Pampered Pregnancy – Blissful Birth

My doula wasn’t able to save me from a pitocin-induced labor, but I firmly believe that her presence prevented the possible need for forceps, vacuum, or a cesarean with my posterior “natural” birth.

I had planned on my fourth and last birth being a natural birth – I have had one midwife-attended homebirth and two previous hospital births. The biggest factor for us with a large family was cost, and our insurance only covered hospital births and obstetricians. So we were seeing an obstetrician and planning a “natural hospital birth”. At month seven, I attended the “Meet the Doula” night and hired a doula through GetBabied.

I always go quite a bit past my due date, so avoiding an induction was my biggest goal. I did everything you can think of – acupuncture, acupressure, spicy food, etc.  The doulas helped me with ideas and recommendations for people to see – all were wonderful. Because my two previous inductions ended with epidurals- I mistakenly believed you HAD to have one with an induction – which my doula corrected me about on the day of my “emergency” induction at 41+3 weeks. I was literally driving to the hospital with my induction orders, defeated, talking to my doula on the phone as she pep-talked me back into the “natural birth is still an option” zone, even with the impending pitocin-induction.

At the hospital, the doula’s knowledge enabled her to go “toe-to-toe” with my doctor without me feeling that I had to become an expert on birth practices. I just had to show up, focus, and have the baby! The first possible intervention was right away – upon arrival the baby was mysteriously having heart rate accelerations and decelerations and dr. started talking c-section (!) one hour after we arrived.

Tanya (my doula) quickly jumped in, asked questions, and bought us time to get the baby back to normal where he stayed all night.

Dr. backed off about the c-section and brought on the pitocin. They upped the pitocin over the next 6 hours with me being happy for having non-painful contractions. Tanya was waiting for (and wanting) me to get “fucking uncomfortable”. J I finally did.

We then labored on the birth ball until I mentally felt like I couldn’t take any more contractions. When I got to the point where I started thinking about an epidural, I focused on what I learned in my childbirth classes: when a woman starts to feel like giving up, she is close.

I didn’t know how close I was; I just needed to get through each contraction one-by-one. I tried a few different positions then wanted to go to the bathroom and have some privacy because I felt like I was emotionally overwhelmed. I asked Rocky (my husband) to come in and provide support and felt like I could cry in front of him.

I gathered my strength, went back out to the arena and was ready to push. Little did I know what was to come!

Tanya helped me into position – I did not want to labor on my back in bed but luckily, pushing actually made the painful “pressure waves” hurt less. From my last natural birth, I knew that my body would just push the baby out on its own. That’s why I was so surprised when the contractions were pushing the baby, I was pushing the baby, and nothing was happening.

I became frustrated quickly and tried to just focus on and listen to what TANYA (out of all the voices) was telling me to do. My dr. was no help at all. She was just staring at me like I was knitting socks or something. The nurse was impatiently saying “hug your baby” but I didn’t know what she meant. I was pushing against my legs for pain relief, but I needed to pull.

Pushing (pulling?) quickly began to feel *impossible* and I’m pretty sure I kept saying “I can’t do this” where Tanya replied “yes you can” and dr. probably would have grabbed her forceps or vacuum listening to me without tough-as-nails Tanya at my side. If I had had an epidural, I KNOW I would not have been able to push the way they needed me to.

At that point I just wanted the pain to be over and was thinking “just cut me open and get this baby out.” THEN…Tanya told me three more big pushes and the baby would be out. Okay, I’ll try Tanya. Four pushes and I don’t know how or why but I pushed out my 9lb 1 oz baby boy. She was right! He did come out – face up! I told my husband later that when they were asking me to push it felt like they were asking me to move a wall with my mind. As hard as I tried, nothing was happening. I honestly thought it was impossible. It became possible with the doulas.

And Ruth (shadow doula) took pictures of the whole thing! What a special memory for my last birth.