Five Things that Shocked Me about Cesarean Recovery

I've said before that my cesarean was not a planned one, so to say that I had no idea of what I was getting myself into is an understatement. My learning curve after having my son was steep. Here are some of the "surprises" I encountered in both my son and my recovery that I had never read about prior to and that I don't see mentioned very often anywhere.

1. Unexpected Digestive Issues

It seems very clear to me that my son was fated to have digestive issues. He had really bad reflux until he was about six months old. He has struggled a very underdeveloped digestive system (although it has improved greatly over the past few months) and has a very acute dairy allergy. These natural digestive issues were further complicated by his cesarean birth. One of the first issues he encountered was excessive gas and spitting up developing within hours of his birth. The nurse assigned to us the first day assured me that babies born through c-section often have gas and spitting up issues the first day because when the baby is born through c-section, they are often frightened by the sudden action of the doctor pulling them out. This causes them to cry and to swallow large amounts of amniotic fluid as they are being pulled out. (Conversely, babies born vaginally often do not because of the pressure exerted when they are pushed out.) I don't know if this is true from any other sources, but as the nurse was a twenty year nursing veteran, I had no reason to doubt her expertise. I can attest, the my son was a burping/clear fluids puking machine his first twelve hours or so.

Babies born through cesareans also lack exposure to the helpful bacteria of their mother's birth canal. This bacteria is the same bacteria that should be found in any healthy digestive system, but are missing from most cesarean birthed babies. (Cesarean birthed babies have, instead, been found to have bacteria found on the skin in their digestive systems.) This lack of helpful bacteria can make foods (even breastmilk) harder for those babies to digest.

2. Extreme Cluster Feeding

It is my understanding that most babies clusterfeed to some extent especially during growth spurts or during times when there are supply issues. Cesarean birthed babies take this to the extreme with clusterfeeding sessions lasting hours on end. This happens most often on the third through fifth day after birth. I've read that this may be the babies' reaction to a slowness in the mother's milk coming in (another common side effect of a c-section is that the milk is often delayed in coming in). In my case, my milk came in only two days after my son's birth, but my son still extreme cluster fed on both the third and the fourth day after birth. The third day (the day we came home from the hospital), he fed for almost eleven hours straight from 4 in the afternoon to 3 in the morning. He slept only in four ten minute stretches that entire time. Panicked, we trolled in internet and found descriptions of this behavior and even called the hospital ward we had just left. We were assured by both sources that this is not uncommon for cesarean birthed babies. (The following night, he cluster fed for 9 hours straight; the night after that, he fed for five hours . . .after that, he stuck to two hours or less.)

3. Physical Recovery takes a lot longer than Six Weeks

Before I had my c-section, I thought that when books said there was a six week recovery time that at the end of the six weeks you would be fully recovered from your surgery. I was so wrong. Six weeks is the MINIMUM recovery time. It is basically the time your body needs to recover enough so that the incision site will not likely reopen. It takes months for your body to fully recover (at least nine months for the muscles alone to heal). It is not uncommon for the incision site to remain tender and for the muscles to ache long after those six weeks are up. Some parts of it never heal. (I have permanent numb spots along my incision site.) Most resources I have read say that to insure your body is completely healed from your surgery and give you your best chance at a VBAC, you need to wait at least TWO YEARS before conceiving another baby. Even if you do wait that long your muscles and the skin of your incision site is forever altered and my not be as elastic or as comfortable as it was during your pre-cesarean birth pregnancy. (Kayce has been very candid about some of the experiences she has had in her post cesarean pregnancies.)

4. Mental Recovery Can Take Even Longer

Some women have cesareans (expected or unexpected) and feel perfectly content with both the procedure and its aftermath. Some women are devastated by it and even suffer PTSD. Others are somewhere in between. It's impossible to know where on the spectrum you might land. Prior to going into labor, I would have told you that although I was planning a natural birth, I would be fine with a necessary cesarean. However, after my labor, I learned that wasn't true. Even though I really do think that my cesarean was necessary, it has been a huge emotional hurdle for me to recover from.

