**this post is rated PG 21 for Pregnant Girlfriends over 21. Its okay if your not pregnant too, but it would be good if you have been pregnant before or this will be too much information. Men you may not want to read this, it concerns detailed info on pregnancy and birth. This is a full disclaimer. **
I was thrown into motherhood with very little warning or preparation and I wonder sometimes if thats why. I had no immediate plans of becoming a mother and I was only 24 years old and still hadn't decided if I was going to be a professional snowboarder (no i was never that good but try telling me that at 21) or a trapeze artist. So obviously I wasn't in the stage in my life where I was looking to strap a kid on my back as I was headed down the mountain. But regardless, when I found out that I was expecting I realized I knew nothing about it. Nowadays there is so much info on the internet and women have become so open about labor and delivery,(like me apparently) that theres really no shortage of information. In fact sometimes I wish there was.
Anyway, no one I was close to had every been pregnant or expecting and I knew absolutely nothing about it. Im sure my mother took me to the Dr when I was young but the only times I had been to the Dr that I could remember at that point were when I was arriving either via stretcher, ambulance or helicopter. But I did realize that having a baby was going to involve a Doctor of some sort. But I had no idea I needed a specific Doctor. Now keep in mind that although the internet had been around by some time at this point I wanted nothing to do with it and still didn't own a computer or a phone so had very little way to look things up. So I found some info in a book somewhere that said I needed an ob/gyn. Now some of you who know me know that I skim read or speed read and so I occasionally can get things mixed up. (my dad knows this)
Anyway I call Rose Medical Center which was a hospital I found in the phone book and asked them if they had an OB gym. (i assumed it was some trendy way they were doing the clinics up now, using exercise balls and what not when examining you, I mean I lived an hour out of Boulder so nothing surprised me) It took several minutes of both of us being very confused before we pieced it together and they gave me the number of one of their ob/gyns. That my friends is how un prepared I was for motherhood. No kidding. And it just got better.
My first appointment at my first Ob/ Gyn was nerve racking as I had no idea what to expect and I drug Rye along hoping he might know. So the nurse settles us in the room and tells me to change into this little shirt gown thing and then hands me a blanket. I put the gown on but am standing there buck naked from the waist down and feeling somewhat uncomforatble but I can't figure out what to do with the blankie. I mean I'm not really cold and I depseratly want to get it right so I decided they must want me to put it on the bed and sit on it so I don't get my 'germs' all over. So here I am sitting on this table buck naked with only a little gown covering my top, I mean it would be considered a belly shirt if that.
So in walks my awesome classy Doctor. And she is not expecting the likes of me. She takes one look at me, stops in mid sentence, turns around and tells me she's going to leave the room and I should put the blanket over my bottom half and cover myself and then she will be back and she will knock first. Oh. oops. Theres no manual for this kind of stuff.
Anyway I now know after having millions of ob/gyn visits that they do not in fact expect you to sit there naked and have a conversation with you. Just cause it doesn't bother me doesn't mean it doesn't bother them. Anyway the rest of my visits were uneventful. Well except the one where they had to give me my Rogaime shot and told me to dip my pants down so they could give me a shot in the hips and I totally drop all my drawers right down to the floor and lean over the table like I'm told. The nurse stands there somewhat nonplussed for a minute and then has me pull them back up and then SHE just carefully pushed my waistband down a bit to get to my back hip. My luck, Rye was there for that one too and even he was surprised by my actions. I didn't know where she wanted to give me the shot at so I thought I would keep her options open. Whatever.
But if someone ever tells you they want to give you a shot in the bum, they mean the upper bum and you don't, in fact, have to drop your pants all the way to the floor. I mean this is sad isn't it? Talk about being unprepared, I'm sure my mom would have been happy to give advice but at that stage in my life I didn't think I needed her help.
I spent my pregnancy and all subsequent pregnancies hovered over a toilet bowl. I puked all day every day so badly that by the time I was done having kids I had torn a hole in my esophagus from puking so much so hard. I had lost so much weight with my second child that she had intra-uterine growth retardation and was born underweight, malnourished, and with a almost completely dead placenta. I not only puked my guts out all day every day with NO BREAK EVER, it would last about 6 months. So pregnancy was NOT a joyful, fun, enlightening, or awesome thing in anyway. I enjoyed month 7 and 8 a little as I was pretty happy to be done barfing. But by then I was getting so big (except with Skye) that I was having pretty bad back pain to the point where I couldn't sleep. My brother in law called me a belly on legs. I was so underweight in all the other areas of my body and weak. Since my first baby was almost 9 pounds and my third baby was induced 10 days before my due date for measuring too large and she came in at almost 10 pound. I was prone to large babies and therefore large bellies and I didn't have a large, nice big birthing frame like I so deserved.
