I’ve given birth twice now, and both times were completely different from what I had imagined.

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Photo by Olivia Gray Photography

My pregnancy with Lil Washi three years ago was fairly uneventful. I was terrified the whole time after having two miscarriages, but the pregnancy itself went really smoothly. At my 39 week appointment, everything was going along just fine. I felt fine, the heartbeat sounded good. I did mention, offhand, that the baby seemed to be moving around a bit less than he had been. It wasn’t something I was concerned about in the least – I had read many times that babies tend to slow down  as they get bigger and more constricted in the womb. But my doctor decided to do a quick ultrasound to check on things anyway.

I was pretty shocked when the doctor came in to talk to us after the ultrasound and told me to go check in at the hospital. During the ultrasound I could see that the baby was moving around a bit and the heartbeat was good, so I assumed things were just fine. It turns out the baby’s cord was wrapped around his neck and the fluid in the amniotic sac was too low. My doctor’s office is actually attached to the hospital so my husband and I walked next door and the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and monitors. According to the monitors, I was already having contractions although I hadn’t felt anything. It was early evening by this time, so they started me on a low dose of pitocin and my IV drugs for strep B and I settled in for the night.

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The next morning, I still hadn’t really made any progress, so the doctor broke my water. And then not a whole lot happened. They increased the pitocin. I got an epidural. There was one moment when the fetal monitor showed distress but the nurses ran in and when I turned back to my other side, everything was fine. My epidural stopped working after awhile and they increased it.

And after basically 24 hours on pitocin, I was still only dilated to a 5. My doctor started talking about a c-section. I really didn’t want a c-section. I had seen so many statistics about how they are overused in the United States and about how both moms and babies who have a vaginal birth do better. And while I realized c-sections save lives, this really didn’t feel like a life or death kind of situation. The doctor and I agreed to wait another hour and then reevaluate.

After another hour, I had made zero progress. (Although my epidural had worn off yet again.) I agreed to the c-section.

It didn’t go quite as planned. The epidural stopped doing its job. I really didn’t want to be put to sleep even though I was really hurting, but the anesthesiologist made the call to have me put under anyway. So I was asleep when my baby was born. My husband also wasn’t there – he was kicked out of the room when I was put to sleep.

When I finally came to, a few hours later and was allowed my first groggy look at my sleepy newborn, I was told his umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck, not once, but four times!

newborn Griffin

Poor little guy was super swollen at birth.

At first I was pretty disappointed with how things had gone. I hadn’t truly been present for my baby’s birth and my recovery from the surgery was really hard. But eventually I realized how lucky I was that things had gone so smoothly. It may not have been the birth of my dreams, but it was the birth that allowed my son to be born safely. And absolutely nothing is more important than that.