A Medicalized Birth

Now I am all in support of home births for those women who have the courage and emotional balance to do it. I am not one of those women. There was never a question in my mind that I wanted a magical birth free of pain. I had already gone through so much physical pain during the saga of our (equally medicalized) conception, was not in the mood for more. I would not necessarily advocate pain medication during birth, it is really and truly a personal choice based on a woman’s threshold for pain. Some superwomen can smile through the sensation of having a jaws-of-life clamp squeezing their belly and pushing a baby through their 10-cm diameter birth canal. I am not one of those women.

So I asked for all of it. Before the drip by kind OB told me that he was feeling generous today, he would let me eat whatever I wanted. By this time I was starving, I must have not eaten for more than 12 hours. What was near Medical City that was still open late at night? McDonalds ick. So I went full monty and sent my dutiful husband out for a quarter pounder, a large coke zero, and a large fries. He took a picture of me to commemorate the moment, some of our final moments as DINKS (dual income no kids).

Photo from McDonald's

Except for a few choice friends, nobody will ever be shown that picture. I looked horrid, all swollen in the face, but happy. Until I saw that picture I imagined myself as I was pre-pregnancy, with a full face of make up and looking ready to conquer the world with eager eyes. Instead I found that I looked fat and tired, pale with bags under my eyes, acne across my face, and hair all unwashed and askew. 

I digress, this is supposed to be about the medication. Through 24 hours of labor I must have had, on top of the initial epidural drip, 4 “refills.” Those things don’t last very long, after a few hours you start feeling the pain again. Epidurals are magic, it made my painful contractions feel like Braxton Hicks contractions where I can feel only a pleasant squeezing. For the epidural virgins out there, the procedure can be intimidating. First, it’ll take an army of doctors and nurses to administer it, including a big burly man whose job it is to hold you down in a fetal position while someone else administers a spinal tap. There’s a small needle pinch to numb you in the site where the big needle goes. Then the big needle goes, into your spine, you can feel the doctor poking around in there looking for the sweet spot. After you’ve been tapped, they run a thin plastic line across your back and tape it to your shoulder, Through this line they feed the magic contraction-numb-ers. 

Photo from: http://solutions.3m.com.sg/
This is what an epidural looks like

On top of the epidurals, I also had the rest of the stuff they give women for a C-section. Was numbed completely from the waist down. That was very very strange and scary, good thing I was already so tired and almost in shock from the cold of the OR that I couldn’t completely process it in my brain. 

So all in all it was an extremely medicalized birth, with all manner of pain killers. What would this mean for my breastfeeding prospects? The question I never did get to ask myself. I only realized what it meant a week after Baby J was born.

The Day I was Admitted to Give Birth

*I realize these posts are out of chronological order, sorry about that. This blogging thing started out late in the game so am just now catch up with the birth stories.

I had already been “phoning it in” at work for a couple of weeks, partly because I was expecting Baby J to arrive at any moment, but mostly because it was just getting too darned difficult to move around. I felt huge, heavy, unwieldy, and all other synonyms of “large” you can think of. Mostly I was sitting on the couch watching reruns of Law and Order until it was time for naps. Except for random Braxton-Hicks-type contractions several times a day, which were painless, this pregnancy was exactly where it should be at 38 weeks. 

Photo from: http://www.totalfitnessexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pregnant-belly.jpg

On one of these weekday mornings the contractions suddenly felt painful, very painful! I was groaning in pain, holding my belly, and kneeling on the floor waiting for each wave to subside. Time to alert the husband to take me to the pre-delivery room at Medical City, where I was going to give birth. This was a first pregnancy, so I had absolutely no idea what contractions would feel like and how to know when I was supposed to go to the hospital. We texted the doctor and he said just go and get checked. When we got there, I was hooked up, checked, poked, and put on standby. Wouldn’t you know it, contractions stopped when I was there. Feeling silly for pressing the play button too soon, we were discharged and sent home with instructions from the doctor to come back only when contractions were 15 minutes apart and coming in regularly.

After the false alarm my husband, my giant belly and I went out to lunch with friends, hung around the house, I may have even gone to the mall to walk around. In the early evening the painful contractions started again and this time we know enough to actually time them. 

You know how some women who give birth say they have a high tolerance for pain? Well, this one has a very low tolerance for pain. I was squeezing B’s hand, twisting and writhing in pain with each wave of contraction. At 10pm, we went back to pre-delivery room. There they waited and waited and waited, contractions were very irregular but very painful. Internal exams show I was dilated 1cm, that’s nothing! That’s a polite way of saying “honey you are so not ready yet but i’ll say 1cm so you don’t feel stupid for taking up our time.” Baby J hasn’t dropped into my pelvis, he wasn’t going anywhere. Still, since I was in so much pain the residents probably took pity on me and got me ready to move to the delivery room.

Brilliant tip from our OB, book the Lamaze room, the best room and you don’t actually have to use Lamaze techniques to give birth. It was huge, had a couch, a tv, its own bathroom and enough floor space to do a Zumba class for 6 people. Sure it was windowless, but it had an entire wall covered with a mural of a pretty garden of flowers! I had my Kindle, my ipod, my phone, and my husband, I was ready for the wait. So we waited, and waited, and waited. 12 midnight became 4am which became 11am and became 6pm. This baby was not dropping! There were long stretches of time with no contractions, then some contractions close together, then they’d disappear again. Poor intern had to sit there half-asleep recording all my contractions. 

Photo from: http://www.mommylace.com/2010/02/21/cost-of-giving-birth-normal-and-ceasarian-delivery/

I don’t remember exactly when I asked for an epidural, it was probably halfway through my labor. My OBs resident asked me if I was in pain and I enthusiastically said hellz-yeah I’m in frickin’ pain! At this point I sheepishly asked when I can get pain killers to which she replied “ anytime you ask for it ma’am!” See, if they had explained this to me when they admitted me then I could’ve asked for it 6 hours earlier and I wouldn’t be so exhausted. 

There were all manner of unpleasantness during this period of labor which I will warn all you out there about in a following post.