Labor = Empowerment July 16, 2008

I posted something on a blog about labor being an empowering experience, and a bunch of people posted back that they would disagree with the idea that labor is empowering.  Okay, maybe in the throws of it all you don’t feel very empowered, but after its all over with, I don’t understand how you could not feel strong and powerful.

Too many women in this country look at having a baby like taking a crap.  You want to get it out of you as quickly as possible, wipe the icky residue away, and then forget the whole nasty business ever happened.  I don’t understand that outlook, personally.  I thought that the process of bringing a child into the world was pretty kick ass.  Its something I like to talk about, because it was cool.  Yeah, it hurt, and sure, there were some gross parts, but in a nation where we line up to see the latest gore porn sequel every time the masterminds behind Saw decided they’d like a little more money, can we really not handle hearing about a little placenta?  Seriously, people, don’t be such pussies.  I’m as squeemish as the next person, but this isn’t feces, its a child.

So yeah, I’ll say it, I peed myself in transition.  Several times.  I’ll say it, I pooped on the delivery table while pushing.  I’ll say it, some sort of green fluid gushed out of me after they yanked my son out.  And yeah, I’ll say it, I bled like a stuffed pig for six weeks after labor.  Its all part of that kick ass labor experience I had, and I’m very sorry if you didn’t have a kick ass labor experience yourself.

All it takes to have a kick ass labor experience is to participate in your own labor.  You don’t have to do it all natural, with no drugs, like I did.  Natural birth isn’t for everyone.  If you’re the type of person who would rather wake up in bed next to Ted Bundy than to run a mile, natural labor is probably not for you.  If you’re the type of person who cries when you get a paper cut, natural labor is probably not for you.  If you’re the type of person who makes your husband have sex with you through a hole in a sheet with all the lights out so he can’t see your shameful, shameful nakedness, you probably should go ahead and schedule an elective c section.  But whatever kind of person you are, you can still take an active role in your labor and participate fully in the experience, and wind up having a totally empowering birth experience. 

All you have to do is research your pregnancy and labor options fully, and pick the options that are best for you.  Maybe you know you want pain relief, but you’re terrified of needles.  Do a little research, and you’ll be relieved to know that there are many pain relief alternatives to the epidural, such as Demerol (which my aunt says was just great for her first labor, but not enough pain relief for her second).  Or maybe you want to look into sedation methods for when they put in that epidural needle, so that you can just ignore the whole needle ordeal.  Look into your options!  Don’t just lean back and figure the doctor is a professional, so let him decide.  Nobody knows you like you.

Next, write a birth plan and give it to your doctor.  Birth plans are awesome.  They let the doctor and nurses know what kind of person you are, what kind of birth you want, and how best to serve you during your labor.  A lot of women think a birth plan is not necessary if they are not having a natural birth.  WRONG!  Since you researched your options and have picked a specific plan that’s going to be best for the unique and special individual you are, you’re going to want to articulate that to your hospital staff - even if your plan looks like the pretty standard action plan of most OBs (epidural, augmentation with pit).  If we all demanded to be treated like the unique individuals with unique individual needs that we are, that action plan would not be standard.  There would be no standard!  For example, when writing up my birth plan, I seriously considered requesting an IV (totally not standard for an otherwise natural birth).  Why?  Because I like them.  They make me feel super hydrated.  I know I’m crazy.  No, I’m unique.  So are you.  Demand to be treated as such.  (Furthermore, you’ll probably want to specify how you want yourself and your baby treated after birth, otherwise god only knows what they’ll do to you)

Finally, ask questions.  Why? Good question.  Because things change.  You can never have total control over labor, but if something happens and your plans change, you will feel better about everything if you know whats happening and what your options are from there.  Women who report feeling positive about their birth despite emergency cesareans all say that the thing that let them feel so empowered after such a drastic change in plans was getting all the information they could from the doctor so that they were able to participate in the decision process.

Look, all the time you hear people saying that its about the journey, not about the destination.  People apply that cliche to everything, from your career to relationships.  But for whatever reason, we don’t want to apply it to labor and birth?  Come on.  Sure, that baby destination is pretty awesome, but if you don’t participate in the journey to the baby, you’re really missing out on a pretty kick ass thing your body is doing.

