Gavin's Birth Story

Gavin’s Birth Story

Although I didn’t feel upset at the time, in retrospect I realize that my son’s birth is a good example of how using one intervention can snowball into using several. When I married the love of my life at the age of 21, we had been intimate with each other for nearly three years. Often our methods of birth control were sketchy, I must admit. However, when we officially got engaged 7 months before out marriage, we decided the best thing to do would be to become very careful about contraception so that we could finish our degrees, grow together as a married couple, and be more financially secure before committing to the intricate emotional and financial responsibilities being parents would bring. About two months after saying our vows and moving a day’s drive away from friends and family, I became very ill for no apparent reason. It was August, so there weren’t a lot of flu or cold bugs going around, but I was plagued by a persistent heaviness in my stomach and a lump in my throat like I would be throwing up any minute – which I never did. It was horrible, and after suffering for a few weeks 24/7 I finally went into the hospital to have some tests run. I wasn’t surprised when the pregnancy test came back negative because I had had my Depo shot three and a half months previous and had been ‘covering’ the lapse for the last two weeks with a birth control pill prescription. However, they were unable to find anything wrong. After another week or so, just when I thought I might make an appointment with another doctor, the ill feeling faded out. I was so grateful! I had two impacted wisdom teeth that I needed to have removed, and I knew I would be able to get it done now that I wasn’t miserable anymore. I was frustrated when the dentist’s office told me that because I was a young woman in prime childbearing years, they would like to have a false pregnancy test done before putting me under general anesthesia. Ooooo, I was so irritated!! Finally, they compromised by letting me do a home pregnancy test since I was so insistent that I couldn’t be pregnant. So, I set the surgery appointment, went home and took the test, and sat down to play some cards with my hubby. After awhile, he asked if I was going to go check it. I rolled my eyes and started to get up. Then he got up a little faster then me. By the time we got to the bathroom we were both running and giggling for some reason, each trying to beat the other. When we got to the doorway both of us stared at the shadowed pregnancy test. Surely not . . . Curt reached around me and turned on the light. Yes, indeed, a big blue plus sign. I stared at it stupidly. Huh? Curt was the first to find his voice. He picked me up and swung me around with tears in his eyes yelling: “We’re going to have a baby! We’re going to be a family!!” My response had been upgraded to a nervous twitter and “huh?”

The next day I made an appointment to go see an OBGYN, and he confirmed that I was 10 weeks along. Which meant I had gotten pregnant the first month we were married! I did all the usual tests, made all the usual prenatal appointments, read lots of books, went to child birthing classes (Lamaze) and cleaned my house like a crazy person during the last couple of months. My pregnancy was practically flawless. No stretch marks, no varicose veins, a 30 lb. gain, and absolutely no complications. When I was four days past my due date, my doctor suggested I come into the hospital and have a prostaglandin suppository put up at my cervix to see if that didn’t get things moving. I got to the hospital at 7:00 A.M. and the whole ‘process’ started with the suppository. Hours went by, and nothing happened. I knew I would feel very disappointed if I went home ‘empty handed’, even though I had put together a very detailed birth plan that discouraged interventions of any kind. However, my husband’s brother had come for the birth, as had both of my parents. They had been there since my due date, and I knew they couldn’t stay indefinitely. At the more sensitive age of 22, I felt guilty that I wasn’t living up to the expectations I had set for myself, and might disappoint my family as well. So, at 11:00 A.M., when my doctor came in and offered to break my water, I decided to let him. I knew they would never let me go home after doing that, but I was feeling anxious to ‘get it over with’. He broke my water, and then did something I had NOT asked him to do. He stripped my membranes, and continued stripping with me yelling at him to stop it. Ouch!! Instead of apologizing for acting without my permission, he simply said: “I just saved you two or three hours of labor.” Grrrrr. Within moments, hard contractions began. There wasn’t much build up, suddenly I was just trying to keep breathing at all, much less doing the Lamaze methods, and Curt and my mother were furiously rubbing my back each time because I had severe back labor. They didn’t have a tub, but did help me get up and get in the shower several times. Even though that had been part of my birth plan, I knew in the back of my mind that I was sitting only feet away from release from the pain . . . the drugs that I had solidly refused on my birth plan. After four hours of really hard labor, I gasped to my nurse (while hunching over a chair in the shower) that I wanted drugs. She chuckled comfortingly, since she, like every other person allowed within a mile of my labor room, had been given a copy of my birth plan and warned of the dire consequences should it not be followed. I reached out, put my hand on her arm, and growled, “No, I mean it, I want drugs.” So, I was given the I.V. I hadn’t wanted, hooked up to the monitor I hadn’t wanted, and given the drugs I hadn’t wanted but was too wimpy to resist knowing they were right there. Nobody argued with me, which on one hand was good, but on the other hand, if someone had told me how quickly I was actually progressing (I was almost 3 centimeters before