the birth story

I’ve spent all day trying to write about this, but all I managed was three pages of why it happened. The truth is that this is a story of the scariest, most painful and violating thing that has ever happened to me. I’m ashamed of it, I still feel guilty about it, and I don’t want to be judged for it. I don’t want to be admonished or told what to do next time. Trust me, I know. I know now. I’ve learned what not to do, what to do differently next time, and I just need expiation. I have a few demons that need two dimensional-izing, to be pulled apart and rewoven into a quiet little story, a story like a grave. This is a nasty one, one that makes me sometimes still so angry that my heart drops into my gut and my fists quiver. I used to be unable to sleep with the rage of it, I couldn’t shower without getting lost in it; that time is past, now, and it’s time to lay it to rest. Or waken it. Shake it, air it out, and bury it. So, here it goes: the birth story.

First of all, my labor was induced. I hadn’t wanted to induce; in fact, towards the end I hated my doctor and wanted a midwife. At one point I thought I had the strength and energy to drop the doctor and get a midwife. In the end, I was just too tired to. Too many weeks of false labor, false starts, false hopes, and I just didn’t trust my instincts, even though I knew I should. They finally convinced me that it was in Devon’s best interest to induce her labor, and the sooner the better because they predicted that she already weighed 8 lbs via the ultrasound.

I didn’t just go in meekly and let them do what they wanted, though. I figured I had a fair shot at still doing the labor naturally, the way I wanted. I thought that no one could make me do anything I didn’t agree to, and I would just pick and chose which interventions I’d allow.

This was my fatal flaw.

I agreed to let them give me a cervical softener, and pitocin the next day if (and only if) I wasn’t already in labor. This part I wasn’t even sure of; I decided I might just leave if I wasn’t in labor by the morning. The first nurse I had was very understanding, and she gave me a portable fetal monitor so that I didn’t have to labor in the bed, even though hospital policy required that I have one on. So I dragged the monitor and the IV pole around with me as I paced the triage floor, feeling absurd in my hospital gown with my procession of anxious medical gadgets.

I still don’t know if I was in labor or not that night; all I know is that it kept up the whole night through, although it wasn’t consistent, and it hurt so much I couldn’t sleep. When I was checked the next morning I hadn’t dilated much, and so we moved on to the next round of battles.

The first thing the new nurse did was try to break my water and put in an internal fetal monitor that required I be bedridden. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but I knew I couldn’t handle a pitocin induced labor with my water broken while laying in a bed. I basically told her to go to hell, in as nice a way as an exhausted fat ass pregnant woman can after weeks of false labor and haggling with a bitchy doctor. She clarified several times that I refused to have my water broken and that I only wanted the pitocin if I wasn’t already in labor, and told me she’d tell the doctor. Several hours passed and my labor, false or not, went on slowly, getting more painful.

Then the doctor walked in, my doctor, with the nurse. She said, “We’re putting in a fetal monitor�. I asked her if it would hurt the baby. Neither I, nor Jon, nor my mother realized what she was doing, what she was saying. She said no, I said okay.

I didn’t realize what the bitch had pulled until the amniotic fluid hit the bed like a flood and splashed onto the floor. I sat there, stiff with rage and shock, knees up, legs spread, feeling the water gush out of me. Tricked. Miserably drenched, the plug pulled on my baby’s precious home. Knowing that I was trapped, that if this baby didn’t come out in 24 hours they’d cut her out because my womb had been opened, violated. Sensing her fear as the water ran out of her world, scared for her, too; feeling so fat and dumb and weak to have allowed this to happen, and so utterly shocked that these sick people had come into this room, stuck something inside me and ripped open something so intimate and precious, while knowing that I had refused multiple times to have this done…

I lay there like a dumb cow as they rolled me from side to side like a corpse. I said, you have no right. I said, I’m a person, this is my body, you have no right. This is one of the most important moments for me in my whole life and it’s just a night at work for you and you have no right. The nurse told me to cough. Childlike, I only glared at her. The doctor told me to cough. I snorted. The whole thing became unreal, it got hard to breathe. They rolled me around like a corpse in water.

I said, what you just did to me felt like rape. She seemed stunned, said, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I’m sorry you feel that way. I said, I need to be left alone. I need to calm down. I need to decide what to do. Please don’t give me the pitocin right now; give me time to calm down.