Why I want to become a doula July 15, 2008

My pregnancy was totally unplanned.  When I found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I just sat there on the toilet with my pants around my ankles for what seemed like hours, staring at that little plus sign that didn’t even have the decency to wait until I set it down on the counter to show up.  This wasn’t how I imagined I would get pregnant one day.  I felt totally unprepared and out of control.

When I made the decision, a few days later, that I was indeed going to have the baby, I wanted to seize what little bit of control I could.  I immediately started reading on what was going on in my body, in the baby’s body, and what the future held for us both.  I had to know everything.  It became an addiction.

Seven months after having Elijah, nothing has changed.  I still want to learn more about pregnancy, child birth and parenting every day.  Whatever information I encounter I absorb, whether it applies to me or not. I am a member of several pregnancy, child birth and parenting forums where I proceed to disseminate this information in the hopes of helping some woman who isn’t as hopelessly addicted to child bearing knowledge as I am.

I have thought, since having Elijah, about what I could do with this new found passion and knowledge, and the more I try to answer questions and give encouragement, the more it becomes clear.  I should be involved in pregnancy and childbirth as a career, somehow.  Since I don’t see myself becoming a nurse or a doctor, and midwifery probably isn’t in my future either, I did some research on what it takes to become a doula, and decided that very likely was for me.

Really, I felt most inspired by my own doula, and a few encouraging words from her when I wrote to her about my doula ideas was all it took to make me decide for sure that this is what I wanted to do.  I checked out the required reading list for certification and found that I had already read some of the books on the list.  I chose a class to attend (in November) and made an announcement at work.  I’m going to become a doula.

I hope that I can help women have the empowering, awe inspiring birth that my doula helped me to have.  I hope I can satisfy some of my lust for the pregnancy and child birth experience (because I’m just dying to do it all again) by sharing that experience with other women.  I hope I can one day make a descent living at this.  And I hope I will be able to volunteer my services to other single mothers, and maybe empower them a little to not let their situation condemn them and their children.  I hope I can be there for women who need a c section without getting queasy.

Hopefully now my choice doesn’t seem so sudden to everyone.

Book Review: Natural Family Living, The Mothering Magazine Guide to Parenting June 30, 2008

I know I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to.  As we get closer and closer to the Democratic National Convention, my office is getting busier and busier, and I have less free time.  Hopefully the business won’t be lasting too much longer, though.

Today I’d like to tell you all about the book Natural Family Living by Peggy O’Mara, the publisher, editor and owner of Mothering Magazine, and Jane McConnell, former editor in chief and publisher of Women’s Sports and Fitness magazine and associate editor of Mothering Magazine.  I love Mothering Magazine, so I was pretty eager to get this book.  I started reading it when Elijah was about 12 weeks old.  He’s 7 months old now, and I skipped chapters that didn’t apply to me.

Obviously, this book is a monster.  Its the size of a college text book, and is organized like one too.  Also, like a college text book, it is a wealth of strait forward, clearly explained information on Attachment Parenting.  It covers everything from preconception to adolescence, with a forward by Dr. William Sears, the practically worshiped guru of all things Attachment Parenting (in fact, he’s the one who coined the term, Attachment Parenting, in a way he invented it - at least he invented it for industrialized nations, since its the only parenting choice available for indigenous peoples).

First, my complaints with the book.  This book was obviously written for married people who planned their pregnancies.  Yes, I recognize that this is the ideal that we all (allegedly) strive for, but it doesn’t happen to be the common reality.  I don’t think anyone in my entire family planned any of their pregnancies (at least not that they would admit to) and half of them were not married at the time of conception.  I don’t know many people who have.  In fact, when I first announced I was pregnant at work, someone from another office asked me “How long were you trying?” and I replied without thinking “Pssh, who tries to have a baby?” (ooops, apparently she and her husband tried for many years before they got pregnant, awkward).  Maybe its just my world view, but it seems like you’re pretty lucky if you get to plan your pregnancy.  Even married people have oops.  But we are not married.  We are single moms.  Many of us were never married.  This book doesn’t even acknowledge us.

