How Did I Get Here - Part 1
Every Monday, I will post a new part to my own personal birth history. This will not be happy most times, but over the years I’ve given myself a lot more grace and love, and I hope the story reflects that. I don’t know right now how many parts this will have, but it’s going to cover almost a decade of how I truly got to where I am. I’m not going to gloss over hard things, and be aware there is talk of cesarean sections, the NICU, repeat miscarriage, infertility, blood, and possibly more that I don’t even realize right now. I may include pictures sometimes as well. This is my life, as best I can tell it, and I hope it gives a little insight into who I am beneath the sarcasm, emo music, and C-3PO level of know-it-all I carry around the world.
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I was a Navy brat, moving every couple years, and almost never going to the doctor for anything unless we couldn't fix it at home with time, rest, or OTC meds. I didn't have a distrust of the medical system, more that they were there if we couldn't handle it. I also knew my birth story growing up, along with a lot of my ancestor's stories, something I've learned others didn't have.
I was a cesarean, though my mom planned an unmedicated hospital birth. Most of our family doesn't take any pain meds unless we need them, and birth wasn't when we needed them. My grandmas all had unmedicated births in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, something odd for the time, but for me just made it a given that I would also want and have an unmedicated birth. The pain didn't scare me, even knowing my birth story. My mom didn't have the birth she planned, but she knew anyone could have an unmedicated birth and should try for one.
This isn't to say we trusted anyone outside of a doctor. We didn't see the chiropractor unless it was cheaper to get my physical for sports. We went to our well visits, had our vaccines, used antibiotics for things without question. It was a strange dichotomy to trust them but also not see them.
When I got pregnant with our first, I didn't question the hospital birth. I called the doctor my mom had with me (I was back to living where I was born), found out he retired, and his patients were being seen by the hospital midwife. That felt strange, since I had never seen a midwife, and also was slightly distrusting of them because I had never seen one, but I went along with it. They couldn't get me in until I was 12 weeks, but I figured it I needed anything, they would provide. I knew absolutely nothing about this process, so I accepted everything they said without question.
My friend from highschool, someone I recently reconnected with, had a baby right before I got pregnant. She had him at a birth center, which I thought was insane. Not having him at the hospital? What was the world coming to! He was great, she was great, but that was still a step too far for me. What would happen in an emergency? What if they had died?? She laughed it off, but looking back I know it annoyed her how worried I was about them both. As if she didn't know what she was doing? Compared to me, she was practically a doctor herself with the knowledge she had of the process and what she wanted. Her doing this was absolutely not enough to change my mind on anything, and I blissfully went along with my midwife and hospital experience thinking everything would be great, I wouldn't have issues, and I would have my unmedicated birth whenever my baby was ready to be born.
That was another aspect I learned from my family history - babies are born when they're ready. Induction was a strange topic for us. My grandma, my mom's mother, had a baby way outside her "Due window". They gave her a due date that she didn't agree with, and then stayed pregnant for weeks after her water broke because she knew he wasn't ready to be born. And even when he was born, she knew he was earlier than he should have been. Their dates be damned. So this concept of the body and baby not knowing when to be born and needing to be forced out was so foreign to me. I was "overdue", it was normal, so why rush it?
A lot of this eventually colored my own education and experiences in finding a preceptor, but for my first pregnancy, my wants aligned with the midwife I was seeing, and I didn't question when things weren't how I wanted them, because the end goal - an unmedicated birth - was what we both wanted for me.
I ignored the lack of time with her. When I saw her, it was for maybe 15 minutes, but growing up seeing Navy doctors, that didn't seem odd. Just par for the course. She was excited when we said we didn't want to find out what we were having, she said it was really rare for anyone to choose that and was so excited to tell me at the birth. My choice was colored by two people I knew, my mom and my friend that birthed in the birth center, finding out what they were having just for it to be wrong at the birth. I didn't want that, so finding out was the much easier choice.
We talked about breastfeeding, I knew I could do it because all the women in my family did without issue, and that was that entire conversation.
I did the blood tests they recommended, had my first ultrasound at 21 weeks, drank the horrible glucola drink, and said yes yes yes no matter what.
