The Birth Story: Part One

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write this. I find it fitting that I choose my first “real” Mother’s Day weekend to chronicle my daughter’s birth. While the 48 hours I am going to write about will be forever seared with the wondrous experience of her entering this world, they were also colored with pain…and guilt…and lots of tears. I’m going to warn you that as funny as I try to make this story seem, there are still parts of it that are painful, extremely NOT funny, and even gory. In my attempts to inject humor, I endeavor to remove the pieces of this trauma little by little.

(I will also note that I do not write this as a treatise or statement towards the current state of women’s healthcare or obstetrical experiences in this country in general. I will note that I went into my birth experience educated about the overuse of c-sections, the benefits of natural birth and all of the things that come with watching Discovery Health for seven straight months, reading several books, doing countless hours of internet research, and memorizing the “Business of Being Born”. I STILL chose traditional medicine because-when it came down to it-maybe I was raised in a society that didn’t teach me to trust my body enough and to trust doctors more. Or, as you will see at the end, maybe it was an already keenly formed sense of mother’s intuition. Whatever it was, it worked out. My daughter is here-happy, healthy and full of life. I escaped with the only outward scar being a four inch slit sitting extremely low on my abdomen that is already so faded you can hardly see it. I also escaped with a vagina in its original and pristine working condition. So, I guess there is always going to be a trade-off, right? Anyway, no diatribe’s here. Just a story about how something worked out the way it worked out.)

Being pregnant is almost like being 13 again. You have no control over your body and you are pretty aware that-just because you are a woman-some weird shit is about to go down with it and it’s all going to originate from an extremely private area. There’s a level of embarrassment there. It’s like walking around announcing to the world that “HEY, I USED MY VAGINA AND IT WORKED.” There is always the underlying assumption when walking around pregnant that you are definitely someone who has had sex within the past eight months. Unless you are Mary the mother of Jesus-and I’m not talking about our cat. The only Biblical Mary that’s ever been uttered in the same sentence with mine was the one with the last name Magdalene. And I’d never been prouder.

Sort of along the same vein, The Man and I refer to the patrons of “Babiesrus” as “The Largest Collection of Non-Virgins in the Tri-County Area.” As such, I was a glistening display of heathen activity.

There aren’t classes on being pregnant. You just get pregnant, read some books about how it generally works, and then figure out what that means to you and your body. It is a VERY physical condition. Yes, there are emotional parts and that whole thing about there being a BABY in there. Like a WHOLE NEW PERSON. But, I will honestly admit-in true Virgo fashion-I’ve never been particularly squooshy about babies. I don’t cry at weddings… or baby showers for that matter. I’m just not that type of person. As far as I was concerned, pregnancy was the way you got at a baby. That baby then turned into a kid who grew into an adult whom would then build you a nice guest house out back when you were old and incompetent and needed someone to make your gin and tonics for you. That’s how the world works.


I won’t go into the details of my entire pregnancy except to say that the bulk of it was extremely uneventful and exciting and painful and suck-y and interesting and mind-blowing and weird all at the same time. Every week something new was happening with my body. Mostly my vagina. But, still…weirdness. I even SMELLED weird. Not bad….WEIRD. There were days I hated it, days I didn’t mind it, and some days that I actually loved it. These feelings only really lasted until about 30 weeks. Then the total thing sucked and I was wishing that when man evolved from chimps we had kept the 7-8 month gestational period and not insisted on that whole extra month and a half of extra time purely to facility further brain development. P’shaw. We don’t need all that! But, I finally made it to 39 weeks.

As far as The Man and I were concerned she could arrive at ANY MINUTE. Every time The Man ran to the convenience store to buy the cigarettes he was smoking end upon end due to the stress of her impending birth, I knew he secretly thought by the time he returned he would find me spread-eagled in the middle of the living room floor holding a screaming infant still attached by its umbilical cord (technically, The Man had officially lost his shit 3 weeks previously when I started scrubbing the inside of the bathroom closets because they were just HIDEOUSLY DIRTY. He had heard that started right before the baby up and fell out). I was THAT pregnant.

