My birth story
One year ago was the worst + best day of my life
My daughter turns one this weekend, and I am in denial about it. How is my tiny babe so grown?? It has happened so devastatingly quickly. I knew it would feel this way, but I still wasn’t prepared.
In celebrating one year since her birth, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on what I’ve learned and everything that’s happened in my transition into motherhood. I can honestly say, it’s been so blissful, magical, and dare I say, easy! Not that there haven’t been things that are hard, but truly I have felt so completely at ease in my role as mother to my brilliant little angel baby. She’s a dream come true and I’ve felt that way every single day since she made her appearance.
This ease is quite surprising considering how absolutely brutal her birth was. It was not what I had planned for and was devastating in a way that I never could have anticipated. There was a lot of grief associated with my birth for me, and I want to give space for the reality of that too. So I am sharing my birth story, because there was a while where I thought I would never be able to talk about it to anyone ever.
I planned for a birth center birth. My husband and I were living in Chicago at the time, and Chicago has really amazing birth options. We found an incredible birth center with a team of midwives that became friends, and while my pregnancy was miserable, my care was phenomenal.
We chose a birth center birth because my husband is an emergency physician and I used to work as a doula, so for us we wanted to be in a place that felt comfortable and not medical, that would allow me to take the lead in my labor and birth, while still providing us with expert care.
I had a really healthy and normal pregnancy (though I was basically nauseous for the entire 9 months), but then at 36 weeks we found out my daughter was breech. I did not take this well, but after taking a day to cry and feel sorry for myself, we hunkered down and took action. We did spinning babies (I was upside down twice a day for 20 minutes each time), moxibustion (burning a stick by my pinky toe every night before bed), lots of acupuncture, cold packs, etc. etc. And we scheduled an external cephalic version with an old school doctor an hour outside of the city who was supposed to be the best in the biz. And he was! At 37 weeks we went into the hospital, I was hooked up to all sort of things, and this doctor (plus a resident) manhandled my belly until my baby was flipped head down. It was extremely painful but quick, and I was just so overjoyed that it worked that the pain seemed inconsequential.
After the version, for the remainder of my pregnancy, I had prodromal labor which is when you have real, painful contractions that come and go but don’t actually mean labor is starting. I also had lightning crotch (exactly what it sounds like) any time I walked. After a week of this and thinking I was going into labor, I decided I needed to change my mindset and basically refused to ever believe I was in labor.
At 40 weeks and 4 days I started noticing that my contractions weren’t going away like normal but I had meetings all day at work, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up, so I just ignored it. They also weren’t any more painful than usual — just felt like period cramps — so I found it pretty easy to ignore.
When I woke up the next day at 7am, the contractions were definitely more consistent and not going away, but I still didn’t want to get my hopes up so I started working. About an hour into working I was laying on the floor, staring at my computer, and realized there was no way I could get anything done.
I labored at home all day going from bouncing on the yoga ball, laying in my bed, standing in the shower and finally on all fours on a yoga mat in the living room. My husband was timing the contractions and we were on the phone with my midwife and doula on and off throughout the day.
Basically since the contractions had started, they were 3-5 minutes apart lasting a minute. I think I had had most of my early labor the day before and through the night and just hadn’t realized it. Because of the regularity of my contractions, I focused on intensity as the indicator for when I should go into the birth center. My daughter was posterior so the entire labor was in my back and pretty intense, but I figured as long as I felt able to manage it myself, I was fine to be at home.
After about 8 hours of regular contractions, I facetimed my sister. She was making me laugh between contractions and during one contraction my water broke in a huge gush. I quickly hung up with my sister and called the midwife who wanted me to come in right away. I was GBS positive so they wanted to start antibiotics. I said I was going to wait about an hour and then I’d come in. After maybe 20 minutes my contractions were so intense that I knew we had to go in right then.
My husband made me a bed of blankets on the floor of the car and as he drove I would press my tailbone into a metal bar on the floor for counterpressure.
At the birth center I immediately felt better. It was so cozy and everyone was so excited and calm that it gave me the reassurance I needed. I knew I could make it through the rest of my labor and birth.
When I got to the birth center I was 5 cms dilated. My contractions were a lot more intense at that point and I didn’t want anyone to touch or speak to me. I labored in silence basically the whole time. The midwife and her assistants kept trying to give me antibiotics, but I kept saying no any time they brought over an IV. I was really in the zone with my contractions so I was not paying much attention to anything that was going on, but my husband told me later that they were checking the baby’s heart rate really frequently. I had been at the birth center about 3 hours when my midwife told me that the baby’s heart rate was way too low for me to continue there and that they were going to have to transfer me to the hospital. I probably was shocked by this on some level but I was so focused on my contractions that I just nodded. I remember having the passing thought that if I was going to the hospital then I might as well get an epidural (lol).