In the beginning, it was really hard to struggle with my emotions because it didn't seem like anyone around me really understood why I was struggling. I think all new mothers struggle with a version of this. Taking care of a newborn is mentally and physically exhausting and sleep deprivation is far crueler than most of us realize until we experience it firsthand. Meanwhile, it seems that everyone around you keeps cajoling you to "cherish every minute." You can start to feel you are a terrible mother just because you are crying because your breasts ache and you haven't had a two hour stretch of sleep in three weeks. For mothers who have just had cesarean surgery, you are dealing with post-partum emotions, physical demands and recovery from your labor, and intense physical recovery from a surgery. Unlike most other emergency surgeries which would result in other people tenderly attempting to take care of you, a c-section is treated almost as if it didn't happen by a lot of people because the focus is on the healthiness of the baby not the mother. Of course, every mother is delighted that her baby is healthy, but it is also perfectly normal (even healthy) for her to be aware of her own discomfort and recovery. It's also natural to go through highs and lows in your emotional recovery.

My own emotional recovery has also been impeded by what I refer to as "The Mt. Everest Syndrome." Prior to my labor, when I heard about people who made it almost to the top of Mt. Everest, but had to turn around for technical, weather, or health reasons, I never really understood why they became obsessed with trying it again. Wasn't it enough that they almost made it to the top? They made it further than most of us ever will. Why do they need to risk it again? Now, I understand perfectly well where their obsession comes from. I labored for 26 hours without pain killers. I have learned that I am a woman warrior and that I have the mental and spiritual strength to birth a child. I know what I am capable of. However, because my son got stuck, I have yet to be able to show the rest of the world what I now know about myself and that drives me mad. I have often described my c-section as "defeat snatched from the jaws of victory." I feel like an Olympic athlete whose shoelace broke causing me to trip inches from the finish line. I long to roar my child into being and to claim that victory as my own. I want to be one of those women who say with pride "I birthed my baby and now I can do anything."

5. C-Sections Introduce Troubling Doubt

The most nefarious, by far, of all the surprises I have encountered during my cesarean recovery is the introduction of doubt into all thoughts of future births. Many women who have experienced cesareans (maybe especially the women who experienced necessary ones) feel self-doubt as to whether or not their bodies will be reliable in future labors. Having been failed by your body once, it's hard to have complete faith that your body will not fail you again.

Complicating this self-doubt further is the doubt of everyone around you. A woman who is planning her first birth is told "when you go into labor" and "when you birth your child." A woman planning a VBAC is told she will have a "trial of labor" and "if you birth your child." Even those who believed in her the most during her first labor or in her labors prior to her cesarean now have cause to doubt her and her ability to birth. That can make future labor feel like an uphill battle already. In an attempt to realistically acknowledge what has been proven to be a birth possibility, support team members often feel they need to develop the repeat cesarean birthing plan alongside the VBAC trial plan. It's a little like training to run a marathon while your cheering section is gassing up the car to pick you up when you collapse. (A necessary evil, but still a gut checking one!) During my first labor, when I hit a wall during transition and said aloud that I couldn't go on, that I didn't have the strength, I was immediately assured by those around me that I could go on and that I did have strength. Now, I live in fear that if I am not in the right environment for birth, I will be believed if I utter those words again and will end up with another c-section which is something that I most assuredly do NOT want for myself or my child unless it is necessary.

My Cesarean Story

This is the story of my daughter's birth.  The easy pregnancy turned rough, an unnecessary procedure turned emergency cesarean.  I decided to rewrite it for Cesarean Awareness month and give it a fresh perspective, with all the emotions rather than the edited down version I normally write.

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My pregnancy with my daughter was easy.  We tried to get pregnant for three months before we got our positive, but it never felt like a long time.  From the first instant, I never had a thought that anything could go wrong or that we would lose her.  It just felt right to be pregnant.

