MY FIRST BIRTH STORY

TL;DR Baby born under 6 hours with minimal pain due to a successful epidural. Poor hospital birth experience. Vagina stitches very painful. Pain Grade: B- Hospital Experience Grade: F

As a single girl, busy only with which restaurant to choose from Yelp for the night or which Ben & Jerry's flavour to indulge in on a Netflix marathon, I didn't have much stress or drama in my life. I had never really been overly curious about the birth process, as I spent more time and energy worrying about marriage and all its possible pitfalls.

Imagine the innocence and naivete I approached this first momentous experience. Ha! I can barely laugh about it now 3 years later.

My pregnancy had been relatively smooth, in retrospect. No complications at all. However, because of my "advanced maternal age", (goodness, it makes it sound like I tried to give birth at the ripe age of 70) there were many, many more hoops to go through in terms of tests and results and how those results were presented to me. I was 34 when I first got pregnant.

So armed with 10 months of pure anxiety, terror and horror (miscarriage, possible birth defects, would I need invasive testing and possible lose the baby??!), I found myself quite relieved to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I had read a couple of books (this one, and this one) about birthing, and both convinced me that hospitals were doing it all wrong and left me contemplating natural birth practices like a water birth or asking to use an unconventional birthing position. But I figured I'd ask when I got to the hospital. Because you know, births take hours. Hours! That's a lot of time!... I thought.

I was almost a week overdue, a few days before a scheduled induction. I was bouncing on a yoga ball most of the time, questioning every twitch and pull I felt anywhere in my torso. My husband came home from work a little after 4pm that Wednesday. He stepped in as I was heading to the toilet for the thousandth time that day. Imagine my jolt of surprise when I felt my water break a little. But I hadn't felt any contractions. Sure, I'd been feeling Braxton Hicks for a couple of weeks, but even the baby's kicks were soft feelings that left me unsure if what I was feeling was anything at all.

By my water breaking a "little", it was the same. I wasn't sure. I just felt like I'd peed, but water continued flowing- for a "little" bit more after I was done. So I told the husband and he got all excited and I'm like whoa, whoa, I don't know if this is it, I'm not in pain? Insert scratching of both our heads. I decided to call the hospital, they would tell me what to do, right? My biggest concern at that point was that we would go all the way there and be turned back because I wasn't ready yet. It had happened to a few people around us. Also, I hate wasting my time and pointlessly waiting.

My call went something like this:

ME: Hi, I think my water broke a little? Should I come in?

NURSE: Sure, why don't you make your way here.

ME (startled to not be asked lots of questions): Oh, do I have some time? Can I take a shower? (I still had the ability to feel embarrassed and had expectations of basic human dignity at this point.)

NURSE (gently laughing): Sure, but come on in right after.

ME (feeling excited and fearful at the same time): Okaaay, thank you.

I took a shower and off we went. It was 6pm by the time we got to the hospital, there hadn't been much traffic and it was a quiet drive broken only by our bursts of excited chatter. We went and checked in, and I got undressed in the triage. I self-consciously put on the hospital gown. Little did I know the forementioned dignity had been left behind the minute I entered the secured doors of the maternity ward.

I was checked once by a nurse and waited a while to see the doctor. When she appeared I was glad to see my own ob/gyn working that shift- hospitals scare me a little and she was at least a familiar face. She joked with the nurse that I was still laughing and talking normally so I must be far from ready. The rest of my water broke when she checked and she told me with a startled look that I was at 6cm and would be admitted.

A few minutes after my waters had been broken, I felt contraction pain. We were waiting to get moved to a birthing room and it couldn't have been more than 30 minutes but felt like an eternity. I couldn't move or breathe, and my body was so shocked at the sudden violence it could do nothing but tense every muscle and pray for it to stop. Then it would be completely fine again, making me doubt it had ever happened. Throughout all this, my husband babbled away in the background, unaware of the explosions going on inside me as I couldn't even call out. As it kept happening , we discussed how soon we could request an epidural.

I was moved to a birthing room where we told the nurse that I needed an epidural. Although I was all for natural birthing methods, I was not going to willingly sign up for what I'd heard was excruciating pain. I don't recall the shot itself as being particularly painful- The anticipation was more frightening.

The husband settled into an uncomfortable side chair that folded out into an uncomfortable bed. We texted family and friends and turned on the TV. The hospital was quiet that night. At 9pm I was at 9cm. About an hour later the doctor came in. I was blessedly numb from the epidural. The nurse and I tried pushing. I couldn't feel a thing and pushed only when she told me to. I was told my pushing sucked. The Big Catch was on TV.

After pushing ineffectively for an hour or so, the doctor opened up his bundle of goodies and showed me a plunger he could use to pull my baby out. I'd read about the unnecessary usage of these types of tools, only used to facilitate doctors and their schedules so I politely declined. And I didn't want the poor baby to be vacuumed into this life.

After some more time unsuccessfully trying to get me to push better, I was told the baby's blood pressure was dropping and he would be using it if I wasn't able to do it myself.

Let me insert here that from what I read of birthing stories online, I had a terrible hospital birth experience in terms of friendly staff. I mean, I don't want them to treat me with kid gloves, but the nurse repeatedly shamed me for my pregnancy weight gain and scolded me for moving and dislodging the monitor sensors. It is hard to lie in one position on your back for hours when 40 weeks pregnant! The doctor was not not-nice per se, but he wasn't super nice. So just his impersonal, indifferent bedside manner felt quite cold, considering he had his hands in my very personal spaces.

So I had Mean Nurse holding my left leg, my husband holding the other, and an impatient doctor below. It was getting close to 12am and I still couldn't feel a thing, and though I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could, nothing was happening. The pressure was on because now the baby's health was apparently affected.

Then a new nurse came in, pushed the pillow behind my head forward so my chin was pressing into my chest. She would tell me to push and at the same time push my head down for me. That must have done the trick because my daughter finally made her appearance eight minutes after midnight. Thank you mystery nurse, I had my eyes mostly closed so I can't remember your face and we never properly met, but I consider you my only bright spot that night. Other than Epidural. Epidural, you stole the show.

The baby was weighed and checked while my most sensitive bits were sewn back together. Again, thanks to Epidural, I didn't feel a thing. Poor cone-head baby was placed skin-to-skin on me and my husband and I enjoyed an hour or so of wonder at the miracle of life. Actually my husband may have slept- he'd almost fainted at the sight of so much blood. The removal of the placenta did not help, I'm sure. I feel bad for what he witnessed, as I missed the whole thing and don't regret it. Some things can't be unseen. Har har har.

Recovery for me was more brutal than the birth. I found it incredibly painful later when Epidural left the party and I was alone to deal with the aftermath. I took all the painkillers allowed (Tylenol) religiously every 4 hours. I'd never gotten stitches before so imagine my shock at how my tender lady parts screamed white hot pain. It was such a foreign type of pain that 4 days later, when it still hurt too much, I went to the ob/gyn only to be told they were very nice stitches and it was healing nicely.

Oh, and is it too late for a TMI alert? My first poop after the fact was: Excruciating. I screamed out the scream I didn't even have for the birth of the baby. Don't forget the stool softener, friends.

So don't be scared- other than the fact it doesn't help. I know I'm luckier than most- I've heard stories of labour that last over 10 hours. Whether it's during the birth or during recovery, the pain will find you. The good news is, a crying newborn will introduce a whole new world of struggles that will push everything else to the back-burner!