labor even started, and 80% effaced); it might have made all the difference. I tried the Nubain, and it did nothing for me except make me feel good between contractions. So then I pleaded for an Epidural and promptly got one. The aesthetician was a nice man who asked me if I wanted to wait until my contraction was over for him to do it. I yelped “No, no! Just DO it!!” (How would that be for a Nike ad?) Within moments, it was working. I believe it hit me before my next contraction did. Ahhhh, it was wonderful! It made my super-obnoxious nurse that was now on shift almost tolerable. She wouldn’t stop yapping, and constantly fondled all of my private parts and arranging me like a Barbie doll. She started me pushing long, LONG before I needed to, and I was totally exauhsted by the time I really did need to. And she did it by putting her face within inches (within spitting distance, one might say) of mine and gasping loudly “PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH!!!!” I finally had to manually move her face away from mine, resisting the urge to dig my long fingernails into her eyes as I did so. I had made it to second stage labor before my contractions phased out to practically nothing, six minutes apart, due to the epidural. So, Pitocin was promptly started. My misery by this time, compounded by extreme frustration, was overwhelming. I was exhausted and at that point might have performed my own C-section quite happily had someone handed me the instruments. Needless to say, I didn’t have the gusto to push out my own baby, so the inept nurse promptly placed a vacuum extractor. The doctor had to repetedly instruct her not to do this or that, and finally started to snap at her in front of us, due to his own frustration. Meanwhile, everyone is still chanting at me to push, and I have this glaring spotlight right on my nether-regions. I spent three hours in second stage labor, and much of that time his head was visible, but he just wasn’t coming out. My husband kept saying, “I can see his hair! Oh, honey, I can see our baby’s hair!!” When his head did get around to coming out, my Dr. said to me “Do you want to see this? It quite a sight, you may never get to see anything like this again, your baby is being born.” I said “No! I’ll watch the video!!” Finally, 12 hours after I arrived in my hospital room, I delivered my baby boy! For all the interventions, drugs, vacuuming, etc. he entered the world vigorous and with a gusty cry. His cord was too short for him to be laid on my chest, so he lay on my belly and got wrapped up while his Daddy prepared to cut the cord. Never in my life had I gone from such complete misery to such incredible joy in the space of a second. He was so beautiful, so perfect, and instantly I was in total love. My wonderful son is now 6 y.o. and we are eagerly anticipating the birth of our daughter, who is due in about 16 weeks. This time I am going to give birth at home, but that is another story that I will write about in December!Gavin’s Birth StoryAlthough I didn’t feel upset at the time, in retrospect I realize that my son’s birth is a good example of how using one intervention can snowball into using several. When I married the love of my life at the age of 21, we had been intimate with each other for nearly three years. Often our methods of birth control were sketchy, I must admit. However, when we officially got engaged 7 months before out marriage, we decided the best thing to do would be to become very careful about contraception so that we could finish our degrees, grow together as a married couple, and be more financially secure before committing to the intricate emotional and financial responsibilities being parents would bring. About two months after saying our vows and moving a day’s drive away from friends and family, I became very ill for no apparent reason. It was August, so there weren’t a lot of flu or cold bugs going around, but I was plagued by a persistent heaviness in my stomach and a lump in my throat like I would be throwing up any minute – which I never did. It was horrible, and after suffering for a few weeks 24/7 I finally went into the hospital to have some tests run. I wasn’t surprised when the pregnancy test came back negative because I had had my Depo shot three and a half months previous and had been ‘covering’ the lapse for the last two weeks with a birth control pill prescription. However, they were unable to find anything wrong. After another week or so, just when I thought I might make an appointment with another doctor, the ill feeling faded out. I was so grateful! I had two impacted wisdom teeth that I needed to have removed, and I knew I would be able to get it done now that I wasn’t miserable anymore. I was frustrated when the dentist’s office told me that because I was a young woman in prime childbearing years, they would like to have a false pregnancy test done before putting me under general anesthesia. Ooooo, I was so irritated!! Finally, they compromised by letting me do a home pregnancy test since I was so insistent that I couldn’t be pregnant. So, I set the surgery appointment, went home and took the test, and sat down to play some cards with my hubby. After awhile, he asked if I was going to go check it. I rolled my eyes and started to get up. Then he got up a little faster then me. By the time we got to the bathroom we were both running and giggling for some reason, each trying to beat the other. When we got to the doorway both of us stared at the shadowed pregnancy test. Surely not . . . Curt reached around me and turned on the light. Yes, indeed, a big blue plus sign. I stared at it stupidly. Huh? Curt was the first to find his voice. He picked me up and swung me around with tears in his eyes yelling: “We’re going to have a baby! We’re going to be a family!!” My response had been upgraded to a nervous twitter and “huh?” The next day I made an appointment to go see an OBGYN, and he confirmed that I was 10 weeks