I told her often that I was still throwing up and sick, and she would laugh and tell me I just needed to want to be pregnant more. "Obviously you just don't want this baby, which is why you're making yourself sick." This was a very wanted baby. I may have only been 19 years old, but it wasn't an accident, even if she thought it was. When I was admitted to Labor and Delivery at 27 weeks with contractions that wouldn't stop and dehydration so severe I needed 3 bags of fluids to even bring my blood pressure up, she still asked why I wasn't bonding with my baby and was making myself sick.
So I stopped talking to her about it. I was slowly gaining weight, though it only ended up being 16 pounds total by her birth, but she was happy with it. I was still spilling ketones and throwing up multiple times a day, but she was happy and I didn't feel like a failure every appointment.
At 35 weeks, I went in for my appointment, got the GBS swap which I was not ready for because they didn't explain anything to me, and then she said "And your baby is head down, things are getting ready for birth, oh wait." She looked at my chart, realized she had never check the baby beyond heartbeat, and had me lift up the gown. She pushed on my belly for a bit, and then said I needed an ultrasound because she thought my baby was breech. Did I understand any of that? Nope. Did she explain? Nope.
I hadn't had an ultrasound since 20 weeks with the anatomy scan. That was my only one up to that point because it wasn't something we wanted or she offered.
So off we went to get a scan. For what reason? We had no idea.
They took pictures, it was really cool to see her, but no one told us anything. I got a call later that afternoon that I was immediately placed on bedrest, that my baby was frank breech and my fluid was low. I had to come in the next day for her to talk to me about what that all meant.
I wasn't worried. I wondered why she sounded worried and panicked, but to me everything felt exactly as it had throughout the pregnancy, and she was kind of overreacting. And yet, I listened. I went into work and put in a leave of absence, my mom came over to help me clean a bit, and I laid on the couch. But not really, because to me it truly didn't seem like an issue so why was I on bedrest? So I was just as active as I had been, rolling my eyes at her the entire time in my mind.
I went in the next day and she explained that my baby's head should be in my pelvis, but instead it was her butt, and on top of that, the ultrasound showed she had no water, and that meant she was not doing well. So I had to have another ultrasound the next day to check on her. Before she even finished these thoughts, she told me she was no longer allowed to be in charge of my care and I was being transferred to an OB I had never met.
Way to bury the lead, lady.
I had an appointment scheduled for later that afternoon with the OB she most referred to, and she would still be involved, but I couldn't see her for my care anymore.
Honestly, not much changed aside from where I went in the hospital to see them. Pee in a cup, sit on the table, take my blood pressure, and wait for them to come in and see me for a few minutes, then go home.
The only difference was this time I was given "choices" of what we could do.
Go to Salt Lake City and hope the University of Utah would deliver her breech, because no one closer could.
Have an external cephalic version (ECV) at 37 weeks and hope her being smaller meant she turned easier and we could go home to wait for labor, while also being transferred back to my midwife if so. If she stayed breech, we try again at 39 weeks.
Have the ECV at 39 weeks which probably wouldn't work because she was bigger, and then be immediately induced if she turned. If she didn't turn, a cesarean that same day.
Schedule the cesarean for 39 weeks without trying anything else.
To say I was blindsided is a small thing. I had no idea what to do. He gave me too many choices without explaining any of them! My mom had a cesarean and came out fine, so should we just do that? Or do we schedule this ECV? The only one that would not happen was driving to Salt Lake. We were poor college kids, my husband had to work, and that just seemed stupid. In hindsight, I wish we had, but that's life.
So we chose option 2. Which is what he wanted us to do. Because if I hadn't asked questions the entire pregnancy, why start now?
We had 3 ultrasounds a week those last two weeks before the ECV. My fluid levels rose, but they were still so worried about it I had to keep coming back. I didn't get why, but again, why start questioning it now.
I got the call the night before the ECV to be at Labor and Delivery at 5am, no foods or liquids after 10pm, and they would get things started.
What you need to understand is that they explained to me the process of getting the ECV, but I didn't truly understand what that meant.
An IV for medications to calm my uterus
An epidural so it didn't hurt
An ultrasound before to make sure she was still breech and then ultrasounds during and after to make sure she was still head down and doing ok
Hooked up to monitors to check her heart rate and to make sure I wasn't (or was) contracting. That depended on who was talking to me, making it super clear. Not.
Cool. Lots of meds, monitors, people, and then my baby would flip and I would go home. No big deal.
I wish it had been.