So I was miserable during pregnancy and as I got more children I had to take care of during this time it because a horrible, stressful time of our life that greatly affected my family. Most days I could barely get off the couch to take care of my children. I feel like I really missed out on the beauty and joys of pregnancy. And I never had great labors either. After being so overdue with Sage (my first) my Dr tried everything to get me to go into labor. She started by stripping my membranes (don't ask) and then she gave me a cervical suppository guaranteed to put me into labor. That didn't work so she gave me petocin in an IV. That didn't do it, so they eventually had to MAX me out on petocin (which made my body go into one non stop contraction) and break my water before they finally could get me into labor. I was in so much pain at this point that they started drugging me which did not help the pain and most especially did not help my state of mind. For those of you who read about Vegas you know what Im talking about.
Home births and midwives were not all the rage then, at all, even though we did live by Boulder. Nowadays its the trendy thing to do but that wasn't an option at that time. I didn't have a birth plan either as I just planned on hopefully having a baby. We almost got kicked out of our Lamaze class for not only laughing when were weren't supposed too but because I put on my practice birth plan that I planned on having a baby. Period. We actually got 'in trouble' in our lamaze class more than once but seriously these people are HILARIOUS at how serious they take it all. I was smart enough to know that no matter what my 'plan' was as I was sitting in a comfy air conditioned room months from my due date, it would likely all go out the window as soon as I went in labor. And I was right. Breathing didn't help, meditating didn't help, balls didn't help, massage and water didn't help. I was being split in two (from the maxed out petocin) so after almost 12 hours of horrid labor and I was only at a 3, they decided to give me an epidural.
I mean honestly most women walk into the hospital dilated to a 3. I walked in to the hospital at o everything. 0 dilated, 0 effaced and never having experienced so much as a braxton hicks. And I was way overdue. I guess my body figured it fought so hard for 6 months to keep that baby in that it wasn't letting it go. I come by this naturally, my mother and my little sister all have this same problem. Our bodies REFUSE to go into labor. Looking back though I am thankful as I know I would have gone a very long time over my due date and Sage had already swallowed meconium form being over late and was very dry (also from late and not good) and she was a pretty big first baby coming in at almost 9 pounds.
So after finally getting an epidural, my body relaxed enough that I went to sleep and my body went into labor. Finally. My epidural was so amazing that they woke me up close to midnight to push and I thought they were waking me up for breakfast. I pushed her out in 11 minutes and it was the easiest part of my whole pregnancy. In fact it was the only thing I was good at . In our video of sages first minutes we just hear the nurse telling her over and over and over how her mom was "such a good pusher" "the best pusher she's ever seen." I mean we have to mute the video when we watch it its so ridiculous. But I get handed my baby and I look at her and am so shocked by all the white goo all over her (also from being overdue and dry) and her smashed nose (from being in birth canal too long) and long long pitch black hair and dark purple skin, that I want the Dr to put her back and bring out the cute chubby baby with pink healthy skin that we see in the movies. As I'm looking at this baby that is surprising the socks off me, my world starts spinning. All of the sudden every monitor in the place goes off and nurses are rushing in and there is panic. The last thing I remember before I went to another world is that they flung Sage at Rye and sent him off into a corner of the room. I will never forget the stricken panicked look on his face. it was the last thing I saw and its ingrained.
To make this sad and awful part that I never talk about, a little shorter I will just say that I started hemorrhaging and my placenta did not detach from my body, called placenta accrete, and all kinds of things that are never supposed to happen (like less than 1% of the time I was told later) that I won't get into here. As several doctors and nurses worked frantically over me, Rye said he sat there and had no idea what to do with this baby. She was breathing weird (just gunk in her throat) and he didn't know what to do with a newborn or how to even hold her. She was screaming and crying and as far as he's concerned based on the reactions around him, I am currently dying. But thankfully for modern medicine and a quick doctor I made it through it with no ill effects, well except a persisting long lasting case of anemia from severe blood loss. I was very light headed and dizzy and disoriented for a few days and could quite figure out what to do with this baby. To this day we don't know where she came from. She had JET black hair and dark skin. I'm sure no one thought she was Ryes but she was. And now she's as fair skinned and light haired as the rest of us, so Im not sure what happened there. IN fact when my mother came in the room and saw her for the first time she thought we had the wrong baby!
