Nicole’s first birth story can be found here. You should also read Meaghan O’Connell’s, it’s a triumph of the genre.
The last few weeks of pregnancy are pretty bad. Even when you’ve already had a baby, it’s hard to remember that they’re easier to look after while they’re still inside your body, because you have to pee constantly and your back hurts and your feet hurts and you can’t shave anything you used to shave without putting yourself at serious risk of slipping on a pool of your own blood.
As a result, when my midwife offered me a membrane sweep at 39 weeks, I told her to go for it. If you are unfamilar with the concept or execution of a membrane sweep, it’s like a normal pelvic exam but one performed by a drunk teenager with ragged acrylics. Your care provider sticks her fingers inside your cervix and swirls them around, pushing your amniotic sac away as she does so and breaking up the adhesions that connect the two. If you’re pretty much ready to go into labor anyway, it’ll jumpstart it in the next 48 hours, and if you’re not, you just cramp and spot and regret having said yes.
The next morning, I started having mild contractions. Generally, your signal to go to the hospital is when they’re painful, lasting about a minute, and coming every three to five minutes (if you’ve had a kid before, they usually want you to go in when they’re every five minutes apart, because things can get real far more quickly once your garden of mystery has already been laid waste by a hurricane or two.)
Now, these contractions were strange! They weren’t too bad at all, but right away they were coming every three minutes and lasting about 30 seconds. And this went on all morning. I would later discover this is pretty much textbook presentation for ROP, which is when your baby is facing your stomach instead of your back, and HIS back is to your right side. So you’re trying to get him out, but the part of his head that’s supposed to be stimulating your cervix to dilate is not ON the cervix, so not much is happening.
I went to the hospital. I was at 4 cm (I had been at 3 the previous day), and my hospital has a new policy that you need to be at 6 to get a room. Now, since I was positive for Group B strep (it’s no big deal, but you have to get 30 minutes of IV antibiotics every 4 hours until you give birth) they wanted to give me my first dose and let me pace around the nurses’ station for a few hours to see if my constant and increasingly unpleasant contractions were going to go anywhere. So I spent two hours (some of it sadly trailing an IV pole) reading Live From New York on my Kindle while clutching the wall and moaning every three minutes. Then they checked me and I was at 5 cm, and they said I could get a room because I was Making Progress. Room 4, to be exact, which is the swankest birthing suite and has a nice tub AND was where I delivered my daughter.
My entourage was assembled: my husband Steve, my mom, my doula, my doula’s apprentice, an OB nurse, and the world’s hottest midwife. It was the first time I’d met her (you get whoever is on-call), and she was so hot my heart stopped. She was so hot that Steve took his life in his hands and whispered: babe, is it just me or does our midwife look EXACTLY like Beckett from Castle? She was so hot I didn’t even kill him.
In addition to being, again, just mega smokin’ hot, my midwife was relatively new to being a midwife, and as such had boundless enthusiasm for the job. She was like the earnest new teacher in a movie. She climbed into the tub to check me so I didn’t have to get out. She rubbed clary sage oil on my pressure points. She told me frequently how beautiful and strong I was.
She ordered me a fruit and cheese plate from the cafeteria and placed each individual piece in my mouth while I labored in the tub.
So, basically, things were going pretty well. I was having bone-crushing contractions, my doula was doing counter pressure (this is the only thing that actually helps, it is the ONLY way to give birth without drugs, pay no attention to the breathing or visualization or whatever, you want a strong and sympathetic woman driving her elbow into your back and shoving your knees and ramming the bottoms of your feet during a contraction, trust me) and I was very confident that I was in the throes of transition and would soon be ready to push.
This is also when Steve fell asleep.
No! It’s okay, I told him to. There was a pull-out couch in the room, and literally nothing he could actually do to help me, so I said “why don’t you try to get some sleep?” and he said “I doubt I could!” and then instantly fell asleep.
Having now spent four hours in the tub, my midwife decided to check me. I was pretty sure I was at least 8cm, because of the agony.
