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Defective No More

I can remember being pregnant for the first time. My husband and I had actually tried to get pregnant and BINGO we did it! Of course at the time, my husband was in the Navy and being that he was on duty the night before had not been home when I took the home pregnancy test (I still have the result stick today...I know, I know, bizarre). Well, since I am one to read ALL the instructions on an item I am using and this was only the first day of my missed period....I knew I could only be 2 weeks pregnant. Well I dropped my happy little news into hubby's ear and like any expectant father he was elated. All this happened over a weekend, so first thing Monday morning, I made an appointment to see my OB that afternoon for a pregnancy test to confirm the results (just like the package said to do).

As my doctor (at that time) was examining me, he stated, "Well, you are about 2 months pregnant!" You can well imagine my dismay since my husband had been in the middle of the atlantic ocean 2 MONTHS ago, and I am faithful to my husband. So I replied, "I don't think so, I think its more like 2 weeks pregnant." His reply to that? "Ma'm how many children have you had?" as he looks at my chart where it was written no previous pregnancies. "Well, this would be my first!" I replied as I beamed, so excited at the thought. With a voice heavily laden with sarcasm (as if I were completely stupid) he said, "Then WHO is going to know better about YOUR body, YOU or ME?" I can remember the nasty little reply that went through my mind, but felt so degraded and humiliated by the way he was treating me (I honestly started to think that maybe I was too stupid to know myself very well) that I couldn't even answer. At this point, I knew I needed to take the most educated and helpful childbirth classes I could find.

So many of my friends had taken hospital classes of one kind or another and said their birth was awful and they had gone the route of drugs for pain relief. Now I don't begrudge anyone their choice of birth experiences, but I truely wanted a non-medicated and NATURAL birth without all the interventions and especially that AWFUL episiotomy I kept hearing about. I asked around to others around me at the time and time and time again was told that if I really wanted the best classes around I just HAD to check out the Bradley Method® of Natural Childbirth. So I asked around for the best teacher in the area. I enrolled in her class feeling confident that I would be able to avoid all the pitfalls my friends had encountered.

When I first enrolled, it became evident that I was going to need a back-up coach since my husband could not make very many of the classes and might not even make it home for the birth. I chose my friend (and next door neighbor who had delivered 5 kids with no anesthesia) to be my surrogate coach. Little did I know that her 17 year old daughter had become pregnant about the time we were into class 3 of 12. When she did make classes it was usually late and then, again because of my lack of knowlegde of her home problems, she would not practice the exercises with me. As I look back now, that should have been my first sign that I needed to find a more supportive coach.

I went on to announce to my husband and mother that I really wanted to have this baby at home and was told by both that if this was to be my choice I could not count on their support as they felt this was TOO dangerous. They had a right to feel that way since, of course, they had not been given the knowledge about the safety of home birth that I had learned in my classes. Unfortunately, it still left me too afraid to try this scenario without them and I opted for the hosital birth (the one place I feared the most). I was still determined to have my NATURAL birth though.

I soon found out that my doctor not only felt I had no knowledge about my body, but that I couldn't possibly know about good nutrition either. And, since I was adopted, I couldn't possibly know how safe a new mother I could be. I had no knowledge of my medical background, and that also left me feeling scared (what if my family had a history of premature births and miscarriages and back labors and all the worst HORRORS of a birth imaginable?). This fact was continually brought up to me (and I feel now) used against me to coerce me to do as my doctor felt was best. At one appointment, since I was gaining so much weight so quickly, my doctor actually asked me if I had "hand to mouth" disease. I was TERRIFIED! My God! This sounded so deadly! Of course, in all naivate', I asked "What is hand to mouth disease?" And he replied, "Oh you know, you sit around all day on your BUTT eating BON BONS!" At that point, I lost what little bit of control I had left with this doctor and said, "You know, I don't apprciate your comment at all. I will admit I don't get as much exercise as I probably should, but I sure as hell DON'T sit on my BUTT all day long eating bon bons!!!" I was incensed! How rude! How tactless and insensitive! I considered changing doctors at this point and realized that since my husband would be getting out of the Navy soon, I knew no other doctor would take me on without insurance. Now I was feeling trapped!

