Submitted by Dana
I have two children and two stories. I feel like with my first son, I have a “real” story. My due date was December 3rd, 2004 and on November 27th (my mom’s birthday), I went into labor at 7am. I had had contractions before but these were coming regularly and - just as everyone says - I knew this was the real thing. We were very calm and called the doctor who told us to call again when things got more intense.
I just breathed through every contraction and about 10am we called again and she told us to come in to the hospital. I remember that day very fondly. There was pain, of course, but I felt very close to my husband and very excited about the baby that was on the way. I got stuck at 3cm dilated for a few hours so they had me walk the halls of the hospital. Suddenly, my contractions that had been painful but manageable got extremely intense. Very slowly we made it back to the room and found out that I had gotten to 6cm - in an hour! No wonder it hurt. I asked for an epidural and once I got that, I was very comfortable. I felt each contraction but without the intense pain.
Things progressed very easily and nicely from there. Around 9pm, my doctor came into the room and told me it was time to start pushing. It was just me, my husband, a nurse, and the doctor in a lovely birthing suite with Miles Davis playing in the background - a very civilized way to have a baby. After three rounds of pushing, my baby’s heart rate dropped and didn’t immediately recover. My (usually very calm) doctor gave him a beat and jumped up and said, “Time to go to the OR.” I was crestfallen. After a whole day of labor, I was going to have to have a c-section?
We got into the OR and I was hooked back up to all the machinery and we found that he had recovered and all was seeming as it should. I begged her to let me continue to push and she did with the condition if things got scary again, they would do the c-section. So, push I did for the next three hours. I had to stay in the OR for it, so gone was the music and nice lighting and they would not let me have anything to drink - not even ice cubes - in case surgery was necessary. At two hours she told me that it was looking like I wasn’t going to be able to get him out and again, I begged her to let me keep trying. After another hour I was beyond exhausted and scared and was ready to get him out safely.
This is where things got bad. After 18 hours of labor and three hours of pushing, I felt like I was laying under two tons of water - utterly and completely spent - and then I was cut open. When he finally came out, I was literally too exhausted to look at him. My entire body was shaking and I couldn’t even turn my head. It was a dreadful moment. He didn’t do very well at first and my husband tells the story of looking from his blue baby to his cut open wife and wondering if either of us was going to make it - a scary moment. My recovery was very difficult as my body healed from both labor and surgery. Breastfeeding was very challenging because (I think) I didn’t get a chance to try and nurse him right away. They were busy giving me anti-biotics for a high fever, and giving him medication for low blood sugar. But of course, we both made it and he is thriving as he comes up to his fourth birthday.
For my second son, my doctor recommended a planned c-section since I had so much trouble the first time. My first son was only 6lb. 13 oz. when he was born and her feeling was that if I couldn’t get a baby that small out, we were better off just planning surgery. I agreed to get a late-term ultrasound to see how big he looked like he would be and when they guessed over 8 pounds, I agreed to the surgery.
My doctor assured me that my recovery would be much easier with the planned c-section and so we picked his birthday to be February 2nd (which felt really weird to me). That day, we brought my older son to preschool, dropped him off at a friend’s house, and then went to my appointment to have a baby. I hate how antiseptic that all felt but in the end, I had a 7lb. 12oz. baby who was brought to me right after I was sewn up, and nursing turned out to be a breeze. The planned c-section was the right (although difficult) decision for me at the time.
I am very grateful that I got to experience labor, very grateful that I live in a time when babies in trouble can be born safely, but mostly grateful that I have two healthy - and gorgeous - sons. Thanks for letting me tell my story!
