Nealy's Journal

Birth of a journal
For scheduling reasons, I'm going to have to miss my beloved Parent-Baby class this afternoon, and the topic was to be "Birth Experiences." I really hate to miss out on hearing all those birth stories, and I hate to miss out on talking about my own. Accordingly, I'll start off my livejournal by talking about my birth experience.
Starting pretty early in my pregnancy, I knew that I wanted to have one of those glowing natural birth experiences, full of struggle and pain and love and achievement. I studied the Bradley Method and read the Sears attachment-parenting books, and hired a doula to help me reach my goal. I did my pelvic tilts and kegels religiously.
I went into labor nine days past my due date, and I walked and drank tea and rocked and ate yogurt. At the end of a long day of this, I called the midwife to ask her advice. She prescribed a sleep aid and a narcotic pain reliever. I went and picked them up, but couldn't bring myself to take them. How could I subject my little baby to drugs when we hadn't met yet? So I dozed between contractions in the armchair in my living room. Over night, I lost my mucus plug, but the contractions didn't seem to progress. They were still about nine minutes apart and manageable, as long as I didn't lie down.
In the morning the midwife called and asked me to meet her at the hospital for a labor check. I got out of the armchair, got dressed, and went to the hospital, feeling very proud of myself. I was in labor! I was going to meet my baby today! The midwife arrived and examined me. She said I had dilated to 4 centimeters and was almost completely effaced. The baby was tolerating labor admirably, she said, but he was quite large and my pelvis quite small. She was a little concerned that I might not be able to deliver him. I told her I thought I was having back labor, but she said she would be able to tell by watching me. Posterior babies, she said, hurt much more than my labor did. She said to call her when my contractions got to five minutes apart.
I went home and sat around, exhausted. Finally, by about 3 pm, we determined that I was having contractions every 5 minutes. James called the midwife and she said to call her when I felt ready to come in. At about 6 o'clock the contractions got much more intense, so James called our doula, Wendy, who came over to help him support me. It was fairly intense, but I was coping well. After a while my water broke with a big contraction, and we noticed that the fluid was a little greenish, so we called the midwife and went to the hospital.
I was admitted, and the nurse checked me. I was still at 4 cm, but now my cervix would stretch all the way to 7. I labored in the tub and leaning on the elevated birthing bed alternately for a while. Finally, several hours later, the midwife arrived. She checked me and I was still at 4 cm. All the wind went out of my metaphorical sails.
Deb (the midwife) said I needed pitocin to augment my contractions, and I asked if I could try walking the halls first. She said that was fine, and went to take a much-needed nap while I did so.
The walking did the trick, at least as far as augmenting my contractions. No one suggested pitocin after that. I walked and screamed in my labor room for about two hours before James finally couldn't take it anymore. He asked the nurse to call Deb. She arrived quickly and checked me. I had dilated to a 5 in the intervening two hours. Deb didn't seem happy with this. She said she didn't think I'd get past an 8 because of the baby's head size.
James wanted me to just have a cesarean at this point, because he couldn't stand listening to the pain noises. Deb seemed agreeable, but I wasn't ready to give up. I agonized for a few minutes and decided to ask for the anesthesiologist. I'd been up for 48 hours and I wasn't progressing well. I'd heard that sometimes an epidural block would relax the muscles enough to allow progress when none had been possible before. Everyone but me (and maybe Wendy, who probably knew I wasn't thrilled about it) seemed perfectly happy with this decision. Deb put in my IV herself. I'm terrified of needles, but getting stuck in the arm was nothing compared to my contractions. After a while, the anesthesiologist arrived and started the epidural. Everyone but the nurse went off to take a nap for a while.
About half an hour later the nurse checked me. I had dilated to a 6. The epidural was working. I continued to dilate rapidly, and when the doctor came to check me to determine whether I needed the cesarean, I was complete.
A well-rested midwife, Mary, arrived and took over to supervise the pushing phase. I started at 9 am. Mary said I was doing exceptionally well, especially in light of how long I'd been awake. After an hour, the baby had descended to +1 station. I kept pushing for another hour, and then Mary realized that the baby was posterior. This was discouraging, because I had been pushing in lots of positions and still he hadn't turned. She tried all sorts of techniques to turn him by hand, but it didn't work. She called the backup doctor to request that she try turning him with a vacuum extractor. The doctor wouldn't agree, because she said my water had broken too long ago. She said she would be down to talk to me about a c-section shortly. At this point, I lost all my drive to keep trying. Maybe it's true that there was no chance for me to deliver the baby vaginally by that point, but if there was a chance, I lost it because I felt hopeless and wouldn't try anything new. The doctor arrived half an hour later. I reluctantly agreed to the c-section, and Thales was born, healthy and large and posterior, in the operating room at 1:13 in the afternoon.
Now, why am I still not OK with this birth? I feel that there are things I could have done better. I should have taken the pills the midwife prescribed on the first night. I wouldn't have been so exhausted then. I didn't walk enough on the second day. Maybe that would have gotten me further. And, although it worked, I'm sad that I decided to take an epidural when I was only at 5 centimeters. Maybe I would have progressed well anyway without it. Maybe the baby would have finally turned if I could have stayed up and walking. Maybe then I wouldn't have needed a surgical delivery. (Maybe the outcome would have been worse, but I doubt it. The only worse thing possible would have been for the baby to go into distress.) Now I'll never know. I'm sure I could have taken the pain, severe as it was, but I wish I had been able to prove it to myself. I remember that before I took the drugs I kept thinking "if this gets any worse I won't be able to take it," but then it would get worse and I could take it.
So what can I learn from this experience? I can hope the universe will send me a smaller baby next time, and I can work even harder at preventing a posterior baby. I can remember that I need to surround myself, if at all possible, with positive people, and not respond to any negativity that I do experience. I really think the outcome might have been better if I hadn't responded so strongly to Deb's (and James') well-meaning but negative feelings about my labor. I trusted her and she made me feel discouraged. A lot of people will say that I'm blaming myself for a negative experience that wasn't my fault, but I do really think there are things I can do better next time. In a sense I am blaming myself for some aspects. However, I don't really think I was a bad or weak person for the decisions I made. Not everything about my labor was within my control, but next time I'll have a different perspective on it. Different things will be important to me, and I will know much more about what to expect and how to handle it.