This was my first birth, and since I had never given birth before, I didn’t know what to expect! While the labor and delivery were okay, in retrospect, if I had changed a few things, I think things would’ve gone much better! I was successfully able to labor and deliver naturally and unmedicated as planned, …
This was my first birth, and since I had never given birth before, I didn’t know what to expect! While the labor and delivery were okay, in retrospect, if I had changed a few things, I think things would’ve gone much better! I was successfully able to labor and deliver naturally and unmedicated as planned, but things just didn’t turn out the way that I had imagined and hoped they would. And yet, I learned so much from this birth, and I grew so much!
At 39 weeks and 2 days pregnant, I woke up three times on Thursday night (12/2/22) to powerful contractions, but I was able to go back to bed each time.
The contractions continued throughout the day on Friday (12/3/2022) and at about 6 PM, I started tracking them on a contraction timing app.
When it came time to go to bed, I told my husband that I felt too uncomfortable to lay down and that I thought I would probably go into active labor in the middle of the night, so I had him go to sleep and I stayed up all night watching my contractions.
The contractions never got to where I thought they needed to be and at 7:30 AM, after working through them all night, labor stalled out.
In retrospect, staying up all night to time contractions was a huge mistake! Rather than focus on the pain in early labor, I should have tried to distract myself and rest in order to have energy for what was coming.
I was able to get some rest from 8 AM to noon, at which point, I woke up and the contractions started again.
I labored at home most of the day but by the evening, I wanted to get out and move around. We went to a Christmas lighting festival and a church Christmas party, but things got so intense that I needed to come home and call my doula.
I was at 311 before she got there, but when she arrived, things stalled out again! An hour and a half later and after going for a walk, we felt that we were in active labor, and it was time to go to the hospital.
We checked into the hospital at 11:30 PM. I thought for sure when they measured me that I would be at like an 8 (because of the prolonged pain I had been in) but the nurse told me that I was only 3 or maybe 4 cm dilated. I was shocked and disappointed.
They left me in triage for one hour, and since I was able to progress to a 5, they admitted me to labor and delivery.
I felt pressured into getting a saline lock in the event of an emergency. They poked and prodded me about 6 or 7 times until they got a vein in a spot that pinched and was actually very uncomfortable.This essentially put my left hand out of commission.
They still had not been able to get a reading of two accels within a 20 minute time span. This was because each time I felt a contraction come on, I had to move to cope with the pain. My movements would shift the monitor so it couldn’t get a clear reading.
A nurse who felt bad for me offered to switch me to a waterproof monitor so that I could labor in the tub. The hospital policy was that you couldn’t deliver in the bathtub but you could labor there so I agreed.
The bathtub wasn’t very deep so my belly wasn’t able to submerge all the way and it didn’t end up helping as much as I had thought it would.
It turned out that the waterproof monitor was broken so they asked me to get out of the tub in order to get the readings they needed.
I was wet and shivering, but they finally passed me off and let me get back in the water. After a while, at around 4 AM, the midwife came in to check me and told me that I was only at a 6.
I felt devastated that after four hours I had only progressed 1 cm. If I was already in this much pain, how much worse would it get? And how much longer would it take to get there?
In retrospect, I realize that I got into the water too soon. The effects of hydrotherapy only lasted so long and when the labor became more intense, the water couldn’t help as much. Albeit a shallow tub, it did help my body to sooth a little but that caused my contractions to slow down before I progressed further like I needed to.
Even though I was experiencing so much pain, it never crossed my mind to get an epidural because I felt like I had already been laboring for a day and a half. I didn’t want to have spent that much time and effort laboring unmedicated just to give up.
I decided to get out of the water and labor back in the hospital room to move things along.
The next stretch, from 4 am – 6 am was the most arduous. By 6 am, they measured me at 8 cm dilated. The pain from contractions was never ending.
