Birth Story, Part I

Every mom has her birth story. Even those moms who haven’t experienced childbirth, they have their own form of a birth story.

Here is mine.

WARNING: The following includes some personal and potentially graphic information, especially for any menfolk out there. Okay, you’ve been warned.

Today is Jacob’s birthday! I can’t believe our little nugget is a walking, talking little person. Today is also Gandhi’s birthday, which is why I think that Jacob is so mellow, and it may also be why he fought so hard to be born on October 2.

Oh how we tried to get him out of the hot tub! At 36 weeks, his head was measuring at 39 weeks and his weight was 7 lbs, 4 oz. Yikes! Everyone kept telling us we were going to get this big old baby that would never make it to 40 weeks. We tried to induce a week before Jacob’s birth, and it failed. This was somewhat horrifying because we didn’t realize that an induction may not work. We figured we’d come out with a baby no matter what, right? WRONG.

We checked in on a Tuesday night, and they gave me Cervidil, a vaginal suppository (Seriously, you have been warned) which is a cervical ripening agent, which means that it should have gotten my cervix to open up and get ready to make room for my hopefully not too big kid.

About three hours into the 12 hours of Cervidil, I woke up with the WORST PAIN OF MY LIFE. Worse than labor, and worse than what followed Jacob’s birth (That would be the future post entitled Postpartum Part I). In the days and weeks that followed, I got very familiar with the 1-10 pain scale, and I can say unequivocally that this was a perfect 10. It felt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly in the ONE place that a woman does not want to be stabbed. Thankfully they took it out and the pain subsided. The downside was that we just had Pitocin (another drug used to speed things along) to induce labor and that wasn’t enough.

Night two, we tried again, and once again, I woke up with the WPOML. Thankfully we had a fabulous nurse (I could write pages about the awesomeness of labor and delivery nurses and I probably will, but that is also another post) who asked if I had bad period cramps, and I said, “You mean like take massive drugs for three days bad? Why yes, yes I do.” Evidently that was a sign of hypersensitivity to prostaglandin, the MAIN ingredient in Cervidil.

Day 2 was a Thursday, and with a still un-ripe cervix by the end of the day, we had a choice: C-Section or go home. As much as we wanted this kid, I didn’t want a C-Section (Hear that? It’s God laughing as I tried to make a plan for this birth), so we went home. Tired and emotionally spent, I finally let my friends that I was still alive, and sobbed on the phone to my mom-friend, L.

Back at home, we decided to wait and not push things. So we waited, and my due date came and went. Monkey Brain struck the weekend after Jacob was due, and I tried to induce labor using castor oil. I ended up with bad breath and 12 hours of false labor.

I went into real labor the evening of October 1, and 25 hours and one C-Section later (that’s Birth Story Part II), Jacob came into this world at 9 lbs, 14 oz. As much as I tried to figure out a plan, it seems that he had his own.

Jacob’s birthday reminds me of what’s coming in February, and the big question is to VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean) or not to VBAC. What I have learned is that I’m not going to decide right now. I remember the last time I tried to pick my child’s birthday.