I called the OB that my mom had when she had me, and ended up being transfered to the CNM at the hospital.  He had retired a few weeks before I got pregnant (which I am now incredibly thankful for as his name around here was "the butcher". He had an almost 70% cesarean rate) and the CNM had taken all of his clients and was getting calls that used to go to his office.

I never thought of having a midwife.  I knew that I wanted a natural birth, not because of anything I read, but because my mom labored naturally with me until she was taken for a cesarean.  I never thought that pain medication was necessary because my mom never had any.  I set up the appointment, and it was smooth sailing from there.

My family was a bit weird about my having a midwife, but when they learned I was still having the baby in the hospital, they could have cared less.

My pregnancy progressed really well.  I never gained much weight, I had hyperemesis gravidarum (severe "morning" sickness) throughout my pregnancy, but it was never bad enough to be hospitalized, and my plan was to labor without medication and for me to specifically ask for meds and my midwife to approve before I got any.  It seemed perfect.

At 35 weeks, we found out our daughter was breech.  My midwife sent me for an ultrasound to check what position she was in, how much she weighed, and how much fluid there was.  We came back from the ultrasound completely shell-shocked.  My fluid was at an 8 (10 is the lowest they want), she was said to weigh 4 lbs 3 ounces, and was Frank Breech (feet up by her head, butt in my pelvis).  I was put on instant bedrest (which I never followed) and had to have 3 ultrasounds a week followed by a non-stress test to see how she was doing.  It all seemed so unreal.

My care was transferred to an OB without my consent.  They set up a consultation with him to do an external cephalic version (where they manually turn the baby from breech to head down).  I wasn't given a choice.

They told me that we would do the version at 37 weeks 1 day.  If she turned and I didn't go into labor, they would send me home. If she didn't turn and I didn't go into labor we would try again at 39 weeks or schedule a cesarean.  And if I went into labor regardless, I would be either able to have a vaginal birth, or would be whisked for a cesarean.

The days before the version, I was secretly excited.  My mom had two cesarean sections and she was fine.  My brother and I turned out fine.  I almost hoped that I would have one so I could meet our baby and take her home.  Sometimes I think that those thoughts are what lead to my cesarean.

The day of the version came.  I had an epidural placed, an IV put in with fluid and meds to calm my uterus (I had been having braxton hicks contractions since 17 weeks), and had an ultrasound done to make sure she hadn't flipped already, though they did the ultrasound AFTER I had everything already placed.

It took them two tries to turn her.  It was more pressure than the cesarean was.  They had to lift her out of my pelvis, and the OB pushed her head while the CNM pushed her butt.  The second time she spun around beautifully, but I could barely breathe because of how hard they pushed on me.  I didn't notice that they were both sweating from pushing so hard.  They did another ultrasound to make sure she had turned, told me they were going to monitor me for a few hours to make sure she was okay, and they would check me later.

The epidural and medication made my legs spasm and I started having anxiety attacks.  I couldn't breathe and I felt like my chest was caving in on me.  I started throwing up.  About this time they noticed that I was having regular contractions and her heart would slow down during and after each one.  With some her heart beat was completely vanished.  I was given an oxygen mask, pushed onto my left side and left alone with just my husband.

The version was done at 7 am that morning, and by noon, they were getting worried about her heart rate.  I was only one centimeter dilated.  I was told they were giving me a cesarean and I didn't have to consent because before a version, you sign papers saying that you agree to a cesarean section should it become necessary.  I had to have a second dose of epidural medication, and they had to give me three times the dose because it wasn't working.

My daughter was born at 1:41pm.  It turns out that when they did the version, they pulled part of her placenta off.  I remember a lot of tugging, throwing up because of the pulling and pressure, and then just silence.

My daughter didn't cry.  A few minutes later I heard a tiny cry, and she was instantly whisked away to the level 2 NICU, and my husband with her.  Then, darkness.

I woke up in Recovery, not knowing what had happened.  I didn't believe I had a child.  I tried to ask if she was okay, but then darkness again.

