Category: Birth & Postpartum Reflections

Fair warning: some details below may be TMI for some readers. It is a birth story though, people. And it’s not that graphic.

38 Weeks & Feeling…Not So Fine

As I was getting close to the end of my pregnancy, I was trying to find positive birth stories to read online. 

A kind of terror develops at the end of pregnancy, or at least it does for some of us.

One poster on a Reddit thread referred to the feeling as feeling like she was waiting for her own execution.

That’s a little rough, but otherwise describes it pretty well.

Birth is such an unknown, and it can truly be a life or death event for you and/or the baby.

Some people like to say things like, “millions of women have done it,” or, “your body was made for this.” 

But many women have not survived it. Let’s not sugarcoat that.

It can be dangerous. Full stop. And my heart truly, genuinely goes out to anyone who has experienced any kind of loss related to pregnancy, birth, postpartum and beyond. 

And while many moments of the saga I’m about to relate are humorous, I just want to pause first and acknowledge the above.

The Search for Something Neutral to Read

There seemed to be two kinds of birth stories widely available online:

1. The horror stories
2. The ones where women claim to have done it all naturally without so much as a twinge of pain, and maybe even orgasmed or whatever.

Look, if you are one of those incredible unicorns who had the latter experience, I’m happy for you. 

But I just really wanted to read some regular stories. 

And my birth story turned out to be pretty regular, after all, for which I’m so unbelievably grateful.  I’m going to share it here. 

The Pressure Increases

I went for one of my regularly scheduled appointments on a Monday during, I think, the 38th week. My husband had just started a new job, and I had quit my job back in December and was trying to make up for the lost income with grocery delivery driving. 

Things were a mess, but it was a relief not to have to play nice office girl at the end of my pregnancy.

Anyway, at my appointment, my blood pressure reading was a tad high, and for some reason it caught my attention that it had been steadily increasing over the last few visits.

I wasn’t yet into dangerous territory, in fact, the nurse referred to it as “your blood pressure is normal, so that’s good,” but I mentioned to my OB/GYN that it had been creeping up over the last few weeks. 

She agreed that it was possibly concerning, and told me to come back the next day for another reading. 

In I went the next day after trying very hard to be ~relaxed~ the night before. 

Side note: I did realize that in the days leading up to this, I had been feeling a certain pressure, almost a rage feeling, in my head while completing my delivery trips. 

I had attributed it to stress, but it was probably the developing hypertension.

Anyway, this time, my blood pressure was higher, and over the threshold. They told me again to come one more time.

If the next reading was again over the threshold, I would need to be induced.

I don’t know why, but that reality didn’t necessarily sink in, and I remained convinced that it was only accumulated stress. This is why I booked a massage for the next day, without consulting my doctor. I don’t recommend this, by the way; it was probably not a smart move.

Life Keeps Happening

That night, before the third appointment, my husband went off to work and I was supposed to go delivery driving. But, I just didn’t feel like it.

I goofed around and took a bath instead. I was chilling in the bath when my husband texted me that his father in Mexico had just had a serious heart attack. 

I was worried of course, and asked him if he wanted to come home early, despite being new on the job.

I also expressed my hope that his father would quickly stabilize, and my husband decided he wanted to continue working.

About ten minutes later he called me crying and said, “my dad is dead,” which still breaks my heart to remember.

I picked him up, and when we got home he closed himself up in the bedroom to watch an old Mexican movie, whose lead actor apparently looked like his dad when he was young.

The next morning, I went for my massage, rattled, but prepared to get properly relaxed before my blood pressure reading. 

Which didn’t work, shocker.

The reading was again over the threshold, and higher than the day before.

The PA who was on duty cheerfully asked me, “are you ready to have the baby today?” 

Despite intellectually knowing this was the possible outcome, I think I yelled “what, today?! NO!”

They scheduled the induction at the hospital, and told me to go home, get my things, take my time, and go back to the hospital. 

I texted my husband the news and then, on the hour drive back home to get him and our things, I was so jittery that I called my dad up and started a political argument. 

Once at home, I just kind of wandered around throwing random things in a bag and lamenting the fact that I did not want to leave home and did not want to leave the cats alone. 

