I've been thinking a lot about birth, and pregnancy, and babies, and I kind of wanted to write my own experience with my two girls down. The wonderful thing about blogs is that you can express your own personal opinion on matters and nobody has to agree.
The Birth of Ruby Lee
THE BEGINNING
I was SO incredibly sick. Stopping off at 7eleven on my way to work to buy big gulps of cherry coke (I NEVER drank soda) with lots of ice....incapable of chewing gum, choking down breakfast or not eating at all. What in the world was wrong with me? I'd never felt like this before! It was the most exhausting sick I've ever felt in my life. It was like somebody tied my stomach in knots and put a ball and chains on my ankles. It was all I could do to get out of bed. When I mentioned it at work one of the girls said "Are you pregnant?" "NO way!" I replied. I had already done a pregnancy test & it said "NEGATIVE." Adam and I had tried a month or so before, just for that month, but decided that we would wait since I had just gotten a new job as an Esthetician and I wanted to give it a chance. I suppose I should have known that with my family & his family's track records, one month was good enough! I feel so naive when I look back on it all. Of course we wanted a baby very badly, I just didn't think it would be that quick! The changes in my body were immediate and drastic. My hormones were a roller coaster, but I still didn't understand why I felt this way because the pregnancy test said I wasn't pregnant! After another week of this, I knew it wasn't normal, so one night really late after Adam had fallen asleep I went into the bathroom and used the 2nd test from the box. This time, I saw that little plus sign that let's you know there's a baby in there! I felt a rush of emotion and exhilaration all at the same time. It was a spark of immediate love for that little baby growing inside of me. The next 8 or so months were going to take me on a journey I'd never experienced before. A journey that would last the rest of my life. I ran back into the room and woke Adam up with tears in my eyes. The funny thing is, he didn't believe me! It took the actual Dr. confirming it before he truly believed it was true! Of course, the second I found out I was pregnant I went into "my body is not my own" mode and started making sure I was doing everything possible to provide a good environment for my growing little one. Over the next few months as my belly grew I started really deeply researching birth. It's a whole new world for a young woman who has to decide what kind of experience she wants. I say that because I truly believe the mother decides (unless there is an emergency situation) what kind of birth story she wants to tell. I found and watched a movie called "The Business of Being Born" and it changed my whole ideals on birth and what it's all about. Such an eye opening experience for me to realize the truth about birth and Dr.'s and hospitals. I quickly started realizing that it was up to me alone to make these decisions about how we would be bringing our baby into this world. We went at 15 weeks and found out our baby was a girl. I was ecstatic! I always wanted to have girls! By the time I was twenty weeks I had decided for sure that I wanted a natural birth and that I would have a Doula present. I was very glad that my OBGYN was really into natural birth and had worked with Doula's and Midwives before. I started the search for a Doula. I wanted a Christian woman, someone who could understand me in that way and know where I was coming from. I didn't want hypnosis or any sort of strange new age stuff. Through a series of emails I miraculously came into contact with a woman named Sue. She was a Christian, had 7 children of her own and had been a Doula for years and years! I emailed her and then had a phone appointment with her to chat and kind of "meet" her. The second we spoke I knew she was my Doula. What a divine woman! We started meeting with her for birthing classes and she was honestly a God send. I cannot put enough emphasis how important it is in natural birthing to have someone there to coach you with your first child. I will literally say that I couldn't have done it without her!
THE BIRTH
Two weeks before my due date my OBGYN told me that my baby was so low she was practically falling out of me and she figured the baby would come any second. The week before my due date she said it was unreal that I still had a baby in me. I was already dilated to 2 and everything was looking ready. 4th of July weekend I laid low hoping that the moment would come.....and then it was July 6th, 7th, 8th.....I went in for another appointment on the 9th and she told me that she could NOT believe I was still pregnant. I felt as though there was a bowling ball between my legs, and yet our little girl wasn't ready to come out. My due date was July 12th, which just happened to be my birthday! It was hot, I was miserable, my sciatic nerve hurt like nothing else, and walking was one of the most painful experiences I had endured up to that point. At my appointment she stripped my membrane (yeah it sounds gross, I know!) and said that might help things out if I was ready. The 10th I met up with my cousin and went for a walk at the mall. I felt slightly odd. It was different. I tried to eat lunch but had no appetite and my braxton hicks didn't feel quite the same as they had previously. I had the feeling this might be it! We walked for a couple of hours and then I went home and lay down. I spent the rest of the day at home counting contractions and trying to rest. I called my Doula and let her know I thought things were starting to happen. She told me to sleep as much as I could, so I lay down around six-ish for a nap. Adam ended up going surfing! I told him if I tried to call him and he wasn't able to answer his phone because he was in the water, I'd kill him. Luckily he was home before anything exciting happened. At around 8pm the contractions became a lot more consistent and a lot closer together. At 10pm we went on a little walk around the block and I couldn't get through my contractions without stopping and hanging on to Adam. We walked home, and I went upstairs to use the restroom. As soon as I sat down it was like something snapped. My contractions had been about 4-5 minutes apart up to that point, and all of the sudden they were UNBEARABLE and started coming every 1-1 1/2 minutes. I literally crawled into our bedroom from the bathroom and told Adam to call the Doula. He got