Hellobee

Lately I have been having all kinds of dreams about what Chocolate Baby’s birth will be like. I guess my subconscious mind is trying to prepare me for the idea. It’s also brought back all the memories I have of Drake’s birth, so I thought I would share that story now as well, as my worries about giving birth again.

When I was pregnant with Drake, I remember deciding I wanted to have a natural birth if I could.  My thought process was simply that women had done this for hundreds of years and I was just as capable of anything they did. On the other hand, I had watched enough television and movie portrayals of birth, as well as some real live ones on Bringing Home Baby on TLC to know that birth hurts… a lot. So with that in mind, I decided I wanted to try a natural birth as best I could and if I simply couldn’t manage, I had the right to change my mind and have an epidural.

To help boost my chances for a natural birth, I signed up for the Lamaze class the hospital offered and dragged Mr. Chocolate along with me so that he could learn to be a good supportive coach. I was worried that Mr. Chocolate (who doesn’t always do well in high pressure situations) would have a difficult time with the experience, so I contacted DONA International in the hopes of finding a birth doula who could help not only support me during the birth, but also Mr. Chocolate, who I was convinced would be either unconscious on the floor or throwing up in another room (like my own father at my birth).  As it happened I found a wonderful doula in training who lived locally and had 3 children of her own (she was pregnant too when I met her due 3 months before me!).

I tried to read up on different birthing methods like hypnobirthing (my best friend who was also pregnant at the time and due 3 months before me was doing this method) and the Bradley method, but in the end I figured I would end up winging it with the support system I had in place more than anything, and that was fine with me. I had a wonderful OBGyn that supported my choice of natural birth.  While she didn’t do many natural births, she told me she promised she would never try to influence my decision and wouldn’t offer any kind of medication lest I openly said to her that I wanted it. I really appreciated her respecting my wishes and I am happy to be using her again for Chocolate Baby’s delivery for that reason.

On the day of what would be the start of labor, I woke up feeling fine.  I was 39 weeks and had a weekly appointment later in the day, and woke up a few hours before to get ready. I went to the bathroom and saw a tiny tiny minuscule spot of blood when I wiped.  Since I was already going to see my doctor in a few hours anyway, I called the office to see if they wanted me to come in earlier. I was experiencing no pain whatsoever.  The office said my doctor was at the hospital for surgery, so I should just go there to meet her and she would see me really quick instead of my regular appointment (my doctor’s office is in a building attached to the hospital).

I drove myself to the hospital and checked in a room around 10 and waited for my doctor.  A nurse came in to see me and asked if I was in pain. She used the pain chart with the faces ranging from 1-10, and I picked 1 as I was feeling fine.  She said by the looks of me and my demeanor, I would be going home rather shortly as I clearly wasn’t in labor, and the blood just might have been a fluke. About 30 minutes later my doctor came in fresh from surgery.  She just wanted to check my cervix and send me on my way.  I was already mentally planning out my day when my doctor said, “You are 3 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced; you’re in labor!”

I tested positive for GBS (Group B Strep) so I needed to be on antibiotics for 4 hours before my water broke (it hadn’t yet), so my doctor admitted me and said to start making my calls. I was amazed that I was in labor as I didn’t feel any different from how I normally felt. I called Mr. Chocolate at school and I couldn’t reach him on either his cell phone or his classroom. In the end I had to call the office and have him paged. I sent him home with instructions on how to finish packing the hospital bag, which I hadn’t bothered to take, as well as contact his family and my mother. It was 11 AM and we were going to have a baby.

Mr. Chocolate and my doula arrived within the hour. I had been entertaining myself with my phone and the Price Is Right on TV, marveling at the idea that this was labor — no pain, no screaming, no begging for drugs. Mr. Chocolate was amazed too. They had hooked me up to a machine so they could see the contractions, and oftentimes I would have to look over to even know I was having one. When I saw the spike, Mr. Chocolate would ask if I felt it, and sometimes I could feel something, but nothing I would call too painful or too hard to deal with.  Most of the time it felt more like a period cramp. A few hours passed like this where Mr. Chocolate, my doula and I would chat, watch TV, walk around the halls, play with our phones, and just sit around and wait for something to change. When my doctor came back a few hours later, I was still pain-free and had moved to around 5 cm.  I was pleased everything seemed to be moving along nicely, and I wasn’t experiencing anything painful. I told myself I could easily do this naturally at this rate.

