I remember I used to cringe when anyone would start telling "labor" stories in my presence. It's like a ritual when you get two or more women together to share the extensive details of their labor experience. It becomes a competition and a matter of who can one up the other person. "Oh you were in labor for 20 hours?" "Well mine lasted 3 days." "Oh, you had an epidural?" "Well I pushed my baby out at home in a kiddie pool." "I threw up on the doctor." "Well I pooped on the baby's head" .. and so on it goes.
Meanwhile, I'm over here in complete terror thinking to myself "This is why I'm never having kids." Do I want to experience extreme trauma to my lady parts? Um no thanks. Do I want to risk 3 days of excruciating pain of trying to push a baby out without any drugs? Definitely not. I would sit on the sidelines of these conversations laughing to myself thinking these women were completely nuts, this will never be me.
Fast forward a couple of years. I find myself in Union Hospital Labor & Delivery for 20 hours. Here I am, sitting here telling this story which I swore I'd never tell. Which I now feel honored to share when other women are boasting about their own delivery stories. It's as if once you live through this life changing event you become initiated into the group and have earned the right to your own story. Well here is mine.
At a little over 40 weeks pregnant I arrived at the hospital at 4 pm to be induced. The nurse came out and asked "Are you really not feeling these contractions" "What contractions ?", I asked. Apparently I was already in labor and having pretty decent contractions, so there was no longer a need to induce. They decided to let me labor on my own all evening, during which time I spent bouncing around on a labor ball and thinking to myself "This is a breeze."
Come midnight, the nurse came in to check my cervix and insert Cervidil, which if you aren't familiar with, is a gel that is manufactured in the fiery pits of hell. My contractions were picking up and becoming almost unbearable but I denied the offer for Morphine and suffered through them while my significant other snored on the couch.
Fast forward an hour later. "GIVE ME THE FUCKING MORPHINE!", I screamed. By this time the contractions were so strong the morphine wouldn't even touch them so I went ahead and got an epidural. PRAISE LORD JESUS. The epidural is the greatest thing that has ever been invented hands down. At some point my blood pressure dropped out and I got to feeling pretty bad, but other than that it was pretty uneventful until time to push.
I pushed for 3 days and 3 nights. Ok maybe it was more like 3 hours but it felt like sooooo much longer. It felt like it would never end. But it did. And the result? A beautiful, perfect, red-headed boy. They feared he had meconium in his lungs so they had to take him right away to be checked out. I was basically the last person in the room to see him, but that's OK. I couldn't have asked for a better labor experience or a more precious baby boy. THE END.
So as you can see, I've jumped on the bandwagon of labor sharing stories. But this is only the beginning of other "mom" stories to come.
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