I thought I was ready for Labour. Spoiler: I was not.
They say child birth changes you. Here I am, 27 days postpartum, at half past midnight, after just finishing feeding my baby, writing my first ever blog.
Talk about change!
I guess I am just desperate to find a new purpose - other than feeling like a cow.
Postpartum is hard. The every-2-hour feeds, never-ending diaper changes, the lack of sleep, all the while dealing with the pain and discomfort from the stitches - ugh! I have new found respect for moms and parents everywhere! I can’t imagine how parents of twins and triplets even do it. Maybe I should make another blog just about postpartum and things no one told me about.
Unlike postpartum, my pregnancy was a breeze - no nausea, no food aversions. The only thing I had to deal with during my pregnancy was my gestational diabetes. Other than that I was upbeat and enjoyed every moment. I was literally out in the city roaming on my due date, which was 31st of December by the way. But the baby decided to stay in the womb a little longer - can’t really blame him. Nobody wants to come to Copenhagen during the winter, not even babies!
Since I had gestational diabetes, my OB made a plan to induce labour on week 40+1 if I didn’t go into labour naturally which I didn’t. During my visits to my midwife, I was made aware of the procedure for inducing labor. I was told that I’d be given some pills that I need to take every couple of hours to start the contractions. This would take anywhere between 2-5 days. So I went for my induction appointment, being prepared to stay pregnant for a little longer. Little did I know that that night was going to be the night.
The midwife there checked me and said I was about 1.5cm dilated and would break my water instead of giving me the pills. When I asked, she said the contractions can start in a couple of hours. I remember the butterflies in my stomach and my legs shivering when she said that because I wasn’t prepared for labour! I had no clue about what was going to happen or what to expect. I read books about pregnancy, had 3 apps on my phone for pregnancy that told me what fruit my little bean was each week but nobody said much about labour.
I was asked to stay in the hospital, walk around for a little while before checking my dilation again. While we were waiting, during one of my trips to the restroom, I noticed my water started looking green. Turns out the little bean pooped in the womb. The midwife immediately made a room ready for me in the labour ward and put an electrode on the baby’s head to measure his heart rate. The poop could be a sign for one of two things - mature digestive system of the baby that he was ready for his first poop (which was likely given that I was past my due date) or the baby was under stress. They wanted to make sure the baby was not under stress - they needed to know because vaginal delivery would be even more stress on the baby. Now you may wonder how they put the electrode on the baby’s head. The midwife just reached up to his head through my vagina and placed the electrode, not weird at all. My family already prepared me saying pregnancy and childbirth will completely change the definition of the word weird.
In Denmark, hospitals mainly offer 3 types of births - your standard on-the-hospital-bed birth, water birth in a jacuzzi type of tub and home birth. Because of my gestational diabetes, standard birth was my only option, to be prepared in case the baby’s or my BP/heart rate were abnormal. But, as part of pain management, I could sit in the tub with hot water to relieve some of the pain and discomfort. Now because of the electrode running up my vagina, that too was ruled out. So was jumping up and down on a birth ball (not that it would help with the pain, but I thought that would have been fun).
In an hour or so, contractions started coming in, they were mild at first but quickly became strong and painful. They also put a sensor around my belly to monitor and measure my contractions. There was also a neat little display showing two graphs - one for the baby’s heart rate and one for my contractions. The contractions graph also showed a score for how strong (painful) the contractions were. Our family and friends were with us in the room and they could see my pain quantified on the screen. It felt like they were all watching some sort of sport, counting scores, ooh-ing and aww-ing at high scores.
In my birth plan, I kept the option to get epidural (a localised anaesthetic drug administered in the epidural space in the spine) open. I got to a point where the pain was unbearable for me. My husband quickly notified the midwife about the pain and asked for epidural. The anaesthesiologist came in and administered the epidural. I was told it would take upto 30 minutes for the drug to kick in, but I was gladly surprised when the pain started going down in a few minutes. After about 15 mins, I joined my family and friends in the chatter and score-keeping, this time smiling and laughing. I didn’t feel a thing anymore. Thank god and whoever invented epidural! There was still a long way to go, I was only 3 cm dilated at that point.
After a while, I started sensing some discomfort around my left thigh. I was asked to switch positions on the bed to keep the epidural flowing to both sides equally. Despite switching positions, the discomfort grew into a rhythmic pain from around my ribs on my left side to the left thigh. Extreme pain might I add. I suspected the epidural might have worn off on the left side and the pain could have been from the contractions. I notified the midwife and she gave me laughing gas to help with the pain. It didn’t do much. Just after 30 or 40 mins, the midwife checked me again and I was fully dilated.
If you ever watched any movie or a TV show with childbirth in it, you would obviously see a woman wailing in pain. While I was pregnant I was really curious to find out if women actually cried out like that or that was only in movies so I went on to Reddit to find out. Some women did confirm wailing like that while others didn’t. I liked the thought of handling the pain gracefully. LOL.
I was in so much pain that I was cursing and sighing with the F-word! I asked for the anaesthesiologist again. She came in and heard my pain between all the F-bombs. I asked her to re-adjust the epidural catheter as I wasn’t feeling a thing on one side while the other side was clearly killing me with pain. She gave me 2 options - either increase the dose of the epidural and hope it works or take my request and re-adjust the catheter near my spine which posed a risk of the catheter falling out completely. If it fell out, it can’t be placed back in because I was already 10cm dilated and it wouldn’t work (or didn’t make sense to them or something like that). I don’t know what I was thinking, well I probably wasn’t thinking at all given the pain. I took a chance and asked her to re-adjust the catheter. That manoeuvre was not very different from the docking sequence from Interstellar! I was in severe pain from less than half-a-minute-apart contractions and I was supposed to sit still while the catheter was being slightly pulled out and put back in. We had started and stopped several times, working around the contractions before the anaesthesiologist finally put it back in. In less than 5 minutes, my face relaxed and I fell asleep, in the middle of labour!
The midwifes were really sweet and let me nap seeing how much I struggled when the epidural wore off. I think I slept for almost 40 minutes. When I woke up, the midwifes checked and found that the baby was still high in the uterus. So they asked me to move around a little and do some squats to bring the baby down. After some squats and hip movements, it was go time!
In a birthing class I attended, the instructor used the phrase “Ring of fire” during the presentation to describe the baby’s head crowning. That is, I think, the most accurate way to describe it. I generally overestimate my ability in a lot of things, and similarly I was confident that I can get through labour “gracefully”. But when the baby’s head was crowning and I was told to push one last time, I remember, literally begging for mercy. It wasn’t pain, it was a sensation of severe burning, hence the phrase “ring of fire”. I remember crying and saying “no I can’t, I need a break” and begging my partner to tell them to give me a break.
I don’t remember pushing that last push at all. But everything that happened next, happened so quickly. The baby was out, the midwifes announced the time of birth, the baby was put on my chest, my husband and I start crying, he also started taking pictures. My husband was handed a pair of scissors to cut the cord and I ask him to pass me the phone so that I can take a video of that moment. I will use this example for the rest of our lives whenever he forgets to capture a moment. I literally just gave birth and remembered to capture his moment. I don’t think he can ever argue with that.
The whole experience humbled me in the best way. So yeah, going through labour “gracefully” is a joke. You know what else is funny? I remember everything about that night - the scene of the room, the conversations, how my body curled up during the contractions, my facial expressions during the pain, almost everything. But I cannot remember what the pain itself was like, like the actual sensation when the contractions hit. I guess that’s how people go through this again for another child. They just don’t remember.
