My Birth Story Part 1

It’s 7:00 pm on a Tuesday evening in September 2021. Chance and I are in our home office, logging into a virtual tour of our local hospital's Mother and Baby Unit. The facilitator starts the presentation, going over the process of what to do when your labor starts and what to expect while checking into the hospital. She shows pictures of the triage room, delivery room, and the recovery room. The next slide appears, on it are pictures of the unit's Operating Room for Cesarean Sections. She lingers on this slide, explaining who all is involved in the surgery should a C-Section birth be needed. I turn and look to Chance with tears rolling down my face. "I’m scared. I don’t want to have a C-Section."

I’m 36 weeks pregnant, going for my weekly OB check. My doctor does a pelvic exam, and I'm 1cm dilated and 50% effaced (spoiler alert, dilation and effacement are NOT indicators that labor is coming soon. Babies come on their own time). He starts talking to me about induction and a birth plan. For those of you who may not know what a birth plan is, it is what the birthing mom wishes to happen while at the hospital during and after delivery. A birth plan... so I did some research. Some examples of birth plans that I read from other women had things like:

• Delayed cord cutting

• Immediate skin-to-skin contact

• Dimming the lights while pushing

• Playing music while pushing

And then I continued reading…

• No electronic fetal monitor

• No Vitamin K Shot for baby

• No Hep B Shot for Baby

• No epidural

I mean, what is my birth plan? I'll tell you what my birth plan was. It was to deliver my son with pain meds coursing through my veins (in a safe manner). I wanted everything that was recommended for my son: fetal monitoring, Vitamin K and Hep B shots, and especially an epidural.

I applaud women who give birth without an epidural or other pain medication. However, if a women chooses to have an epidural, I don’t think that makes them weak. Contractions are painful. Labor is painful. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Personally, I know my pain limit. I know that I do not have a high pain tolerance. Therefore I chose pain management during labor, and man did I get the good stuff (come back for part 2 and you’ll get to read about it).

December 10th, 2021, 2:00 am: I feel like I had peed myself (sorry if it’s TMI, but you are reading a blog post on a mom blog so….). I get up to use the bathroom. Upon standing, more fluid trickles out. I wake Chance up, “Um, Chance, I think my water broke.” (I have NEVER seen my husband more alert in his life than that early morning at 2 am.) He starts grabbing the hospital bags. Meanwhile, I take a shower and continue monitoring the fluid that is slowly leaking out. We kiss our three fur babies goodbye and head for the hospital.

It must have been a full moon or Mercury was in retrograde because the labor and delivery unit was POPPIN’. They had zero triage rooms available, and every delivery room was occupied by a laboring mother. I was stuck in an outpatient room that was the size of a broom closet. It was 4 am, and in walks the doctor on call. In order for them to admit me, they needed to test if my water had actually broken. She does a pelvic exam to test for amniotic fluid. When she told me the test came back negative and that I probably just peed myself, I wanted to throat punch her. I looked her dead in the eyes and said, “I promise you, I did not pee myself.” She takes another sample to send to the lab and orders an ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid levels.

My ultrasound came back with normal fluid levels. It was 7:00 am, shift change. A new doctor walked in, introduced herself, and sat beside me. I thought to myself that she would tell me the sample they sent to the lab was positive and they were going to admit me. WRONG. All tests came back negative. I looked at her and told her, “I swear to you, I did not pee myself.” She stood up and told me that to discharge me, she would have to do her own pelvic exam, and another test would be done to see if it was positive for amniotic fluid. I placed my feet in the stirrups and lay down. “Hmmm, cough as hard as you can please,” she said. After coughing as hard as I could, she lifted up the strip of paper, and the test was positive.

****** Advocate for yourself, ladies! You know your body better than anyone else*****

Since every pregnant women decided to go into labor that Friday, I was stuck in my outpatient broom closet for several hours as I was not in active labor. I changed into my labor gown, a nurse started my IV, and then I got to hear a pregnant women arrive by EMS crowning and screaming her head off as she delivered her baby on a stretcher right outside my broom closet door.

It keeps getting better, come back for part 2 of my birth story next week.