My mother and Jon rushed over to the bedside as soon as the doctor left. I started crying before the nurse left the room, sobbing like the baby would, the baby in my leaking womb, and holding my mom’s hand in a way I hadn’t since I was a very small child. Jon sat at the foot of the bed and sobbed into his hands. I’m sorry, you, he said. Our miracle turned into a nightmare.

The labor began to hurt a whole hell of a lot more. Each contraction felt like I was dragging my naked ass across dry concrete. There was lots of blood and the amniotic fluid kept leaking out every time I moved. I got up to pee and the goddamned internal fetal monitor fell out. They never put it back in.

For several hours I dragged through a harsh labor, trying to muster my wits to face the incomprehensible task of deciding what to do. The nurse kept trying to get me to lay down in the bed, but it hurt 1,000 times more to labor laying down. She was short and mean to me, tugging on the monitors, trying to find my contractions, the baby’s heartbeat. According to the monitor I wasn’t in labor and the baby was dead.

My baby didn’t need to be born to a bunch of sad eyes. I knew there was no way I could get a grip emotionally while going through the kind of pain I was in, nor was there a way to deal with the pain while being as emotional and unfocused as I was. I decided to have an epidural so that I could greet my child with a smile. I also agreed to take the pitocin, just to get it the hell over with.

The epidural was scary. I had to hunch there in the posture of the defeated and take it from behind. Immediately, though, I felt a hell of a lot better. I wanted to marry the anesthesiologist. Even when the itching started, and a thousand fleet footed ants started running under my skin, even when they put the catheter in, and I had to lay down and wait on nurses to roll me over, I felt better. The power of the epidural.

The pitocin didn’t seem to be working. Every half hour or so the nurse came and increased it. My contractions were measuring as little weenie ones, even though I could still feel them in a distant sort of way and see my stomach tightening and rising. I knew they were strong ones, and was glad as hell for the numbness, even though the nurses seemed to think that nothing was happening.

I’d been feeling nauseous for a while. Then the pain started again. I couldn’t feel the contractions, but there were millions of mean little needles eating away at my perineum. There was an incredible, methodical, painful pressure. I grabbed onto the rail of the bed and started houting. I sent Jon for help. They sent the anesthesiologist again.

They gave me more without checking my dilation. The pain only got worse, although I lost my ability to move one of my legs. I pulled up onto my side using the bedrail and lifted my other leg as much as I could. I looked down and saw blood squirting out of me. Jon and my mom took turns coaching and trying to find someone to help. I did everything I could to keep from pushing; I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think, except for: don’t push yet. And, is this really happening to me?

The nurse came in, grumbling about how I’d just gotten more of the epidural. She watched me hooing and houting there, my knuckles going white on the bedrail, and asked if I was really in that much pain. She checked me. I was 8 cm dilated. They went to find a doctor.
I pushed for thirty, forty minutes. My mom held one leg, Jon held the other. Harsh, bright lights glared down at me. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I yelled while I did it. I smelled shit. The whole thing seemed interminable, surreal. I mustered as much force with each push because I had become convinced in the last month of pregnancy that this baby would never come out, and I wanted to make sure that she did-- and soon. The doctor told me to look down and push even harder. Jon said, I can see her head!

And then she pulled a baby out of me, a red, wide eyed, incomprehensibly beautiful baby girl. I was shocked. I started yanking off my gown and all the green medical crap laid out all over me. The doctor told me to stop, that she was laying the baby there. Stupidly, I let some other woman dictate the first time I greeted my child. I had planned on ripping my clothes off and hugging her to me to feed her. Instead, she was wrapped in some dumb hospital blanket and rested on my knee.

We stayed the next two days in the hospital. Within 24 hours of her life they’d made me give her formula, within 48 she was exclusively formula-fed. I was treated like I was ignorant and incapable.

I was glad to go home.

If you are pregnant and reading this, make sure you trust your doctor now. Make sure that you aren’t in a position to have to defend yourself on your labor day because you will be surprised how fatigue and pain can break your courage, your will. You don’t want to remember your first labor experience and the first few moments with your child with shame, anger, and regret.