologist came into my quiet cave, tall, thin and gray. He spoke closely, as if the rims of his round spectacles were my own. The baby has stopped growing. Shown by it's disproportionate head to body ratio, it's called Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR). He wants to do an amniocentesis, but I'm almost 38 weeks I say. My doctor orders an induction at his community hospital, so I order Arby's 5 for $5 on the way.