Birth Story

On 9/08 when I got up at 11 to pee, my water broke on the toilet. I was 38 5. I was in serious disbelief as I'm a FTM, had no signs of impending labor whatsoever, and baby hadn't dropped. We had even scheduled my induction for 10/01 at the birth center because the midwives said I'd likely go overdue.

I texted my husband that I was pretty sure my water broke. He came home from work and started packing the bag according to my instructions while I was sitting at the desk soaking through pad after pad. My water gushed so much that we had to create a towel diaper for me to waddle around in. At least it was raining outside!

We met the midwife on call at the birth center at 1:00. I hadn't had any contractions yet but I needed antibiotics as I was GBS so she gave me my first dose. Unfortunately the midwife on call was the one midwife I was hoping I wouldn't have to labor with. There was nothing wrong with her, but we just didn't really vibe well. I feel like that played a part in how my labor went but I'm sure no matter who I had things would have ended up the same. We decided we would meet back at the birth center at 7:00 for my next dose of antibiotics or sooner if labor progressed.

We went home and ate a big carb heavy meal as per her instructions. She also told me to take castor oil and I did. Approximately 30 minutes after the castor oil, I started having diarrhea, and then contractions! At first they were about 7 minutes apart, but very quickly they got to 4 minutes apart and stayed that way consistently for a few hours. I was doing pretty well coping with the contractions at home, so we labored there until 7 when we went back to the birth center for more antibiotics. The midwife told us to keep on laboring at home (we live down the street) until labor was really intense or we reached contractions every 3 minutes, lasting a minute long, for an hour.

Around 10:30 labor got super intense and I felt like I needed to be at the birth center, so we called the midwife to meet us there. She checked my cervix when we got there and announced I was dilated to 5 cm! I thought great, maybe labor will go pretty quickly from here. We turned on some music from a playlist I made, aromatherapy, and hung out in the birth room. The birth rooms were basically just big bedrooms with four poster beds and not much else. I was kinda hoping there would at least be a TV or something and kicked myself for not bringing a tablet to watch stuff on. In hindsight it might have helped if I sent my husband back home to get something to watch as the music didn't do squat for distracting me.

The midwife wasn't helpful at all during contractions and she wasn't even in the room most of the time. She would come in every fifteen minutes or so, stare at me while I was contracting, muttered "good" under her breath a couple of times, and then leave the room. I thought the birth center atmosphere would help me stay relaxed as I get panic attacks at hospitals, but I think it had the complete opposite effect. Being in a big, empty house late at night with only my husband and one midwife was kind of eerie and made me feel totally and completely alone.

My husband is the sweetest, most supportive guy on the planet, but he was not great at being a birth coach. And that's completely fine! It's like the midwife on YouTube said in the birth class series we watched: it's not fair to expect your partner to just know how to be a perfect coach just like it's not fair to expect the mother to just know how to labor. So I didn't push him or ask much of him because I knew I wouldn't get what I needed from him. Plus he does not do well when he's tired, and it got really late at night, so I mostly just let him sleep. I feel that if we had hired a doula, perhaps I could have stuck through labor a while longer and maybe even delivered naturally like I planned.

Going through contractions with a sleeping husband and a midwife who was barely around made the whole deal extremely hard for me. I had no distractions from the pain and was completely in my head. At one point the midwife filled up the tub for me to try laboring in, and the water did nothing to help me whatsoever. After I got out I was wet and cold and miserable. She wanted me to try laboring laying down with the peanut ball and it was HORRIBLE. I just couldn't stand the pain, and she very condescendingly said "that's probably because it's working, so you really need to just do it." Just do it? Okay. If I could JUST DO IT, I would be doing it. I had to get up and move through contractions or they were so bad I would cry.

Finally my contractions were so bad that I was throwing up through the pain. I had thrown up three times, was crying and told my midwife I just couldn't do it anymore, when she finally offered for me to try the nitrous oxide and some IV pain medicine. I feel like she pushed me much harder than I could go and if I had had some help coping with the pain sooner I might have made it. We tried the nitrous and one puff of it made me violently puke and I didn't want anything to do with it. She checked my cervix thinking I was in transition or close to pushing and then announced with a very disappointed face that I was at 6.5cm. I lost my shit. It was 4 in the morning, I had been having contractions since 5pm, and I knew at that point I couldn't carry on without help being that I had been at the birth center for 5 hours and only made it a centimeter and a half.