I looked it as well. I was 2cm dilated and 90% effaced at 37 weeks. I weighed somewhere in the range of a small rhino and had started experiencing that really entertaining and attractive late pregnancy symptom of face swelling and nose growing. As ugly as I was, and the more my ankles looked like hams, the closer we assumed she was to making her appearance. In fact, we had two “final” celebratory dinners during week 37 AND week 38. After her no show, we just started celebrating nightly at home with lots of macaroni and cheese and grape-flavored Kool-Aid. I did this because I knew that once I had her, I really could no longer justify eating Kraft macaroni and cheese. With barbeque sauce. Because, just, GROSS and….GROSS. ( I will readily admit that I definitely enjoyed the American world of pre-packed and processed food during my pregnancy.) I had been somewhat crazed about organics and gluten for six months previous to being pregnant, so I’m pretty sure The Man was pretty happy about the nine month spate of me eating like a good healthy red-blooded American. I gained 65 pounds. I had never been happier.

My pregnancy seemed to actually level me out. Previous to it I had the tendency to be a neurotic and anxious drama queen. There was a definite serene-ness to me during pregnancy that I had never had before, and don’t really have after. If I hadn’t absolutely hated that whole nonsense NO GIN policy during the whole thing, I’d have been absolutely radiant-until the 7th month. During the seventh month something happens that no one REALLY talks about. That’s when you start peeing yourself when you sneeze and having to wake up seventeen (NOT JOKING) times a night to go the bathroom just to squeeze out two freaking drops and switch sides because your hips are somehow both numb AND screaming in pain at the same time from laying on one side for, say, ONE WHOLE ENTIRE HOUR. I went to bed at 8:30pm and stayed there until 8:30am and maybe got six hours of sleep a night. When people used to comment about me not getting any sleep AFTER she was born I had a strong urge to punch them in the larynx. Actually, for the entirety of the last two months, I had the strong urge to punch most anybody in the larynx. Especially if you talked to me and it made sound.

So, by 39 weeks I was pretty damn effing tired of being pregnant. I had delusions of being pregnant forever. I constantly thought every twinge was IT. THE BIG EVENT. The doctor’s monitored me. I was having no contractions. I was not progressing. I was frustrated, hot and tired because I was ready for her to be out. But, if she didn’t want to come out, I was going to let her stick around as long as she wanted. My doc would extend to 42 weeks and I had convinced myself that I could be pregnant that long if I had to. I didn’t WANT to. But, I was willing to do it.

Due to the fluid I had accumulated my doctor was keeping a very close eye on my blood pressure. It had been pretty freaking fantabulously perfect the entire pregnancy. It fluctuated between 115/65-120/70. My BP was good. My pee tested clean for whatever the hell they check it for. So, she let me continue. I put on 15 pounds the last two weeks. I could no longer wear shoes. My face and nose were freakishly large. I couldn’t lie on my back at all without feeling like I was suffocating. People at work were starting to look FRIGHTENED when I showed up in the morning. People refused to get on elevators with me. Waiters starting joking the MINUTE we walked in the door to be seated. But still, no baby.

I went to my 39 week appointment steeling myself for the same report of “no further progress. Go home and call if you start to feel contractions.” Instead they checked my blood pressure when I first arrived and it was 158/89. I’d never actually seen a “concerned” look on a nurse’s face before this moment in my entire life. I peed my pants a little.

My doctor came into the room and calmly told the nurse to let me “rest” for 20 minutes and they would check it again. She then proceeded with the same cervical checking procedure of the previous three weeks that pretty much consisted of The Man cringing in the corner while my doctor inserted her entire forearm into my nether regions and I tried not to scream and claw at her eyes. After what seemed fourteen hours, sShe peeled off the required glove and affirmed what I’d already known. No progress.