Everything from then on was excruciating. My midwife checked me just before the EMTs got there and I was 8 cm dilated. When the EMTs arrived everything went from quiet and calm to loud and cold and chaotic. I remember one of the EMTs saying, “Is she in labor?”. Which is a crazy thing to ask about a woman who is 8 cm dilated. Props to me for looking really calm, I guess. Between contractions I crawled from the beautiful, plush queen bed onto a stretcher and was wheeled across cobblestones(!!!) into the cold and then put into an ambulance.
My midwife was the only one allowed to come with me in the ambulance so my husband drove separately with my doula to the hospital. I’m honestly very glad my midwife was the one with me. She was in control and calm throughout the entire situation and acted as a barrier between me and everything else so I could continue focusing on being in labor. Even still, the ambulance ride was the most harrowing experience of my life. I remember squeezing my eyes shut and clinging to the side of the stretcher as we sped through the streets. It couldn’t have been longer than 10 minutes but it felt like an eternity.
When we got to the hospital I was sped around and poked and grabbed and jostled as I was moved into different rooms, onto different beds, hooked up to random machines, and having all my vitals taken. I was also being asked a lot of questions as part of the intake process. I turned to my midwife and begged for an epidural.
When my husband finally got into the hospital room I grabbed his hand and told him I could not do this. The room was so bright and crowded and I was sobbing and screaming through contractions. I was getting cervical checks every few minutes it felt like, and being moved around into different positions to try to get my daughter’s heart rate to regulate. I wasn’t allowed to move in the way I wanted and there were probably a half a dozen strangers standing around my bed. It wasn’t long before the OB said I was 10 cm and I needed to push. It was too late for the epidural.
I only pushed for a few minutes and then the room became panicked. The baby was too high in my pelvis and her heart rate was dropping rapidly. The OB said I had to have a c-section now. They started rushing me around and injected me with something to slow the contractions down. The injection wasn’t working though and things were moving really quickly. I remember distinctly the OB explaining to me what a c-section was — this is hospital protocol but it still struck me as ridiculous.
They rushed me back and I had a moment of realizing I was cold, naked, and surrounded by strangers. I remember the sensation of liquid (antiseptic) being poured over my body. I was being told to take deep breaths into a mask. I wondered where my husband was. I didn’t realize fully what was happening — I was being put under general anesthesia. I think I still had this idea in my head of getting an epidural and then they would bring my husband back and we would have a traditional c-section birth.
I took deep breaths and closed my eyes and the next thing I remember was waking up in a different room, and my husband was standing next to me holding a baby.
It was shocking, but in the moment I just felt so much relief that it was over. We spent about a day and a half in the postpartum ward before I begged to go home and thankfully they let us.
We had been home maybe 4 days when I woke up one morning and just burst into tears. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and when my husband asked me what was wrong I told him I had missed the birth of our daughter. She had been pulled out of me by a stranger and I would never get that moment back. I was devastated.
There’s a photo of me meeting my daughter for the first time. I look emotional as I gaze at her. But I don’t remember that moment at all. I remember a few minutes later when I was allowed to hold her, but that first meeting is erased from my mind — or maybe buried behind walls of anesthesia. For a long time I was sad for my daughter — for those first few hours of life she spent without me. Now, when I think about it, I am mostly sad for me. They told me that they gave me some medication that would make me forget the surgery because, apparently, I woke up briefly during it (I guess this is common). That must have been terrifying for me. And though I don’t remember it, that’s still something that happened to me. That trauma lives somewhere inside my body and mind, and I’ve had to heal from it — from all of it — whether I remember it or not.
When I was preparing for my birth, I pictured, over and over again, the moment when she would emerge and be handed to me. It’s a moment I’ve seen dozens of times as a doula. I’ve cried at countless births at that moment — the release of love and energy and physicality is so powerful. I had pictured that moment for myself so many times. But I didn’t get to have it. The moment she was born, I was, for all intents and purposes, not there.
It took me months to be able to really talk about it. And I still can’t tell the story fully without crying. It’s amazing to me that I have this beautiful, incredible girl who is my entire life and world, who I grew in my body and birthed out of me with tremendous effort, and yet I wasn’t even present for that moment. It seems an impossible tragedy to have missed it.
I wonder if the universe decided to meet me in that grief and give me the blissful months that followed as a gift. Postpartum wasn’t easy by any means, but as I’ve mentioned, I’ve found motherhood more empowering and enjoyable than I thought was possible. In many ways my immediate postpartum was actually quite smooth (I will say I did A LOT in the lead up to make this possible, maybe a post for another day).
And now my daughter turns one. While our birth story is a difficult one, our life with her has been bliss. She is everything. I couldn’t love her more and yet do love her more every day. She’s the best thing I’ve ever done. She makes me feel more myself. She inspires the best parts of me. She is brave and smart and creative and funny, and it is the honor of my life to be her mother.
I would live through our birth again and again if it means getting to have her as my daughter. Happy birthday to my perfect baby. I am better with you.
