I can do anything: My birth experience Part II
Disclaimer: Long post ahead — read at your own discretion
After having my cervix checked for progress, I was reeled to a room where I would spend the next couple of hours hooked up to a machine that would monitor my baby's blood pressure. At this point, my mom had already joined me. I felt sorry for her as she had stood out in the cold for so long, and now had to sit in an uncomfortable chair beside the hospital bed.
The pain
The pain from the contractions is something I am yet to be able to describe. My insides felt like they were being pulled every which way, while simultaneously stirring up the biggest stomach cramp I had felt in my life. It took every bit of me to stick to the breathing exercises I had learned as my insides were screaming, and I felt like running away from my body.
As I sat there trying to keep a straight face, my contractions only grew in intensity and duration. And while I had started out monitoring my contractions with an App, my mom ended up taking over, as I did my best to breathe through them.
I was told several times — by one midwife after the other who came in to tend to me — that I was doing such an amazing job. One midwife in particular, whose warm face and soothing words I will always remember, stroked my back and told me that she was so impressed with the way I was handling the pain. She also expressed that if I were ever to decide to have another baby at the same hospital, she would love to be part of the experience.
My mom, who could not believe that I was taking the pain so well, said that she had been so worried that I wouldn't be able to handle it, and that they might decide not to let her in to help me through the process. She explained that the first waves of contractions she had while pregnant with me had resulted in her screaming for an epidural.
The dreaded epidural
I was approached by a midwife who, with a concerned expression, told me I should seriously consider an epidural as it would benefit me, should they have to go in with instruments in order to get the baby out during delivery.
Having seen the instruments she was referring to in one of the many videos I had watched about breech birth, I knew that they weren't something that it would be pleasant to have stuck inside me.
I had a series of questions about the epidural, and after being left to think about it for a while, I ended up deciding to go for it. In all honesty, I was more nervous about having a needle stuck in my spine than I was about the next waves of pain from my contractions. As I was waiting for the needle to be inserted into my back, I couldn't help but wonder whether my decision was the right one.
After the application of the epidural, which numbed mostly my legs (I was told that they would need me to feel as much as possible in order to know when to push), I was introduced to a walker. I used it each time I needed to pee, or when I needed to walk around to let gravity help push my baby downwards.
My partially numb legs made it hard to navigate effortlessly, and I often needed help to lift them to change positions, or to get out of or into bed. I remember specifically collapsing onto the toilet seat when I went to pee because I had stepped away from the walker, thinking that I would be fine without it.
While the epidural had removed some of the edge off of my pain, it felt as though most of the pain had travelled from my contracting uterus towards my back and rectum instead. It was excruciating, but I still carried on breathing just like I had taught myself to do in preparation for birth.
A midwife, who I was not very fond of at first because of the way she kept jamming her fingers up my vaginal opening while my contractions were taking place (standard procedure, but I would have appreciated if she had been more gentle), increased the dose of oxytocin I had been given to rush the process. I was greatly annoyed that my dose had been increased without my knowledge, and that the midwife was planning on upping the dose with 15 more micrograms.
I was already in so much pain that I was beginning to lose focus of my breathing, as I could no longer tell whether I was breathing in or out, even though I appeared to be doing so in the calmest manner possible.
10 cm dilation
After several hours of pacing around the hospital room with the walker, singing while being 10 cm dilated and in extreme pain due to rapid back to back contractions, having nurses and midwives come and leave the room to check my cervix and my baby's blood pressure, and having a catheter inserted to fully empty my bladder, the time for my baby's arrival was finally here.
The new midwife assigned to me suggested we move to a larger room since she felt the room I was in was much too small for the whole medical team. I was a little hesitant about this as my mom told me she felt it would be a room facing the graveyard. And being the paranoid person I am, I thought this was a sign that I might die giving birth.
Without protesting, I got out of bed and wheeled my walker to the second delivery room, followed by the midwife and a team of doctors and nurses. By then, the pain was so intense that I felt like I was dragging my legs along the corridor.