As this pregnancy continued, I began to swell at the ankles horribly and my "coach" even teased me and called me "Barney Rubble" (the character from the cartoon The Flinstones who didn't have any discernable ankles). I tried to take it in stride, but as I grew bigger with child (and yes, fat) and had some ligitimate complaints of pregnancy, the person I most desired support from (my husband) grew tired of me asking for a foot or back massage and even the smallest complaint was met with the comment "Hey! You wanted it (the pregnancy), You got it!" I was so hurt and devistated! I never again mentioned a single pain to him, fearing verbal retrobution. I began feeling more and more alone and scared. All I could think of at that point was "I want my mother!" Mom, unfortunately was 3,000 miles away in Oklahoma and here I was in California with no family and a mate who, it seemed, was beginning to hate me. It was the one and only time during my pregnancy that I wished I could make the baby go away and all my pain with it.

Well to shorten this portion of my story, the doctor would ALLOW me to go 3 weeks past HIS due date before he would threaten induction of labor. Well, my due date came and went (as did my mother - she flew out to try to be there for the birth) but this baby had other plans. At 3 weeks past my due date and still no baby, my doctor stated that since he had lived up to his part of the bargin by "letting" me go so terribly far past my due date and he DID sign my birth plan (very begrudgingly), I HAD to "allow" him to induce my labor as this baby was goint to get WAY to big for even ME to deliver. So I cowered down to his authority and went in for my induction.

Now, I had been having very strong Braxton-Hicks contractions since my due date, but was only dilated to 2 cm. So, at 9AM on the 5th of January (I had been due supposedly on December 14th) I went into the hospital to have my labor started with pitocin (by the way the week prior the doctor and even tried stripping my membranes - I was so desperate to not be induced with pitocin). From the time I started the induction until 8PM that night, I had only dilated to 4cm (no clue as to my effacement). They turned off the pitocin and let me eat some dinner as I kept complaining that I was ravenous. Shortly after dinner the doctor came in and as he was telling me broke my bag of waters saying, "This should REALLY get things going!" (Oh no! I had specifically stated in my birth plan that I didn't want my bag of waters ruptured artificially.) I was beginning to feel doomed. The person I had chosen for my labor support was unable to properly support me. And since the doctor artifically ruptured my bag of waters, from that point on, I was in a new world of hurt with each contraction. Things did not progress the way he felt they should and, of course since I had it in my birth plan that I preferred not to be OFFERED medication, he wouldn't let me HAVE any (how terribly crass and insensitive). Finally, at 8AM the morning of the 6th, after 24 hours and only dilating from a 2 to a 4, the doctor came in and announce that "The baby is doing fine, but I'm worried....You are really getting tired (NO KIDDING! REALLY?!) and I'm just afraid that by the time you DO reach 10cm, you will be SO TIRED, you won't be able to push this baby out." Lord help me! Was I to be pregnant and in labor the rest of my life? I couldn't take the pain anymore! I was ready to have a limb cut off if only I would deliver! So I agreed and was sectioned.

As I sat up on the operating table in the operating room looking at all that scarey equipment, I thought, "This is wrong! Please, can I change my mind?" All the while the anesthesiologist is telling me to sit VERY still as he inserted the needle in my back for the epidural. THAT was more painful than the contractions! I cried, as I leaned on the nurse in front of me and said, "I failed...I MUST have done SOMETHING wrong! I should have tried harder...does this mean I'm a quitter?" I was humilitaed, horrified and scared out of my wits. I remember thinking, there is something incredibly wrong with me...I can't even have a baby the way everyone else I know does; I felt like a defective typewriter and terribly incomplete. I was crushed.

As they pulled my newborn child out of my womb, I cried...cried for joy that he was alive and cried for sorrow at my failure. "Please, someone take this oxygen mask off me! I have to talk to my baby!" Finally, it was removed and as I listened to him cry from across the room, I tried my best to be brave for this dear child and with a trembling voice said, "Its okay 'Little One', mother is here!" and he stopped crying!!! Someone near me said its a boy! And again I cried out, "Oh God, its a boy! Oh God, my little Michael Jay...I love you my 'Little One'...I love you....Mama is here...its okay, don't cry...Mama is here!" and dying inside quickly because I couldn't see him...couldn't hold him. "Please, let me touch him....I HAVE to touch him...he's my child... PLEASE GIVE ME MY CHILD!!!" A nurse brought him over to me, let me see his face and started to leave and in desperation I screamed, "HE'S MY CHILD, I HAVE A RIGHT TO AT LEAST TOUCH HIM...he won't know me if I don't touch him...he won't know me!" I think the nurse thought I was going to go crazy or have to be restrained if she didn't and (without undoing the straps holding my arms down) put him close enough to my fingertips that I could touch his foot (barely). "OK, you've gotten to see and touch your baby....now LAY BACK like a good girl and LET the doctor stitch you up!!" she tersely replied. Then I faded into blackness and woke 4 hours later, again terrified, because I had no idea where I was. I was a mother now, but somehow it didn't seem so wonderful...I hurt and had no child in my arms...some mother I was...I wasn't even nurturing my child as I should in his first hours after birth...I had failed...my body had deceived me...I had failed...horribly failed.

