When we last left the blog, our heroine was heading into an induced labor clutching a pair of juggling balls, as advised in a non-medicated birth skills book.
Did the juggling balls distract her from contraction pain? I think you know the answer to that. I write this with my two-month-old baby sleeping on my lap and of course I got an epidural.
I feel like every moment of reading about a natural birth was a wasted one, ha. My friends definitely could’ve told me that (and did tell me that).
That day, I told the nurses I was open to an epidural but I wanted to see how the pain went and go from there. They gave some medicine overnight to start labor and it felt like a light period cramp, I was able to sleep. Then the pitocin in the morning made me throw up a couple times. I kept wondering is this a contraction? What about this?
Once I was confident that this was indeed a contraction, I was like “check, please.” All that talk and I tried the natural way for about an hour.
No regrets at all. The fact that they could turn off that feeling is downright miraculous. We watched Reservoir Dogs a few days after the birth and all that gruesomeness made me more uncomfortable than usual, now that I know how painful things can get.
The reason I didn’t want it in the first place was I wanted to try a natural labor where I wasn’t tangled up in wires. But with an induction, I was hooked to all sorts of monitors right from the start so that didn’t really matter. Thank God I was because Loretta’s heart rate kept going down and ten doctors would run in the room. They even had nicu team ready for her, but she was fine. Turns out she had a short umbilical cord and that was making her heart rate drop.
I also read online that the anesthesia could affect the baby and prevent her from latching but she is breastfeeding like a champ.
It was weird to be trying to push and have no sense of whether it’s working. But in retrospect, I’m very glad I didn’t feel that! I was so scared and nervous going to the hospital, I almost felt like canceling the induction appointment. “Could you do this part for me?” I asked Joe. “I’ve gotten us this far.” He said, “No can do.” Drat!
Before I gave birth I loved reading birth stories on the Babybumps forum on Reddit, so this is my modified version. My story has a cinematic twist too. I used to go to the same ob-gyn as my mom in Fairfax and I loved this doctor, sometimes I daydreamed about her being my doctor when I had a baby.
But then the practice stopped taking my terrible marketplace health insurance and I had to switch. The new practice was totally fine, no complaints at all. The only thing was I saw a different doctor basically every time. The night we arrived at the hospital, they kept giving me different names of who would deliver our baby. That morning, the doctor walked in and even though she was wearing a mask, I recognized her voice. It was my ob-gyn! She had just gotten a new job. That can’t be a coincidence, what are the chances?
She was wonderful and I felt so much more at ease with her there, especially when it got a little harrowing in the delivery room. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but how can words express that moment when your baby lands on your chest? She looked up at me with these half moon eyes. What a beautiful creature.