I was still at exactly 5cm. MOTHERFUCKER, I said. MOTHERFUCKING CUNT MOTHERFUCKER. My doula put a cool washcloth on my forehead.
So, we had a lil council of war. My midwife, correctly, figured that the baby was ROP, and suggested that I leave the tub and go climb some flights of stairs to encourage him to get into a less bullshit position. So I put on one of those assless robes and a pair of shoes and she took me to an enclosed concrete stairwell, stuck a shoe in the door so I wouldn’t get locked in, and was all “good luck!”
So I began doing stairs. I did a whole bunch of stairs. After every two flights, I would have a horrible contraction. Eventually, this got old, so I tried the door. It did not open. This is because there were TWO sets of auto-locking doors between myself and freedom, and a shoe in only one of them. I banged. No one heard me. I did not have my phone. I climbed up a flight of stairs and banged on THAT door. No one heard me. I waited, alone, semi-nude, phoneless, contracting, picturing what it would be like to deliver my own baby in a concrete stairwell. No one came.
Finally, I descended all the stairs until I discovered a basement access door and escaped. I found a confused and blushing young man who escorted me and carded me into a staff elevator that spat me out back on my floor. Apologies were made.
I continued to contract, in agony, until four more hours had elapsed.
My midwife checked me. I was now at 5.5 cm.
“We have two options,” she said. “First, I can rub more clary sage oil on you. You can do more stairs. We can rebozo your belly. We can wait.”
I would like very much to hear my second option, I said.
“We give you pitocin and an epidural and see if it relaxes your pelvic floor and scoots him around some.”
I would like very much to have pitocin and an epidural now, I said.
It took them about an hour to get me my epidural, which was very unfortunate, as the MINUTE I psychologically checked out of natural childbirth, I could no longer really stay on top of the pain. It was no longer something I was VALIANTLY DOING, it was something I had to put up with until the needle-woman came to take it away. It was instantly a billion times worse.
(Steve is still asleep at this point in the story, by the way.)
The needle-woman came. She was not, unlike my midwife, very beautiful, but I will carry the memory of her kind face and capable hands to my grave.
“The first thing you’ll notice is that the pain will lessen. Then it will go away.”
That is what happened. It was a perfect epidural. I could move my legs. I could roll over. I could feel pressure, but not pain. They gave me a catheter, so I could pee without knowing it. It was wonderful.
An hour (ONE HOUR) after they gave me the epidural and cranked up the pitocin, my water broke.
An hour (ONE HOUR) after my water broke, my midwife checked me. I was completely dilated and ready to push.
“Steve,” I said, nudging his body with my hand. “Steve, we’re going to have the baby now.”
Steve woke up.
I pushed. I had the baby. I needed one stitch, which came off in my toilet paper two weeks later, briefly leading me to think I had a horrible black squiggly vagina-parasite.
I stood up with wobbly colt-legs and was wheelchaired to my room, holding my beautiful son. They took my catheter out the next day, and I still acutely feel its loss.
I am not sure I will bother not-getting an epidural again, but time will tell.
Thank you for listening to my story.
I find this much more helpful/inspiring/JUICY than all those neat-and-tidy “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” articles. Thanks for your story!
You are a hero and a champion, bridging the gap between our reality and the place baby souls come from.
Also your midwife sounds like a dream.
agony, babies, beauty, birth, goddesses, heroes, pain, sisterhood, triumph
Yes x9. Baby is amazingly cute! Well done.
Yes, isn’t that an uncommonly cute baby? I tend to think that babies should be hidden in drawers or soup tureens until they are quite old, but that infant is CUTE.
Not worth it, though. Mine would probably be ugly.
Rilla? Rilla of Ingleside? Is that you?!
Why, thank you for making me clean my monitor. It really needed that bath of Diet Coke it just got.
AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING!!!!!
The stairwell thing, though. I can’t believe the stairwell thing.