The only thing this book said that seemed to apply to me as a single, never wed mother, was insulting.  On page 6 it says “One study indicates that women involved in stormy relationships run a 237 percent greater risk of bearing a psychologically or physically damaged child.  A pregnant woman needs emotional support, and the baby’s father is often the most important source of that support.”  Gee, thanks.  I guess I was pretty stupid to pay more attention to those dozens of studies that indicate having an abusive, addict father would screw you up, instead of listening to your one study saying fathers were the most important source of emotional support.  Yes, I know they weren’t actually saying that I should have stayed with the drunk bum who knocked me up.  What upsets me is that they don’t say anything about women in my situation.  As if women who inadvertently get involved in “stormy” relationships (because no one does it on purpose) should be ignored, forgotten about, brushed aside to make way for those women who happen to be able to plan their pregnancies with their perfect husbands.  As if its women’s responsibility to fix “stormy” relationships so that she can have a healthy baby.

They could have fixed that problem, that awful impression they gave me, with a very simple mention somewhere in the book that it is better for mother and child to be alone than to be in a destructive relationship.  In fact, the book would do well to recognize those mothers who have never been married, because while the book has whole chapters on divorce and the death of a family member, it has not one mention (unless its in one of those two chapters, because I didn’t read them) of women who either had to leave their partners because they were somehow unfit, women who’s partners abandoned them because they didn’t want the responsibility of a child or women who choose to get pregnant on their own because a descent man hasn’t presented himself to them yet.  The book could do well with an update chapter for women like us, instead of willfully ignoring us and furthering society’s perception that we are somehow unworthy, hopeless and shameful.

Other than that (really, its easy to get past all that scathing stuff I said up there, I promise), the book was great.  I like that it covered issues beyond infancy and toddlerhood, and I particularly appreciated the chapters on discipline, sexuality, public schooling and alternative schooling.  I have a lot of fear about what I’m going to do when Elijah gets bigger and I have to start being a “real mom”.  Of course I’m a real mom now, but with a baby its different.  Babies don’t need to be disciplined or taught, and they’re not really going to remember you.  The interaction is just different now, I don’t know how to explain it.  Anyhow, its not important.

I also enjoyed the chapters on Natural (Drug-Free) Childbirth, even though I had already done it and didn’t really need to read about it, circumcision, even though I already chose not to circumcise my son (and actually, I didn’t really enjoy reading the chapter on circumcision, it really grossed me out, and there were parts I had to skip because I was too squeemish to read them, but it made me feel even better about my choice to leave my son intact) the chapters on healthy eating and alternative medicine, and I really loved Chapter 14, What Makes a Healthy Family.

This book, I have a feeling, is going to be a constant reference for me.  Like I said, I didn’t read every chapter.  I didn’t read the chapters on Homeschooling (since that’s just not an option for me), Handling Divorce (since I’d have to be married first) and Handling Death (I’ll get to it when it happens, if it happens).  I also only skimmed through the chapter on adolescence, since I’m pretty far away from that.  This was a pretty hefty book and by the time I got that far I was just wanting to finish it because I wanted to write a review of it.

In short, despite the despicable neglect of single parent households in this book, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in natural parenting methods, or anyone who just isn’t sure about the stricter, Ferberization methods that are so popular today.  There are many alternatives to the “cry it out” methods.

Updates June 7, 2008

Greetings from St. Louis!  Let me just say, I don’t know what kind of person wants to live in a place with no sidewalks.  I’m just saying.  But more on that later, when I get home.

My sister delivered a healthy baby girl by cesarean (is that correct spelling?  I’m not sure the spell checker knows what its talking about) early Thursday morning.  She is doing really well, for having just gotten a C section.  Her daughter was 7 lbs, 7 oz.  She is a sweetie, but Elijah couldn’t care less.  He didn’t sleep very well during the drive, and he seems exhausted now.  All he wants to do is nurse and sleep.