I think at some point I just laid on the couch and scrolled on my phone, and my husband was like “uhhh, aren’t we supposed to be going?”

I definitely was experiencing that off-to-the-gallows feeling and I stretched out the time at home as long as possible. 

When we finally got on the road, I decided I was starving.

We stopped at a Mexican restaurant and I ate a massive plate of nachos.

Spoiler alert: no one warned me how much puking happens during labor. So yeah, you can guess what happened to the nachos.

After that, rush, rush, rush, we get to the hospital, get all checked in, and set up in the room. 

And then….

We wait. And wait. And wait. 

An Unfortunate Surprise (Which Maybe Shouldn’t Have Been a Surprise)

At that point (yes, not before), I started reading about inductions online, and that’s when I learned that an induction can take several days. 

W.T.F.

I think that’s the moment when I just disassociated from the whole thing, more or less, which was very much for the best. 

I received pitocin, and they did the foley balloon thing, and I was totally imprisoned in the bed between the IV, the balloon, and the baby heartbeat monitors. 

So no recommended exercises for me, or bouncing on the ball, or using the fancy labor tub, or any of that. 

The staff told me I was free to do all of it if I wanted…but, how?

That was a fib anyway, because when I took the baby heartbeat monitors off, a nurse came in to ask me “why?” in a scolding tone. 

When I asked to use the shower, suddenly I was not so free to do all of it, though I did ultimately get my shower. It was one of those weird little half-y squat showers as I tried not to get all the various things wet. 

But I digress. 

Obviously, given the events of the night before, my husband and I were in a weird mood. 

He laid on the little plastic couch in the room, and I laid on the supremely uncomfortable bed, and we both pretty much decided that we would not try to be strong. 

I think I even said that to the nurses several times. Like, yes, I’ll take the anti-nausea meds, yes, I’ll probably get the epidural. I’m not feeling tough today and I don’t feel like trying to be strong. 

And yes, I want more juice in the little juice cup.

So began several hours of a quiet, laying-in-bed misery which I fortunately seem to have mostly erased from my memory.

I mean the nurses kept coming in and poking me with various things, and the foley balloon thing sucked, and the blood pressure cuff was too damn tight which is a personal pet peeve / sensory issue that sends me over the edge. 

And I kept throwing up, which again, I never see anybody talk about as something to expect during labor!

I barely slept that night, and I think I complained a lot to my husband about hate, hate, hating the hospital, and wanting to home to my cats.

To add to the tragicomedy, my husband was having a serious flare up of his gastritis and absolutely terrible gas. So, yeah. Every time the nurse left the room, he’d ask, is she gone? And let one rip, and inevitably she’d walk right back in. 

This is the type of thing that would usually make me curl up inside and die from embarrassment, even though hospital staff, of all people, should understand gastric issues.

But like I said, dissociation. Highly recommend it. 

Fortunately we only had to spend one night like that. 

Arrival of the Blood Moon Princess

Whether I’m ascribing too much power to myself or not, for a while the next day I did some visualization exercises, where I imagined swimming up to my baby girl and telling her it’s time to come out, and that I would show her the way, but we had to start moving. 

Maybe it worked, because by evening, the labor seemed to be kicking up. 

It was a full moon that night, and a blood moon.

I ended up getting the epidural, and again, disassociation. I can picture the scene now as if I had been standing in the doorway of the hospital room watching it, even though I was actually sitting on the bed getting a needle stuck in my back.

I don’t really remember what it felt like.

I can tell you that another thing people don’t seem to talk about is that SOMETIMES EPIDURALS DON’T WORK!

Yes, that’s right. Sometimes they straight up don’t work. 

And often they only partially block the pain. 

I had a few minutes or hours, I don’t know, where I wasn’t sure if it was working.

But it showed up for me in the end.

Still, you feel a lot. And when the doctor came in (fortunately my OB/GYN happened to be on rotation) and asked, “are you ready?” I believe I yelled “NO!”, again, and looked at my husband and said, “I don’t want to do this, let’s go home.” 

That seems absurd when I look at my baby daughter today. But that moment is a real Schrodinger’s cat situation. We didn’t know what we were going to find in the box. 