(During my mom’s birth of my sister, THE DOCTOR feel asleep, and she was delivered by an English midwife who kept saying “Poooooosh Karen, pooooooosh,” which we do dramatic reenactments of on each of my sister’s birthdays.)
I love this and always want to hear more about the specific things that different families say.
When my mom went into labor with my sister, her doctor was…not on call? on vacation? something where he wasn’t around for the delivery, which meant my mom instead had a horrible other doctor who a) wouldn’t give her drugs and b) told her ‘there is no screaming in my delivery room’ in a snappish voice (or so I assume, based on the numerous retellings of this story).
In response to that, however, my mom looked this woman dead in the eye and let loose a bloodcurdling howl, which is one of the many reasons I’m so proud to be related to her.
My substitute doctor also told me not to scream. If I hadn’t been so busy screaming, I would have kicked him.
My midwife told me screaming was a waste of energy! I’ve never been so angry and continued to screech like a banshee stuck in a chimney.
My mom always tells the story about how when she was giving birth to my brother, she was stuck in an eight-bed ward during her labour waiting to be dilated enough to be taken to a delivery room, and there was a twenty-year-old screaming bloody murder/profanities every time she had a contraction and upsetting all the other expectant mothers. After three hours of this, my mom, being thirty-five and on her second child, bravely yelled back, “SHUT THE EFF UP AND SUFFER IN SILENCE LIKE THE REST OF US, OR I WILL GO OVER THERE AND SHUT YOU UP FOR YOU” and anyway then they wheeled my mom’s bed out into the hallway for a while. Yay maternity wards.
You got to experience the best of two worlds there, Nicole; a beautiful, eager midwife who supported you in your birth, and a terrific anesthesiologist who didn’t mess up your epidural.
I, too, enjoyed having the catheter during both maternity stays. It was so fun to just sit in bed and be exhausted and never ever have to worry about getting up to pee, for an appropriate amount of time. Road-trip catheters would be a nice thing to invent, maybe.
I’ve always found that the idea of a catheter is better than the actual experience. But then they’ve never waited ’til I was anesthetized to set one up, so that could be the foundation of the trauma.
ahhhh this just reminded me of an amazing story a coworker told me: a friend of his who was in medical school was going to be a hospital patient for halloween. being someone who committed whole-heartedly to his endeavors, he decided to insert a catheter. on himself. (in himself?). he then proceeded to pass out from the pain with the catheter halfway inserted. when he woke up he finished the job.
why would
why would you do that
why
especially because WHO WOULD EVEN SEE IT?! like, just tape a hose to your dong; don’t put the damn thing IN.
WORD. I was one of those would-be valiant souls who, after pitocin was started (I had to be induced), I asked for the epidural. However, I was also one of those souls for whom the epidural had asymmetric effects, meaning: I felt everything on one side of my body, and the other side was made of lead. They couldn’t seem to fix the problem, but thanks to the miracle of postpartum amnesia — which I truly believe is a real thing — I don’t remember much of that at all. I just remember that, by the time I pushed that beautiful little person out, I felt nothing but elation. I also pooped all over the place, just for the record. I feel like more folks need to come out of that particular closet (hey, it’s all the same nerve column; you try bearing down on your pelvic floor without expelling something from your colon).
My anthropology professor talked about that – about new born babies being covered in shit and blood and how no one talks about that part. It definitely made an impression on me – I still remember it 25 years later, which is more than I can say for a lot of my first year of college.
You are an amazing warrior-goddess of a person, and your son is SICKENINGLY adorable and will be an asset to the world even though he’ll grow up to be a Man. Thank you for sharing.
I have not doubt he will be raised to become A Man Who Knows His Place. And he will see to it that his mother wants for nothing.
I mean, maybe. The kiddo could inform us otherwise. But I’ve no doubt Cliffebairn will be assets to the world.
Good point. Baby will be what baby is.
“once your garden of mystery has already been laid waste by a hurricane or two.”
you are a WIZARD with words.