Anyhow, thought I’d drop a line to let everyone know I’m still alive.  I should be back in Denver on Wednesday, but no promising I’ll be back to blogging.  The non stop drive from Missouri to Colorado is a rough one, and Elijah and I will probably need our sleep.

My sister’s water just broke June 4, 2008

I’m going to be an aunt!

So I’m going to be gone for a week or so. Bye!

I have heart burn like a mo fo June 3, 2008

Is that the proper way to spell mo fo?  Can anyone enlighten me?

Looking back, my first clue that I was pregnant should have been the sudden onset of heart burn.  At first, I had no idea what it was that I was experiencing.  I had never had heart burn before.  When I figured it out, I shrugged and thought “Well, I’m getting older”.  If only I had known what really was causing the heart burn.  Of course, if it were just the pregnancy, why do I still have heart burn now?  Why?

Anyway, my sister just informed us that she lost her mucas plug, so I might be disappearing sometime soon.  She had talked her doctor into scheduling some kind of induction like procedure in which she would be hooked up to some drip (not pitocin, she said, but something) to make her cervix efface in which she’d have to be strapped to a hospital bed for 12 hours, then they’d check her, then she’d wait for another 12 hours, etc.  It sounds not only miserable, but expensive.  Does she have any idea how much a 12 hour hospital stay costs?  And she pays 20% of her medical bills after deductable.  Not a choice I would make when I’m not even a week over due, but thats just me.  Not to mention all the risks of interventions such as this, and how it increases her liklihood of needing further interventions, eventually dramatically increasing her chances of getting a C section.  I worry about all this for her, but its her baby and her body and her choice, so I’ve been trying to be supportive.  She has PUPPP really bad, so I guess I can understand.

Of course, if she just lost her mucas plug, she may go into labor naturally before she gets the chance to be induced, and that would be great for her and the baby.  In the future, I will blog about natural birth and try to do it without sounding like one of those natural birth Nazis.  You can read the story of my natural birth here.

In other news, I’ve been working on finding a cure for Elijah’s seasonal allergies.  Its been a rough few weeks of noses too stuffy to nurse, followed by a few days of realization of common sense.  I needed to dust.  So I spent a good portion of the day yesterday dusting and vacuuming, which has already made a world of difference.  I still need to dust and vacuum my room, which is where Elijah sleeps, but I can already see an improvement in him.  It would be nice to get a HEPA filter vacuum, and even nicer to get rid of carpet all together (since carpet is a breeding ground for dustmites and the best collector of allergens known to man - not to mention a chemical nightmare, off gassing toxins and VOCs like there’s no tomorrow), but until then, I need to make it a point to be extra dilligent about dusting and vacuuming.  It helped my allergies also (after a temporary worsening during the dusting).

I’m looking into buying a bicycle used.  Craigslist seems to have a lot of bikes listed every day, so maybe with my next paycheck…  Also, looks like I can get a trailer for Elijah pretty cheap there too.  And maybe a bike rack for my car.  Yes, I’ll finally be one of those Coloradoans who looks really outdoorsy everywhere they drive.  I don’t want a rack on my roof though, for fuel efficiency reasons (that roof rack adds the most drag, from what I understand), and I certainly wouldn’t be riding around with my bike on my car all the time.  But it would be nice to have, wouldn’t it?

Finally, Indiana Jones and the Search for the Crystal Skull was no where near as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but it beat the hell out of Temple of Doom.  Even if the newest Indiana Jones was way more cheesey and even less realistic than Raiders and Crusade (yes, the newest one was less realistic, even, than the melting faces in Raiders), at least it didn’t have that irritating chick from Temple in it.  It was awesome to see it at the drive in, though, because I could eat a Qdoba burrito and nurse my son through the whole movie.  Bring back the drive in!

 

Green up the purchases you already make tip #4 - Green your drinks May 16, 2008

Okay, this is more of a networking source, and its not really a purchase, but I filed it here anyhow because you will purchase something while participating.   This really makes no sense, but it would if I weren’t backing into it.