She then left the room and we waited ten minutes until the nurse came back in. Another blood pressure check. It hadn’t fallen significantly. My doctor entered the room and informed me that it had dropped enough for her to allow me to return home but that as far as she was concerned, between the swelling of my face and lower extremities and the sudden uptick in my blood pressure, this pregnancy was on borrowed time. She very business-like made me an appointment for the following Monday night to “check-in” the hospital at 7pm to be induced. Like it was Holiday Inn. The Man and I agreed simply because I knew enough about preeclampsia to know it was nothing to mess around with and I was carrying all the hall mark signs of it.
So, The Man and I packed our bags, took off from work, enjoyed our final, final, FINAL dinner out as an “childless” couple and checked into the hospital at 7pm on Monday, June 15, 2009. That is the day this blog begins.

Since I’ve blogged that whole part in detail, I will summarize for the lazy by saying: I went in. I got naked. They hooked me up to fetal monitors and inserted a string with a hormone called Cervadil attached to it and left me for the night to watch bad horror with The Man while I tried not to dislodge the string every time I peed.

The next morning I got an enema, they broke my water, and this whole party got started.

I was given an IV of Pitocin and it wasn’t long after that I began experiencing contractions that were somewhat like being beaten with a 2 X 4 while also being stabbed in my back. They were fast, they lasted a long time, and there was only a minute between them. I had read enough to know that Pitocin contractions were pretty much a son of a bitch because they don’t build like normal contractions. They just start at the part where a woman in labor begins screaming, “I HATE YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU EVER DID, WILL DO, AND THOUGHT ABOUT DOING. MY BODY IS RIPPING INTO FOURTEEN PIECES.” I got to that point quickly.

I endured 17 hours of unmedicated labor total. They refused to give me an epidural until I reached at least 3 cm. The nurses, who complained of my extremely high cervix, kept telling me I wasn’t there yet. At this point I was prepared to slip them around five thousand dollars to EFFING LIE AND SAY I WAS 3 CM AND DRAG IN AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST OFF THE STREETS. I was willing to accept forged South American Medical School diplomas and tell whoever it was to GET ON WITH IT. THE PART WHERE PAIN IS RELIEVED. DO THAT PART.

I had come into the hospital at 7pm the night before and it was now 3pm.

I had my mother on one side and my husband on the other. Each one held one of my hands. Their hands were purple from the squeezing. I had a box fan sitting on a chair at the end of the bed blowing on me full blast as I sweated bullets and writhed. I cried and actually told both my mother and The Man that “This can't be natural. There is NO WAY this could be natural. I can’t do this. I want to go home” They had the foresight not to laugh. I will say seriously that I think this was extremely difficult on both of them. It was freaking intense. My mother was having a hard time not crying just watching me go through this. My husband was having to take a break every twenty minutes or so just to walk outside and catch his breath.

My doctor finally made rounds right after 3pm and did her own cervical check. She said I was 3 cm and could have my epidural. I wanted to tongue kiss her and name the baby after her. The nurses told her that I’d “been brave.” I wanted to kick them in their crotches and pull out handfuls of their hair. EFF YOU AND YOUR BRAVE. I WAS SURVIVING. One of them was name Angelique and if I'd had more drugs I would have referred to her as "Devilique" to her face.

As soon as the doctor approved the epidural, I saw The Man and my mother visibly relax. NO SIR. I pulled both of their hands and begin sobbing, “What if the anesthesiologist is with another woman? What if he’s in another wing and can’t get away? What if he’s in surgery and it takes him an hour to do this. I CANNOT DO THIS ANOTHER HOUR. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. MY VAGINA IS ON FIRE. I AM ON FIRE.”

My mother helpfully suggested that she thought he would probably be there within the next fifteen minutes. I hastened to remind her that I could DIE IN THE NEXT EFFING FIFTEEN MINUTES AND HE BETTER GET HERE IN THE NEXT THIRTY SECONDS OR MY BLOOD WAS ON HIS HANDS.

I then inquired about the ability of the hospital to give me heroin.

