First Things First: Birth is Important

Posted by: Marja Sovero
Doula, Childbirth Educator, and Student Midwife

Welcome to the Welcome Home Doula Services blog! I hope you’ll keep checking us out, and please take the time to add your input in the comments section!

My favorite part about birth is that it brings people together, so I love internet formats where women can come together to learn from each other. In this blog, I want to talk a little bit about birth stories in general, and then I’ll tell you about the birth of my oldest son, which was my first experience with childbirth. Later on, I’ll tell you about the births of my second and third children, also.

First things First: my education in the field of childbirth began with the births of my children, and I think that this is true for many women, so I think it’s appropriate to begin the Welcome Home Doula Services blog by telling birth stories.

For me, each birth brought with it a new and novel lesson, so each birth gets its own blog post. I think it’s important to realize each birth as a completely unique occurrence, and the variety seen in normal, healthy births is immense. Many of the problems we see in medicalized births occur when we try to apply a standardized model of care to all women, across the board. Anyone who’s experienced more than one birth, whether as a mother, support person, or care provider, ought to know that every birth is different. Not only is every mother and every baby an individual, with a uniquely reactive nervous system, and uniquely structured tissues, but every pair (or group!) has a different story, and each birth occurs in a subtly different context. The possibilities are endless, so it is important to always remain flexible and be ready to treat each mom with specialized care, to be in tune with the mother’s and baby’s needs at that moment in time.

This is where birth stories come in—when we try to tell women what birth is like in a generalized way, we end up giving mothers the impression that there is a way they should be having their babies, one right way for a birth to go. When we share birth stories, we can transmit information in a way that shows how different every birth is, and that there are many ways for a birth to be successful. Aside from recognizing and celebrating the distinctive character of the individual birth experience, telling and hearing birth stories serves an important psychological and cultural function. Women fear childbirth because they don’t know what to expect, and fear increases pain. To hear other women’s birth stories, and especially positive ones, is a way of receiving critical information. You may not know what will happen at your birth, but you know how it worked out just fine for one more woman, one more time. There is a reason that mothers love to tell their birth stories and that so many of us find them so captivating: birth stories are not idle gossip- they benefit women as a group.

If you are interested in the function of birth stories, here is a fantastic link.

Now that I’ve convinced you that you want to hear it, or at least told you why we’re here, we can move on to the actual story.

I got pregnant with my oldest son at the age of 18, in 2003. My life was pretty chaotic at the time, and I wasn’t really living anywhere in particular. I felt, at the time, that this made homebirth an impossibility. When I started telling people that I was pregnant, I got a lot of negative feedback—to put it mildly. Stubborn as I am, I became determined to be the best damn mother anyone had ever seen. I would cloth-diaper, breastfeed exclusively, and co-sleep. I even went vegan! I went on a righteousness bender, and I was determined to show everyone how wrong they were about me. I conscientiously followed guidelines for the behavior of pregnant women—I even volunteered for unnecessary drug tests, just in case anyone had any suspicions. I was being defensive, I realize now, but I really embraced motherhood as an opportunity for a change of identity, as a pattern-breaker. And of course, I learned everything I could about childbirth. I wanted to make sure I did it right! The more I read, the more enthusiastic I was. I decided that I wanted to become a midwife, and eight years later, I still do.

Physically, I was fine. I spent my first trimester sleeping. Recovering from the effects of my previous lifestyle, and growing the baby, were all I could handle. All I did was sleep and eat for months! I had gone back to school when I found out I was pregnant, and I was doing well, but I would go back to bed when I returned from class. Physically, I was doing what I needed to. I had no problem making better choices for my health; I wanted so badly to do the best thing for my baby. I was anxious to prove that, despite my troubled teens, I was a good mom. Emotionally, things were rough. My son’s biological father went to jail for domestic violence while I was pregnant, and I moved in with my mom. This turn of events was for the better—I even looked radiant, happy to be free from an unhealthy relationship, and moving towards a new life as a mother and a student. I was never particularly worried about childbirth—I had confidence in my body, and trusted the birth process. I felt that I was a really tough gal, and that I could handle labor, no matter what it felt like. I told people, “I can handle anything for 24 hours, right?”