The  hours rolled by and I was still at 5 cm, which got me a little discouraged. Another check a few hours later and I was at 7cm hooray!  And that’s when the stall happened.  Hour after hour would roll by and my doctor would still say 7 cms. I was still pain-free for the most part, but progress had halted.  At one point my doctor offered to break my water to help speed things along, but I waited at first, a little fearful that pain would start soon after. In the meantime my mother and Mr. Chocolate’s family came in for a short visit. I was still feeling fine — maybe in a little bit more pain than earlier — but still perfectly content to have conversation.

After hearing we were still at 7 cms for the 4th time, I relented and had them break my water. What an unusual feeling it is to have water spurt out of you is all I have to say!

Shortly after my water was broken though, I moved to 8 cms and started to feel slight more pain than I had before. I started to feel a loss of my body in that I thought I wanted to use the bathroom, but when I got there, there was nothing. I wanted to lay down but the second I did, I felt I needed to walk around. I started to race around the room in a bit of a panic as I tried to figure out what it was I needed to be comfortable. At 9 cms the pain was hard. It hurt and I was so set on trying to find a comfortable spot but just couldn’t. Every time the doctor came, I prayed she would say we were at the magic 10 cm, but alas we were stuck on 9 cm it seemed.  Around the 3rd time I heard 9 cm, I caved and told Mr. Chocolate I was thinking epidural. Mentally I knew it was way late to be asking for one, and how hard it was to make it that far to throw in the towel.  Part of me was hoping that the time it took to get the doctor and start the epidural would allow me time to get to 10 cm. That’s precisely what happened while we were waiting for the doctor. I made it to 10 cm naturally.  It was midnight.

The next few hours were a blur for me. I had been there since 10 AM the previous day at this point with little sleep (thanks to pregnancy insomnia), no food, and little water. I was deliriously tired and started to fall asleep even between contractions. For the first hour I pushed every which way I could imagine, only to be told that I was doing it wrong.  I never felt anything like “the urge to push” as I had heard from other women, so I really had no clue what to do. I tried and tried to push as they instructed, but I felt lost as I never had an idea of what was right or wrong. At 3am my doula said she felt like she could see the head; that gave me some relief but it seemed that there was no progress after that. Every time they said the head was coming with the next push, it seemed Drake would go back into my womb; another push would show it, only to have it disappear again.

At 4 AM my doctor was thinking c-section. She told me though she couldn’t believe how close we were to be thinking that idea. She said she would try one more trick to see if it would help before that though — a vacuum. At 4:19 AM with the help of a vacuum, Drake made his grand entrance in the world.  As it happened he was a large baby (8 lbs 8ozs) and had been sunny side up (or OP as they call it medically) which made it much harder to push out for some reason.

Drake was a surprise baby so I was anticipating that big moment of, “It’s a…” But at 4 AM with the chaos of finally being done and Drake needing to be checked out immediately by a special doctor because of the vacuum, that part was left out. I was also the last on the floor to deliver, so all the nurses had come in to wait for the arrival of the last baby before changing shifts. I had to look at Mr. Chocolate, who had been an amazing coach and trooper throughout, and ask, “What is it?” To which he replied, “Oh I dont know,” and went off to look. So needless to say my big Hollywood moment didn’t pan out as I had thought. But one long, exhausting, but surprisingly pain-free labor til the end brought me my little Drake.

Looking back I realize how unusual my birth experience was. My best friend always comments about how I drove myself to the hospital while in labor — something so bizarre and unheard of when you think about other people’s labor stories.  Part of me is hoping that lightning will strike twice and Chocolate Baby’s labor will be the same relatively pain-free experience (half the pushing time would be nice too). But I also realize there is a chance that it won’t happen like that at all, and I will actually experience what most woman do when giving birth.

In many ways though I have already given birth once, I feel like I still have no idea what to expect the second time around simply because my experience was so different from the norm. Even my doctor commented how she had never known someone not feel contractions for so long. As the weeks creep closer, I feel just as nervous as I did before I had Drake — scared for the pain, scared for the uncertainty, and scared for the unknown, just as if this was my first time going through it.  There is a chance, of course, that I’ll have a similar experience, but I’m more nervous I won’t, which is why I am going in with the same mindset of natural with the right to change my mind. I’ll have Mr. Chocolate again for support, but sadly my doula is going through some personal issues as her youngest daughter fights leukemia and I can’t ask her to be away from her own child for so long. I know I can do it, but I won’t lie and say I am not nervous and scared to go through it all again, despite having gone through it once before.

Are you nervous about giving birth the second time around?