Then I was sent home and warned that because a resident had done my epidural (his first one ever) he had poked through too far and gave me a lumbar puncture into the dura mater of the spine, also called a wet tap. When they told me this I was in the middle of a horrific contraction so could have cared less if they punctured my lung. But by the time I left the hospital I sure enough cared by gum. I had started a spinal headache because the spinal fluid had all drained out of the base of my skull due to the hole in my dura mater, or something like that. It was horrific, beyond horrific, the only thing that brought relief was laying down so that your skull wasnt pressing on your spinal column so much. So I was trying to nurse for the first time while laying down and when I would get up to go to the bathroom, the pain i would feel from a horrid bladder infection (from the catheter) and the headache combined would almost cause me to pass out.
Finally it was determined that I would need a blood patch so back into triage I go. They want to drug me as its painful but I was a natural mother back before it was cool and said no way. I didn't want any drugs going into my breast milk and how bad could it be after labor anyway. They informed me there would be a lot of pressure and pain as they filled this hole in my spine up. No problem is what Im thinking. I already have a giant headache the likes of which i can't even describe, a very acute bladder infection, very engorged, and not to mention the soreness from having a almost 9 pound first baby. I got this.
Well turns out, I didn't really have this. They have to draw over 20 ccs of your own blood out of your arm and almost simultaneously be putting it back into this hole in your spine before it will clot. Well they couldn't get the blood out fast enough before it would clot so they had to keep redoing it over and over. So this very painful but quick procedure turned into a very long painful procedure that ended up involving a lot more than 20 ccs of blood. At one point I was silently crying so hard that I think Rye almost passed out. The doctor doing it felt so bad as he said they have never done this on anyone without either anesthesia or major narcotics. I was thankful for his sympathy as it was pretty horrible. I would have gladly had them rip another baby out of me before I do that again.
Then I was sent home and warned that because a resident had done my epidural (his first one ever) he had poked through too far and gave me a lumbar puncture into the dura mater of the spine, also called a wet tap. When they told me this I was in the middle of a horrific contraction so could have cared less if they punctured my lung. But by the time I left the hospital I sure enough cared by gum. I had started a spinal headache because the spinal fluid had all drained out of the base of my skull due to the hole in my dura mater, or something like that. It was horrific, beyond horrific, the only thing that brought relief was laying down so that your skull wasnt pressing on your spinal column so much. So I was trying to nurse for the first time while laying down and when I would get up to go to the bathroom, the pain i would feel from a horrid bladder infection (from the catheter) and the headache combined would almost cause me to pass out.
Finally it was determined that I would need a blood patch so back into triage I go. They want to drug me as its painful but I was a natural mother back before it was cool and said no way. I didn't want any drugs going into my breast milk and how bad could it be after labor anyway. They informed me there would be a lot of pressure and pain as they filled this hole in my spine up. No problem is what Im thinking. I already have a giant headache the likes of which i can't even describe, a very acute bladder infection, very engorged, and not to mention the soreness from having a almost 9 pound first baby. I got this.
Well turns out, I didn't really have this. They have to draw over 20 ccs of your own blood out of your arm and almost simultaneously be putting it back into this hole in your spine before it will clot. Well they couldn't get the blood out fast enough before it would clot so they had to keep redoing it over and over. So this very painful but quick procedure turned into a very long painful procedure that ended up involving a lot more than 20 ccs of blood. At one point I was silently crying so hard that I think Rye almost passed out. The doctor doing it felt so bad as he said they have never done this on anyone without either anesthesia or major narcotics. I was thankful for his sympathy as it was pretty horrible. I would have gladly had them rip another baby out of me before I do that again.
So in a nutshell (okay a big nut) I was not the dewey eyed, peaceful looking madonna we see in pictures. I was one big huge gigantic mess from the time I got pregnant until I walked out of that hospital. With every one of my kids. Every birth story was crazy and weird and totally different than the one before it. I didnt even know what to think about my baby, she was a little stranger to me. My bond grew over those first few days and at the end of week one my love was so strong and so cemented that nothing will ever break it down. But it wasn't an instant thing for me. Course I was drugged, hemorrhaged, exhausted from almost 2 days of labor, and very very overwhelmed.
