Previous birth stories - Part 1

With all these birthdays recently, I have been reflecting upon each of my "birth stories". I love reading other ladies stories, so I thoughts I'd share mine. I have already blogged Becky's and Anna's birth stories before. 

 

Solomon

 a few minutes after birth

Solomon, our firstborn - wow, we were so young, and knew so little! The thought of home birth crossed my mind once early on in pregnancy, wondering if anyone still gave birth at home in the 21st century, and if so, why they would want to do that. I also was under the notion that if anyone were to attempt a home birth, they probably had to have an ambulance waiting in front of the house, ready to rush to the mother to the hospital if needed.

I saw an OB early on in my pregnancy who was morbidly obese, but very friendly. Her weight would have made me doubt any nutritional advice she would have given me, but she never gave me any advice, nutritional or otherwise. My appointments took a few minutes each, and basically consisted of recording my weight, blood pressure, and temperature. Later on, we moved to the other side of town and I switched to a different OB, but my appointments with her were pretty much the same other than the fact that I suddenly weighed 9 lbs less because obviously one of the two offices had a scale that was way off. 

Instead, the popular "What to expect when you're expecting" became my main source for learning about pregnancy (we didn't have internet). What I didn't know was that pregnancy in mainstream America is a very strange adventure. But not to me, who had little else to compare it to. One night, my husband remarked that I had been reading the book so much I had probably committed it to memory. He was joking, but I told him I probably had. Just for fun, he picked it up and started reading a sentence, and I finished it word-perfectly. In disbelief, he did that a couple more times, and sure enough, I knew how to finish those sentences, too. Pathetic, huh?

The pregnancy was very uneventful, other than suffering from debilitating morning sickness at first. A couple of weeks before my due date, I started having prodromal labor: my contractions would pick up and be regular and painful, only to stall out again. What I didn't know then was that I am prone to have labor drag on like that, and that Solomon was facing the wrong way ("sunny side up"), which was causing these false contractions. My OB was either not skilled enough to palpate the baby's position and teach me how to get him to turn, or she didn't bother to inform me of it.

After two weeks of having painful contractions that accomplished nothing other than to rob me of sleep, I was induced early in the morning on my exact due date by having my water broken and being put on pitocin. Ugh, to think how little I knew about what I was getting myself into! This being our first, looking back I realize how much God was watching out for us by not allowing this to turn into a needless Cesarean for "failure to progress" - many induced first time births end in one. 

The pitocin immediately made me violently sick to my stomach. I had secretly eaten one of my husband's Arby's roast beef sandwiches when the nurse wasn't looking, and it suddenly and violently decided to turn around and come back. Funny thing was, my husband and I were only concerned about hiding all evidence of my getting sick, as it would have exposed me as having had food against hospital policy. 

The pain from these synthetically generated contractions was unbearable right from the start. Pitocin is like a storm in a water glass - it makes labor feel like transition the whole way through. Not wanting an epidural, I finally gave in to one half dose of some intravenous dope they shot me up with. It took effect within seconds, and I literally felt tipsy and like I was floating above the bed. Somewhere in the back of my mind I felt that surely this was no different that recreational drug use, and that I shouldn't be doing this, but I was too "happy" to really care. I was still in just as much pain, but in an altered state of mind where I didn't care so much.

Of course, that didn't last very long. The drug had completely worn off after about two hours, and I soon asked for another half dose. Again, it didn't take the pain away, it just drugged me up to where I no longer cared about it. By the time that dose wore off, it was evening and I was dilated to a 7, so they would no longer let me use the drug because of how it could affect the baby that close to birth. Too late to get an epidural (which I had been against all along), I was now suffering the full effects of a posterior baby - back labor at its worst. I must say that the labor nurse that was helping me was really nice. She showed me how to change into a position on the bed that would alleviate some of the pressure on my back, and also encourage the baby to turn around (which he never did). From this point up until I finally started pushing hours later all I remember is being in horrible pain and screaming uncontrollably with each contraction. The poor moms in the other rooms must have really hated me!

Pushing was surprisingly easy and relatively painless. Solomon's head was soon on the perineum, about to be born, when my OB (in full battle gear, with a plastic shield covering her entire head) announced that I needed an episiotomy. I knew that this was not good, and tried to argue with her, but to no avail. The second the doctor cut me, Solomon slipped out immediately and flopped onto the bed that I was pushing on, but I did not see him because I was reclined. They held him up briefly, cut the cord, and then whisked him off for a few minutes to do their little song and dance. Solomon was screaming the whole time, until my husband started talking to him and he took a break to listen to that familiar voice. Finally, he was handed to me for the first time, tightly wrapped in a swaddling blanket, as seen in the picture above. I still clearly remember the feelings that swept over me as the nurse placed this little bundle in my arms. My life was changed forever in that one instant.

My recovery from the episiotomy was quite painful, but we were beyond elated with our newborn son, and our little family. Breastfeeding was a bit bumpy at first because Solomon was quite tongue-tied, but we soon got the hang of it.

