Birth Story, Part One

Disclaimer: This is a pretty detailed account of my experience giving birth to my first (and currently only) child. It is intended for those who are interested in birth stories and/or people who care about me and my family and don't mind references to my own anatomical correctness. The following includes words like "cervical ripening," "fluid," and "catheter." You have been warned. Placenta.

I didn't have a birth plan, per se. I had a birth idea; I had a way I would pretty please like labor to go. I wanted to be unmedicated, but I wanted it to feel pleasant. I wanted to be able to hold and feed my baby right away, for as long as possible, but I wanted to be able to immediately sleep for 12 hours. I wanted to be able walk/waddle around, but I wanted to be able to forget I had feet.

But you and the Internet know -- this sort of thing never goes according to plan. So I constructed a vague mental "birth outline":

• Have a healthy baby.
• Love the crap out of that baby (then clean up the crap and repeat).
• Don't beat yourself up about it.

And anything else would just be a bonus anecdote.

So here's my bonus anecdote.

I was going to have a hospital birth, at the hospital where I was born. I didn't have any great love for my OBGYN office but didn't realize how dissatisfied I was until it was too late to get to know another group of people, so ultimately we were like, "Whatevs, it's just our first pregnancy!"

I was also sure we would take some sort of childbirth and parenting classes, but the weeks flew by, and home and work projects came up that we didn't anticipate, so by the time I was 36 weeks pregnant, we were like, "Whatevs, it's just our first childbirth!"

I spent the last month of the pregnancy meditating on an exercise ball in front of streaming videos of natural child births. I counted that as "prepared."

I had tested positive for group b strep at my 35-week check-up, which meant I would have to be on drip antibiotics for the duration of the labor. This was an element I couldn't control, so I focused on the things I could control, like YouTube playlists of doulas answering questions.

My son was due (oh, by the way, I was pregnant. With a boy!) on June 1st, my mother's birthday. And June 1st was a great day  -- Dunkin Donuts accidentally made two of my latte, my mom turned old -- but the baby didn't come.

The next day, at my final prenatal appointment, the midwife checked me out and said, "Well, you're one day overdue and your blood pressure's mildly elevated. We should induce you tomorrow night."

I was heartbroken. I had wanted to go into childbirth naturally and was convinced that she was being overcautious. But I couldn't really argue with the midwife. I was a day overdue, and my blood pressure was mildly elevated. So I thought of my primary aim --

• Have a healthy baby.

-- and agreed to the induction.

This is how the induction was supposed to go: I go to the hospital in the evening and they give me a Cervidil -- a vaginally inserted "cervical ripening" agent -- after which I get to sleep a full night in my cozy Craftmatic hospital bed. I wake up refreshed, with a now-well-dilated cervix, and they start me on a Pitocin drip to kick-start my contractions. After, say, a couple of hours of very rewarding effort -- during which several fun-loving nurse-types poke their heads in to ask if I'm "laboring hard or hardly laboring, ha ha" -- I push once and an angel baby eases out of me, gazes into my eyes, and says, "Mama."

I of course would prefer to go into labor on my own, but the explanation of the induction sounded pretty good and still met all my bullet points.

So I went to the hospital on Tuesday evening after a day of bed rest. I got in my PROPERTY OF KENNESTONE HOSPITAL gown and complimentary (and complementary!) yellow socks, and the nurse once again explained what was going to happen and then inserted the Cervidil.

Now the Cervidil is a vaguely parasitic-looking strip/tampon/acid tab full of some chemical that makes your cervix open up. And when inserted it feels like your vagina is biting on one of those plastic things you chomp on when you get dental x-rays (Wikipedia tells me these are called "bitewings," which is pretty rad).

Then the nurses hooked up my IV drip, strapped on the baby heart monitor, plugged me into ALL THE MACHINES, and turned out the light and wished me good night.

I settled in. We had movies (Labor Day [ha ha.*] and 12 Years a Slave, for some reason) and the Internet. It was 10 o'clock, and Perfect Hero Husband pulled out his laptop so we could stream the latest episode of Fargo. I could tell right away it was going to be a great episode -- that Lester Nygaard says the darnedest things!

And then, at 10:15 pm, I had a contraction.

I'd been having Braxton Hicks (i.e., pretend) contractions for weeks, but this one felt different. Hurty. Real.

And five minutes later I had another one. And then, five minutes later, another.

Now you're considered to be pretty well into the swing of things once your contractions are five minutes apart. And the closer they get, the sooner the baby is coming. I didn't get the nurse, though, because they'd just started, and I was watching my stories.

Four minutes later I had another contraction.

Three minutes later another.

There were five minutes left in the episode when my water broke (incidentally, and not trying to give any spoilers, but it happened to be the moment we see one of the characters pregnant for the first time). We decided to close the laptop and invite the nurses in.

~Side note -- I was not prepared for how much "water" "breaks" and how long it comes out of you. For hours I had a fresh warm burst of amniotic fluid escaping me with each contraction.~

The nurses confirmed I was in labor and took out the Cervidil. I was psyched, genuinely. I had gone into labor on my own, I thought. I wouldn't have to get Pitocin for my contractions, I thought. I was already well into labor and this was going to fly by, I thought.

I labored (literally, lolololol) under these delusions for hours.


TO BE CONTINUED... dun. duh dun.



*I have recently learned that Labor Day is not an appropriate movie for someone actively giving birth. Or someone eventually giving birth. Or someone who recently gave birth. Or someone who was born.