Despite the drama of that moment, the next little while was relatively calm. 

I had a comical tussle with the honestly delightful labor nurse (no sarcasm here; she was great and I do not hold the following against her).

She asked me what I knew about pushing, and I responded something about the various things I read online, about how you are not supposed to strain and when it’s time you want to direct your energy down in a kind of centered, forceful way. 

I’m pretty sure she just blinked at me. I know that she informed me that actually, it should be just like pooping. Basically, she said, you want to strain.

Well, I still think she’s wrong, and I informed her that I for one, don’t poop that way. 

She could tell that I was holding back and not following her directions, so a ridiculous passive aggressive back-and-forth ensued for a minute or two. 

And the room was so, so quiet, and it was incredibly awkward. 

Let’s Get This Party Started

I didn’t end up buying or preparing any of the fancy things that I had read about months before (a birth playlist! fairy lights! aroma therapy!) for the hospital.

But I did have my free Pandora app, the same one that I’ve had for over 10 years now, complete with ads. I put my secret Taylor Swift Pandora station on, and that’s what everybody in the delivery room got to listen to. And it was pretty chill. 

So yeah, dissociation and Taylor Swift. Those are the recommendations.

Given that the epidural worked, and while there was plenty of sensation and sometimes pain, I couldn’t actually feel the movement of the baby.

So as we were getting close to the end, the doctor asked me if I wanted to see how much progress we were making, and told me to put my hand down there. 

I did that, and felt a slimy little baby head covered in hair. 

And it was literally the most alien, foreign sensation. I yelled “oh my god!”, and snatched my hand back. 

A few minutes later my baby girl was out, and promptly pooped on me. My husband cried as she arrived, something for which I will always love him. 

Things Take a Turn

I always hear stories about the moment someone felt they became a mother. 

I don’t think I had that moment.

But as they plopped her on my chest, I do very clearly remember her little purple hand flailing around and I had what I think is a normal human reaction. Like, here is this fragile, delicate creature, and I am responsible for her, and she needs help. 

So I reached out and grasped that tiny purple hand.

She didn’t grasp back. She was crying, and I tried to soothe her.

But the nurses told me that actually we need her to cry more, she’s not crying enough. They started poking at her and whatever else, and the next thing I know, they are taking her off to the NICU for respiratory distress. 

I could give you a play-by-play of the next moments, but I don’t really want to. Suffice to say, everybody got quiet, and it was uncomfortable, though they assured me (in not very convincing tones) that she would be fine and that she had just opened her mouth and gulped fluid on the way out. 

And in this awkward silence, my Pandora station played Pink Pony Club while the doctor sewed up my junk (which fortunately only suffered minor tears). 

And ta-da! That’s the story of how my beautiful girl was born.

Any Conclusions?

A few other notable events occurred, such as a silly argument between my husband and I about ordering a post-birth Pizza Hut pizza, and the fact that our little girl was in the NICU for a few days. 

In the end, though, she was able to go home with us when I was discharged and I did not continue to have blood pressure issues. 

Important PSA: postpartum preeclampsia can happen! That’s something I also didn’t know. 

It wasn’t a magical fun fest, but it was a pretty positive experience in the end.

A lot of people talk about having birth trauma, but blessedly, I don’t feel traumatized by my experience (and yes, I know I am very, very fortunate in that). 

On one hand, luck is responsible for that.

On the other hand, I think it also helped that despite reading natural birthing books months earlier, I ultimately never wrote a birthing plan, never hired a doula, never read about birth complications in great detail though I knew generally what they are, and never got really rigid in my thinking about how I wanted things to go.

I want to stress that I am not knocking any of those things, and I know many people advise the above for good reasons! 

But for me, I think it was better that I didn’t do any of that. 

Finally, I think it was helpful that my husband and I just decided we weren’t going to be tough, and we weren’t going to be brave, and we weren’t going to be strong. 

It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes it’s easier to be all of those things in the appropriate amounts if you just cut yourself some slack. 

Maybe it’s cliched, but the truth is that what I truly feel thinking back on those hectic days is gratitude, gratitude, relief, and gratitude: that we all made it through and got to go home together, to our very confused kitties who were not at all impressed by our new, screaming family member.