I found out I was pregnant in Sept. of 2001 (just before the world trade center/pentagon) and I was 36 with a due date of May 10, 2002. I was seeing a doctor who is affiliated with a hospital that some call the "baby mill." In the past I had surgery to remove fibroids from my uterus. Naturally this was of some concern to my doctor. However, after she got my records concerning the surgery, she said she didn't know if I would require a C-section and she would let me decide. At that point I felt a little nervous because she is the doctor and I didn't think the decision to perform a major operation should be left up to the patient. Routine or not, a C-section is major surgery. At each visit, she would bring up the C-section option, and I began to feel as if this would be more "convenient" for her.
Other than that I was having a routine pregnancy. I didn't undergo an amnio because not only am I a chicken but also I didn't want to risk harming the baby for data that really had no bearing on my pregnancy. The ultrasounds were all normal, and I felt sure that the baby would be fine. Then, in February, I had pre-term labor and I got to experience the "baby mill" first hand. I went to the hospital at about 4 am and didn't see a doctor until well after 8 am and the nurses just gave me medication. I would have liked to have talked to a doctor about the risk/benefits of using this drug but I didn't get that option. Eventually the labor went away and everything seemed okay.
Then on one of my office visits, I had to take the gestational diabetes test. I was not told at the previous appointment about the procedure or what it entailed. So when I arrived at the doctor's office, I signed in and waited (for about 30 minutes). When they finally took me back, they asked me if I had had my "drink" yet. I had no idea what they were talking about. Consequently, I had to drink the sugar drink and wait 30 minutes before they could draw my blood. At this point I was really feeling more and more like a number.
I had been going to yoga and I heard about a midwife of whom I was not aware previously. So I decided to jump ship in my third trimester and go to the midwife. While my experience was "OK" with the midwife I was not enthusiastic about the birth but I must be fair and state that we didn't really have much time to get a repore going prior to the birth so perhaps that is the reason it wasn't what I had hoped. I had also decided to begin Bradley classes (natural childbirth method). I learned all about childbirth and the stages. My husband was practicing as my coach and all was going fine.
On June 5th, I started feeling some discomfort at about 7 pm in the evening. I watched TV with my husband until about 10pm. During this time I was counting the time between "contractions," but the contractions never really seemed to be very consistent, so I thought it was probably false labor. I had also been eating, moving, changing positions to see if that would stop the contractions but nothing seemed to work. At about 10 pm I went in and took a bath to see if that would help. Almost immediately the pain ceased and I thought "darn this is just false labor." Then I got out, dried off and the pain came back and it came back much stronger. I got on the bed and was joking with my husband about whether I was in labor or not and I felt my water break. Luckily I was laying on a pad (keep that in mind when you're near your due date!). So I quickly got dressed and we went to the hospital.
The contractions were coming very close and they were exceptionally painful. I went straight up and got a room. There were no other patients at that time, which was very nice. I told them that my water had broken, but when they examined me, apparently the bag had not completely broken and so they manually broke it and I had meconium staining. This meant that they had to put the baby on a heart monitor and I could not leave the bed. At that time, I was 5 cm dilated. Then the contractions got even more intense and I was feeling a strong urge to push but I was not completely dilated. In fact the urge became an involuntary push and the nurse kept telling me not to push but my body was just doing it. I tried breathing techniques to try not to push and that didn't work. The nurse frightened me by saying that I could tear my cervix or cause it to swell so that I wouldn't be able to push the baby out. At this point I was beyond reasonable thought because I was in transition and I was dialated to 8 cm. The midwife did not really help me at this point. My husband and I were trying to decide whether I should have drugs and she just said she couldn't hear that conversation and left the room. Finally out of fear of hurting my chances to have a vaginal delivery, I asked for an epidural. That was probably a mistake. This was at 3 am. The pain did completely go away and I did get some rest, but I was really too excited and nervous to sleep much. Then at about 8 am they said that I was 10 cm and could push but my contractions weren't strong enough so they wanted to start me on Pitocin (now we were getting into a negative feedback loop -- epidural slowed and weakened my contractions and so I had to have medicine to pick them back up). Really the Pitocin never got my contractions back up to the level that they were prior to the epidural and I pushed for over 2 hours with very little results. I was having trouble getting her head to come through the birth canal past my tailbone. We tried various positions and actually after about 30 minutes of pushing they had removed the epidural so I was actually feeling when to push etc.... After about 2 hours, the midwife came in and said if things didn't progress better very soon she was going to have to call the doctor in to evaluate the situation. This meant to me that she was thinking I would need a C-section. That really made me angry and bothered me. So I pushed all that much harder and within 10 minutes the baby was crowning and they had to go find the midwife and meanwhile I had to stop pushing. I now know the meaning of the "ring of fire!"
The baby was delivered with a bang (literally as her cord broke as soon as she came out). I did not have an episiotomy but I also did not get the benefit of warm compresses on my perineum prior to birth which would have probably helped with the pain I had after childbirth. The baby was a healthy little girl (9 lbs 5 oz and 21.5 inches). She is now 4 months old and is doing very well. Looking back now, I realize that my birthing experience was not all that I had hoped it would be; however, I do think that if I had not changed from my original doctor to the midwife I would have had to endure a C-section. I have learned a lot from my experience and next time I plan to get a doula to be my advocate and to help make the birthing process more comfortable.