Wo HOO. Congratulations!
The best part of my labor was watching my mother, who’d had four babies in the 60s, including a two-fer, completely fascinated at how they do it these days. I loved my OB, but my mother LOVED my OB.
Yes! The horror stories from women who gave birth decades ago! For a while there in the 20th century, giving birth in the Western world was creepy as hell. With my mom’s first in 1958, she was knocked out when she arrived at the hospital and then woke up the next day alone in a cold dark room with no baby in her belly. She says it was the scariest and loneliest moment of her life.
So she loved hearing me talk about labor tubs and skin-to-skin.
My Grandmother had her first child in 1944 and her last one in 1958. She said that her doctor did not believe in drugs for women in labor, other than a “whiff of ether” while the baby was crowning. She also had polio somewhere between the first two kids and the remaining ones, so she said that the nurses pushed on her belly to help her vaginally deliver the younger ones. This is crazy and amazing to me.
Being unconscious during labor sounds absolutely horrifying, and also like it would make delivery more difficult.
hahaha men “(Steve is still asleep at this point in the story, by the way.)”
I say that as a guy who might someday be a dad, by the way.
You are a champ – a goddes and a heroine of epic proportions. This (and your previous birth story) are my favorite birth stories. They are great. I would not have been as calm about having to trudge down to the basement as you were, and I applaud you tremendously. My birth story was full of long car rides, disbelieving nurses, and lots of swearing. This is better!
NICOOOOOOOOLE I’m so excited this story is up. I remain completely horrified by the idea of giving birth but honestly I would read anything you had to say about it for a LONG time. Being trapped in the stairwell sounds terrifying, your midwife sounds amazing, and you, as usual, sound really badass. Plus your son is very cute.
ALSO how did you tell Steve about being trapped in the stairwell and what was his reaction??
I don’t remember! I DO remember walking back into the room and everyone being oh we thought you were really into doing the stairs
Yeah I was also wondering about that! Wouldn’t they…go look for you at some point? I hope they apologized very profusely.
You should get a medal for being trapped in the stairwell. Your son is adorable
I see your trapped in the stairwell and raise you EPIDURAL CRAPPING OUT DURING TRANSITION.
Not that I’m bitter about birthing my beautiful son. But if he grows up and wastes his life on some bullshit, he will come to know the pain I felt that day.
My mom likes to remind me that her epidural FELL OUT while she was in labor with me (which lasted 36 hours apparently, SORRY MOM).
My mom’s fell out too, when she had me! And then they had to do a c-section, but didn’t have time for another epidural, so they just poked her with a pin and an ice cube to see if she was still numb enough and then just went for it.
My mom was also in labor over fall daylight savings, so she had to labor one hour twice. Love u mom.
When my mom had me, the person administering the epidural MISSED and drained her spinal fluid sac and she had to spend two weeks lying flat on her back in a lot of pain while my dad danced around holding me and wearing a “world’s best dad” hat…
D: 😀
A few hours after getting my (MUCH needed) epidural, in the midst of soul-crushing labor, I asked something like “Is this thing still on?” and the nurse looked at me like ‘oops’ and showed me the little doodad I could have been clicking every 15 minutes for more juice. She clicked it once, and about 10 minutes later my little man arrived. I was robbed.
Laughing very hard at MOTHERFUCKING CUNT MOTHERFUCKER. There should be a compendium of things said during childbirth. With my first, during the pushing phase, naked in front of God and an entire NICU team, I was pretty loopy. “Oh,” I said, calmly. “This must be why they call it the ‘ring of fire.'” I thought I was being quite wry. Not a damn one of those NICU bastards even cracked a smile of acknowledgment. (J/K, NICU bastards, we didn’t end up needing you but I deeply appreciate that you would have saved my child’s life if necessary.)