Green Drinks

Its a group of people interested in green living who get together for happy hour one day a month all around the world.  You don’t pay for membership or anything, just go to the site and figure out when and where your local chapter is meeting, then show up.  Then you buy drinks.  So see, what I’m writing about isn’t a purchase, but you purchase things when you get there.  See?  Ah, its a stupid point.

Anyhow, here in Denver they meet on the last Thursday of the month at Double Daughters.  I am going to try to be there, but my sister is due to have a baby the day before, and the minute she goes into labor my mom and I are dropping everything we are doing and driving out to Missouri to be with her.  Hopefully we will be there in time for the birth and for a week afterwards.  As you all know, there’s really no way to tell when a baby is going to decide to come, so we could be gone on the last Thursday of this month.  Who knows?

Also, if there are no posts for a week suddenly, now you’ll all know why.

My birth story March 23, 2008

This is my real birth story, complete with all the gorey details.  If you don’t want to know them, don’t read it.  Seriously.

Late Tuesday (Nov 20th) night, or possibly early Wednesday morning, I started having contractions. They weren’t bad, but they were different than any I had had before, and I wondered if perhaps it could be the very beginnings of labor. I was able to sleep between them pretty well, but they were strong enough to wake me when they happened. They seemed to be a good distance apart but I wasn’t paying attention because I was trying to sleep.

When I woke up Wednesday morning I went to the bathroom and found a big clump of bloody mucas on my toilet paper. I knew I had lost my mucas plug, so I started paying attention to how often the contractions were coming, and it seemed to be every 10 to 15 minutes. I already had a doctors appointment scheduled for that morning and was anxious to see if I had made any progress and if the doctor thought I might finally be in labor. When I was last at the doctors on Monday the 19th, my cervix was just barely starting to dilate, not quite a centimeter. This time I was dilated to almost three centimeters, the doctor said, and he predicted that I would have the baby the next day, which was Thanksgiving. I had been afraid the whole pregnancy that I would have the baby on Thanksgiving and miss my mom’s turkey and stuffing, but I was actually very excited when he made his prediction. I knew this Thanksgiving I would have something to be thankful for that I would remember the rest of my life.

As we left my doctors appointment I called my doula and let her know what was going on. We decided that in order to keep things moving along at a good pace, I ought to stay active, but it was awfully cold outside, so we decided to go walk the mall. I had wanted to go bowling, but my little sister who hates bowling was in town and we didn’t want to leave her behind, so we opted for the mall. We walked the mall for a couple of hours and discussed another option for keeping things going that my doula suggested, taking a small dose of castor oil. My mother had taken castor oil when she was pregnant with me and said the only thing it did for her was make her sick out both ends, so I was afraid to do it. But my mother had been instructed to take 8 oz of castor oil alone, while I was instructed to take 2 oz in some juice. I decided to give it a try, and on our way home we stopped and bought some.

When we got home I took the castor oil, which was really gross, and made myself comfortable to watch some movies with my mom and my sister. Occasionally, I would time my contractions, which seemed to be happening between six and ten minutes apart. Soon my sister got the idea that we should go out to a local resteraunt, a 50’s themed diner, for some cheese fries and malts, which sounded great to me, so we went out. While we were there the castor oil kicked in. I felt really icky, and suddenly couldn’t tell the difference between the contractions and the gas pains I was feeling. I had no idea how often the contractions were coming.

As the night went on, I spent an awful lot of time on the toilet, which wasn’t agreeing well with the terrible hemmorhoids I developed while I was pregnant. I kept finding large amounts of mucas on my toilet paper when I went to the bathroom. Eventually I could tell the difference between the contractions and the gas pains because the contractions were getting stronger and the castor oil seemed to be wearing down. My mom was staying up with me to help time my contractions, but they were totally irregular. They were ranging from ten to two minutes apart, lasting from 20 to 90 seconds. She was very worried because her labor with me had been very much the same, and after she had labored 41 hours, my heart stopped beating and she had to get an emergency cesarian. The only sleep I got the whole night was when I managed to fall asleep between contractions while I was in the bathtub. The bathtub was a godsend.

