My Birth Story: William
-Jerrica Lou Photography & Birth Services
I recently had my second child and my labor and delivery were chaotic to say the least.
I wanted to have a natural birth at the hospital. Honestly, I wanted to have a home birth, but that required thousands of dollars that we didn’t have. I hired a doula to help coach my husband and me through the birth and to have an advocate in the delivery room. This was my first time being seen at a military hospital and I was rather nervous.
At 35 weeks I woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. It wasn’t a cramping or tightening pain like contractions. It was a sharp constant pain in my stomach. After the pain continued for over an hour, I called labor and delivery and we decided to go to the hospital. Of course, right after driving on base, the pain subsided but we continued on since they were expecting us.
The hospital staff was unable to find the cause of my stomach pain, but while there they put the two fetal monitors on me. One monitors the baby’s heart rate and the other is for contractions. Even though a cause couldn’t be found for my stomach pain, the contraction monitor caught that I was having irregular contractions. I could barely feel them so I didn’t think it was a big deal but because of the circumstances behind my visit, they decided to check and see if I was dilated.
Surprisingly, the bottom of my cervix was already dilated to a 5. The staff decided to keep me there and recheck me in an hour to be sure that the contractions I was having weren’t dilating me further. Luckily, they weren’t so I got to go home. With me already having contractions and being that dilated, we were sure that I was going to go into labor any day. We were wrong.
-Jerrica Lou Photography & Birth Services
My due date kept getting closer and closer and labor was nowhere in sight. After having to be induced with my firstborn, I was starting to convince myself that my body was broken and that it couldn’t go into spontaneous labor. Thankfully, I was wrong again.
The night after my due date I was rather sore and decided to do some assisted deep squats before getting into bed. At around midnight I texted my husband telling him that I had experienced a contraction and that he should come to bed soon just in case I did go into labor even though I didn’t think I actually would. He didn’t heed my warning and came to bed at 3 am.
That next morning, two days after my due date, I woke up shortly after 6 am with contractions. After not being able to go back to sleep I got in the bath at 6:30 am. It was my hope to labor at home as long as possible. I started timing my contractions and to my surprise, they were already only 2-4 minutes apart so I decided to go ahead and wake up my husband. This proved to be a challenge because he is incredibly hard to wake up and I was in our bathroom with the door closed unable to get out of the bathtub on my own due to the contractions.
At 6:48 am I used my phone to call the Alexa in our bedroom to wake him up. Thankfully, it worked! He helped me out of the bath and got our daughter and other things ready to leave. I called my doula and the hospital to let them know I was in labor. On our way to the hospital we dropped our daughter off at my husband’s coworker’s house. His coworker lives on a road that isn’t maintained by the city and it was horrible in the car to and from the house while being in labor because of all the potholes.
Luckily when we arrive at the hospital the labor and delivery unit already had my stuff printed out since I had called ahead. We get into the triage room and they said that I was about a 5-6cm dilated.
-Jerrica Lou Photography & Birth Services
I was again hooked up to the two monitors and the chaos started. The baby’s heart rate was super low. No matter what way they turned me they couldn’t get his heart rate to increase. The doctor was called and they started preparing for a c-section. Luckily, his heart rate picked up and that was avoided.
At this point, I decided that if I had a few hours of labor to go I wanted to forego the natural birth and requested the epidural. They started an IV after some difficulty finding a good vein and brought in a wheelchair to take me to a delivery room. The nurse leaves the room and before I could even lean up to get into the wheelchair my water broke. My doula ran out of the room to get the nurses and again chaos ensues.
When my water broke there was meconium in it which is another cause of concern. At this point, they rechecked me and I was at an 8cm. Since I was unable to walk at this point due to the contractions and my labor was progressing so rapidly, they decided to just take me bed and all to the delivery room and switched the beds. We get to the room and the anesthesiologist comes in to try and start my epidural. Lo and behold, little William had his own plans and he started to come. More doctors, nurses, etc. come flooding in. There was extra staff in there due to the meconium just in case he needed emergency intervention.
After less than 3 hours of labor and 5 minutes of pushing, William was placed on my chest. I’ll be honest, after the chaos that had led up to his arrival, I disassociated and had to be told to talk to my baby. It took me several minutes to comprehend all that had happened and come to my senses. Even though it wasn’t how I planned in the moment, my labor and delivery ended up going exactly as planned originally and I got the natural birth I had hoped for.
-Jerrica Lou Photography & Birth Services