With my second, I pushed for 8 minutes instead of an hour and a half. It was much nicer, overall, but wow were those an intense 8 minutes. I believe my final words before becoming a mother of two were the very classy, “JESUS CHRIST THIS HURTS.” (And then she flew out into the birth tub like a bottle rocket and I didn’t even need a stitch, so, again, much better.)
I cannot even believe about the stairwell, good lord.
“It was no longer something I was VALIANTLY DOING, it was something I had to put up with until the needle-woman came to take it away.”
Maybe that is why labor was so insanely horrible for me?! because it was NEVER something I was actively doing, it was something I was suffering through until someone would get me a goddamned IV of fluids and a fucking anesthesiologist. (God love that man.)
I think things like this and I think yeah, next time I’ll go drug-free, and then I remember I have IRRITABLE UTERUS and thank my lucky stars for narcotics.
This is it exactly. I was induced and got an epidural very early with my first one (that whole labor was weird and long and annoying, but not particularly painful, as it would turn out), but went into labor naturally with my second. I was pissed off for basically every minute between deciding it was hospital time and the anesthesiologist (POORLY) sticking a gigantic needle into my spine.
Nicole, I applaud you and your successful birthings, and just read your first birth story and while this one was filled of stairs and hot midwives, your previous birth’s Buffy reference was on. fucking. point.
You’re marvelous and so is that baby.
As I started reading this absolutely epic birthing story, I was literally holding my breath and feeling my heart race in my chest. Thank God for “all’s well that ends well” otherwise my whole morning would have been shot to Hell.
(Nicole, your life stories are THE BEST!)
Congratulations, thank you for writing your story I AM NEVER GOING IN A STAIRCASE EVER AGAIN PREGNANT OR NOT!
My third was posterior presentation (not so much to the side like your dude, but definitely sunny side up, and head cocked like he was on the phone). I managed first stage better than the other two but delivery was a knees-to-the-ears, midwife-elbows-deep-yanking kind of experience.
So glad you got relief when you needed it!
My brother presented chin-first, which is… not the greatest presentation, and resulted in my mother being held upside-down by her first husband while the doctor tried to not break my brother’s neck while adjusting his head so it was coming out the right way. I’m pretty sure she’s never forgiven him for that, or me for being a month late.
Oh my god what an image. I am trying to decide whether upside-down or month-late is worse and it’s actually a damn toss-up. 😉
I have been trapped in stairwells a couple times (though not while pregnant) because I thought I’d take the stairs and I underestimated how locked all the doors would be. I wouldn’t really recommend it, but it’s only a bit awful once you know that there is basically always an exit that you can open from the inside at ground level, because fires.
That’s reassuring, actually. Thanks!
Now solve “idiot building managers requiring keys for office washrooms because of utterly neglible risk of washroom havoc.”
A. I have never clicked view all so hard.
B. CUTIE BABY FACE.
I swear my gf could have kissed the man with the epidural. Inducement is no joke.
I had my first naturally, and the second was induced.. I ended up getting an epidural. The difference between the two deliveries was surreal! The first time I was incoherent, and only vaguely aware of people in the room as I labored, nude, for hours, collapsing into an only semi-conscious heap in between contractions. The second time.. (Being induced is awful to begin with) the contractions came on so hard and so fast I had no time to put my mind in that faraway place where I could handle it, so I guiltily accepted the offer of the epidural. Oh. My. God. I was able to have a conversation with the midwife and my husband AS I GAVE BIRTH! Night and day, I tell you. Modern medicine is a marvel! No regrets!
Nicole, that is an amazing story. So glad everyone made it through OK. They really should have sent someone into the stairs with you, maybe?
Let’s hear it for doulas. With our first the goddess I refer to as “wife” made it through a Pitocin induction with no pain meds because of the expert ministrations of the doula and midwives. Not that there is anything wrong with pain medication, but the goddess wanted to avoid it. That absolutely would not have been possible without the doula.
That photo! Baby Boy Cliffe is saying, “Every baby has a mommy, but *you’re* the one I got? I feel like I won the lottery!”
Who says infants can’t talk?