My husband called everyone to tell them about our daughter.  He got to hold her and be with her.  I was alone for almost 4 hours after her birth.  One nurse brought me a really crappy Polaroid picture of her, but it was blurry and I couldn't believe it was my baby strapped to that many wires.

My husband came back and told me what she looked like, what she weighed, and how long she was.  He told me that she was on oxygen and couldn't breathe.  And the worst part is that part of me didn't care.  She wasn't my child.  She was just someone people were talking about.  Someone I hadn't met.

When she was seven or eight hours old, one of my postpartum nurses came in to see how I was and asked if I had seen my daughter yet.  I told her no and she was furious.  She told me every mother should see her child no matter the situation.  She got me into a wheelchair with my IV pole and my catheter and took me to her.

 She had hair all over her body.  She was so tiny at 5 lbs 13 oz.  They told me that she looked much earlier than a 37 weeker.  She had tubes of oxygen in her nose, an IV of sugar water to keep her nourished, a pulse oximeter to see how her oxygen levels were, and a monitor for her heart and lungs.  She had already had an X-Ray to see if she had pneumonia.  She was bruised on the entire right hand side of her body.  She had two vaccuum spots because they couldn't get her out of the tiny cesarean incision they had made with just their hands.

She didn't feel like my baby.

I was only allowed to stay with her for an hour, and had to leave her alone in the NICU.

The next day, my parents and my husband's brother, his wife, and his grandparents all came.  I got to hold her for the first time.  She didn't even make a noise.  I was told she had had another X-Ray and her oxygen levels had almost reached the maximum they were allowed to give at a Level 2 NICU.  She was so red because she was trying so hard to breathe.  The nurse only let me hold her for thirty minutes and said that I had to put her down before I hurt her more than I already had.

The next afternoon my daughter was life-flighted to a Level 3 NICU an hour away.  We followed close behind with my husband's parents.  My parents showed up at the hospital a little bit after we got there.

Instantly she looked better.  She was almost 3000 feet lower than at the old hospital, and just the shift in altitude helped her breathing.  She was still at a very high level, but things looked a lot better.

I pumped every three hours and the next morning, my milk came in with a vengeance.  In the three days I pumped at the NICU, I was able to store almost 150 ounces of milk.  The day my milk came in, she was finally able to take a little bit of it through a tube.  They slowly increased her stomach size for three days until her stomach could hold about 50ml. When she was 6 days old and finally off the oxygen, we finally figured out nursing (after she pulled out her tube in a fit).

When she was a week old, we went home with six oxygen tanks, an oximeter, and an appointment to meet with her pediatrician to decide if she was okay to come off the oxygen since we were 3000 feet higher than the NICU.

It took me a long time to feel like I was her mother.  It took me a long time to truly love her.  I didn't bond with her at all, and she just felt like some baby I was nursing.

I hated how I felt.  We tried to keep her in her crib, but I couldn't stand it and finally brought her into our bed.  I had her away from me enough in the NICU, I wanted to make sure she knew she was cared for at home.

It took me almost 18 months to write her story the first time.  Since, it has gone under many revisions, and has helped shed a lot of tears.  To this day, almost 4 years later, I regret to my very core hoping, even a little bit, that she would be born the day of the version.  I regret not researching for myself the benefits and risks of the procedure.  I regret how she was the one that was made to suffer because I didn't know that I needed to advocate for myself and not just blindly trust someone I was paying.

I still have trouble thinking about her birth.  I celebrate that she is beautiful and healthy and happy, but inside, part of me is still so angry and so depressed about what happened.

Most of me is so glad it happened, though.  If I had had a natural birth, I doubt I would have found my calling as a midwifery apprentice.  I doubt I would care as much as I do about women, pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding.  I am so happy that it happened if only so that I finally found a "job" that I am happy doing.

Since her birth, I have come to realize that I can love her with everything I have, but still hate and mourn the day she was born.  I have come to realize that it isn't about having a healthy baby, it is about having a healthy and happy mother and baby.