At that point, I told the midwife I needed to go to the hospital and get an epidural. She made me feel horribly ashamed and not supported in my decision whatsoever. She was trying to convince me to try IV pain medicine first but my contractions hurt so badly I couldn't sit still while she jabbed the fuck out of me a million times trying to start an IV. Oh yeah, she was absolutely horrible at finding veins and for all of my doses of antibiotics she stuck me at least four times every time and had already blown two of my veins. I told her I needed to go to the hospital NOW and she said "well, if you go to the hospital they'll need to start an IV there too so you might as well just let me get that done here first." I didn't want to say it but I was thinking I wanted anyone else in the world to do my IV except for you!!

Finally, she said there was a pain medicine she could inject straight into the muscle and would I like that? Uh, are you fucking joking?? Why didn't you offer me that when I was begging you for help? Of course I want it! Once she injected that medicine everything changed. I became calm enough to let the torturer continue to jab my veins and start an IV and the contractions went down to just bearable. Finally, she got the IV going to give me some fluids and I fell asleep.

I slept for about three hours with my husband and woke up for contractions here and there but they were much easier to tolerate. At some point, a completely different woman showed up and was taking my blood pressure while I slept. I woke up to see Amy, the owner of the birth center and sweetest midwife in the history of midwives, and nearly cried with relief. In five minutes she showed me all the support I had wanted all night and made me feel validated and cared for in the way I was hoping someone would. She told me there was absolutely nothing wrong with wanting an epidural, that tons of ladies who'd gone to the birth center had transferred to the hospital for the same reason, and that she thought it was a great decision for me and I had done so well. She said she was going to call the hospital for me and get everything ready, and them we would go.

My husband got up and drove back home because I hadn't brought my purse and figured I'd need my ID and stuff. I sat in a chair in the corner while another midwife, Debbie, chatted with me and actually coached me through contractions which helped immensely. Then I had the thought that maybe with these new better midwives I should stick it out and still try naturally, but I was so fucking exhausted I didn't think I had enough energy left in me.

My husband came back and Amy had us follow her to a hospital where she actually had privileges. That meant she could still be my doctor! I was so completely relieved and immediately felt like everything was right and how it should be. Even though I had a horrible night with the other midwife, it led to me being able to go to the hospital with Amy and that saved me.

When we got there, they had a room immediately ready and the anesthesiologists coming to give me the epidural. Amy checked me and I was at an 8 already, so it wouldn't be too much longer thankfully. The anesthesiologist arrived and we started the epidural process. My husband helped support me and my sweet nurse helped position me and I held that position super still while the anesthesiologist numbed my back. That part was fine, but when she started trying the epidural, it felt wrong and the nurse told me to say if it hurt and where. It hurt a ton and I kept saying "left, left, left!" but it never stopped hurting and even at one point she hit a spot that made my leg fly up and scared the shit out of me. Surprise surprise, she fucked up, and I was leaking spinal fluid. That was the EXACT reason I was scared of getting an epidural in the first place. She had given me a little bit of medicine and then stopped trying to do the epidural.

She also decided to tell me that I was the "first person she ever needed help with" which is just what you want to hear. I was extremely upset at that point and already having a panic attack after I laid back down. Crying and hyperventilating with like five different people standing around me didn't help. Another doctor came in and I was so scared of her going back into my back and asked if there was any other way I could carry on without getting one. She said nothing else would help like the epidural and that there weren't any additional risks for going in again because since they already got a "wet tap" (spinal leak) I would likely get a spinal headache, so since I was already at that point she might as well go back in. I reluctantly agreed. This time, though, she was in and got it and I didn't feel a thing. My legs started to go numb.

I felt a lot better and just laid down and relaxed. Amy asked if I felt anything and I said no. She said I had just had a contraction! I couldn't feel a thing and I was so relieved. My nurse had me lay on my side with the peanut ball and after a while we switched sides. I was laying there happily numb, smiling at my husband, and everything felt okay. After a little bit of talking about everything, watching a little TV, and hanging out with the peanut ball, my nurse checked me and said I was at 10cm and it was time to have a baby! The moment was super exciting and full of joy, and I think if I hadn't gotten the epidural things wouldn't have been as great as they were. She said she would go get Amy and then I would start pushing.

I was so happy because I hadn't realized that Amy was going to deliver the baby too! She came in with the nurse and got my feet put up on the stirrups. My husband came to hold one of my legs, the nurse held the other, and Amy told me to start pushing. I would push three times as hard as I could and then rest. I was doing well pushing but Amy had the idea of trying some handles that were attached to the bed. I grabbed onto those and pulled really hard with my arms while I was pushing down and it made all the difference. Eventually I could feel the contractions (still painlessly) and knew when to push.

