Two years ago tonight, I threw in the towel and prepared for a c-section.
After three full days and nights of active labor - some at home and some at the birth center and some in the hospital- I was exhausted and demoralized. Pregnant with my 4th baby, I'd begun having contractions while at work one afternoon. A coworker drove me to the freestanding birth center where I planned to have the baby. When I arrived, the midwife hooked me up to the machine that confirmed to her what I already knew, that I really WAS having contractions, despite being only 36 weeks and 4 days pregnant. My husband arrived. I fretted. The midwife examined my cervix,and told me it was closed up, tight as a drum. By this time I was having to breathe through the contractions and rock back and forth to deal with them.
The midwife administered a shot of brethine, and then another, sure that the drug would stop the contractions. It didn't. I was then given an IV of fluids to see whether dehydration was the culprit. By now I was hurting, for real. The midwife assured me that even though she saw no actual progress from the contractions, I would likely be "having a baby later that night." But since I wasn't yet at the magic 37 week mark, she would have to send me over to the hospital, where she would meet me later. That was because the birth center isn't allowed to deliver babies earlier than 37 weeks. Honestly, I didn't really care that much, as I'd given birth twice at that hospital previously, and had been with my sister as she gave birth there twice (both without drugs, and once in a birthing tub which she brought in herself), and I liked everyone there and pretty much everything about it very well. The main reason I was attempting to give birth at the freestanding birth center was to try to avoid an epidural (more on that in a minute).As long as I didn't have an epidural, the rest was sort of gravy, as far as I was concerned.
So off Jon and I went to the hospital, which was less than five miles away. On the way there, the contractions slowed, but we did hit a big bump that jostled me really hard. I felt a bizarre and huge FLIP in my belly, like my innards were being turned inside out. I thought nothing of it, assuming it was just a weird contraction. When we got to the hospital, they were expecting us, and the maternity floor triage nurse immediately suggested a quick ultrasound, to see how things were looking in there. That was fine with me, so she began running the ultrasound wand over my belly.
"They didn't tell me that your baby was breech," she said matter of factly.
Jon and I both looked at each other. The baby had NOT been breech 30 minutes previously, when the midwife clearly felt her little noggin, positioned where it was supposed to be, below my belly button, ready for what we hoped would be a speedy and low-pain exit. I immediately realized that the freaky, flippy feeling I'd felt on the way over must have been the baby reversing herself into a head-up position. I couldn't believe it. Neither could the nurse, who told me she believed the midwife had been wrong, and that the baby hadn't been head down at all. Whatever the case, however, she was no longer head down, and my contractions had picked back up again according to the monitoring belt positioned around my giant belly. Of course, I could have told them the contractions were starting back up, even without the aid of the machine, but independent confirmation appeared to be the order of the day, both here and back at the birth center.
The nurse told me that if I wanted to avoid a c-section - which I did (don't they involve someone inserting a needle into your back?) - I would need to have an immediate "version," where the doctor presses on your pregnant tummy from the outside to try to flip the baby back around. Not too many doctors have the mad skillz to do this little trick any more, but as it happens, my very favorite OB - the one who had delivered two of my previous three children - DOES still do manual versions. So he was called to the scene, and he explained to me that I would need to have an epidural in order to give his work the best shot at succeeding. The epidural would apparently relax my uterus, slow the contractions temporarily, and allow him to work his obstetrical magic. Once the baby was head down, labor could progress at the same rate as the contractions.
This news - that I would have to get an epidural - was the worst I possibly could have gotten. I was TERRIFIED of having an epidural. Ten years previously, when I'd had my last baby in this same hospital, I had been administered an epidural-gone-wrong that left me with horrible, debilitating back pain for almost the next three years. I knew the back pain had been caused by the epidural; for at least a year after getting it, I could even feel a painful lump on my back where the needle had been inserted. But I could never get any of the back-doctors or neurologists I saw in hopes of fixing my injured back admit that it MIGHT have been the epidural during childbirth that did the damage. Eventually, the pain went away after I bought a TENS machine to use at home. The relief was like a miracle after the several years of post-birth back agony. But I was terrified at the idea of ever again having a needle inserted into my back. And yet, here I was, a decade later, being told by a doctor I trusted that I would need the epidural in order to attempt to avoid major surgery.