My cesarean was so hard in so many ways, and I am still dealing with the scars left behind.  I don't think I will ever just get over most of them.

You can be happy your child is alive and healthy and still mourn.  You can love your child and hate they day they were born.  It isn't black and white.

A healthy baby isn't all that matters.

A healthy mom, inside and out, matters just as much. 

My beautiful daughter, who made me the person I am today

Unexpected Cesarean

I need to preface this story by admitting something. I never, ever thought a cesarean would ever happen to me. I'll admit that I even felt a little smug when I sometimes heard of other people planning natural births and then ended up having c-sections. I thought to myself, they must not have known how to fight for their bodies or they must not have known that they could have had a natural labor if they just tried x-y-z. I knew there were rare occurrences in which women needed c-sections and I knew those women had no choice (and I understood why c-sections had been invented to save those women and their children), but I didn't think that would be me! Well, I'm here to say that I thoroughly researched natural childbirth, thought I had taken just about every precaution . . . and I still ended up with a c-section! Here's my story:

We had no inkling that we were going to have our baby the least bit early. In fact, all along, I had almost planned on having the baby at 40 or 41 weeks. My mother had always had beautiful, swift, natural childbirths at 41 weeks, so I expected the same. It never even occurred to me that I would have a birth with any interventions. I had intentionally decided to use the practice that had the lowest rate of any interventions and to give birth at the hospital with one of the lowest intervention/c-section rates in the country.

So, when I stood up in that crowded movie theater on the night of July 25, 2009 and took a step down the stairs and felt my water break at 10:15 pm at barely 38 weeks, I was shocked beyond belief! We called the practitioner on call (a doctor that weekend; the practice has doctors and midwives working together) and told her what happened. She suggested we call again when the contractions had started and were five minutes apart lasting at least a minute each for about an hour. We then went home to check over our bags and to try to get as much rest as possible.

After the conversation with the doctor, I rechecked the bags we were bringing to the hospital and finished some odds and ends around the house. We went to bed around 11 and I tried to rest although it was pretty hard to do considering I was excited about meeting my baby soon and finding out once and for all if I was having a boy or a girl. Around midnight, the first contractions started. At first they were pretty sporadic and would wake me up briefly out of my light sleep, but somewhere between 2:30 and 3:30, I started noticing that I was getting them about every ten minutes and they were starting to intensify and last longer. Around 4:30, they started to come about every five minutes and because I could stand pretending to rest no more, I went downstairs and left my husband sleeping upstairs while I finished compiling another song list for the labor on the computer. I cooked myself an omelet because I wasn’t sure what food I would have access to at the hospital and it helped to give myself something to do. My husband came downstairs around 5 and asked if it was time to call yet. For some reason, I was reluctant to make the call, but at 5:30 (when it had been an hour), I finally did call and because I could no longer talk through the contractions, she asked me to come in.

What followed was the longest day of my life. It began well enough. We were put in the room with the nicest birthing tub and visions of waterbirth danced in my head as we settled in. (All the rooms in this hospital birth center were equipped with tubs, squat bars, birthing stools, birthing balls, etc. but this was, by far, the nicest of the tubs.) I knew from all of my labor books and my hypnobirthing class that my labor might slow a little as I got used to the new surroundings and, it did, but after some walking and bouncing on the ball, it picked back up.

As far as the contractions themselves went, I actually found that I could focus myself inward and make myself relax with each one pretty well. (Because I remained so calm throughout, I actually ended up having my nurse say that she had to check out hypnobirthing if it could help her be in labor like me.) Unfortunately, hour after hour passed with contraction after contraction, but no real progress was made as far as dilation and although the contractions became longer, they were not intensifying the way I expected and wanted them to. Still, I remained active and used probably every single laboring position I’d ever heard of in attempt to intensify my labor naturally. Seriously, every single one! Looking back, those first twelve hours or so were my favorite of the whole labor. My husband and I were a team with him writing down my contraction time and talking to me as I used my imagery to relax and work through each contraction one at a time. At about 10:30 am, the nurse asked if I wanted to order some food, so I ordered some fruit and a bagel, but I wasn’t even able to finish that. I wasn’t hungry for food. I wanted my baby instead.

