Mine.
One of the first things we talked about with our midwives was the fact that the movies sensationalize what happens when a woman goes into labor. That whole “Uh oh, my water broke in the middle of this restaurant, guess I’m going to have the baby here” isn’t really how it goes. In fact, only 10% of women actually have their water break before labor begins. So — imagine my surprise when I woke up, 6am on the morning before my due date and found out I was 1 in 10. My first thought? Denial. It wasn’t exactly like the floodgates had opened, and even if it was “it” I knew a few more hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt. So I went back to bed, and by the time I woke up again at 9am, I was sure enough to give Jesse the news.
My goal for that morning was to do everything in my power to get contractions going in earnest. One of the downsides of water breaking before labor is that after 24 hours, the risk of infection skyrockets. Hitting that 24 hour mark would also mean I would have to deliver in the hospital instead of the birthing center like we had planned. Let me tell you, the list of reasons you would have to get transferred from birthing center care to the hospital is looooong. Most of my pregnancy I just crossed my fingers that the baby would “behave” enough that we could stick to our plan to avoid the hospital at all costs. We didn’t have an official birth plan per-say (it was recommended to me to stay flexible) but I was very attached to the idea of delivering at the birthing center. By the time the big day came, she had passed all the tests with flying colors and everything was looking good to go.
I bounced on that yoga ball like it was my JOB. Jesse took a special trip into town for Black Kohosh and castor oil, which we were hoping we wouldn’t have to use at all. We let our parents know what was going on but kept it to ourselves otherwise, since we knew it could be awhile before we had any actual news to report. As the morning hours flew by, the weather grew worse. By the time Jesse was home from work that afternoon, we decided it was best to head down to my mom’s (45 minutes away) and labor there so we wouldn’t be traveling such a long distance during a snow storm.
As we approached the evening hours contraction-free, the midwife encouraged me to pull out all the stops…including the dreaded castor oil. As controversial as the use of castor oil can be, I was willing to try anything to move things along. Contractions finally started around 5pm — 12 hours after my water broke. The pain and frequency slowly increased throughout the evening, and around 11:30 I woke Jesse up and let him know we should probably get ready to head to the birthing center. After we gathered all of our things, something told me we needed to wait a little bit longer. We were supposed to do the majority of laboring at home, and my contractions and pain level weren’t quite where I thought they should be. We decided to go back to bed and see if we could squeeze in a few more Zs before the main event.
Suddenly, I snapped my eyes open and looked at my phone — it was 5:50am. My contractions had disappeared and we had slept through the night. I called the midwife and let her know the contractions had stopped, and the tone of her response made my heart sink. At 7:30am, we went into the birthing center and the midwife delivered the news — I was only 1.5cm dilated, and we had done all we could do to get the ball rolling naturally. We went over all the options, and it became clear that the best thing for me and baby was to go to the hospital and get started on a Pitocin drip. Under normal circumstances the midwife would have just come with us, but because of Covid I was only allowed one additional person in the birthing room, and that had to be Jesse. After 9 months of working with our amazing midwives at the birthing center and preparing myself for an unmedicated delivery, the idea that I would be delivering in a hospital with strangers was completely heartbreaking. I cried beneath my mask as the midwife and my husband looked at me with glassy eyes. This isn’t what anyone wanted or expected.
When we pulled up to the hospital and it was time to go inside, I broke down again. I just couldn’t believe it had come to this. Even though I knew it was a possibility, the chances of it happening were so low that I hadn’t really thought about what it would actually be like. Thankfully my husband has a knack for knowing just what to say in times of crisis. He reminded me that even though it wasn’t what we had planned, the people in that hospital were invested in bringing our baby girl into the world safely, and that’s what mattered at the end of it all. So I sucked it up and decided to ride the wave instead of fight it.
Within an hour I was checked in and hooked up to an IV. They would be increasing the Pitocin every half hour until my contractions were actually doing some work, and until then our only job was to sit back and relax. Once we were settled and got our family caught up on what was happening, we managed to be in pretty good spirits. One way or another, we would be meeting our little girl soon.
Every single nurse we had in L&D was perfectly suited for what we needed at the time. Our first nurse who got us all checked in and settled was Lindsey — bubbly, high-spirited and had 3 kids at home, one 7-months old. Her positive attitude and understanding that we didn’t necessarily want to be there made it easy to keep our spirits high as we got used to the idea of the new plan. After that was Angie, who was soft-spoken, kind and ever-so-patient with Jesse as he asked a million questions about the Pitocin and all the other doohickies I was hooked up to. Then came Paige, the only one whose real name I actually remember. If someone had been like “We don’t have anyone here by that name, you’ve been by yourself this whole time.” I would have had no trouble believing that she was an angel. Paige’s shift started around 3pm (35 hours after my water broke) right before my contractions started to get serious. She taught us some pressure points and different methods for working through the pain. She rubbed my feet and my shoulders. She brought me gatorade, ice chips and jello to help ease my empty stomach. When I finally broke down and cried from the pain, she encouraged me and told me I was doing a great job. Her voice was like honey, and she gently squeezed my hand when she spoke to me. I will never forget how kind she was and how homey she made that hospital feel. I was sad that her shift didn’t last through the rest of delivery, but our next and final nurse was also the perfect one for the job.
