Did you know that April is C-Section Awareness month ? Neither did I, but after having one last year I noticed an article mentioning it this year and decided this is the perfect time to share our birth story.
I would generally consider myself well educated and well prepared when it comes to a lot of medical decisions. I have a science degree background and regularly read studies on hot topics. However when it came to birthing studies, I was never fully interested. A few years ago I read an article about how C-sections were becoming so common because hospitals get paid more for them and they are quicker for them than waiting for a baby to make its own timing choices. I started to see articles talking about women who had c-sections who didn’t need them, that they had felt pressured by their doctors and later regretted that experience. I had also only known of people having emergency c-sections – you know, when something serious is about to happen and they are rushed away to surgery with all of the tv drama my imagination can convey.
I essentially had the mind that C-sections occurred for 1 of 2 reasons – a potentially deadly emergency or due to medical coercion.
When my husband and I interviewed my OB prior to choosing him as my doctor, one of the questions I had for him was about his thoughts on cesareans. I wanted to make sure he was pro-natural birth unless that emergency came up, and we were very happy with his answers.
Fast forward to our babymoon and I am lying on the beach blissfully reading The Positive Birth book and writing down all of the things I want to pack, want to make known and control about the birth experience feeling very empowered. I skimmed the c-section chapter as quickly as the water-birth one. Those aren’t for me.
Fast forward again to 35 weeks pregnant and turns out our little punk was breech as could be. I thought I had been rubbing her tush but I had been patting her head the whole time! My Dr decided we needed to get on the calendar for a …. Scheduled C-section.
But not me! Oh no. I was going to do spinning-babies and stand on my head all. damn. day. if it meant this kid would flip around. At our 36 week apt she had flipped! Success! I cancelled my chiropractor appointment that I had made to try and massage her into place and congratulated myself on my hard work.
And then at 37 weeks she was breech again. What a jerk. Called the chiropractor again and this time I actually went in. After an hour she was pretty convinced that the baby had actually turned. I started to re-read The Positive Birth book except now I ignored all of the book except for the one chapter on C-sections, wondering why they didn’t give it at least 2 chapters!
At our 38 week appointment we found out the chiropractor was wrong. Baby girl was stuck head up and being stubborn about it (a sign of her personality even before birth). This is when I officially accepted (or at least 95% accepted) that I was going to have a c-section. My husband and I sat down in the nursery and I had a good and proper cry about the whole thing. The idea of surgery seemed a lot scarier to me than the thought of pushing out an actual baby and mentally this was not the experience I had been mentally imagining. Also, a scheduled c-section meant having the baby at 39 weeks, not my promised 40 weeks. I was going to lose an ENTIRE week of mental preparation for having a human! That was almost equally overwhelming.
After that, I dried my tears and started re-imagining our experience based on what I had read. We put the birthing ball, heating pad, back massager and pregnancy pillow all away, I wouldn’t be needing those. I returned the Frida Mom Peri-kit that someone had bought from our registry and purchased a belly binder instead. We made our C-section playlist to have in the operating room which turned out to be a total hit. I asked for a clear curtain so I could watch but Louisiana has some weird rules so our hospital didn’t have them/allow them. I accepted the c-section and the date of the c-section in separate stages mentally. While I understood the c-section need due to the breech position, I wanted to push it as late as possible. However, the closer you get to your due date, the higher the risk of going into labor and then having to have an emergency c-section, so mentally I came around to the week earlier date.
The night before the birth we went out to dinner and had a relatively early night – especially since we had to wake up at 5am for our scheduled 07:30 birth! I teased my OB about not letting me sleep in on my last day to sleep in. We packed the car the night before but since I wouldn’t be sweating, I decided to do my hair and makeup for the occasion. Nothing crazy but I figured I may as well take advantage of the opportunity to look decent in post-birth photos!
The Birth Day
We got to the room and I pretty much changed into the gown while the hubs unpacked our things. They rolled my bed into the OR which felt a little more urgent than if I had just walked in, but it was what it was. When they put the IV in my arm it was AWFUL. The nurse dug around in my arm 3 times before letting someone else do it, who just did it in my hand but phew that needle HURTS. She told me that the IV would be the most painful part of the whole procedure and you know what? SHE WAS RIGHT! I was really freaked out about the spinal, but they numb it first and then I just had to be VERY still while the anesthesiologist did the spinal. My Dr and nurse held my hands and before I knew it I couldn’t feel a thing below my chest. They kind of forgot who was supposed to bring Shai in and by the time they ran him in they were basically starting!
We had our playlist going on full blast and I had my Dr talk me through what they were doing. Since I couldn’t have a clear screen I was trying to peek by looking at the reflections in the mirror. Shai wasn’t allowed to watch either – they made him sit the entire time. At one point the nurse by my head told Shai he could stand up and he did, but he was promptly told to sit back down. At that point I was getting rocked around pretty hard. The baby was not cooperating and did not want to come out in the ideal position – she kept trying to stick her arm straight up! There was some tugging and rocking and then…Galia!
The Dr held her over the curtain for me to see but she was a bit blue and limp and didn’t cry like I thought she would, so I got a bit freaked out. I always thought they would take the baby and put her right to me, but they didn’t. Shai was able to go right to the back with her where they cleaned her and all of that and everything was fine, she was just in a bit of shock and a sleepy baby (she was a sleepy baby a lot early on). I did keep asking the Dr if she was ok and he kept saying something along of lines of “she will be fine” which made me think something wasn’t fine – so Shai made him clarify for me that in fact, everything was fine. Then I just laid there while they stitched everything back up. After that, the real work began!
Honestly our whole birth experience could not have been better. While it was not what I had initially imagined, it was the perfect experience for everyone’s safety. My Dr was amazing and made us feel informed and taken care of throughout the entire experience. So all of this to say, if you find you are going to have a c-section and it was not in your original birth vision – it does not mean that it can’t still be a positive and empowering experience for you.
Xx
Kali