The next day our doula was calling to check in every couple of hours, but there was never anything new to report. My mom decided to go ahead and start making Thanksgiving dinner, joking that if she started making dinner, we would need to go to the hospital soon, but if we didn’t make Thanksgiving dinner, the baby would never come and we would have missed Thanksgiving for nothing. By the time dinner came I was really starting to get frustrated. My contractions were getting worse and worse, and friends were calling and texting me to see what was going on and there was nothing new to report. I felt embarrassed and foolish, like what I was feeling wasn’t legitimate because it wasn’t going anywhere.

After dinner, my doula called to check in again and after describing what was going on she explained that it was beginning to sound as if the baby was posterior. She gave me some exercises to do in the hopes of turning the baby. The first one was to walk up and down stairs sideways. We live in a condo, so the only stairs I had were outside. I bundled up and walked up and down the stairs outside for fifteen minutes, which actually turned out to be quite a workout. The next thing she had me do was lunges with one foot up on a chair. She also had me get on all fours on the floor, stick my butt up in the air and lower my upper half down on the ground, for twenty minutes. This was a very uncomfortable position to sit in, and it was especially bad when I had a contraction, and when I was resting from that position I was supposed to stay on all fours with my back strait, or to lean my front half on my birthing ball.

By 11 things were getting really bad, and I knew that I still had a long way to go. I was getting scared that I would be too tired to deliver my baby if I couldn’t get a little bit of sleep, and I was starting to think that I wouldn’t be able to handle a natural birth. Perhaps I was just too much of a wuss. I had been trying not to think about it for hours, but now I couldn’t stop the thoughts, and I decided that we needed to go to the hospital, and if I hadn’t progressed any further than I was at my doctors appointment the morning before, then I would probably ask for an epidural so that I could get some sleep. I was feeling pretty lousy about my descision, but I was really starting to doubt my ability to handle the pain I was feeling.

While we were driving to the hospital I noticed that my contractions were coming pretty regularly at about 4 minutes apart, so I started to have some hope that maybe the exercises had worked. When we got there and checked in my nurse came in and told me that she had read my birth plan and that she was excited to help me achieve the natural birth I said I wanted. I was feeling guilty then about wanting an epidural, the nurse was very nice and encouraging. I decided I would wait a little bit to see how things went before I made up my mind about the epidural. I mentioned while she was asking me questions about my medical history that I had a feeling of needing to have a bowl movement, but since I had taken the castor oil it was as if my butt hole had gone on strike. She seemed very concerned that perhaps the feeling of needing to poop was actually an urge to push, and she examined me immediately. I wasn’t ready to push, but I was almost 4 cm dilated. That was very encouraging. We called our doula, Brandy, and told her that she should probably come down soon. She asked how soon I thought I wanted her, and I said as soon as she could come, because I thought she would help me to resist getting an epidural.

The details are a little fuzzy as to what happened from that point on, but maybe an hour or two later Brandy got there. She suggested that I get into the Jacuzzi tub, which sounded great to me. The contractions felt so much better when I was in there, and I decided that I wanted to labor in there as much as I could. My mom and Brandy sat in the bathroom with me and my mom held my hand through the contractions. They got more and more intense as time went on, but I seemed to be feeling more and more euphoric between them.

At 7 am our first nurses shift was over and we got a new nurse who was a little bit older and was less receptive of my wishes for a natural birth. She wanted to monitor me a lot more and Brandy had to be much more sneaky about giving me drinks of water. Soon I was found to be 7 cm dilated, and I knew I was then in transition phase. I kept waiting for it to get really bad, but as much as my contractions intensified, I kept getting more and more euphoric. I determined that I was “high on hormones”, it was the only explanation. It wasn’t as though the contractions didn’t hurt, but I was just feeling so good at the same time. It was a strange feeling. I was also very hungry. We had noticed earlier that there was a menu in the room for food you could order in after you had the baby, and I started looking at it deciding what I would order. At one point the nurse hooked me up to the monitoring equipment and went to get the doctor, my mom started eating some trail mix and Brandy was talking about eating some graham crackers. I asked Brandy if she would give me some graham crackers, and she said “Sure!”. Brandy had always been very clear that she believed women should be able to eat whenever and whatever they want while they were in labor, but she did tell me that never before had she known a woman who wanted to eat while they were in transition phase. She gave me one square of graham cracker with some peanut butter on it and right as I was finishing chewing the doctor came in to check me. I was almost busted!