At some point my contractions crossed the line into level 10 pain territory, and the timeline of the rest of the evening gets a little fuzzy for me. Jesse and I prayed together. I crunched those ice chips the best I could. We paced the room with my IV in tow and did all the pressure point work that Paige had taught us. My dilation hadn’t been checked since 7:30 that morning because they were concerned about infection, but I had reached a pivotal point in my laboring. I needed to know how much longer I had. If I was 8 or 9 centimeters I knew I could stick it out, but I was starting to get concerned that I wouldn’t have enough gas in the tank to get us over the finish line. I screamed and thrashed as the doctor checked me, only to find out that all that work (over 35 hours since my water broke and 12 hours on Pitocin) had only gotten me to a 4. The doctor was fairly sure that my water hadn’t broken all the way (yeah, that’s a thing) and that’s why my contractions had started and stopped. He could break the sac manually, but didn’t think I could handle the pain considering how I had reacted to the dilation check.
The way I remember this next part of the story is like in the movies, when someone passes out and then wakes up to everyone hovering above their head in a circle. It took my husband, doctor and our new nurse Kiersten to convince me it was time. She was a get-er-done type of gal, and I’m pretty sure she said something along the lines of “Let’s do this!” when she came on shift. I had told them all to not ask me about pain medication — I knew from the second I found out I was pregnant that I wanted to have a natural birth. But in the most gentle way possible, my doctor said “I know you asked us not to ask you about this but…we need to have this conversation.”
He asked me what my hang ups were about pain medication, and I surprised myself with my honest answer: I felt like I had something to prove. To who? Not to Jesse, I knew he didn’t care either way as long as baby and I were safe and healthy. Not to the medical team, they were wholehearted supporters. And if I was honest, not even to myself — my tolerance for physical pain isn’t something I hang my hat on. It dawned on me that I felt like I needed to prove it to other women that I could give birth without medication. Once I heard myself say it out loud, I realized how ridiculous it was. There is not one woman in my life who's opinion I care about that would fault me for “giving in” to the epidural when I was in so much pain. The way my doctor put it, is that comparing my situation to other women who gave birth naturally isn’t even comparing apples to oranges, it’s comparing apples to rocks. By that point I had been in labor for over 36 hours, and the Pitocin had brought my pain to a level of intensity I never would have reached with a natural birth. It was too much pain for too long, plain and simple. So I made peace with it, and when I agreed everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Hands down, the worst part of my hospital experience was the epidural. I hadn't researched it ahead of time because it wasn’t even on the table before, so suddenly I was feeling very uninformed and had no idea what to expect. I laid on my side and Jesse held both of my hands in his as the epidural technician maneuvered a needle into my spine. The needle itself didn’t hurt, but three (level 10) contractions passed by before they got it in all the way and somehow I was expected to hold still through all of it. I felt moderate relief instantly and the pain dwindled with each of the following contractions. I let myself take a deep breath and relief washed over me from head to toe. Then, much to my horror, the pain started to creep back in and was eventually full strength again. The epidural hadn’t worked. So, we had to do the whole thing again. Apparently. this was the scariest point for Jesse, because my blood pressure dropped for the first time since we were admitted and my life was completely at the mercy of our medical team.
Shortly after, my nurse said “Did you feel that?” to which I replied, “Did I feel what?” and everyone let out a little cheer! The second epidural had worked, and I felt true relief for the first time in over a day. At that point, my only job was to try to sleep and let my body do its thing. I drifted in and out of sleep as people came to check on me periodically over the next few hours. At some point during that time my amniotic membrane had ruptured all the way, which brought with it the final surge of hormones my body needed to finish dilating. Soon after I was at a 7, and things were finally starting to progress beyond a snail’s pace.
Around hour 41, Kiersten came in to change out my catheter and casually says, “Well then, looks like you’re ready to go. Your daughter has brown hair!” and just like that, it was time to push. The word I chose to describe the next bit might be surprising: Peaceful. Jesse laughs whenever I say this because it was anything BUT peaceful for him, but I was in the zone. I could feel things happening enough to participate in the pushing, but I experienced zero pain. Within 12 minutes, our Belle girl took her first breath at 11:58pm on her due date.
I’m pretty sure that Belle’s arrival going exactly 0% as planned was my first lesson in parenthood. I’m proud of the way that Jesse and I pivoted to the new plan, and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t change anything about the way she came into the world. I know I will face more situations in her life that don’t necessarily fit into my box of what I thought they should be, and I will try to remember to look back on the way things turned out with her birth and be reminded that things can work out regardless of “the plan.” — often even better than I could have dreamt. For now, you can find me knee-deep in diapers, full belly laughs as her sweet and silly personality shines through more each day, and a new perspective that is forcing me to grow and grow and grow.
To say our lives have changed since her arrival would be the understatement of the century. This first year of motherhood has been a wild ride, undoubtedly featuring my lowest lows and highest highs. But the common thread that ties it all together? We love this little girl more than I ever could have anticipated. Everyone told us that’s how it would be, but experiencing it for myself has been the greatest joy of my whole life. I started writing this when she was 4 months old, and soon we’ll celebrate her first birthday. I’ve been learning to flow along a new type of timeline, filled with extra heaps of grace and patience. Most things happen on Belle time these days, and my own clock has slowly but surely begun to keep pace with hers. The three of us are a team. A pack. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that I couldn’t have handpicked two humans more perfectly suited to be mine.