Wikipedia “Twilight Sleep,” regret not living in that strange window of time after childbirth killed you but before it was supposed to be a spiritual, fulfilling natural experience.
There’s this bit in Amy MacKay’s The Birth House where the midwife protagonist indignantly protests these NEWFANGLED DOCTORS and their ANESTHESIA and their TWILIGHT SLEEP and I kept thinking as I read it “oh my god just shut the fuck up Dora.”
Oh wow. In the everything-ended-up-okay variant of birth stories, locked in a stairwell definitely is something to be reckoned with. Honestly I wouldn’t have dared–I got super dizzy and nauseated and weird in the head walking around the room with my first, because it turns out morphine really does not agree with me, and that was just going from bed to counter to table over and over again. But even without the morphine I wouldn’t have trusted myself on stairs, I’m impressed with your self-confidence!
(Birth story #1: two-minute-long contractions right from the start; face up instead of face down; stalled at 7 cm dilation after about a day and a half, C section–much less traumatic than Meaghan O’Connell’s story linked at the start, just pressure–*pop*!–baby.)
(Birth story #2: contractions pre-epidural were over six and a half minutes long (400 seconds); two hours pushing, which only got him far enough down that when they pulled him out during the subsequent C section, my uterus tore beyond the surgical incision; yay blood transfusions and Percocet and apparent mutant superpowers of recovering from major abdominal surgery.)
Also: I love that face, what a great smile. Congratulations!
Oh Nicole! This is similar to my story minus the hot midwife (ours was lovely but not hot) and the locked stairwell (a big minus I know) and add an extra 3 hrs of nipple pinching and then pitocin for another 6 hrs and going from 8 cm to 8.5 cm in that 6 MOTHERFUCKING HOURS OF ROP labor with pitocin jacking everything up. Then the epidural, a 45 min nap and 3 pushes later to greet our son. What is it with these baby boys who won’t turn the fuck around so they can get born already? (Yes, I know, it’s probably my aging pelvis not him, but still). I cried for weeks about my inability to do it “natural” and now 5 years later I just shake my head at myself. Oh younger me, how sweet you were to think birth was the hardest part of parent hood and you had to get it exactly right!
I find birth stories so great now that I have gotten over being horrified by things that can happen to the human body. Congratulations on your little dude!
I love birth sprouts because they remind me that I’m definitely not up to the task.
*Stories, obviously. Birth sprouts sound vile.
Oh, Nicole. The stairwell thing about gave me a heart attack, even though I was reasonably confident that you eventually escaped. All the love and admiration and respect in the world.
“Dear internet, I am writing to you from this stairwell where I have been living with my newborn for the past three months. I have eaten the placenta as nourishment. I will write again soon, but first I must troll some parenting message boards.”
“Thank god the stairwell has wifi, and that I remembered to bring my charger.”
Thank you, Kate! I am so grateful that I am only normal amounts of claustrophobic and not PANIC ATTACK claustrophobic.
It was an excellent story.
Nicole! So thrilled for you and Little Mr. Sunshine there. Glad you escaped from the stairs – it’s terrifying enough when you get stuck in a stairwell fully clothed and not in labor.
When do we get a spin-off blog dedicated solely to birth stories? Everyone’s needs to be told and I NEED TO READ THEM ALL.
I wonder if ‘astonishingly beautiful midwives’ is a thing. Mine, getting up for sixteen years ago, was Paulina Poris/kova’s mother and looked it — the best looking middle-aged woman I’ve ever met. My father met her when he came to visit me, and mentioned her wistfully for literally years later.
She was also, I believe, a witch (in the best of senses). On a tour of the birthing center, another woman asked her if her practice used herbal medicine. Her response? In an intimidating Czech accent: “We do not use herbs. [long pause, followed by a sly grin.] But if it is necessary? We have that knowledge.” I’ve never felt so nervous but so reassured simultaneously.
She sounds incredible!
I would have a baby to have it with that woman. She sounds amazing.