along. Which meant I had gotten pregnant the first month we were married! I did all the usual tests, made all the usual prenatal appointments, read lots of books, went to child birthing classes (Lamaze) and cleaned my house like a crazy person during the last couple of months. My pregnancy was practically flawless. No stretch marks, no varicose veins, a 30 lb. gain, and absolutely no complications. When I was four days past my due date, my doctor suggested I come into the hospital and have a prostaglandin suppository put up at my cervix to see if that didn’t get things moving. I got to the hospital at 7:00 A.M. and the whole ‘process’ started with the suppository. Hours went by, and nothing happened. I knew I would feel very disappointed if I went home ‘empty handed’, even though I had put together a very detailed birth plan that discouraged interventions of any kind. However, my husband’s brother had come for the birth, as had both of my parents. They had been there since my due date, and I knew they couldn’t stay indefinitely. At the more sensitive age of 22, I felt guilty that I wasn’t living up to the expectations I had set for myself, and might disappoint my family as well. So, at 11:00 A.M., when my doctor came in and offered to break my water, I decided to let him. I knew they would never let me go home after doing that, but I was feeling anxious to ‘get it over with’. He broke my water, and then did something I had NOT asked him to do. He stripped my membranes, and continued stripping with me yelling at him to stop it. Ouch!! Instead of apologizing for acting without my permission, he simply said: “I just saved you two or three hours of labor.” Grrrrr. Within moments, hard contractions began. There wasn’t much build up, suddenly I was just trying to keep breathing at all, much less doing the Lamaze methods, and Curt and my mother were furiously rubbing my back each time because I had severe back labor. They didn’t have a tub, but did help me get up and get in the shower several times. Even though that had been part of my birth plan, I knew in the back of my mind that I was sitting only feet away from release from the pain . . . the drugs that I had solidly refused on my birth plan. After four hours of really hard labor, I gasped to my nurse (while hunching over a chair in the shower) that I wanted drugs. She chuckled comfortingly, since she, like every other person allowed within a mile of my labor room, had been given a copy of my birth plan and warned of the dire consequences should it not be followed. I reached out, put my hand on her arm, and growled, “No, I mean it, I want drugs.” So, I was given the I.V. I hadn’t wanted, hooked up to the monitor I hadn’t wanted, and given the drugs I hadn’t wanted but was too wimpy to resist knowing they were right there. Nobody argued with me, which on one hand was good, but on the other hand, if someone had told me how quickly I was actually progressing (I was almost 3 centimeters before labor even started, and 80% effaced); it might have made all the difference. I tried the Nubain, and it did nothing for me except make me feel good between contractions. So then I pleaded for an Epidural and promptly got one. The aesthetician was a nice man who asked me if I wanted to wait until my contraction was over for him to do it. I yelped “No, no! Just DO it!!” (How would that be for a Nike ad?) Within moments, it was working. I believe it hit me before my next contraction did. Ahhhh, it was wonderful! It made my super-obnoxious nurse that was now on shift almost tolerable. She wouldn’t stop yapping, and constantly fondled all of my private parts and arranging me like a Barbie doll. She started me pushing long, LONG before I needed to, and I was totally exauhsted by the time I really did need to. And she did it by putting her face within inches (within spitting distance, one might say) of mine and gasping loudly “PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH!!!!” I finally had to manually move her face away from mine, resisting the urge to dig my long fingernails into her eyes as I did so. I had made it to second stage labor before my contractions phased out to practically nothing, six minutes apart, due to the epidural. So, Pitocin was promptly started. My misery by this time, compounded by extreme frustration, was overwhelming. I was exhausted and at that point might have performed my own C-section quite happily had someone handed me the instruments. Needless to say, I didn’t have the gusto to push out my own baby, so the inept nurse promptly placed a vacuum extractor. The doctor had to repetedly instruct her not to do this or that, and finally started to snap at her in front of us, due to his own frustration. Meanwhile, everyone is still chanting at me to push, and I have this glaring spotlight right on my nether-regions. I spent three hours in second stage labor, and much of that time his head was visible, but he just wasn’t coming out. My husband kept saying, “I can see his hair! Oh, honey, I can see our baby’s hair!!” When his head did get around to coming out, my Dr. said to me “Do you want to see this? It quite a sight, you may never get to see anything like this again, your baby is being born.” I said “No! I’ll watch the video!!” Finally, 12 hours after I arrived in my hospital room, I delivered my baby boy! For all the interventions, drugs, vacuuming, etc. he entered the world vigorous and with a gusty cry. His cord was too short for him to be laid on my chest, so he lay on my belly and got wrapped up while his Daddy prepared to cut the cord. Never in my life had I gone from such complete misery to such incredible joy in the space of a second. He was so beautiful, so perfect, and instantly I was in total love. My wonderful son is now 6 y.o. and we are eagerly anticipating the birth of our daughter, who is due in about 16 weeks. This time I am going to give birth at home, but that is another story that I will write about in December!