18 months later, we made our move from California to Oklahoma so I could be near my family while my husband continued to travel; now as a merchant seaman. And soon I was pregnant again (this time it was an oops!), but we always wanted more children anyway, so we took it as a blessing in disguise. I went to my family practitioner and pled with him to deliver my baby since I was so terrified of the whole OB/GYN system and my family doctor had always been kind, honest, and trusting of my judgement about what was happening to either myself or my son when I would call in about one of us being sick. But he just wouldn't do it.....he had stopped delivering babies because the malpractice insurance was so high...however he gave me 2 referrals for OB/GYN's with a deep understanding of my need for a 100% supportive doctor for a VBAC. One was a male and the other a female.

I chose the female, since my last male doctor in that area had no heart and bad bedside manners. I met with her and was delighted that she was totally supportive of VBACs...and not just a trial of labor either....she really believed it was better for everyone involved to have the woman try for a VBAC and even encouraged them. She was familiar with the Bradley Method of Natrual Childbirth course that I had taken and was willing to let me use all my techniques learned in the classes to give birth naturally...everything was always MY CHOICE.

With my first, birth the induction had no medical basis, but with this birth there was a medical need...it seemed that my amniotic fluid level was dropping and my bag of waters was intact. Again I was three weeks past my due date, but this time the doctor's due date figure and mine were only a week apart...so, at best I was only 2 weeks past my due date. Now that I knew my family history of post date babies (just like some folks have a history of preterm babies), I wasn't overly concerned. I agreed to a prostiglandin gel induction this time over pitocin and the contractions slowly built. I finally got to the same place I had been with the first one (4cm) before the c-section...and try as they might, my labor support persons just couldn't get me past my fear of another c-section. So, I agreed to an epidural. After it was administered I fell asleep sitting upright, refreshing my mind, body and soul for the work ahead. Just before I reached 10 cm the epidural began to wear off, and I announced "I REALLY want to push!" At this point they turned the epidural off. The nurse checked me and just as she finished my bag of water burst. How exciting! I had never made it this far! Oh how I wanted to jump around the room and shout "I CAN DO IT! I AM STRONG! MY BODY CAN LABOR!" And then that first strong, solid and unrelenting urge to push hit me.

I felt an energy well up inside me like I have never felt before. I could feel this life in me as I worked harder than I have ever worked in my entire life to help my uterus push this baby out. At one point his head got stuck and I started to panic again...."Oh no! How could God be this cruel to let me get this far, only to have me cut open again!" But the doctor assured me, we weren't backtracking now. She would use forceps during my next 2 pushes to help straighten out the baby's head (not pull him out - by the way she really didn't like using forceps much). In retrospect, I realize now that because of the epidural the baby had lost his exit signal and no longer was positioned exactly right (up to that point he had been in perfect position) and, more than likely, I would not have needed the forceps to help him straighten out even. Once it was straightened again I resumed that pushing with all my might. It felt so wonderful to work with my body and know that I was about to bring forth a life as my body had always been intended for. As his head crowned, I touched it and knew THIS was my miracle child. No episiotomy and no tear until his elbow caught me on the way out...and even then the doctor said she was glad WE had agreed from the beginning NOT to do an episiotomy. His body came out with the next push and I held him on my stomach! What a miracle this was! I was NOT broken! I had a body that worked! It brought forth life as it had always been intended to do! At this point I cut the cord, and in that same instant bonded, totally in love, with my child.

As I gazed at this miracle in my arms, my first child walked in the room with my mother. Getting to see his new baby brother for the first time (and not even cleaned up yet!). "Oh Mama! Can I kiss him? Please?!" And all I could say was "Sure!" as I fought back tears of joy and elation. Joseph Phillip, 8 pounds 5 oz. 21 inches long, was brought into this world with love and care and determination, was just shy of being 1 full pound bigger than his big brother had been 4 years before when I was told HE would never fit through my pelvis...my vindication served and proved...my body worked! It had not been the pure and completely natural birth I had envisioned....but it was my miracle birth and proof that I was not defective...my body worked! My next child, (whenever we decide to create him or her) will be born in peace and tranquility (and where I had always felt the safest), at home with the loving touch of a midwife in attendance and a newly 100% supportive mother there to help welcome her next new grandchild.

Renee Kendall, AAHCC
MthrluvOK@aol.com
Bradley Method Childbirth Educator, Professional Labor Assistant, and Midwife-to-be