This isn’t a post about Baby Boy Nugget’s birth story, it is a post about how Baby Boy Nugget’s birth affected me for the better.
I have been writing this post in my head for more than a week now. I could tell you that spending time with my new baby and my toddler, who is adjusting to the new baby, have kept me away from writing this post. This fact is true. Yet equally true is that I have been putting off writing this post because it feels very personal and I am not sure how much to share. Luckily, yesterday I saw a wonderful mom friend of mine at a mother’s group meeting and she told me how much she enjoyed reading my blog. Her encouragement made me realize that I wanted and needed to write this post.
Mr. Man, Baby Nugget’s older brother, had what I would consider to be a difficult birth. Mr. Man’s birth story began two days after his due date in early November of 2015 when my water broke around 2 o’clock in the morning. I did not go back to sleep and by dawn I felt some contractions but they were still at least nine minutes apart. My body might have been in the early stages of labor but I was nowhere near the 5-1-1 contraction pattern that signaled driving to the hospital that my husband and I learned about in our childbirth class. Our childbirth instructor told us to stay and labor at home as long as possible to avoid interventions.
At day break, against this advise we received in our childbirth class, I decided to call my doctor’s office and report the fluid leak anyway. I was scheduled for a non-stress test at the hospital that morning and being the rule follower I am, I did not want to “get in trouble” for not showing up. Additionally, I consulted a website about childbirth for advisement on what to do when your water breaks and reading the site made me feel guilty about not seeking immediate medical counsel.
The on-call nurse with the answering service told me to go to the hospital as soon as possible. When a patient’s water breaks or they leak amniotic fluid, hospitals like to deliver the baby within 24 hours of the rupture to decrease infection risks. So my husband and I put our things in the car and and went to the hospital with excitement in our hearts. It was not quite the way I envisioned my labor experience, but it was a warm November morning and I would take it.
After my rupture was confirmed, I was induced with Pitocin. Pitocin is brand named drug that is the synthetic form of oxytocin, a natural hormone that causes the uterus to contract during labor. Pitocin is administered in some inductions to jump start labor by kick starting contractions. Pitocin can be real helper for doctors and nurses because it can speed up labor in situations where labor has stalled or is not staring. One fact I did not realize at the time however is that taking Pitocin usually means that contractions are are stronger and more intense. Another thing I recently learned is that sometimes when a person’s water breaks it causes the contractions to become more intense since there is less cushioning once the bag of waters is ruptured.
In the childbirth class I took before Mr. Man’s birth, the nurse teaching our class spoke about the Cascade of Interventions that can take place during a labor and delivery. The Cascade of Interventions a situation where one intervention can be used to “solve” a problem which in turn causes other interventions to be used, which then might cause more interventions to be used. Sometimes interventions like getting an epidermal can slow down or even stall labor which might cause other interventions to be used. Before Mr. Man’s labor I had not completely decided if I wanted to get an epidural or not. People reminded me that “Nobody gets a medal for having a natural childbirth” but I wasn’t sure I wanted to start the cascade of interventions.
In my case, the Pitocin I was given intravenously caused stronger and more intense contractions. I tried to breath through them with my husband for a few hours, but then I caved when I learned I still had quite a ways to go before the pushing phase of labor. The rest of my Phase I labor with Mr. Man was pretty unremarkable. I watched some television and tried to rest. I was confined to my hospital bed because I could not move my legs after the epidural and ended up with continuous fetal monitoring and a catheter. I don’t know if the epidermal slowed down my labor. I do know that labors for first babies are slower than subsequent labors.
The second phase of labor, the pushing phase ended up lasting 2 hours and 42 minutes. I know this because I began pushing at 7:00 pm on the the dot and Mr. Man was born at 9:42 pm. My doctor used the vaccum and an episiotomy to help facilitate Mr. Man’s birth.
I am grateful that Mr. Man was born healthy and had no lasting effects from his birth. I have a million things to be grateful for regarding Mr. Man’s birth. However, ever since his birth, I have felt some regret and frustration that things did not go better or more smoothly especially during the second state of labor. Mr. Man was born late in the evening but before midnight, which made the night he was born count as our first night in the hospital even though we did not get to our room until after midnight. I felt harassed by the nursing staff about feeding him often enough, even though he was born at a very healthy birth weight and did not lose a significant amount of weight while we were in the hospital. There were a few other complications that arose due to Mr. Man’s birth size and the length of time that I spent pushing. In short, I left the hospital feeling rather fragile and not quite ready to face the challenges that are the early days of parenting a newborn.
At home I had some new challenges to contend with too. I quit my job before having Mr. Man because I always thought I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom then I struggled at first with my new identity as a non-library employee. I also struggled with the baby blues for the first few months of my new journey. Yet, we persevered and I found better moods on the horizon once Mr. Man’s colic subsided and the weather turned springy.
I found the first year of parenthood to be a whirlwind of emotions. Wonderful but frightening. I lost myself a few times that year. I felt like I had to forge a new identity in order to move on. Ultimately I found myself again sometime around Mr. Man’s first birthday, changed but intact, perhaps even stronger than before.
This is why I struggled a bit when I found out I was pregnant in June of 2017, when Mr. Man was 19 months old.
To Be Continued in Labor and Redemption: Part II
Coming later this week