I weepily agreed, and I got the epidural. Maybe it was my fear, but the feeling of having that needle and tube threaded into my back made me absolutely ill. Still, it seemed to do the trick. The contractions stopped temporarily, and my doctor was able to flip the baby back head down. They turned the epidural off, I was sent to a room, and we waited for the contractions, which slowly picked back up, to begin to do their work of actually dilating my cervix and moving the baby along toward daylight. Everyone assumed, given the fact that I was clearly in active labor, that we would see some progress soon, no matter how minimal.
By the next morning, the midwife and nurses seemed totally irritated with me - or at least that's how it felt to me in my exhausted, revved up, sore, and hormonal state. Despite the constrant contractions, coming every 2-8 minutes, my cervix was like that of a woman who wasn't even pregnant. There was NO sign of anything happening. So they sent me home with some pregnancy-safe tranquilizers, and told me to try to sleep, and to return when I felt like "something was happening." This felt so dismissive to me, as I knew my body was working just as hard as someone who was actually seeing some labor progress. These were real contractions and they really hurt. They were not pre-labor, and I was not some inexperienced drama queen. This was my fourth baby. I knew what real labor feels like, and I knew this was it.
But we went home, where I tried to rest. And we returned to the birth center several times over the next several days, only to be sent back home after it was determined that my cervix was still beyond unready to do its appointed job. I tried walking, warm baths, squatting, a birth ball, herbs...you name it and we tried it in hopes of my next "progress check" showing some sign that I was actually getting somewhere. And throughout all of it, I kept contracting, steadily and with gusto. It was like my uterus was completely disconnected from my cervix - like they weren't even located in the same body. The constant, pointless and increasingly unbearable contractions felt a bit like my belly had been possessed by some crazy demonic force that only wanted to cause me pain without purpose. By the third afternoon, I was back in the hospital, alternately weeping and stoic, and tired in a way I can't even quite describe. I felt beat up and beaten down, and my wonderful, amazing husband was also trying to hold it together. He was completely worn out with stress, sleep deprivation and dealing with a wife who had been in what appeared to be absurdly useless agony for the past severakl days. We tried a pitocin drip to no avail. My cervix remained stubbornly uncooperative. Apparently, I was by now, something of a medical anomaly, as nurses would wander in and out, chatting about "three days of labor, pitocin, and she's still completely closed up."
Sigh.
In case you've ever wondered, this is what three days of completely unproductive labor looks like: Not Pretty.
I knew I was headed for a c-section at this point, and honestly, I no longer cared. I didn't want another epidural, to be sure, but as far as the surgery went, I just no longer cared. As we waited for the doctor to come in to tell us what we knew he was going to tell us, Jon asked the attending nurse whether most women in a situation like this would end up with a c-section.
"Honey," she said. "I can't compare this to other women because NOBODY does this for this long without something happening."
Sigh again.
They gave me something for pain in my IV, so I could rest some before the surgery the next morning. The relief was amazing. At that moment in time, I loved intravenous narcotics more than close friends and family members. My sister, a professional childbirth educator, assured me that I shouldn't feel guilty for feeling like I actually wanted the-c-section at this point. My oldest friend, an obstetrical nursing professor at a major university, told me the same thing. Still, I felt this odd mixture of relief that it would all soon be over, gratitude for the wonderful and complete pain relief I was now getting, and guilt-embarrassment that I had started out hoping for a waterbirth and was ending up like this. How was it that so many friends could get this whole natural birth thing right, and I never seemed to be able to?
They checked my progress one last time before the surgery, early the next morning, and no one was really surprised to learn that nothing had changed. So they wheeled me in to the operating room.
