About three weeks ago the most joyous event happened- I gave birth to my son. He came early by two weeks. Which was a total shock to me because I never even went into labor with my first child.
I wrote to everyone previously about my quest for natural childbirth. I wanted Ryan (my son) to come on his own time, without drugs or intervention. And true to my word I tried my hardest to make that happen. I waited until I wasn’t able to talk through my contractions; they were about 4 minutes apart when we left for the hospital. I had been in labor since before 9 AM on this same day and by the time I would leave for the hospital it was 9:30 PM at night. Twelve hours is a long time to have back labor. When I got the hospital, the Doctors hooked me up to the monitors and I was indeed having contractions. They were now 3 minutes apart and starting to resemble “mountains” instead of “peaks.” My doctor decided to check me and see how far along I was… I wasn’t even dilated 1 centimeter. In fact the nurse couldn’t even find my cervix to check for dilation because it was so high in my pelvis. I was in a lot of pain and obviously not getting anywhere with the contractions- after about 45 minutes my doctor and nurse came in to tell us that they were prepping an OR for us. We were having the baby tonight via Cesarean Section.
Was I upset? Yep. I asked my Doctor what my chances of getting this baby out on my own were and her reply was less then favorable. I was really hoping that I was going to be able to do the natural childbirth thing. I wanted to feel the pain, pushing, and the cry at the end that makes it all worth it. But it didn’t seem to be in the cards for me. Apparently I am very good at growing babies, but not so good at the eviction process.
I know part of me feels like my body has failed me in some way. I feel that millions of women are able to do this and yet my body didn’t seem to get the memo. I feel that in some small way I am less of a “woman” because I can’t birth my child on my own. I think in a small way I feel like because I wrote down what I wanted that it was going to open the door to much criticism because I didn’t get the chance to do all the pushing and sweating.
Such is life I suppose- But then I look at Ryan and I just feel lucky. I feel lucky because if I was trying to have babies 100 years ago one of us could have died in the process. I feel lucky because he melts my heart when I hold him to nurse. I feel lucky because I have a healthy baby when many don’t have the luxury of that outcome. So in the long run it doesn’t matter how he got here- it just matters that he is here. And that’s all I ever wanted.
No comments:
Post a Comment