At 12:30 pm, my doctor checked my dilation for the first time and discovered I was only at 3.5 cm. She also discovered that because it had been so long since my water had broken that a “pocket” had formed. With my permission, she broke the pocket and asked if she could re-assess in three hours, but shared her concern that if the labor had not progressed by then, she would like to introduce a very low level of pitocin because it had been so long since my water had initially broke. I was pretty heartbroken about the idea of not having a pristine completely "natural" birth and maybe not being able to have a water birth. (I was also a little scared about how much more painful the pit might make things and how stressful it would be on the baby.) I actually got so worried about it that my labor stalled for about a half an hour with the contractions getting further apart rather than closer. I took that time to lay down and rest for the first time since 4:30 that morning. But, after a quick cat nap, I soon redoubled my active efforts. I was convinced that my body would take over and would birth my baby, it just needed some time. I took a shower and tried nipple stimulation. I squatted and walked miles around my room. But when she checked in at 3:30 pm, I had not dilated any further. After discussing it further with my doctor, she promised to use the lowest levels of pitocin possible and to turn it off in time for me to push my baby in the water. (She shared that the hospital strongly encouraged the doctors to try to have women give birth within 12 hours of their water breaking . . . a milestone that we had already exceeded by five hours, but as far as her practice went, she would like to see us have the baby within 24-36 hours.) Not really knowing why the hospital and the doctor thought there should be a time limit on my delivery because my water broke, I felt really confused and scared that my body seemed to be so disappointing in its delivery preparation. However, we didn't know what else to do, so, we consented. (I'm still not sure if this was the right or the wrong thing to do.)

To my surprise, I found I could focus just as much as I could before and found that while the pit made my contractions more rhythmic, they did not make them more painful. Pain medication didn't even enter my mind because I was so focused on taking each contraction one at a time and with each one I’d promise myself that whatever happened in the future, I would get through this contraction this time.

By 7:30, with the help of the pit, my labor was much harder, but still nothing I couldn’t handle. I felt strangely calm and single minded. I was going to birth my baby and that was it! The doctor checked and I had progressed to 6.5 cm. Although I had wanted to go into the birthing tub for hours, I had been afraid that to do so before 7 cm would delay my labor, so I had not gotten in beforehand, but with my legs shaking and my ankles weak from hours and hours of walking and bouncing and working to help my labor progress, I asked to go into the tub and what a relief it was! It was hot, but my husband kept me cool by placing washcloths soaked in ice water on my head and neck to cool me off.

By 11:30 pm I had progressed to 8.5 cm and then was in heavy transition for another two hours. (By that time, it was like time had ceased to exist for me because I was living contraction to contraction and usually had like 10 seconds or so between each one.) I was fairly quiet throughout this part of my labor, only thinking to myself as each contraction built “I can do this. I can do this.” Then at the top, I would say “Oooo” and would relax my body as much as I could and would ride the contraction back down. Again and again I did this. I started to feel the pressure of my baby and wanted to push, but the pressure was in the wrong place. It was too far forward. By this time, we were on our second 12 hour nurse shift and the veteran nurse assigned to us held one of my hands as I worked my way through each contraction. Once in awhile, I would let myself float outside of my body and I would start to panic because I was so exhausted I wasn’t sure how I would ever have the strength to push my baby out of me knowing that pushing could take hours on its own. When I voiced this concern to the nurse, she smiled and said not to worry. It was just the transition talking and I would have the strength when I needed it. Half an hour more, she told me and that baby will be in your arms. I would picture it then, the moment when my baby would slip out of me and I would be looking at him and he would be looking at me and I would know that I had done it. That WE had done it. And I would look at my husband and we would be a family. That image got me through the pain and the exhaustion. It had already been twenty four hours since my first contraction. Even as that “half hour” kept pushing further and further away, I kept telling myself it would happen. My body began to shake uncontrollably and I got out of the tub because I was anxious to see if getting back on the birthing ball would bring my baby to me more quickly.