Isaac

two days old

Isaac was our first home birth, but we did not go into this pregnancy planning one. I was going to go back to the same childless OB who I felt had not given me the best of care the first time around, but I didn't know there were other alternatives available. Solomon at the time was 7 1/2 months old, so at my first appointment, the OB told me she would for sure do an episiotomy again on me for this second birth because the births were so close together she was afraid I would tear along the scar from the first birth. I had read enough about natural birth in the meantime to know that this was ridiculous, so I started looking for another OB. Our HMO health insurance only had 4 other female OBs that were still accepting patients in our area, and for various reasons, none of the other doctors would work out for me. One of them actually interviewed her patients before taking them on for care, and she would not take me on unless I agreed to stop nursing Solomon immediately, something I would not do. 

My husband, who didn't really see what the big deal was, would have been fine with me staying with the same doctor. I continued to see her for prenatal checkups, while trying to find an alternative. There was a birth center across from the hospital that was run by midwives, but our insurance wouldn't cover it and there was no way we could afford the cash rate. I was feeling more panicked as time wore on - the prospect of having my perineum butchered was scary at best. Then something wonderful happened. My husband met a young couple while out soulwinning one night. They were already Christians, but looking for a church, and they started attending our church after my husband's visit. The lady was expecting their third child, so of course I immediately asked her about which hospital she was going to deliver at. To my utter surprise, she told me that she was planning a home birth, and that her first two had also been born at home. Wow, she might as well have been an alien! So people DID still have babies at home!

I immediately brought the idea of home birth up to my husband, who dismissed it as entirely crazy. He was concerned about me bleeding to death at worst, or a horrible mess to deal with at best. As I kept bringing it up to him, he really didn't warm up to the idea at all, especially because of the cost of it. While we paid several hundred dollars a month to have me on his insurance plan through work, the insurance would not cover out of network providers such as homebirth midwives. Their cash rate  for midwives in the area was $3500 to $4500 for the entire prenatal package, which was utterly out of our budget - my husband only made about $2000 a month back then. The thought that we should drop my health insurance and instead pay for the midwives or get different insurance never once crossed our minds.

A couple of midwives I had called took pity on me and offered to do all the prenatals and birth for $1200, and after much pleading with my husband, he agreed to go ahead with the home birth and paying the midwives $50 each month on our balance (which we paid off in full within a couple of months after the birth when we got our tax refund).

The day I went into labor, my mother-in-law had come to our apartment to pick me and Solomon (who was only 16 months old) up and take us out for lunch. I still remember going to Jack in the Box and having to grip the back of the chair during contractions. We also stopped for dipped cones at Dairy Queen on the way back home. I remember my contractions really picking up intensity and wanting to get home quickly, but my mother-in-law was driving painfully slow, or maybe it just seemed that way. It runs in my husband's family to slow WAY DOWN during a conversation, so it was probably a combination of both.

Once my labor progressed to the point that I had to call the midwives to the house, grandma took Solomon to her house for the rest of that day, and night. We filled the birth pool (which was actually a water trough for horses that was being used "off label") in the living room of our tiny one-bedroom apartment. We like to joke that this started Isaac's love for horses. My labor was fairly easy up until 6 or 7 cm dilation. For no apparent reason, I was not able to progress past that point for several hours. My midwives finally suggested that breaking my water would most likely speed up labor, but it didn't. In exhaustion, I finally left the birth tub and lay down on our bed, where I fell asleep for the next hour or so except for the peak of each (excruciatingly painful) contraction. Suddenly, I woke up very alert, and felt the urge to push. Oh, what a relief it was! I have always found that the hardest part of labor is over once the pushing starts. Not sure how long I pushed for, but probably not more than 10 minutes, give or take.

Isaac looked slightly blue for a few seconds after being born, which is perfectly normal, and then just started breathing without crying. I thought for sure he was dead, but my midwives assured me that he was perfectly fine, and that a lot of babies don't cry much. After another minute, he did start crying. I had no tearing whatsoever, and didn't require any stitches. What a different recovery I had!

Upon inspecting the placenta, it was discovered that the reason I had had such a hard time fully dilating was because of the baby's failure to fully descend. The cause of this was a relatively short cord, and the fact that it was wrapped around his thigh and back in three loops altogether to make it even shorter. It just took a long time to get it to stretch long enough to be born. I do remember the cord appearing stretched thin when he came out.

Just a few weeks later, another lady I knew was having her first baby at the hospital. She had an almost identical situation with her cord (short, wrapped around baby, stalled in transition) and ended up being given a C-section. I was so glad that I was at home for Isaac's birth, because I would have been begging for a C-section at the hospital - labor was just so overwhelmingly painful and slow. I was very glad to have been able to have a natural birth at home, and felt confirmed in our decision to do so. 

To be continued with John and Miriam's birth stories...