Totally living the dream: labor and delivery

Giving birth is a lot like skydiving; it looks really awesome before you do it but it’s terrifying in the actual act. And there’s always the chance something will go wrong. And that you might pee yourself.

Nothing could have adequately prepared me for the first time I gave birth. A week past my first son’s due date, we decided to go in for an induction. I remember our perky steps as we walked, blissfully unaware, through the hospital parking lot at 6 am on our way in to have a baby.

I labored for 12 hours on the dot before he was born. About five minutes into the process it occurred to me that I was completely unprepared for what lay ahead. I thought I knew what to expect but actually being there, laboring, working to get my baby out, was something for which I was woefully unprepared.

I don’t actually know what the correct amount of preparation would have been. I’d read a few books on labor and delivery, had a hazy idea of what I wanted to do as far as pain management went (get that epidural in ASAP) and assumed he’d just slide out with no problems.

Ten hours in to my labor my doctor said I was at about nine centimeters and it would be time to push soon. “Cool,” I thought, “push, yeah…that thing.”

I had no idea how to do it. The epidural was working like a charm but because I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down I didn’t know what muscles to flex to get baby out. I pushed for two hours with nearly no progress.

And then the doctor and the nurse conspired against me. They let the epidural run out. Suddenly, I felt everything. I mean everything. I was in no way prepared for an unmedicated birth, but I was locked into it and there was no getting out.

My son was born 15 minutes after the epidural wore off. I remember thinking, in the midst of the mind-numbing pain, that I looked exactly like the women giving birth in movies; I was screaming, irate, sweating, yelling to my sweet husband something about “you did this to me!!!” and pretty much out of my mind.

But then there he was, and it all melted away. The pain, the fear, the panic of the birth were gone instantly. I remember flying around the room 15 minutes after he was born taking photos and chattering with the nurses, high on a surge of post-birth adrenaline and hormones.

I’ve since had two other babies and each experience has been completely different from the last. My middle child had to be delivered via emergency c-section at 37 weeks after he tried to come out arm first (true story). My last baby was born on his due date after only four hours of labor and five minutes of pushing.

There’s a lot said about best practices when it comes to women and the choices they make about the process of giving birth. For me, no matter how much I prepared, nothing went according to plan. I wouldn’t advocate any best way to do it, but would suggest having an open mind and a priority for the health of the baby and mom. No matter how a baby is born, a woman always ‘gives birth’. She’s done the work of growing a human inside her. The end process is such a small moment in the entirety of making human babies.

The three vastly different experiences I’ve had with the births of our sons are stories that I already tell them, stories that I love to think about regularly. There were painful moments, but there was also so much joy surrounding each birth. I can still feel my husband’s steady grip on my hand as I delivered our first son. I can see the doctor holding up my middle baby after the c-section declaring, “He’s big!”. I can hear the sound of my youngest son’s small but declarative first cry, his announcement to the world that he’d made it safely to harbor.

Birth is a process, but it’s a beginning, not and end. It’s the gate between symbiosis and independence. Every experience is different, every woman and man experience the births of their children differently, and if we all lift each other up, we can make the process that much better for everyone involved.