Ina May Gaskin once said, "Whenever and however you give birth, your experience will impact your emotions, your mind, your body and your spirit for the rest of your life". I believe this is true. I had my first child eight years ago and I am only now sitting down to write his birth story. But, the truth is I remember everything so clearly that it could have been yesterday.
Getting Pregnant
Allan's birth was not planned, in fact he was one of the biggest surprises of our lives. I remember, telling my husband "I think I'm pregnant". I had taken two pregnancy tests already both were positive but I wanted to go to the store and get the test that would say pregnant or not pregnant on it. So silly, thinking back on it, but at the time I really needed that absolute yes or no. We went through the line and the cashier said "congratulations!" with a big smile on her face. My eyes got big, thinking, "are you crazy lady! I'm scared out of my pants!" Whelp, it was positive with a big pregnant right across the top.
Next step, find a doctor. I went with the first person that had an opening because honestly, I was still in denial about being pregnant. After all, "I have been taking birth control this whole time", I thought. Ryan and I went in and I took yet another pregnancy test, the nurse asked me when my last period was and I had no idea. I still don't keep track today, guess I never learned my lesson. The nurse said, "well your test is positive but that doesn't necessarily mean anything so let's do an ultrasound to see for sure." Some cold jell on my tummy, and sure enough there he was, not a tiny little bean like we were expecting, but a twelve week old baby his heart beating loud and strong! Ryan was in awe, "Look there he is!" I'm pretty sure I felt sick, how in the world did I miss being pregnant for this long.
What can I say, Ryan and I had a lot going on that year. In the span of four months we had our wedding, traveled to Texas to see my grandparent, because they weren't able to come to our wedding, traveled to Virginia for my best friend's wedding where I was the matron of honor, we were also in the middle of buying our first home, and we were both working full time. Guess I'll give myself a little grace on missing my whole first trimester, since I wasn't showing at all and I thought birth control stopped you from getting pregnant. lol
Pregnancy
After the initial shock of finding out I was pregnant wore off, and I began to accept that we now had a baby to take care of, I was all business. I began to think about how I wanted to give birth. My mother had given birth three times at a birthing center in California and my aunt had all three of her babies at home. Well, if they could do it I could do it. I started to look into birthing centers here in Nevada but was sad to find they had all closed down in the 90's. My husband and I weren't quite ready for a home birth, so I went with my sister's OB that had delivered her twin boys two years ago. He was nice enough, but he did let it slip that we were having boy without me asking or my husband there at the time.
Ryan and I moved into our first home in January 2016. We found a two bedroom two bathroom condo with vaulted ceilings and big windows to let in lots of natural light. I quickly went into nesting mode starting with the nursery. Our baby boy was due in March, so we were running against the clock to have our home ready. I love that I still have these before and after pictures of his room.
Once the stress of moving and settling in wore off, I started to think again about how I wanted to give birth. I had decided to stick with my OB and I knew I wanted to go unmedicated. Spontaneous labor, with no epidural, and no interventions. I had been talking with my co-workers, and really any woman that had given birth, and for some reason they all wanted to tell me their horror story. How things went wrong, and how I was crazy for wanting to go without an epidural. One mom I talked to however, told me a different story. She told me how she had gone without an epidural with both of her children, that it was easy. "You can do it, you'll be fine, it's really easy, my doula helped me a lot too." She said, encouraging me. That's when I found out what a doula was and that I wanted one.
I interviewed two doulas and decided to go with Cherish. She was a student doula at the time with two children of her own. I had Ryan watch birthing videos with me, we did a tour of the hospital we would be going to and took one of the hospital natural birthing classes, to my surprise the nurse teaching it was wonderful. She had given birth to all six of her children unmedicated. Cherish gave us some homework as well. I was feeling ready and confident in my body to birth this baby. Now, all we had to do was wait.
