Many of you have noticed that the topic of pregnancy has been missing from my site. The reason for this is that I never had anything particularly useful to impart on the topic of pregnancy and childbirth, this is due largely in part because of my own unresolved feelings regarding my first birth. During my first pregnancy, my fear of pain during childbirth was much greater than my need for knowledge. I think I even instinctively knew that if I did too much research on birth options I would likely find out information to discredit the method I was going with…which was as pain free as I could manage to get. I read What to Expect When Your Expecting, a bland book devoid of birthing options and we attended hospital offered ‘prepared childbirth’ classes.
When my OB asked me what I wanted from my birthing experience, I told him to experience as little painSchai 8 months pregnant as possible. He gave me just that (kind of). I traded pain of childbirth for the pain of recovery from major surgery. This may sound like I blame my physician. Personally I don't, although I can see that as a rational reaction in many women. Instead I blame myself. The thing with choices is that the ones you make now will affect your future choices, and by choosing a pain-free childbirth, I chose to have my birth managed by a doctor, not nature, and not my body. In essence I removed my options by making the choices I made.
I went to the hospital when my contractions were 13 minutes apart (told you I was a chicken) and was immediately given an IV and Demerol once the IV catheter was in place. At 4 cm I got the epidural and that’s when I stopped feeling contractions. I was disconnected from the labor at that point. Soon there after, a pitocin drip was started in my IV to keep up my contractions and my membranes were artificially ruptured sometime after that. After laboring at 8 cm for a few hours a cesarean section was done and our daughter was delivered only 12 hours after I entered the hospital. (really only 12 hours after I began to labor)
My husband and I were very emotionally unprepared for the possibility of a cesarean section. After all, they are only done when medically indicated in emergency situations, right? Wrong. The United States has a 25% cesarean section rate, that’s an amazing 1in 4 women who can’t deliver normally. Can’t or don’t? Depends on who you ask, but even if they can’t, there is an amazing reason why that is.
For two years I filed my c-section experience away in my mind, slowly absorbing it and sorting it out. To say I had unresolved feelings would be an understatement. I was mad, but I didn’t know at who. I was confused as to why I even had a c-section. Perhaps it was well discussed with my husband and I, but neither of us remember it. I seem to recall it was failure to progress because I had been hovering at 8 cm for a few hours, and possibly some pitocin induced fetal distress. I was sad at not even looking at my baby for longer than 5 minutes until 4 hours after her delivery! That was well beyond the hour of quiet alertness an infant experiences directly following an unmedicated, natural, vaginal birth. And I was out of sorts for having to begin motherhood and family life with a 3 day hospital stay.
Then recently I became pregnant again. I decided that I would have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) but I also thought that I would just go to the hospital, a little more progressed of course, and get the epidural and deliver vaginally. No problem right? Not right.
In this section of my site I will be covering some of the information I have discovered through my research of birthing options and how decisions a pregnant mother and her partner make can increase their risk of delivering by surgery, not nature. I do not wish to condemn those who choose to have a medicated birth, only to provide you with enough information on the cons of typically glorified procedures which your birth attendant is likely to offer or insist upon. I know that medicated and managed birth is the norm in the United States, but being the norm does not afford it the distinction of being the best. That is a decision for pregnant couples to make based on a myriad of information reflecting the risks, side-affects, and benefits of particular procedures.
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