As part of Caesarean Section Awareness Month I wanted to share a positive belly birth story.
By sharing this story I also wanted to show the importance of preparing and writing down preferences for a birth plan B (or C) even if your plan A is a natural physiological birth. This will allow you to remain in control, and to be able to make the right choices for you and your baby along the way.
"One of the highlights of my life was the day baby J was born. It was the greatest joy after five very hard years of trying to conceive, one miscarriage, several rounds of IUI, and a very difficult IVF journey. All of that waiting and hoping and J’s birth was just the beginning.
Thinking back to a little before the birth, I remember sitting in the surgery for a midwife appointment next to this older woman who looked at my belly and asked me my due date. I told her that it was, in fact, “supposed to be” today. She looked at my belly, smiled, and said that I probably had another week or two to go. She was so confident that I believed her, and it made me less impatient for baby J to arrive. She was right. Ten days later, my water broke in the middle of the night and, because I had yet to feel a strong contraction, I tried to rest as much as I could to prepare for what would come next. We had chosen to give birth in a midwife-led unit, so there wasn’t much to do except to wait until my contractions were established. The next day, I did what I could to stay calm and get baby J moving along. I hiked five miles, ate spicy food, and had so many dates (the fruit). We reviewed our different birth plans and just breathed through it all as my contractions increased to 6 minutes apart.
By now it was 4AM and the midwife-led unit said we could come in if we wanted to be assessed. As soon as I arrived at the MLU, my contractions slowed to every 15 minutes and I was only dilated 1 cm. It was disheartening to say the least. At this point the MLU was no longer an option (with my water releasing early a clock was triggered) and I accepted to go to hospital to be induced as I didn't want to take the risk of an infection. For me, the whole of the birth progressed so slowly that we had plenty of time to pivot and think through decisions. It was nice to be prepared for each turn of events along the way.
It was a very warm day in April and the hospital room was incredibly hot. The midwives were attentive, kind, and experienced. The doctor began the Pitocin to kickstart labour again, but something felt wrong because after a while, baby J would show signs of distress. The solution was to turn off the Pitocin and try to change positions to see if it would make a difference. The breathing and scripts I practiced with hypnobirthing helped but the doctor wanted me to lay down in different positions (mostly on my back) in the hopes that it would help baby. But in these different positions the contractions were just extremely uncomfortable. The gas and air wasn’t working for me so I requested an epidural which ended up being the second best decision of the whole experience. At this point, I was only a fraction through my labouring and really needed the rest that the epidural provided me to keep going. Unfortunately, adjusting positions didn’t help because every time the OB-GYN started the Pitocin drip again, baby J would again signal distress. After this continued happening repeatedly, the OB told me that we had some options: we could keep staying the course and see if anything improved or we could begin discussing the possibility of having a c-section. It seemed that we were heading in that direction, so my partner and I pulled out our c-section birth plan and talked through with the OB and midwives what that might look like. I appreciated their candour in helping me understand what could happen and what wasn’t likely to happen. For example, my husband could cut the cord and I could have skin-to-skin immediately after but they didn’t recommend vaginal seeding. This helped me to prepare for what would happen instead of wondering what was going on “behind the curtain”. At this point I had been labouring for over 16 hours and I was only 3 cm dilated. I knew that my body was nowhere near ready to deliver so we decided we would try to stay the course for a little bit longer. At one point not long after this discussion, the midwives left the room to find more fans because it was so hot. At that precise moment all the alarms went off and I stared wide-eyed at my partner and called out to get help right away. Then and there I knew it was time. I turned to my husband and said through lot of emotional tears, “It’s time to have the c-section.” We were encouraged by the fact that we would be able to meet baby J sooner and were so thankful that we had talked everything through beforehand because rushing to surgery was a blur. We were both so calm knowing what to expect. Very soon after, baby J was born. I was thankful that we had a plan in place and felt the support of the medical staff along the way."
"It helped me realize that for me my ideal birth was one where I could feel empowered to make informed decisions about what needed to happen for my body and my baby so that in the end, I could hold him safely in my arms."