Forty seconds later, as I begin to hyperventilate, he walked in the door. I wanted to tongue kiss him too but I restrained and immediately sat up, turned around, dropped my gown, and told him to get to it. It was the quickest I’d ever shed my clothes for a man in my life. I didn’t even feel a prick until he said, "that should take full effect in about ten to fifteen minutes" and I slowly felt a warming numbness creep down my right leg and I sighed and told him I loved him. He laughed and told me he got that a lot and walked out of the room. The nurses waited an hour and then checked me. I was at 5. Hallelujah and the Baby Jesus! I was progressing. I progressed quickly over the next two hours and at around 5pm the nurse told me that she thought I was ready to push.

This is where shit gets surreal. As I had pretty much prepared myself for the entire experience BUT the pushing. Yeah, I’d gone to child birth classes and everything. But, as with most of my schooling I just assumed I was smart enough to figure that part out on the fly. So, when she told me to push…I pushed. HARD. I pushed hard and harder and harder. I sweated and grunted and grasped on to hospital bed rails as three strangers and my husband stood with their heads bowed staring at my vagina.

If I would have been un-medicated I might have cared. At this point I did not. I could have laid down in the middle of State Street with my legs in stirrups as long as this baby would GET OUT OF MY BELLY. What I’ve also failed to mention during this story is that sometime around 3pm I had spiked a fever. It had been rising about half a degree every hour. An hour into pushing I was around 102 and shaking uncontrollably from both the fever and the epidural. I was tired. I felt the exhaustion of the fever beginning to drain me.

I pushed for another hour.

At 7pm the nurses had determined that my daughter’s head was stuck at what they refer to as “zero station” or my pubic bone. She had descended through the birth canal but her head was not making it under the lip of my pubic bone. The nurses contorted me. Forced me to sit straight up and pulled me forwards. They did pretty much everything they knew how to do for 50 minutes to get her to drop further. I was miserable.

Around 7:45pm, the doctor came in. Now she looked concerned. Parks’s heart rate had jumped to over two hundred during the last two contractions and I was still running a fever of 102. Right before she walked in the room I was defeated. I looked at my dear, dear husband and told him that if the doctor walked in and suggested a c-section to jump up and high five her. Tell her I was all in. In fact, to tell her that she didn’t even have to worry about a bikini cut. She could cut me from one end to the other as long as this baby got out of my belly within the next hour and was okay.

She suggested a c-section. I looked at her and said, “let’s go.” I fell back against the bed and let out a huge sigh of relief. I had not one ounce of fight or pushing left in me. I wanted it to be done. I had been in labor a full 24 hours. I had not eaten in 26.

By 8:00pm I was being wheeled into the delivery room. The Man was hauled away to don scrubs. Right before he left, looking shocked and scared to death, I hurriedly reminded him of our conversation concerning unexpected events in the delivery room. I only had one rule that I had repeated over and over again during my pregnancy after reading a book encouraging parents to plan for the unexpected. FOLLOW THE BABY. He told me he remembered and he squeezed my hand, kissed me, and left. I was on my own.

I arrived in the delivery room and was given a full spinal block. I complained to the anesthesiologist that I could still feel my left leg. I was petrified. Neither my husband nor my doctor were in the room. There were strangers readying a baby warmer and newborn supplies. They were draping sheets and swabbing me quickly and efficiently. I felt apart from the whole experience. I can honestly say that I had no true understanding of a surreal experience until that moment.

My doctor walked in. She was wearing regular green hospital scrubs, no nonsense reading glasses, and four-inch spiked gold lame heels. God, how I loved her for that. I will forever tell my daughter that the woman who delivered her was so freaking bad ass she did it wearing scrubs with four inch gold lame heels. I once again told the anesthesiologist that I could feel my left leg. No on paid attention. He informed me he was going to give me a dose of IV Valium. He should have just gone ahead and said was he wanted to say, “I’d wish you stop whining. Hell, we’re only cutting you in half and removing a living being. Get over it.” Instead he plunged the stopper on the syringe and I immediately fell back against the table head rest and my eyes went wide and unfocused.

