Our son Nathan was born in March, and since then I haven't thought too much about my birth experience. But I do want to remember it, not only for when my own children ask me some day, but also so I can reflect on what I want for my next birth. In many ways, birthing is out of our control, but I think being prepared helps make the best decisions in the moment. So here is my story.
In November 2001, my high school tennis team played Daniel High School in the playoffs. I played number three singles that year and had a long, three-set match. Sometime in the second set, I got terrible cramps in both my legs. I could hardly stand, let alone run around, and I fell several times. But it was the playoffs, so I just kept playing. Unfortunately, I lost the match and had a hard time walking for the next several days. It was the worst pain I had ever felt in my life, and I can still feel it when I think about it or see someone on TV playing with leg cramps.
Late in my pregnancy, I did not understand how giving birth could be worse than that pain.
We did not take any classes in preparation for our labor. We contacted the local Bradley teacher, but the classes were going to be held on Sunday nights and we usually go to church. I didn't necessarily feel like a hospital class or any other class would educate me in the labor I wanted, so I just read a couple books recommended by like-minded, natural childbirth friends: The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth and Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way. I also bought Gus Husband-Coached Childbirth by the Dr. Bradley himself for Christmas, but school and other things kept him from reading that one. It wasn't a big deal though, as Natural Childbirth more than prepared him to be a great coach.
I knew that a hospital birth wasn't exactly my preference (though at that point, it was not based on experience), but we decided that, for this birth, we would go with a midwife at a hospital. We wrote our birth plan sometime in the last trimester indicating our desires for a natural, drug-free, intervention-free labor so that it would be in our file for each of the midwives to see at my last several prenatal appointments. I wasn't sure how seriously our plan would be considered once I was checked into the hospital, but I knew it couldn't hurt. If nothing else, writing a birth plan helped me think through decisions before I was confronted with them during labor.
After work on Monday, March 1, Gus and I went to walk at the mall hoping to get some contractions going. It worked, though they were very mild and probably about seven or eight minutes apart. They continued the rest of the evening, and I anticipated waking up sometime in the night with stronger ones. At 3 a.m., I woke up and couldn't sleep anymore because they were starting to get pretty uncomfortable. The midwives had told us to go to the hospital when contractions were 2 minutes long every five minutes for two hours. From around 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., my contractions were 2 minutes long and every five minutes. I wanted to wait a little while longer before going to the hospital, though. And then my next few contractions were only a minute and a half long, six minutes apart, then a minute long and seven minutes apart...until they seemed to fizzle out altogether.
I made the mistake of calling my family that morning to tell them I was in labor, and they immediately drove down to Columbia. They hung out at the mall until around 2 when we went with my parents to walk at Target. We walked around the store about 10 times before I was in too much pain to walk anymore. But my contractions had started again, and this time much stronger. I had a doctor's appointment at 4, and by the time we got to the appointment, my contractions were 3 to 4 minutes apart, and starting to be very painful; I had to sit and catch my breath during each one.
At the appointment, the ultrasound technician said the baby was very low, and she spent about five minutes banging on my contracting stomach trying to get him to move in order to make a weight estimate. He never moved, and she finally gave up and estimated an 8 pound baby. We then met with the midwife, who told us I was dilated 6 cm. and to go directly to check in to the hospital. I checked in at 5, and we thought we would be able to watch Lost with Baby at 9...
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