Everyone on my mom’s side of the family sails through childbirth in record time. My mom is fond of saying that she went into labor with me right after lunch and could have come home in time for dinner. My great-aunt used to regale us with stories of holding my grandmother’s knees together while “that stupid nurse” whipped back around on her way out of the delivery room to catch my aunt. Etc.
So it was very disappointing to discover that I had not inherited those genes, whatever they are.
I was 6cm when I got my epidural, took a 3 hour nap, and woke up at 10cm. BLISS.
They were very sweet when I walked in and was like “Epidural. Now.” I got asked 4 times, “Are you sure? You did say you wanted to do it without one.” And I was like, “Yeah, it turns out I think I could do it without one? But I really, really don’t want to.”
Oh my god stairwell oh my god oh my god–I have very nearly panicked in similar, non-pregnant circumstances, I’m pretty sure I would completely lose my mind.
CONGRATULATIONS you are the champion of the world, and male babies, and birth stories.
The stairwell thing is horrifying; I’m glad you escaped! Your son is very cute.
So, my daughter is going to be a year old in less than a month. When I was just over 8 months pregnant, my OB, who was pregnant with twins, but 7 weeks less pregnant than me, was put on bedrest, and they stuck me with her partner, a very rude MAN who, after leaving me waiting, pantsless, for over an hour, told me to “Deal with it” when I asked if, next time, they could just give me a 5 minute warning when he was ready, so I could undress then, rather than hanging out naked for so long for no reason.
So I got a new doctor the day before my due date.
I was induced the day after my due date because Kat was measuring so big (they said she would be 10 lbs) and had such a big head. They started the drugs, and then the anesthesiologist came in and asked me if I was SURE that I was allergic to benzocaine and lidocaine, in this really desperate, hopeful way, like maybe I was confused. No, I had an allergy test the year before; definitely allergic. “Well,” she regretted to inform me, “Then we can’t give you an epidural, because those are full of ‘caine’ drugs. And you’re having a 10+lb baby with a giant head. Would you like a c-section?”
My doctors (all 3) had been told about my allergies, but none of them had informed me that this would mean I could not have an epidural. My new doctor had told me the week before about a baby she *tried* to deliver, whose head emerged, but the rest was stuck, and she had to SHOVE THE BABY BACK IN and then do a c-section.
Anyway, then I got a c-section and it was over in 30 minutes and then I was allowed to eat finally, and it healed nicely and hardly hurt at all (A++, would c-section again), and my baby is pretty great.
Holy shit I would have punched someone.
(I got shot up with a ton of *caine drugs for my C-section in addition to my epidural, at least the first one (I was kind of out of it the second time), because I had to tell them, no, sorry, I can _definitely_ still feel that and it takes forever to numb me up at the dentist too, gimme some more. I’m glad they had another option for you!)
They do normally use an epidural for a c-section, but they have an alternative that just lasts a couple hours that they used instead. They use it so rarely that they had to send someone to find it at another location. I don’t remember what the alternative drugs were called though.
Heh. I’m never doing that again so it would be sheer curiosity and nothing else, don’t worry about it!
Great Baby, evidence here:
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-WVy1jDah2wI/VQrP1tVdyJI/AAAAAAAArmY/79tjl1N1-08/w386-h685-no/20150319_070027-MOTION.gif">
Read Meaghan O’Connell. Decided to never give birth.
Read this line: “She ordered me a fruit and cheese plate from the cafeteria and placed each individual piece in my mouth while I labored in the tub.” Decided, “Okay, but maybe?”
But also I could just eat cheese in the tub without labor, probably.
I think having the cheese fed to you by a beautiful woman is a crucial part of this narrative.
The Meaghan O’Connell story was amazing – huge props to her for what she went through.
The one thing that bummed me out, though, was the idea she had to get over that having a C-section is a failure. Of course you want to avoid having major surgery if you can, but sometimes circumstances arise that we don’t foresee and a C-section is your best option. And it’s great that we live in a time when this is a viable and generally very safe option! Yay for modern medicine!