It wasn't until 1:30 am when the doctor checked me again that I realized something was wrong. My dilation had regressed to 8 cm (I didn’t even know that was possible until that night) and the doctor told me that both my baby’s head and my cervix were swelling. Hot shame and fear washed over me as I sat shaking on that bed while contraction after contraction still pounded within me. How could this be happening? Why wasn’t I allowed to push? What had I done wrong? I had worked so hard! Was my baby going to be okay?

What followed was the most surreal situation I've ever experienced. The doctors surrounded me and tried to talk to me about my medical options and strongly recommended a c-section soon, but between the constant contractions and the exhaustion of being in labor almost 26 hours and trying every labor position ever remotely mentioned to me, I felt like I didn't even speak their language anymore. I felt like I was in another world miles from them or like I was looking at them from the distance of a long, long tunnel. I was incapable of making any medical decisions at all. I had thought I was moments away from pushing, not making important, informed decisions! That's when my husband stepped in. If not for him, I'm not sure what would have happened. He had to ask the questions and make the decisions because I was completely gone. Because he knew how important vaginal birth was for me and because he knew that I cannot take any strong pain medications (I have reactions to everything in the narcotics family) and thus would suffer more than usual if we had to have a c-section, we ended up making a last ditch effort to salvage the vaginal birth by administering an epidural in the hopes that perhaps after so many hours of labor, the epidural would help me relax more and get the last two centimeters I needed and get the swelling down in my cervix or the baby's head. The doctor gave us an hour to try it. It didn't work and we ended up with a c-section, anyway, but I will always be thankful to my husband for knowing and honoring my wishes and insisting that we try, anyway.

Getting the epidural was absolutely miserable. I hated that it was happening. I hated that it seemed to be my only chance to have my baby vaginally. I especially hated that the doctor said I would no longer be able to feel my baby move. The anesthesiologist came in and I’m sure he expected to be treated like a knight in shining armor, but I’m afraid I was a very mean patient. My tone with him was very harsh. I guess I needed someone to take my fear out on and it ended up being him. When he asked me how much I weighed (something I knew was already on my chart and I was loathe to say aloud), I actually even swore at him! “How much do I f***ing weigh? Aren’t I humiliated enough here?” To administer the epidural, he had me bend over and asked me to stay still (which was absolutely impossible with my contractions coming non-stop and my body shaking furiously). He accidentally put it in wrong initially and I lost feeling in the entire right side of my lower body with my left side left completely unchanged. He was forced to put the needle in again. This time it dulled the pain, but didn’t take it away. “You can use this button to up the medication until you can’t feel anything,” he said with a smile. I nodded and dropped it on the floor. This wasn’t about pain. This was about my last chance to birth my baby. I was relieved minutes later when I dimly felt my baby moving inside me. It was a little thrill of victory. Nothing could sever our tie completely! The doctor suggested that we try to rest for the hour before she would check again and turned out the lights. I did lose consciousness for about forty minutes from sheer exhaustion. I don’t remember what I dreamed about, but I do remember waking up and seeing that the doctor would be back in about fifteen minutes and crying when I realized that it still was not over. I still did not have my baby. I still did not even know whether I was having a boy or girl.

When the doctor checked again, she saw that I was still at 8 cm and the swelling of both the baby's head and my cervix had increased. She held my hand as I cried and agreed that a c-section was probably my best option. It helped to talk to my doctor. She tried to make me feel better by saying that if it were at all humanly possible, I would have had my baby naturally. She also pointed out that 100 years ago, a woman like me would have likely labored for days and if I had been successful in having my son, it was unlikely that both of us would have been okay, but she promised that 45 minutes from that moment, we would both be alive, well, and together. She told me not to feel I was a failure and, whenever the time came when I wanted to try again, she knew I could be successful with a VBAC. She also told me that she suspected that the baby might have tucked his head the wrong way and was now stuck. (It turned out that she was right about that. That's why he hadn't descended properly and why I didn't finish dilating as I thought I would.) Her words were kind, but I found them hard to believe for a long time. She did offer me more time to see if maybe I just needed to relax more, but I did not want my baby exposed to any more epidural than he had already been exposed to, so I told her just to do the c-section. (Moments later, his vital signs started dropping, so I was glad that the room was already being prepped.)

