OK, folks. Now that my birth story has been laid out for all of you to see, it's time to address some of the questions you posed before I was admitted to the hospital. Because I have delusions of self-importance, and also because I like to babble incessantly about my female parts, I'll break up the answers into a series of posts and scatter them throughout the next couple of weeks. At this point, Kara will be hitting her first birthday and I'll STILL be philosophizing about her birth. How boring am I?
Don't answer that.
Let's get started.
Was it easier or harder than you imagined?
Nothing like easing into things, eh? This is actually a hard one to answer, because really, it was both. It was harder than I imagined for a lot of reasons. I always pictured myself going into labor on my own without any trouble, and that didn't prove true for me. Kara went a week past her due date, it took a Pitocin drip for my contractions to finally reach a consistent pattern, and even after a full day of labor, I still ended up with a c-section. For a gal who once contemplated giving birth in her own home without the assistance of pain meds, things definitely didn’t go as expected.
On the other hand, it was also easier. I was able to handle my induction quite well for the first half of the day, I felt wonderfully cared for by my nurses, Luke was by my side the entire time, keeping me focused and calming me down when I was unable to cope, and Molly and Samantha pampered my feet with Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion. Plus, most importantly, being in the thick of things made it truly real that this baby was coming. I was in the hospital, wearing those crappy gowns that never cover you completely, epidural in place. This experience couldn’t end any other way, and when times got really tough, that was the thought that made it all bearable.
I’d like to know if the nurse that put your IV in poked the area that she had just placed your IV and then had the audacity to ask if that hurt. Mine sure did!
My nurse actually did a decent job; the biggest surprise was that she placed it above my wrist instead of on my hand, which is how it was done back in October when I went to the hospital worrying about pre-term labor.
Now that you’ve had your baby in the hospital, will you be more receptive or less receptive to my pro-homebirth brainwashing?
This question comes from Katie, a longtime reader of my personal blog who, in case you couldn’t tell, isn’t a cheerleader for the medical profession, at least when it comes to childbirth. Sorry to disappoint you, Katie, but I was quite satisfied with my birth experience. Read on to learn why.
Did you feel prepared to deviate from your birth plan as needed? Did you feel supported by your medical team? And okay, did you poop?
First things first: The whole poop issue actually turned out to be a non-issue, seeing as I never even reached the pushing stage of labor. And because I don’t see myself being brave enough to attempt a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) with any future children I bring into the world, I’ll never worry about it again. Score one for surgery.
Second, the birth plan. I’m so glad I had a birth plan. It was a simple one, really, and mostly consisted of things that were already hospital procedure, but as a person who makes her living as a writer and thrives on list-making, it was important to put down on paper what aspects of labor, delivery, and recovery meant the most to me—or at least, what meant the most to me at the time. Keeping that list down to just a handful of bullet points helped me not sweat about the small stuff, and when things didn’t go as planned (i.e., “No interventions unless medically necessary, i.e., Pitocin”—ha!), it felt good to know that at least my plan was a starting point.
I don’t know why birth plans get such a bad rap. We go through our whole lives preparing for best-case scenarios and re-adjusting when things deviate from our expectations. Does that mean we shouldn’t plan for anything, shouldn’t hope for anything? If you ask me, that’s a pretty pessimistic way to live.
So really, the problem isn’t the birth plan, it’s the attitude of the person writing the birth plan. During one of my later prenatal visits, my doctor once mentioned a woman who wrote a SIX-PAGE birth plan, filled with stuff like the temperature of the room and how often she’d be checked and how she did NOT want a c-section. Good God, the thing should’ve been copyrighted and displayed in the window of a Barnes and Noble. Do you think everything went according to her control-freak novel? No, it didn’t.
At first glance, it may seem like a lot of things in my birth plan didn’t come to fruition. I had a Pitocin drip and IV fluids from the very beginning, and I had continuous fetal monitoring. However, when you see that the phrase “unless medically necessary” is attached to almost all of them instead of “not at all,” you’ll see that actually, everything went according to plan. I didn’t want Pitocin unless it was medically necessary. Was it medically necessary? Since my doctor and I were both in agreement about induction, and since Pitocin makes inductions possible, yes. It wasn’t my first choice, but in the end, it was still what I wanted. You could say the same thing about my c-section except it wasn’t in my birth plan. I tried to include things that would reduce my chances of needing a c-section, but I knew if I needed one, I’d have to get one. No wiggle room there.
And you know what? I don’t regret that, either. My biggest fear was having something done to me that I didn’t understand. I was afraid of having a labor progress slowly but normally and a doctor who wasn’t patient enough to wait it out. But that’s not what happened to me. We’d given a vaginal birth the best shot we could, and Kara still wasn’t budging. Once I agreed to the c-section, I was freaked out and sad and scared, but I knew it was in my and the baby’s best interest, so at least I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I was doing the right thing. It’s not something I give much thought to these days. I’m ready to move on.
Some things that we thought we wanted didn’t happen. With all the hullabaloo in the OR, Luke didn’t cut the umbilical cord. He probably could have, but he totally forgot to ask. Does he care now? No.
And yet other things went right according to plan. I wore my contacts during labor and nursed Kara as soon as we were wheeled into recovery. Luke was with her when I couldn’t be. And nobody offered the baby pacifiers, sugar water, or formula. All in all, my birth plan kicked ass.
Pardon the French.
More tomorrow.
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Excerpted from Parental Discretion Advised, originally published on Parents.com. Copyright 2008 by Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
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