The Birth

 Warning: This is not your typical birth story, so please don’t take it to heart—but wow, what an experience it was!

Due to my hypertension, I had to be induced at 39 weeks, which meant I had to be at the hospital bright and early at 6 a.m., completely unaware of how long of a day I was about to have. The morning started off pretty smoothly; I was admitted, hooked up to monitors, and started on medication to help me dilate more. About four hours later, they checked my progress and decided to start the Pitocin.

Now, a heads-up to moms-to-be who haven’t experienced childbirth yet: get ready for a complete loss of modesty. You’ll have a handful of people checking and touching you, and let me tell you, it’s uncomfortable—this coming from someone who usually has no issue with modesty!

The Pitocin did its job, and while I started feeling contractions, they weren’t too bad—just like period cramps. Nothing too overwhelming, though I did get my epidural when I was 5 cm dilated, so keep that in mind. After lunch, they decided to break my water(which is the weirdest feeling in the world), so seemed like the perfect time to get the epidural.

And then... things took a turn. I knew the epidural wouldn’t be the most comfortable experience, but I didn’t expect it to be worse than labor itself. I’m not sure if this is common, but it was a pretty awful experience. On top of that, I had "hot spots" where the epidural didn’t fully numb, making it feel even worse. Ouch!

After the epidural, I continued to labor, but not much was happening until I started feeling a sharp pain very low. I kept telling the nurse about it, but she reassured me it was normal. I spent the next two hours crying as the pain increased, before finally getting the midwife on call. When she arrived, she told me I was ready to push—thank goodness!

I pushed for about an hour, maybe longer, before finally delivering my beautiful son at 9:40 p.m. Now, no matter how much fear you experience, nothing can prepare you for the heart-sinking moment when your baby is placed on your chest and isn’t crying. I was so exhausted and out of it that I don’t remember much of that moment. She worked hard trying to get him to cry, but while he made some sounds, it wasn’t what it should have been. Eventually, she took him to the station in my room to try and get him to breathe better.

They called the pediatrician, who worked on him. Meanwhile, I was still being attended to—I had torn badly in two places to the point I was shredding as they were trying to put stitches in, and also suffered another significant tear. I lost more blood than I should have, and I can't help but think that if the nurse had called the doctor earlier when I first felt the sharp pain, things might not have gotten so bad.

After what felt like an eternity, the pediatrician told us that my baby still wasn’t breathing properly and that they would need to take him to the nursery for an X-ray. I finally finished getting stitched up and packed with gauze to stop the bleeding. By then, it was 11 p.m. and still wasn’t even close to the end of the night. It had been a long, exhausting day, and I had little idea of what was going on with my baby. 

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous hand" (Isaiah 41:10).