The room facing the graveyard
Since it was a room facing the hospital's graveyard, I requested to have the blinds completely shut. I didn't want ghosts watching me give birth (just kidding).
I was more comfortable lying on my back as doing so made the pain a little less excruciating. But my baby's blood pressure kept dropping as a result of this, so I was asked to lie on my side instead; a position I did not like at all, as it made my pain so extreme that I could barely think straight.
I complained to my mom that I hated lying on the side because it was so painful, to which she responded that I should think about my baby and the fact that lying on my back was affecting her heart rate. I did.
I gritted my teeth and bit down with each new wave of contractions, the pain so intense that it now felt like a bowling ball was pressing against my rectum with extreme force.
Fighting the urge to push
Even though I had started feeling an urge to push, I was not allowed to. At this point, it was a quarter to six p.m. and, by the instructions of my least favourite midwife, it would be time to start pushing at six p.m. on the dot.
Those fifteen minutes of waiting were the longest, and most uncomfortable, fifteen minutes of my life, as I fought against the urge to push my baby out.
Bringing my daughter into the world
At six p.m. I was finally given the go-ahead to push, and it proved to be extremely difficult! I was operating on minimal sleep and did not know where I would gather oxygen from to hold my breath long enough to bear down with all my might. On top of that, I was shivering uncontrollably.
Each time my mom tried to cover me with a blanket, I would push it off since the pain made any contact with my skin unbearable. I had to let go of her hand and tell her to “please stop talking” or stroking my forehead a few times, even though I would apologise in the very same breath. She assured me that she understood that it was due to the pain I was in.
I was given an hour to push and informed that if I did not push my baby out within that hour, I would have to be reeled to a theatre where a C-section would be performed. We had tried almost everything at this point; me lying on my back and pushing, sitting on all four and pushing, holding one end of a folded sheet while a midwife held the other and pulling in one direction with all my might while she pulled it in the other direction. But nothing seemed to be working. My baby was still sitting very comfortably above my pelvis. On the other hand, I was also running low on energy.
Finally, after breathlessly telling the team in the room that I was tired and didn't think I could do it, I gathered all my strength, sucked in as much air as possible, and began pushing even harder. The last thing I wanted was a C-section (having read about the complications that might occur).
It was the shouts of “Come on” “A little harder now” and “We can see her, she's almost here” that powered me with even more strength to push. I was on my very last leg of energy, and told my mom, “I. Just. Want. Her. Out!” through gritted teeth.
After having been on all four and pushing against a midwife's fingers, which she had hooked into either side of my vagina to stretch it out, I went back to lying on my back. And with the medical team holding my legs on either side, I pushed and pushed until I could see my baby's entire body hanging from my opening.
A few minutes later, after a few maneuvers typical for breech births, the assisting midwives finally pulled my daughter's head out.
“I did it!” I exclaimed as they wiped her and put her against my chest, where she cried (the cutest sound ever) and sucked on her hand.
My daughter had so much hair, and holding her made me think of the fact that I had spent the last hour pushing another human being out of my body, let alone carried her for a whole nine months.
With all the complications I had experienced at the beginning of my pregnancy, there was a point where I wasn't sure she would make it. But here she was, finally. I was in absolute awe at the sight of her, and at my own strength.
While I was occupied with trying to get my daughter to latch on to my breast to feed, my placenta was guided out and I was quickly stitched back up. Due to my vaginal opening being too small for my daughter to fit through, they had had to perform an incision on me during birth. I flinched each time I felt the needle against my labia.
Just a few minutes after, my family members began calling me to congratulate me and have a look at the little one sleeping peacefully against my chest —many of them trying to work out who she looked like. I was exhausted, but it had definitely been a day I would never forget.
Becoming a mother wasn't the only thing that changed on that fateful evening, but an inexplicable strength I never knew I had been in possession of had also been born. I suddenly felt like I could take on the world.
I write all this as my daughter, who is now almost two months, sleeps peacefully next to me. Each time I stare at her cute little face, I remind myself that, if I could cope with as much pain as I did during labour, and bring another human being into the world, I can do anything!