My doula helped with counterpressure on my lower back, my husband applied pressure to my hips and the nurse sometimes applied pressure to just below my knees. I needed all 3 sets of hands! My doula reminded me to breathe and to loosen my muscles. I couldn’t help but naturally tense each time a contraction came on and the pain would take my breath away. She repeated the affirmations to me that I had instructed her to beforehand, and she would pattern breathing for me in low “moos” and moans. And she encouraged me when I felt defeated. Even though I had instructed my husband beforehand to do all these things for me, in the moment, he was so concerned for me that he didn’t remember to help in the way that my doula did.
At 6 AM, when they told me I was at an 8, I wondered how much longer I had to endure because I was worn out! I was exhausted. I literally wanted to fall asleep between contractions.
The nurse oriented my hospital bed so that it was folded like a chair. Due to the restricted mobility of my wrist, labor positions were limited so when waves came on, I would kneel on the seat of the bed and hang my arms over the back.
Around 7 am, they measured me at 9 cm.
At 7:30 am, the midwife measured me to be at 9.5 cm. She said there was just a cervical lip left.
She asked if I wanted her to break my water. At the time, I didn’t want any interventions whatsoever so I told her I just wanted my body to do its thing. Also, I knew that once my water broke, contractions would only get more intense and I couldn’t imagine my contractions being any more painful
I was crying because of the pain and because I was exhausted. The contractions were right on top of each other and I missed the short breaks between them that had allowed me to breathe and prepare for the next wave. With each intense contraction, I screamed. A demanding nurse told me not to scream.
By about 8 am, I had finally reached a 10. I was instructed to pull the red cord when I felt “like I needed to poop” so that the team could arrive for the pushing/delivery.
When I felt pressure, I told my husband and he grabbed the cord. All the sudden, like 10 people stormed into the room to await the pushing phase.
And then nothing happened.
I didn’t feel the urge again. It was kind of awkward, leaning over the chair with my backside exposed to a room full of strangers. I have since learned that this is an evolutionary program. Our bodies know the amount of work they are about to do by pushing out a baby, so after that initial urge to push, the body takes a small, short break, to prepare itself.
The demanding nurse from before instructed me on how and when to push so I did.
I never felt “the ring of fire”. I was too exhausted and had already been through so much pain that any more was just more of the same–as if I had passed the pain intensity threshold.
The midwife told me that my baby had crowned and asked if I wanted to reach down and feel his head. I think she wanted to encourage me to make it to the finish line but I cried that I couldn’t because it was all I had in me just to push.
Finally, the midwife, who was watching the monitor, saw that as my baby was being compressed in the birth canal stage, his stats were dropping too low.
She told me that whereas before, it was ok to push only when I’d felt the need, now I needed to push even if I didn’t, in order to get the baby out immediately. So I pushed as hard as I could even though I didn’t feel the need to yet. I felt so exhausted and like I didn’t have the strength but I prayed for help and, after 30 minutes of active pushing, my baby came!
He weighed 6 lbs. 13 ounces and he was 19 inches tall.
I took a minute to turn around on the chair and face forward. More than excitement to hold my new baby, I was beyond relieved to be done with labor! I was so relieved that it was over!
My baby had had the cord wrapped once around his neck and they were concerned about his breathing. A respiration team stood at the ready to whisk him away. While I held him, nurses vigorously rubbed the baby’s vernix off. “I want to leave that!” I protested. But the nurse threatened that if she didn’t get him to breath by roughing him up, the respiration team would whisk him away. He breathed and I think he just needed to be held by me.
Then came the delivery of the placenta and the stitching of my second degree tear.
We opted to room in with our baby but we also opted not to give him a binky so he needed to be held or nursed to be soothed. With my baby in our room needing almost constant attention and nurses popping in frequently to check vitals and administer ibuprofen/tylenol, we were quickly initiated to sleep deprived parenthood.
My husband was utterly exhausted from all the physical exertion of providing counterpressure nonstop throughout the night. In fact, his muscles would be sore the next day from his efforts. After the team first left us alone to be with our baby, Hunter flung himself onto the uncomfortable couch and immediately fell asleep. I was honestly so grateful for everything he’d done and could never have done it without him. I genuinely felt like we birthed our baby together.
That was by far, the hardest thing that I had ever done in my life. But I had done it! That sense of achievement was so rewarding. After doing this, it felt like I could do anything!
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