I only pushed for about 40 minutes total and soon his head was right there. When Amy said he had hair, I got really determined and wanted to get him out! It was super weird with the pressure when he was down that low, and it felt like I was taking a poop that got stuck and was just hanging out of me. Pretty uncomfortable. Finally Amy wanted me to push more than three times because he was SO close, I looked at my husband who suddenly was going "oh my God he's right there!!! Come on, push!" and I just gave it all I had for five pushes until suddenly I felt him being pulled out of me, and then he was on my chest. It was absolutely insane. It happened so fast I couldn't believe it. This little grey naked baby was crying and wiggling and finally here. I burst into tears and my husband was crying too. He tried to hide it a little bit but I could see him crying, which made me cry even more.

I couldn't see the baby's face yet but I was patient and just hugged him to my chest while two nurses quickly cleaned him a bit. Amy clamped the cord and cut it after it quit pulsing, and delivered my placenta while I was holding baby. The nurses helped me undo my gown so I could do skin to skin. I just wanted to hold him for a while and not try breastfeeding yet, as I knew it would be challenging since I have flat nipples and wanted to save that stress for later (spoiler alert: I was right, it is challenging).

After a bit, my husband held his son for the first time with just the three of us in the room, and he burst into tears. He cried and said "he's so beautiful" and I just sobbed with him. That's one of my favorite life moments to date.

Since my water had broken first and I was GBS , we had to stay at the hospital from Sunday 09/09 through Tuesday 09/11. Everything went well during our stay but we had to give the baby formula as he just couldn't latch, even with a nipple shield. Finally, near the end of our stay, we had a nurse who really helped us get the hang of the nipple shield and got baby to latch onto it while squirting formula into his mouth, but he wouldn't suck long enough to get any of the colostrum. I ended up pumping colostrum and fed it to him via bottle, so at least he got some.

The worst part of the whole experience happened on day 2 of the hospital stay, approximately 24 hours after I got the epidural: the spinal headache. It hit and hit hard. At first my nurse thought it was just a regular headache, but the hydrocodone she was giving me didn't help the pain, so she said we could try Percocet. I took one and laid down and she checked on me a while later, I said the headache was gone! It felt like it was when I was laying down, but then I had to get up to pee and my head felt like it was going to explode. When she came back later for my next round of medicine I told her it hadn't gone away, just got better when laying down. That's pretty much the key sign that it's a spinal headache so she had an anesthesiologist come and talk to me.

He said he could tell by looking at me that I had a spinal headache. He told me about the blood patch, which is the only treatment for it. Basically they go back in to the epidural site and take blood from you and inject it into the epidural site. Other than that, the only thing we could do was to try lots of caffeine, water, and pain medicine. He told me without the blood patch it wouldn't go away quickly and I would probably still have it for a week. I was really scared of having anyone go into my back again so I refused the blood patch for now in favor of trying the other things first.

I was up to two Percocets and it made the pain manageable enough that I could sit up at an angle and still get up to go to the bathroom. My nurse said I should really consider the blood patch and had another anesthesiologist talk to me about it. I was sure I'd probably get it but then the anesthesiologist explained with the blood patch they could possibly get another wet tap, resulting in another spinal headache...so again, I said no, and wanted to wait. This guy said it would normally resolve on its own in 3-5 days so I felt like I could manage for that long. I was discharged with Percocet.

They did help for five days, until I ran out. That whole first week was super rough because I still needed to lay down most of the time or my head hurt really badly so my husband was basically taking care of both me and the baby. When I ran out of Percocet, the pain went from a 6 to a fucking 20. I couldn't get up to go to the bathroom without sobbing. I couldn't even lift my head to eat. We had to call my husband's dad to come watch the baby so we could go back to the hospital and get the blood patch.

Thankfully, it worked, and aside from my back hurting from being punctured a third time, I was headache free. I had tinnitus for a week but it's since resolved. I don't wish the pain of a spinal headache on anyone, but looking back, I would still get the epidural even if I knew what was going to happen. I just wanted to share that part because it's one of those things that almost never happens, but it still happens!

If you made it this far, thank you for reading my story. Husband, baby and I are all doing great 😊

Baby tax! Desmond James, born 09/09/18, 8lbs 9oz and 21 inches long.

http://imgur.com/UYvEwHv