Sue on the phone and she asked to speak with me. I was going through a really painful contraction and he could tell by my reaction that I wasn't able to talk on the phone. He told her I was incapable and she said "good! That means it's time. Take her to the hospital." We got in the car and I literally thought I was dying. It was around 11:15pm at this point and the car ride might have been one of the worst experiences of my life. I just remember banging on the side window and the ceiling and I was yelling at Adam that I had to take of my seat belt because it was hurting me. I think he may have been quite scared at that point. Let me take a moment to say that I decided to have my first baby in the hospital because I was afraid. I wanted a natural birth, but I wanted to be "safe" and thought that by putting myself in a hospital it would make me feel better about everything. We arrived at the hospital and Adam pulled a wheel chair over for me. I was literally tense and in almost hysterics because the pain was so amazingly awful and I had NO idea what to do! We got upstairs and checked in and I was put into a room. I was laying on the hospital bed, hooked up to a monitor, contractions still coming 1 1/2 minutes apart and was being asked a MILLION questions like "what was your pre-pregnancy weight?" It was hard enough for me to process what was happening to my body then to remember or care what I weighed nine plus months ago. I had written up a birth plan which the nurses had read over and decided that I was a trouble maker. The hospital I delivered at has a 99.9% epidural rate and a 50% c-section rate. I was definitely abnormal and they didn't like what they were dealing with. They checked me and said I was only dilated to 3cm. Ironically, I had been dilated to 3cm the day before at my OB appointment. I didn't see how that was possible, but I knew if that was true I WAS going to die. One of the nurses came and stood at the bottom of my bed with my birth plan clutched in one hand and told me (VERY RUDELY) that since I was only dilated to 3 and didn't want any pitocin that they were going to send me home in one hour if things didn't progress to their liking. Just following that my Doula arrived. When Adam relayed all of the news to her she scoffed. I was nearly panicked that being dilated to 3 hurt as bad as it did and that my contractions were still back to back and I wasn't having a baby anytime soon! Sue leaned down and whispered in my ear "you are having this baby, believe me I've seen a lot of women having babies and you are in active labor and will definitely not be sent home." She told me that if they "kicked us out" we would wait in the cafeteria. She calmed me down and got my head in the game. She prayed over me, taught me how to breathe and drop my shoulders and helped me focus on the baby moving down the birthing canal. It was amazing how having someone there who knew, who had experienced this many, many times could put a relief and comfort in my heart. By 12:30am the nurse checked me and decided I had progressed enough for them to admit me. By this point I was trying to focus through my contractions, but the pain was beyond anything I'd ever imagined! I kept saying "I just want it to go away!! Give me an epidural!" Over the next hour or so I sort of went inside of myself trying to cope. Sue was amazingly wonderful and I could just feel her presence over me as she talked me through everything. Adam rubbed my legs and was completely there, but he kind of did the best thing possible by just staying at my side and in the background. He let me focus and do my thing. At 1:45 I really, really, really wanted this insane, crazy, excruciating pain to GO AWAY! I told Sue I couldn't take it anymore and I changed my mind about being natural and I NEEDED an epidural. She calmly told me that wasn't what I REALLY wanted and that I needed to just hang on because I was there. She asked the nurse if she could check me one more time to see where I was at before I made decisions about pain medication. The nurse practically rolled her eyes at Sue, but did as she asked. I just remember her checking me and looking shocked and saying "You are crowning! Ok, hold on. I need to get the dr. in here immediately." All of the sudden this wave of relief came over me. It was like the pain was fading into the background. Somehow I think because it was time I realized it was almost over and I COULD do it and out of that came this burst of energy. Of course, they didn't think I was having a baby so they hadn't even called my dr. yet and there was not a single person available to deliver my baby!! The nurses sort of had this moment of sheer panic. I'm not joking, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I just remember them fighting at the end of my bed saying "If the dr. doesn't make it, I am NOT delivering." "Well, I'm not going to either." No, I'm not kidding. My body started heaving the baby out all by itself and I could not fight the urge to push. I pushed a couple of times and one of the nurses came over, shoved the baby back in and told me to close my legs! You can't make something like that up! FINALLY a Dr. (not my Dr. ) sauntered in all laid back and definitely in no rush. He put gloves on, sat at the foot of my bed and told me to push. I pushed through that contraction and then he said "If I give you an episiotomy you'll probably push her out on this next contraction." "OK!" I said, not really caring at that point. After my episiotomy I was pushing when another Dr. came in (also not my Dr.) who was on call for my regular OB. The guy who had started delivering my baby said "you want this?" and she said "yes" put on gloves and switched places with him! I pushed through the contraction and voila! Ruby Lee was born. 2:13am July 11 2009 weighing in at 7 lb 8 oz 19 1/2 inches long. It was the most empowering experience of my life. I felt like a superhero who could do just about anything. To keep the story from being overly long, the bottom line was that we had an amazing and beautiful baby girl who we were thrilled about. The things we learned from our hospital experience were that it wasn't an experience we wanted ever again! As the old adage goes "you live and you learn!" And you will see how much we learned when you hear about Quin's birth story! :)
Our first family picture! I don't think the word "tired" could have possibly summed it up for me!
My beloved Doula, Sue
There is nothing in the world quite like seeing your baby for the first time!