Birth
It was March 16th 2016 when I went into labor. I was 40 weeks exactly. I was working at Whole Foods at the time, and had spent almost my whole eight hour shift doing go-backs, at my request. I was determined to walk this baby out. I remember, coming home and making pizza for dinner. I was annoyed because I burnt the bottom pretty bad so it wasn't super tasty. We went to bed, I was feeling exhausted.
Around 10pm, contractions woke me up. I worked through them, sleeping in between till I had to get out of bed and into the bath tub for some relief. I texted Cherish my doula to let her know. About 2am we headed into the hospital. Contractions were intense by this point, and I made Ryan leave the car at the front entrance to the hospital, so he could help me walk in. He left the car running, the keys still dangling from the ignition, guess he was a little nervous. They admitted us quickly, I was dilated to a five and progressing quickly. Cherish called, "Is that your car out front? want me to park it?" Oh man, yes, and thank you. Once she got to our room, she suggested I sit on the toilet, and I'm super happy she did. The toilet ended up being my favorite place. I wanted nothing to do with the labor ball and standing at this point felt way too hard. There were three nurses in and out of our room, the charge nurse, a traveling nurse, and a regular labor and delivery nurse. The travel nurse was great, she had a southern accent and had seen unmedicated birth lots of times. She was very helpful encouraging me with her southern drawl.
I was quickly at a seven, then my water broke, then I was a ten! Before I knew it, they were telling me to push. It's at this part of my story, that I wish thing had gone a bit differently. I wish I had known then what I know now, I wish I had advocated for myself better. But, we can only learn from our mistakes, and move forward. Pushing was hard and kind of a blur. I was on my back, not what I had planned. I remember, the travel nurse saying that I really shouldn't be pushing right now. I remember, the regular labor and delivery nurse telling me to stop pushing for whatever reason, only to have the charge nurse tell her off, "you can't tell a natural picante not to push!". I remember, the two baby nurses chatting about their day in the background. I remember, the doctor coming in and offering to do an episiotomy to speed things up. "I don't think that's what she wants" the charge nurse said. Thank you, charge nurse for speaking up for me. I remember, Cherish whispering in my ear, "only push if you feel like you need to". It was her soft voice that I cleaned to, push after push. After three hours of pushing, our little guy was born at 9am. What sweet relief to have my baby in my arms.
Postpartum
The baby nurse thought he had swallowed some meconium so, due to an over precaution in my opinion, they put him in the NICU. They pumped his stomach and took a chest x-ray. The doctor though he saw something in his chest, but later said that the x-ray machine was faulty and it ended up being nothing. Poor Allan was moved to the NICU for three days and Ryan and I went to our postpartum room. Ryan's family dropped off some food for us. I had requested mushroom barley soup from Whole Foods, and oh man, I pretty sure it was the best soup I had ever had!
I insisted the NICU nurses not give Allan any bottles, so I could breastfeed him myself. Every three hours I walked from postpartum to the NICU. Sometimes the nurses would call my room if he was hungry earlier. It was a hard and frustrating experience to tell you the truth. After the first day, Ryan and I had the impression that Allan really shouldn't be in the NICU at all. One nurse even telling us "I don't understand why he's in here, he's a big boy full term, and he's breathing fine." She said this while she was removing all the tubes he had stuck in him. She was obviously irritated at the whole situation. I felt the same way. On the second day, Ryan and I were supposed to be discharged. I hated the idea of leaving the hospital without my baby. Thankfully, we were able to negotiate one more night's stay in our postpartum room. Finally, after three days in the NICU, Allan was discharged on March 20th 2016 and we took our baby boy home.
I was pushed out of the hospital in a wheelchair, Allan fast asleep in his car seat. People waving and saying congratulations as we made our way out the sliding front doors, to freedom. I remember, Ryan securing the car seat in the back as I slid onto the seat next to our baby. All I felt in that moment was relief. Relief, to be going back home to our own bed, our own kitchen, and to be able to show Allan his room. I took a deep breath and started to cry silently. Ryan reached back and took my hand, "Let's go home" he said. We drove out of the parking lot leaving the hospital behind us, moving into our new adventure as Mom and Dad.
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