The Man comes in. He immediately notices that something is wrong and asks me as much. I cannot even answer. I mumble and the doctor says, “First incision 8:04pm.” I feel this violent tugging and burning and I grit my teeth and wait for it to be over. I finally feel a huge weight lift up and out of me and the doctor mechanically intones “Time of birth 8:11pm”. She then shoves a purple greasy baby over the green draping around my head and shows my daughter to me for one second. I nodded my head and had no feelings whatsoever.

One minute later I hear two simultaneous announcements, “She has HUGE FEET.” And “Seven pounds and one oz”. But I don’t hear my baby cry. And I’m scared.

I finally hear a small and struggling rasp and I feel some modicum of relief. But, the Mama in me knows this sound isn’t right. Someone brightly says, “She’s not breathing too good. Hear that grunting? That means she’s having a hard time breathing. We are going to have to take her to the NICU. Give her a kiss.” I numbly kiss this strange gasping, grunting infant on the cheek and she is whisked away. With her goes The Man-as instructed.

I once again hear my doctor's semi-monotone voice, “I’m putting your uterus back in.” And despite still having enough of a sense of humor in my drug induced state to actually ENJOY the absurdity of that statement, the pain and burning sensation that followed closely after knocked any possible feelings of mirth from my body. Jesus. Effing. Christ. What is that burning? I’m on fire, people. How can no one here see that my stomach is on fire. I feel stitching and fire and I grit my teeth and remind myself that woman have done this for years. I cry silently because I’m a good Southern girl and I don’t want to anesthesiologist to get mad at me for having FEELINGS again.

I feel small tugging as I am stitched up and my doctor pokes her head over the draping to tell me that she is “almost finished” and that “next time we won’t have to go through all this nonsense. We’ll just schedule you a c-section and you will be in and out” and I wonder if, despite the four inch heels, she actually OWNS a vagina.

I hate her and I hate everything about this place. But, in about two minutes, I discover that I THINK I REALLY LOVE MORPHINE.

They hook me up to a pump and roll me into recovery. Where they proceeded to tell me nothing but alarmist information about the daughter I had just given birth to but had yet to really meet. My husband was not there. My mother was in the room holding my hand as I just sobbed and asked over and over again, “BUT IS SHE GOING TO BE OKAY???” while no one-because they didn’t want to get sued-would tell a ten minute old mother that her ten minute old baby was going to be okay.

They wheeled me to the mother/baby wing without a word and left me in a room alone with a morphine pump and instructions to only “hit it every 15 minutes”. No one listened when I told them that my stomach was on fire. I hit the button so much the machine automatically shut down and the nurses had to come restart it five times-scolding me each time. But never asking about my level of pain.

The Man comes in to show me videos of my newborn that he has taken in the NICU and ran down the hall and downloaded to the computer. I cry and can’t see her because she has an IV and oxygen prongs in her nose. I pull out my laptop and I google “baby not clearing fluid on lungs after a c-section”. Because I’m THAT kind of woman. And if no one will talk to me, I will find it for MYSELF, damnit. I read countless articles on how c-section babies frequently don’t clear their lungs well as moving through the vaginal canal forces the fluids from their lungs. The articles tell me that this usually heals itself within 24 hours of birth. I calm down. I tell The Man. He runs back to the NICU to get an update from the nurses and take more video. He reports that the nurses were still not reassuring but just said she was “a little better” and I watch the videos until 3am and cry and beg for my baby. I finally sleep fitfully from 4am-6am until shift change.

A new nurse came in and actually LISTENED to me when I told her that I was getting no relief from the morphine. She actually asked me to DESCRIBE the pain. What a novelty in a hospital, right? I told her and she immediately deduced that morphine didn’t work on me and removed the pump from my arm. She gave me two percocets and within thirty minutes I felt the first true pain relief I’d felt in over 36 hours.

I continually asked to see my baby. They told me I could not.


TO BE CONTINUED (I figured this was ENOUGH for one post. Sheesh. But, just wait, things get both funnier and worse)