I know everyone would tell me now that all the complications were from the epidural. I don't know. Maybe so. But I couldn't have done it without one. In fact my body, even after 4 kids, has never had even one natural contraction that I was aware of. I did not have Braxton Hicks and it was always impossible to get me into labor. So I don't know what a natural contraction feels like. I've heard its a lot different. My strong brave little sister decided to have her third child at home and she said it was a totally different experience. She said natural contractions are better than induced ones. They still don't feel great.
But I don't know if I would ever be a good candidate for home birth. Sage had so many issue already with being overdue including meconium in her lungs that they had to work long and hard at to get it all out. Skye had IUGR so bad that I was making weekly trips to Missoula to see a specialist. She was born at 6 pounds and we know based on my other babies sizes how small that really was for me. They actually showed me the placenta and half of it was black. My body simply could not provide for her, I was so sick for so long. And since I couldn't keep liquid down I had the lowest amniotic fluid you can get which also greatly affects the baby. I also had her completely natural without any pain help. And since I was also on the maximum dosage of Petocin they can give you, I was pretty traumatized by it. The problem with having so much petocin is that your body goes into one long contraction sand there is no break between them. This is majorly going against nature and is hard on the mother and the baby. I would not recommend it. But its all that would work, they had to take her due to low amniotic fluid and a placenta that was failing to thrive. So I was left again with no options. I took one look at that tiny black placenta and I was pretty relieved they got her out of me into a better environment.
Siena might have been my only candidate for a natural birth. I had no real problems during that pregnancy except that I started measuring too big. They induced me 10 days early because of that and also I had very very high level of amniotic fluid (I just couldnt get it right) and she was large, but healthy. I insisted on an epidural with her but they gave me a walking one and then had it 'wear' out for the pushing part. Well thank you for that. She was actually pretty hard to get out, not due to her size but her GIGANTIC head which measured over the 100 percentile. Thank you Siena for that. I went from contractions to transition so fast (in 3 minutes) that they couldn't get the mid wife who lived 5 minutes away, back in time. She had left briefly to take a shower.
So they wheeled all the babies in the nursery into my room so all the nurses on staff could be in there to help. Then they called the ER doctor on call in and as the nurses are garbing him up, he's beyond excited because he hasn't delivered a baby since med school over 20 years ago. He actually asks the nurse "Do we still do episiotomies?" So here I am trying to have painful labor and I have 3 crying infants in their bassinets, 4 nurses, and 1 inexperienced Doctor all hanging out with me in my crowded little room. yay me. I have never been so thankful to see my midwife. She made it in the nick of time, soaking wet and dripping water from her hair (she said she never even toweled off) I had had her with Skye and I trusted her. Not only do they not give episiotomies anymore but Ive never even had anything more than a tiny minute little tear in any of my labors so I was ever so grateful that the ER doctor did not have a chance to wield his knife. Sorry men if you are reading this, this is WAY more than you needed to know. You were warned though. I decided walking epidurals were worthless and I was going to go back to Denver and have any more babies I ever had, there.
And yet I was still a fan of epdiruals. I sometimes wonder if I knew then what I know now, if it all who have panned out differently. Would I have let nature takes its course? Would I have regretted it? Is that why I missed out on the experiences other mothers had with pregnancy and delivery? Im a big fan of au natural but would it have worked with all my issues? I guess I will never know. I never did drugs, alcohol, smoking or anything in my pregnancies that could have contributed to problems. I was just sick. Very very sick. One thing I know, if I would have went au natural with Shay, we both would have died. I ended up having full placenta previa with him. Not partial. Full. This is also rare and very dangerous. This is what the women in the old times died of in labor and there was nothing doctors could do as they couldn't diagnose it before hand. This is what freaks me out about home births and home midwives. They usually don't do late stage ultrasound and would never know until too late. It did not show up in my 20 week US as full placenta previa and I had no other signs or symptoms anything was wrong, no bleeding (which always surprised them) Placenta Precia means the plaenta covers the cervix which means that the baby would not get out in time(or at all since placenta is in way) before he would die and I would eventually bleed out from massive blood loss. I had to spend my entire pregnancy 7 minutes from a hospital, I had to go into the hospital every other day for monitoring and he was taken early via C section as they could not chance that I would have even one labor contraction or it could rupture the placenta. It was serious.