This is what relief looks like. After three days of labor, several IVs, two epidurals (the second one was inserted just before the c-section) and multiple, painful checks of my cervix, I was being taken in to surgery, where my suffering would finally end, and I'd get to meet my baby.
Although I was relieved, I was also a little scared as they took me in, I have to admit. I felt breathless and detached from my body. I remember almost nothing about the surgery because I was so sleep deprived that I could barely recall my own name by that point. I don't remember seeing C for the first time after they took her from my body, but I do remember Jon looking stunned and very freaked out as they carried her over to the examining table. Everything was very quiet, and for a brief moment, I thought something was wrong. But it wasn't. She was tiny, but healthy and perfect. And PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY, it was over!
The big payoff finally arrives. 
Clearly, newborn C was also exhausted by the whole ordeal. 
I've had four very different birth experiences. None have turned out quite like I imagined, and I've yet to have that blissful, drug-free, earthy crunchy, bragworthy birth that my sister and so many friends have had. But I really, truly never expected to end up with a c-section. Each time, I've started my pregnancies with the goal of midwife-assisted birth - maybe even a homebirth - but now, I've sort of decided it just wasn't meant to be for me. I am effectively crying uncle on the whole natural birth thing. Despite my stated intentions, I realize now that I don't think I ever really had the dedication that it takes. My heart just wasn't ever really in it, even if my head was, and then this happened.
If we are able to have another baby - unlikely, but still not 100% out of the question - I think that I'd just let go of any expectations that I would have anything other than a repeat c-section. I know I could probably convince my OB to let me try for a VBAC, but I think that my last birth experience, two years ago this week, took all the "fight" out of me. I don't really want to "try for" anything. Seriously, I feel exhausted just writing about my labor and birth experience with C.
I never again want to hear the words "no progress" from a disappointed-looking nurse or midwife. I never again want to stay up all night in my bath tub, weeping in pain and frustration as wave after wave of pain ripples through my midsection, even as I know in my gut that nothing's actually being accomplished. I never again want to have TWO epidurals in the space of three days, as I did with C's birth. If we do it again, I just want to get it over with. The birth "experience" is no longer that important to me. That may be wrong on a number of levels, but it's the truth.
Please don't misunderstand, I have always been and will always be a staunch and vocal proponent of birth options for women. I support complete parity for midwifery care when it comes to insurance payment, and I believe that many women are pushed into surgical birth, which absolutely carries certain risks not present in natural birth. I am privileged to be friends with dozens of women who have loved giving birth at home and in birth centers, and the experience of being with my sister for her unmedicated water birth remains a highlight of my entire life.
But as for me, personally - I've got to be honest here - I just don't think I have it in me to work that hard to have a baby ever again. I feel some guilt at this admission, because I am sure there are many women who could have powered on longer, and maybe ended up avoiding the surgery. But the c-section was truly a blessed relief for me when it finally came, and I have to say that my recovery wasn't any harder or easier in any significant way than my three previous non-surgical, generally uncomplicated births. And on the bright side, they do load you up with some extremely helpful percocet after a c-section. That's a plus!
Really - and I know this makes me sound tremendously shallow - the very worst part of the c-section has been what it did to my belly. Before the surgery, my weight could go up or down, but my belly was firm, intact. Now, it's different. There's a mushy little continental shelf of sorts, and it juts out before dropping precipitously over my scar. This c-section belly bothers me a lot, although I continue to try to make peace with it by telling myself it's a well-earned badge of honor. These pep talks mostly don't work though. I secretly dream of a tummy tuck.
So that's my c-section story. And tomorrow morning, when C wakes up, my precious, surgically extracted girl will be two years old. I can't believe it.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWEET MISS CHARLOTTE!
So as is my habit, now I am interested in hearing from y'all about your c-section experiences. Did you know you would have the surgery in advance or was it an unexpected finale to a surprising labor like mine? Have any of you chosen an elective c-section? How was your c-section recovery?
And I just gotta know whether any of you have any tips for getting rid of that horrible c-section belly flap that you're left with after the surgery.
Tell me about your own c-section in the comments below.
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