As someone who has gotten stuck in more stairwells than I care to admit, I’m pretty sure getting stuck in one while in labour would have caused me to start screaming and NEVER STOP.
(When my mother gave birth to me, she started labour in the middle of the night, so her regular doctor was not at the hospital. A student doctor was instead, and she caught him trying to inject something into her IV. “It’s just to speed things up!” he said. My mother said UM, NO and gave him a piece of her mind, then reported the whole thing to her actual doctor the next morning, who then proceeded to also give the student doctor a piece of her mind.)
Most amazing thing I’ve ever read!!!!!!!!!!
I’m so glad you told this story. I mean, except for the pitocin flashbacks. (Did you know there’s such a thing as contractions coming so close to each other that the baby stops getting oxygen? Freaks the labor nurses the fuck out & makes them wake to-be-dad up so you can have the labor bed instead.)
Congratulations on having the sunniest son ever, or so I must presume from that photo. And he was nice enough to give you a fascinating, if sometimes terrifying, tale to tale.
Does he always look that delighted? Because he’s looked pretty damn delighted in both of the pictures you’ve posted of him.
The anesthesiologist who came to give me my epidural with G (#1) was named Melissa B*, the exact same name as my high school pot dealer. That’s when I knew when I was in good hands. My husband and BFF watched the epidural process and, when #2 came around, both promptly turned their backs so as to never repeat the viewing experience again. #nopaindontcare
I did not need convincing, but now I am more thoroughly convinced that DRUGS ALL THE WAY BABY!
i am really glad this story did not, as I expected, end with you giving birth in a stairwell.
Nicole you are a goddamn hero and you have my respect.
Lol, I loved all of this. Two favorite lines:
go climb some flights of stairs to encourage him to get into a less bullshit position.
*
things can get real far more quickly once your garden of mystery has already been laid waste by a hurricane or two.
Congratulations!
Getting trapped in stairwells is frightening and frustrating enough when you *aren’t* trying to get a small human being out of you.
They have to learn sometime.
I saw your tweets about your fitbit no longer tracking stairs, which leads me to the important question of DID YOU WEAR YOUR FITBIT TO YOUR BIRTH/STAIRCASE HELL?
Thank you for sharing your beautiful and honest account. It sounds like you had a great supportive staff and that is a blessing! I wanted to have my second with no drugs and that whole “things can get real far more quickly once your garden of mystery has already been laid waste by a hurricane or two.” is so true…as he wound up coming in the car on the way to the hospital. For whatever reason, it did not hurt that much until it was time to push? Everything was fine but my husband was ready to throw himself in traffic.
Nicole, I love your posts and tweets. I think you are great! And those babies of yours are pretty rad too.
The Meaghan O'Connell story was amazing – huge props to her for what she went through.
The one thing that bummed me out, though, was the idea she had to get over that having a C-section is a failure. Of course you want to avoid having major surgery if you can, but sometimes circumstances arise that we don't foresee and a C-section is your best option. And it's great that we live in a time when this is a viable and generally very safe option! Yay for modern medicine!
My anthropology professor talked about that – about new born babies being covered in shit and blood and how no one talks about that part. It definitely made an impression on me – I still remember it 25 years later, which is more than I can say for a lot of my first year of college.
I think there is something wrong with me because reading birth stories, pain and agony and endless hours of torment and all, just makes me think: ‘Yeah. That’s something I could do. Definitely interested in living this experience one day.’
I don’t know, guys.
Thank you Nicole. As a newly pregnant person, this is both horrifying and reassuring. Congrats on your son’s (eventual) safe arrival, he looks adorable
Yes, thank you! The stairwell story is actually kind of appalling. Keep the fruit and cheese platter, how about checking on the pregnant lady you set loose in the stairwell to make sure she hasn't passed out and cracked her skull. Totally agree about the note to the supervisor.