The doctor checked me and said I was 9 cm dilated. She asked me if in order to get things moving along I would like to break my water. I was feeling really good, and I knew that breaking the water could take 45 minutes off the labor time. I figured now was the time to do it, and said “What the hell? Lets do this thing!”

The minute they broke my water things got really intense, and I wasn’t feeling so great anymore. I was crying a lot, and I peed myself several times. I thought I was going to throw up that graham cracker and get Brandy in trouble, but I never did. As hard as that last hour was for me, my mom and Brandy and my sister were right there the whole time. A woman in another room was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it. I could only hear my sister talk about it. I was crying at one point that I wished I had gotten the epidural, but then I said something along the lines of, “No, I guess I don’t really”. I felt very scared on one hand and on the other I felt very safe with my mom there. It sounds silly, but I was so glad I had my mommy with me!

The feeling of needing to poop was overwhelming, so I decided I was going to try to poop right there on the hospital bed, I didn’t care who saw. I became very hot, so I ripped off my hospital gown, and my sister got me cold compresses to put on my head and chest. Then I was very cold, so I threw the compresses off of me. I wanted to get up and walk, but the nurse kept saying she wanted to monitor me for twenty more minutes. Every time I tried to move she said “Just twenty more minutes”. I started crying for the doctor. I knew it had to be soon and I wanted to be checked. The nurse must have left, and then my mom suggested maybe I would like to squat and use the squat bar. That sounded like it would feel much better than the lying on the bed, so I said yes, and Brandy told my mom that she better go ask the nurse for the squat bar because the nurse wouldn’t respond well to her. That was my first realization that the nurse and my doula were having some tension between them.

The next thing I knew the nurse was in the room with her fingers inside me massaging the last lip of my cervix away. Then before I knew it I was pushing. At one point they started disassembling my bed, and they asked me if I wanted to roll over. I don’t know what I was thinking except that maybe they would be sitting me up or that I would get the squat bar soon, but I ended up flat on my back with my legs up in the air. It wasn’t very comfortable, but nothing was at that point. They wheeled a mirror in so I could watch the birth, and as soon as the doctor said “Can you see the head there?” I focused on it and nothing else. At first I couldn’t see the head, but soon I recognized it and when I saw it and could see it slip away when I finished the push I became very motivated to get it out as soon as possible. A few more pushes and soon it wouldn’t slip out of sight when I rested. I pushed harder and harder. I didn’t know when I was having a contraction anymore, it all felt like one giant contraction, so I just pushed whenever I could muster the strength to do so. I felt a terrible burning sensation and I said “I’m tearing!” but Brandy assured me that I was just stretching. I remember thinking “Yeah right, don’t lie to me, I can feel myself tearing” but it turns out I really wasn’t. Soon the little head was all the way out, and I knew all I’d have to push out now was the shoulders and the rest should come slipping out real easy. But when I started pushing for the shoulders the doctor grabbed the baby and just yanked it out of me. It felt like this giant suction cup getting yanked out of me, and at that point I did tear. I don’t remember feeling the tear, but later Brandy said she could tell by the look on my face that I did.

None of that really mattered anymore though. I heard my mom say, “Oh its a little boy” and I was just so amazed that this little baby had actually come out of me. That I had made him. I named him Elijah Eugene, he weighed 9 lbs, 4.5 oz and was 22.75 inches long. I pushed for forty minutes.
Afterwards all the nurses were coming to see me and asking if I really had a natural birth and pushed my baby out in 40 minutes. I guess they don’t see a lot of natural births around there.

Even though things didn’t go exactly as i had hoped towards the end, I am very happy with how the birth of my son went and am so grateful for the experience. It was a miracle, and yet so mundane and normal and natural, and I totally had the spiritual experience I was seeking when I decided to have a natural birth.