Jessica’s Labor Story
My due date was August 13 but it was really anybody’s best guess. I didn’t find out the baby’s sex but I saw that in profile the baby had my nose so I felt sure it was a girl.
I found out I was pregnant with my first child just after Christmas 2008. I was in grad school at the time and both my husband and I were consulting so I had not-so-awesome student health coverage. It required that I cover a big chunk of my labor and delivery costs. I tried to change it after learning I was pregnant only to find out pregnancy was considered an “pre-existing condition” and no insurance plan would cover it.
I’d always thought I’d give birth at home because I don’t like institutional settings or rules (why does a laboring mom have to be in a hospital gown or a wheelchair when they leave the hospital? Why can’t they walk the halls holding their baby?). I also knew unnecessary c-sections were out of control in the US and I didn’t want one. BUT I wanted to keep the epidural option open. At that point, most of what I knew about labor I’d learned from movies and it looked painful. I had no idea what all of this meant in terms of finding the right model of care, but midwives were not covered by my insurance so it looked like I’d be delivering in a hospital.
Luckily there is a great one near me in DC. They promised not to force me to wear a hospital gown and assured me they’d have space after I shared my anxiety that I’d show up and they’d be booked and I’d have to have my baby in the parking lot (it was the height of summer — there were loads of pregnant women combing DC). I found a new Ob/Gyn practice I really liked. The doctors were mostly women in their 30s who were very relaxed and patient-centered.
My due date was August 13 but it was really anybody’s best guess. I didn’t find out the baby’s sex but I saw that in profile the baby had my nose so I felt sure it was a girl. After my due date came and went they had me schedule an induction date before 42 weeks. I put it at the last possible day. I think doctors are too quick to induce and I also knew it was a slippery slope to a c–section from there.
At around 7pm on August 22 I started having contractions during dinner with my husband’s family. We told no one and went home after dinner but by 11pm we were off to the hospital. I’d preregistered and the place was deserted, which was a bonus. After awhile I reached a point where I felt like I couldn’t get on top of the pain — there was just never a reprieve, even the resting part was intensely painful so I got the epidural. It allowed me to sleep, which was nice. I’m so impressed with women who do it naturally, and most women in the world don’t even have the option. At about 1am a nurse came in and said, “Oh, you’re fully dilated!” The doctor who was on call that night was a man who wasn’t with my Ob/Gyn practice but filled in as their on-call dr. once a week. I’d never met him but he had delivered the baby of friends’ of ours and they loved him. Anyway he was performing an emergency c-section so I was told I’d have to hold off on pushing.
After awhile the doctor arrived. He went first to the wall-mounted hand sanitizer to clean his hands and screamed after somehow squirting sanitizer directly into his eye. That was our first introduction. Everyone scrambled to help him and he eventually regained his eyesight, (or just got by on the one good eye; I’m not really sure). With my husband Caleb by my side I pushed for about 15 minutes and out came baby shortly after 2am — a girl. It was such an incredible moment.
She weighed 6 lbs 5 oz (due date was most definitely off). She was healthy and breastfed like a champ. Overall I had a great experience. I feel extremely lucky to have had such good care and such an effortless and uncomplicated pregnancy and labor. I also feel lucky to have had the luxury of being able to worry about dumb things like hospital gowns. As far as the not-so-awesome insurance part, the hospital let us do a payment plan and gave me 10% off so that was all good too.