I went four weeks past my original due date, which worried everybody but me, and provoked a lot of unwelcome advice. I ate spicy food and walked all over my hometown, hoping to get labor started. I walked on uneven surfaces, I skipped, I smiled. I tried everything to get that labor going, but I knew I didn’t want an induction. I have hated doctors and hospitals since birth- I had a full blood transfusion and spent a week in the incubator when I was born, and it was all downhill from there, I’m told. I didn’t fear childbirth, but I really feared medical intervention. I was never, never, never going to let them put a needle in my arm, pin me down with catheters and monitors, and manipulate me with lights in my face. I went in for my NSTs and bargained. We talked about induction. We talked, and talked and talked. My rebelliousness, having gotten me into this situation in the first place, made it pretty easy to ignore the pressure to induce. Due dates were adjusted, risks were assessed, and I walked some more. Finally, the day came that I couldn’t talk my way out of it anymore – it would be a full month from my original due date.

On the night before my morning induction appointment, I didn’t sleep well. My stomach was upset, I felt like I had gas pains. I told the nurse who did my NST the next morning, and she laughed at me a little. Those “gas pains” were contractions! I looked at their machines, and sure enough, my gas pains were coming at the same intervals as the bumps on that paper. I was really excited- I hadn’t had a single Braxton-Hicks contraction in 10 months, and now something was happening! I went home and started timing contractions eagerly. I do not recommend timing contractions, if the only way you know that you’re in labor is because a nurse told you so. I tried shopping, like the nurse had recommended, to distract myself, but I was uncomfortable and miserable. After timing contractions all day, I got ready for bed, disappointed and worn out. My contractions were not very convincing, but just enough to keep me awake and wretched. My sisters were home from college, and I sat in my childhood home by myself while everyone slept. I was nervous and I wasn’t sure what to do. My contractions were still kind of irregular, but they were about 3 minutes apart, sometimes. Surely it was time to go by now. I was worried about keeping everyone else awake, shuffling around the house and complaining, so I finally asked my mom to take me to the hospital. I remember I felt so guilty waking her up! It makes me sad to remember how I felt, like such a burden. But on the other hand, I sure had put my family through it over the years! We arrived at the hospital sometime in the 11 or 12 o’clock hour. They admitted me though I had not progressed much, and gave me Benadryl to help me sleep and let me rest in their hospital bed. I got very little rest, but felt like I was where I needed to be. Walking seemed like the last thing I could do at that moment. If I had taken a childbirth class or hired a doula, I may have known how important it was to keep moving, but as it was, I felt stuck. My mother encouraged me to try walking, but when you’re 19, it’s pretty easy to ignore your mother. When I arrived at the hospital, I was surprised to learn that the midwives there weren’t the midwives I had gotten to know over at the clinic. Gah! It’s appalling how normal this is. I wish care providers would be more honest with women about who will be present at their labor and delivery!

We debated rupturing my membranes, which terrified me. Eventually, we did, though contractions did not pick up that much from there. No wonder, though-- I was still mostly laying in the hospital bed. I did love the midwife who was on site, once I got to talk to her for a while, and trusted her. I declined Pitocin and an IV. Instead of taking me at my word, the staff staged an emotional intervention in which I was told that I needed to let go of my emotional baggage surrounding needles and that they were only trying to help me. They told me they were going to give me oxytocin, the same hormone that my body makes during labor. It makes me pretty angry that I was lied to and pressured so much during my labor. If there’s one thing that surprised me most about birth in a hospital, it was the deception! I finally said I would try the Pitocin. I was worried that my body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to, and I was feeling pretty scared and discouraged. This is another point where a doula would have helped- a little bit of encouragement goes a long way at this stage, I think. It would have made a big difference to me if there had been someone there who had confidence in my body’s ability to give birth. I declined pain medication, but was very much pressured to have some, and told that “I would need it” with the Pitocin. I was scared of being numb, and the nurse got quiet. I am still not completely sure whether they added painkillers to my Pitocin drip or not, even having had unmedicated subsequent births.

