"Everything okay?" he asked.
"Well...uh...I'm not sure, but I think my water might have broken." Don't forget, due date is July 1st- still over 4 weeks away.
"I doubt it. But if you're worried, call the nurse advice line." He was thinking, "She just has it on the brain b/c of birthing class. There's no way her water has broken. I'm so tired. Please just let me roll over and go back to sleep."
But Dave is a dear, dear husband, and as his wife called the advice line, he dragged himself out of bed to check things out.
His wife had woken up to pee, as per usual, only to find that her underwear was wet. According to our class, amniotic fluid should be colorless...check...and odorless...check. It wasn't pee and not likely sweat. The advice nurse told her to give it 10-15 minutes and if she continued to "leak or start to gush" she should definitely go to labor and delivery. She stood up to walk around, and felt liquid running down her leg. She looked at her sleepy husband. "Uh...I don't think there's anything else this could be."
"Alright then, let's go."
We weren't packed. We didn't have the recommended labor bag with snacks and music and comfort items and aromatherapy. We threw together a bag with a change of clothes and some reading material. Sorely unprepared were we.
******
Anyway, I've been trying to finish this blog post for 2 weeks now, so I'm just going to give you the condensed version. In the end, this was kind of a worst-case scenario birth. I wanted to go quickly and vaginally and naturally. I ended up going long with pitocin and ultimately a c-section. I was transferred from the nice, alternative, midwife-staffed hospital (sadly without a NICU for premie births) I wanted to give birth at, to the big, heavy-handed medical facility with state of the art NICU in case things went badly. We were given the choice and opted for the big, technologically advanced hospital, because we knew we could NEVER forgive ourselves if the little one needed help that was not available at the smaller hospital. Hospital policy insisted I transfer via ambulance. Totally unnecessary. But it was a fitting precursor to the rest. They strapped me (a perfectly healthy, mobile, not even in labor female) to a stretcher, put me in the back of an ambulance with a taciturn EMT, and drove me to the other hospital. Not the grand entry I was hoping for.
The pitocin was to speed things up because my body was taken by surprise and not moving things forward fast enough. "Failure to progress" is the official term, I think. Gives you warm-fuzzies, I know. I can't blame my body though. By all standards, I was small for 36 weeks. I was expecting another month of stretching and preparation. Only the baby was really ready for the process. I swear that she was crammed and decided to break my amniotic sac with the huge inner-uterine body slam I'd felt the night before. She was ready. My body wasn't. I know I could've labored just fine if the conditions were right, but they weren't.
The fetal moniter (an evil, evil device) was showing concerning decelerations of her heart. So they wanted to speed things up, mainly to see if she could handle it and get her out of there. Turns out she couldn't handle it. She wasn't getting enough breaks between contractions. My contractions weren't organizing enough. Her heart patterns scared the docs- and they have their asses to think about. They want what's best for the baby- which in the end, is also what's best for the mother- though certain literature contradicts this simple point. So, after 20 hours of this give and take with the docs and the pitocin and contractions that hurt but weren't productive, I consented to a c-section. I cried. I didn't want it this way, but I wanted my baby out and healthy. I still know I'd be damn good at laboring. The few hours of good labor I had weren't bad. I breathed through the contractions. I felt strong and able. But it was not to be.
What can I say? I'm disappointed, but only b/c I didn't get the experience of a vaginal birth. I got a beautiful girl, and my first major surgery. Must've had great docs, because recovery has been a breeze. Truthfully, I feel like a lot of the literature I read about the ideal of a natural birth actually worked to make me feel a bit ashamed of having a c-section- and I might not have felt that way if I hadn't read them. Really, can there be any shame in following medical advice for the health of your unborn infant? No. There shouldn't be. But the focus on natural birth (believe me- that was my goal), does throw a really negative light on anything but, and this idea that you have to "grieve the loss of your ideal birth" seems wrong. Am I less of a woman for having a c-section? What's to grieve when the product is a healthy, beautiful baby?
Enough of that. Not my ideal situation. But like my yoga instructor told the class, "The only guarantee in birth is that the baby comes out." And thank god for that.
There is a beautiful story in this mess of modern medicine. My water broke a MONTH early! My due date was July 1. There is no earthly reason she should've been born so early. I had the world's least eventful pregnancy. Pathology on my placenta showed no infection or other possible reason for a premature labor. By the time I had my daughter, it was 2:08 am on June 1. Now, as many of you know, my mom died of ovarian cancer about 6 years ago. Her name was June. My daughter, Aleida June, was always going to have her name for a middle name. I always harbored some hope that she would also be born in the month of June (though really, I was thinking more like June 29 or 30th). But, she was born instead, on my mom's birthday. How amazing and meaningful is that? The ONLY reason this baby should've come early is to be born on her late grandma June's birthday.
