(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.

(Ten Steps for Creating Breast Health)