I think that in the eyes of the staff, I was emotional basketcase and a troubled teen who didn’t know what was good for me. The nurses were nice though, they acted motherly. But soon, a shift change came on and I met and immediately disliked the next CNM who came in. Complicating matters a bit more, she told me that there was another mom progressing the same way I was, and that she was going to have to call a backup OBGYN. I had lost all control of this experience by now. Nothing was going the way I thought it would, and I didn’t really feel like I had a choice in anything. If I expressed a concern, the main job of the healthcare staff seemed to be to talk me out of my fears, as opposed to changing their plan for my care. I was hooked up to their IV, writhing around in pain trying to keep still for their monitors, and I didn’t know if I was ever going to have this baby, because no one seemed to think that I was doing it right. I remember crying when someone told me that the contractions my uterus was producing weren’t adequate. Call me dramatic, but I felt so betrayed by my body. I identified so strongly as a physically powerful person, as an ass-kickin chicken. In the hospital, I felt very powerless. Finally, there came a moment when I was all by myself in my hospital room. I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom, and so I gathered up my IV pole and my determination, and went to the bathroom. It seemed so hard to get around. I remember feeling embarrassed about my bodily functions, and the prospect of even telling someone that I had to poop was outside of my comfort zone. I was glad to be by myself, I realized, and my courage gathered as I navigated my body. After a while, I realized that I was still pushing and pushing even though I had cleared my bowels, and I reached down and felt my baby’s head!! After cleaning myself off I told my mother to have a nurse come check me. It makes me sad that, even though I had actually touched my baby, I felt like I needed someone to tell me whether or not he was coming. I didn’t want these people touching me, but I kept inviting them to touch me, because I thought that was supposed to do. It’s backwards that I felt like the medical staff had more of a right to my body because I was scared of them. I recognize the pattern of allowing unwanted people access to my body because I thought I had no choice- this was a story repeated throughout my teens. Birth is undeniably a sexual experience, and this birth was definitely too coercive to be a healthy one. I thought I was a badass, but I was scared of everybody.

While I was pushing, I kept trying to reach down and feel the baby’s head. I couldn’t forget how amazing it was to realize that there was a soft, perfect little person coming out of my body! The OB wasn’t really responsive to my efforts, but the nurse who was holding my other leg—I was pushing in the lithotomy position—saw what I was trying to do and encouraged me. I wish I’d had a better opportunity to thank her! I think she was the only person on the medical staff who really saw my needs and tried to meet them, as opposed to trying to make me more compliant with the hospital’s expectations of me. I didn’t have to push for that long, maybe 45 minutes. I was so motivated to finally meet this little guy! He slipped out just fine, with just a little unnecessary yanking and an “oops” from the CNM, who had come in at the last minute, when her actions resulted in a small tear. When he was born, at 6:55 pm, I scooped him up as fast as I could. I am still surprised at how strongly I felt about my son when I first held him. I couldn’t get close enough! All I could say for several minutes was “I love you”, over and over and over again. I sniffed him, and snoogled him, and we tried nursing right away. I think my reaction to meeting Leo for the first time was the only thing that day that made everyone smile. Leo weighed 10 pounds, 2 ounces.

I feel strange about giving such a negative account of the labor that led up to my first birth—it was an uncomplicated, vaginal birth. Meeting my son for the first time is my one most precious memory, and I can’t tell folks about it without tearing up. I feel really grateful for this birth: grateful that my mom was able to be there for me, grateful that my baby and I were and continue to be healthy, and grateful that I remember the whole thing. I am even grateful for the aspects that I consider to be less than positive, because I learned so much from this birth. I know that it’s controversial to say this, but I really don’t think that hospitals are a good place for low-risk birth. I don’t think that I could have realized this without seeing the effect that the hospital environment can have on a normal birth that is going just fine. I acknowledge that many, many young mothers don’t get nearly as good of an experience as I had with my first. I guess that I realized that if this is the best outcome a hospital, a really progressive hospital, could provide, then hospitals weren’t good enough for my babies. I think I did the best that I could for my son at the time, and I feel pretty good about that. It was an empowering birth in that I put in everything that I had, and that I didn’t let previous trauma completely own me during the birth process. I was able to build on that power with subsequent births, which is something that I might have been too scared to do had I had a truly traumatic birth experience the first time. My main regret is that I had put it upon my poor mother to be the sole support person at this birth—for her sake. I think it was really hard for her to watch her youngest daughter go through what seemed, to her, like a difficult labor. Next time, maybe I’ll finally hire a doula!