So its been food for thought. We are plastered with so much info and data and media on all these amazing successful home births or completely natural ones and I feel somewhat gyped, did I just approach it all wrong? I did take care of myself in pregnancy as well as I could, I tried to eat natural and healthy but mostly I just couldn't keep a lot of it down. I missed out on being the madonna I always wanted to be. I spent my pregnancies and labors so exhausted, cranky, nauseous, underfed, undernourished, stressed, and confused that the whole process was just a disaster. It was always worth it though and theres no doubt in my mind that my entire purpose on this earth was to be a mother. It has fulfilled me in every way possible and Im happy to say that I dedicated everything to them.
I wonder if home births or all natural births are for the women who puke only a couple times a week, the women who have braxton hicks contractions all the time, the women who dilate to 3 or 4 for weeks before hand, the women who can eat and eat and keep all their food down, the women who love pregnancy, the women who can go into natural labor sometime within a few weeks of their due date. The women who have normal sized babies that aren't over due and over dry and full of mecomium. But yet when you tell all these amazing mothers (and they ARE amazing, they are my heroes) that you did it in the hospital with full drugs and were induced at every one, they look down their nose at you and make a little sigh of dismay in the back of their throat. I actually had one mom really give it to me for not doing right by my kid for allowing them to DRUG me while in labor. What? She actually told me all mothers would be willing to go through a little pain for the well being of their baby. I had narrow hips and posterior babies along with a tilted cervix which caused painful back labor which is a thing, trust me, and I was always in every one of my labors, except my C section, on the maximum dosage of petocin. My dr informed me that very rarely do they have to do that as most women just stripping their membrane or giving them just a tish of petocin will send them off. We are all just doing our best here, we are not super heroes and we are working with what we've been given. Lets give each other a break and be each others biggest supporters instead of biggest opponents. Is there anything as strong as motherhood to bring us all together and have each others back?!
Granted I live in an area of the country where there is currently more unvaccinated kids than vaccinated, montana has more home births than almost anywhere else in the US, and most people like to hug trees. Im not saying I disagree with any of those things, but you can see why I get some flack around here! Im not trying to make excuses or even say I had unusually bad labors. Ive heard enough labor stories to know that theres a million out there way way way worse than any of mine. (although Ive left a lot of the more personal things out.your welcome) Im trying to explain why some of us choose to do it this way. And why we can never look down our noses at someone for what they choose to do or how they choose to live because we almost NEVER know the whole story. I would never look down on home births, I admire them greatly and think these women are amazing in every way and I wish more than anything I could have had one. My little sister had a home birth recently and she had a very large baby, OVER 10 pounds, and she rocked it. In every way. I am so proud of her and think she is so amazing and brave. I admire and respect what she does and wish I had known half then of what she knows now. I guess Im just not the kind of mother that can sit back at let nature take its course, although it was never ever my decision to be induced and was always a last resort used for medical emergencies. But still.
So lets not judge on natural versus not natural. We all have our reasons and I have no idea if I would have ever survived those pregnancies with home births. I did use certified midwives on all but Sage, but they are basically a doctor as far as what they have access too and they deliver at the hospital so its the best of both worlds really. This post got too serious and contemplative and now Im just getting irritated with it so I better sign off for now and regroup my thoughts. Im not sure where I was even going with it anymore.
I have had doctors, midwives, epidurals, no epidurals, drugs, no drugs, placenta previa, placenta accreta, D and C's, long labors, short labors, IUGR, hypermesis gravaderium, 3 normal labors, 2 emergency C sections, paper thin uterus, etc, and you know what? Its all good, and it was all more than worth it! The end result was always the same, a beautiful happy healthy baby for me to remove my whole world around. And thats all that matters. Seriously.
I have had doctors, midwives, epidurals, no epidurals, drugs, no drugs, placenta previa, placenta accreta, D and C's, long labors, short labors, IUGR, hypermesis gravaderium, 3 normal labors, 2 emergency C sections, paper thin uterus, etc, and you know what? Its all good, and it was all more than worth it! The end result was always the same, a beautiful happy healthy baby for me to remove my whole world around. And thats all that matters. Seriously.
