(The birth story series starts here.)
Ten years ago today our godson was born.
C. had gotten up the morning of the 9th, rushed to work (no breakfast), rushed to her OB appointment (no lunch) and got sent over to the (teaching) hospital for induction.
How many bad things do you count in that paragraph?
She was induced sometime that afternoon. We arrived shortly after 5am the next morning, just after she’d received her epidural – she’d had pitocin contractions for 12 hours before getting someone to give her the drugs. She wasn’t dilating.
Midmorning they broke her water. There was meconium in the fluid so they shut off her pitocin, started her on a saline wash in her uterus, eventually pushing the pitocin harder than before. They had her jacked up and down on so much shit. She was exhausted.
She hadn’t eaten for 30 hours, hadn’t been out of bed all day. By 4pm she was dilated to 4. At 4:45 she paged the nurse to come check her. The nurse was refusing saying she wasn’t supposed to do it till 5. C was adamant – something was going on. CHECK ME! The nurse was snotty but did it anyway – C was dilated to 9 – she looked at the nurse, the nurse admitted, “you’re better than any woman I’ve ever seen.”
They kicked us all out of the room and commenced pushing. At the time I didn’t know that it was a little early for pushing. His shoulder was caught, she was exhausted, I don’t know how she did it, but she did and he was delivered at 710. He was well over 9 pounds – and this was after the docs thought he’d only be 7.
For her second child she had an elective C-section – and you know what, I don’t blame her one tiny bit. If I’d been fucked with by a teaching hospital like she’d been, I’d probably have signed up for a quick surgery over 40 hours of doctor induced starvation while trying to birth a baby too.
This was powerful stuff for me to watch. I was going to do everything in my power to keep this from being my experience.
7 Comments
Veronica
Wow poor woman.
I would have been signing the papers for a C-section as well.
We’re very lucky here in Aus, they encourage us to eat ‘lightly’ (sandwiches etc) and will provide us with food and drink (coffee, tea, juice, water) while in labour. I still thank god for the midwife who kept me supplied with orange juice.
bubandpie
It’s amazing to me how widespread the myth is that each centimeter of dilation takes an hour. It seems to be equally common for women to fly from 3 cm to 9 in less than hour.
Sarcastic Mom
Ugh, what an awful experience for C.
Can’t wait to keep reading!
Jennifer
Pitocin is evil. I had several different ones because with both I didn’t dilate. I can relate to the last bit. I was sitting at 3cms for over a day, they broke my water – just before they were about to give up, they upped the pitocin and I went from 3-10 in 20 minutes. For me though, I started to panic thinking the EPI was wearing off because I had major hip pain – the lead nurse recognized that as part of being fully dilated or something.
Ewokmama
Ugh, what a nightmare. It seems pretty evident to me from my own experience and hearing stories like this that inductions are handled poorly a lot!
Jen
It amazes me how the professionals treat women giving birth as if we are exactly the same. When I told my nurse I needed to push she told me I didn’t and finally sighed in disgust that she would check. Of course I was 10 cm and fully effaced. I guess it would be easier for them if we all fit into nice little categories.
the egel nest
We also did 24 hours of labor with pitocin before they finally…mercifully, did a c-section…
Love the ongoing birth story!
Bradley
The Egel Nest