The anesthesiologist was paged once more to get me ready for the surgery. I apologized to him for my rudeness earlier and he shrugged and said he’d seen worse. (I’m pretty sure that this “worse” wasn’t directed toward him, though.) As we rolled toward the operating room, I warned him that I would soon be throwing up. He asked if I was nauseous or if I’d eaten recently and I told him the answer was “no” to both of those questions, but using the epidural for the surgery would result in me throwing up. He smiled and said that probably wouldn’t happen. Just in case, though, he gave me an antacid. It tasted like liquid cheap cherry tums. “This will taste pretty gross coming back up.” I told him. He just laughed. “It won’t be coming back up,” he said. He was wrong.

Laying on the operating table, waiting for my baby to be born, I felt like a strange parody of what I had hoped my birth would be. My upper body could not stop twitching and although the medications kept me from feeling the pain of what was going on, I could feel pressure throughout my lower abdomen. Then I felt her pushing on my stomach and before I knew it I was retching all over myself and I didn’t stop at once or even twice. All I know is that I was mid-retch when I heard a baby crying and I had to remind myself that it was mine. It was 3:25 am on Monday morning. My baby was finally here. I still hadn’t seen him and it seemed like an eternity before they brought him for us to see. (They were waiting for the cord to stop pulsing which is what I had requested them to do.) Finally, they brought him around rear end first so we could see his sex. “It’s a boy.” my husband said with wonder and tears in his voice. Then they took the baby over to a corner of the room to get him weighed and my husband followed him. As the anesthesiologist administered an anti-nausea medication and worked frantically with one of the nurses to help clean all the puke out of my hair and change the hospital gown that was draped across the top quarter of my body, I heard my husband exclaiming all the features he recognized. “He has my monkey toes! He just grabbed my finger with them! And “He has blue eyes and they are amazing!” Meanwhile, I was struggling to keep my eyes open. The anti-nausea medication contained a mild sedative that ordinarily would have just made me slightly calm, but, after 27 hours of labor, was making it a real struggle to keep my eyes open despite the brightness of the room and the knowledge that my baby was there. I had anticipated a lot of emotions when I had my baby, but apathy was not one of them. I was ashamed of myself and my struggle to stay awake and engaged.

However, there was one moment in the OR that I will treasure forever. When my husband was first handed our son to bond skin to skin with him, I heard my baby scared and crying. Instinctively, I started singing him the special song I had sung to him every day with his name in it and he instantly quieted and calmed. Suddenly, everything was okay because he knew that I was near. “He KNOWS you and he KNOWS that song!” The anesthesiologist cried. “Of course he does,” I said tiredly, “I’m his mama and we’ve spent nine months together.” That was our only connecting moment that first hour or so. I tried to reach out and touch him as he snuggled skin to skin in a chair behind me, but my hand was so cold that he pulled away from it to burrow into his much warmer father. Mother/son bonding would have to wait until we got out of the operating room.

As soon as we made it back into the birthing room, the nurse handed him to me and helped me to nurse him which helped me focus and wake up more. To my amazement, he was able to latch on his first try and we even heard him swallowing right away. I laid back with him on my chest and finally got to bond with him skin to skin. As he burped, he looked at me and I looked at him and although it wasn’t quite as I had imagined it, we had managed to successfully nurse together and that small victory was something!

I share this as my contribution to ICAN's Cesearean Awareness month. Next week, I will talk about the surprising things I learned about c-sections while recovering from mine.