Busy, Busy

     It's been a while since I've posted so here's a quick update:

     I received my DONA paperwork.  I have completed all of the requirements leading up to attending a doula workshop.  I've had a hard time finding one in my area and can't attend one that has Thursday/Friday hours until my time off at work re-cycles.  Other than that, I've read all of the required literature and have my first letter of recommendation.  I've been compiling the resource list for my area and only have about half of it left to write.

     I feel like so much of my time goes to thinking about maternity issues and childbirth.  It's been a very consuming process.  I guess it comes with the territory when you're always doing research and it's all you read about.

      I have 3 co-workers who are expecting babies.  One who just entered her 2nd trimester, another due in July and one who's wife is due is 8-10 weeks.  I should be thrilled for all of them but I feel torn about it because I don't want them to head down a path of misinformation.  Who am I to assume that they haven't been doing extensive research, weighing options and arming themselves with the best information out there?  I have a feeling that they are doing what so many people do (heck, I did it!).  You get pregnant, you go to your OB/GYN and you get put on the maternity conveyor belt with millions of other American women.  I'm sure that their doctor's are feeding them the same misinformation that a lot of women get.  My fear is that they will be victims of the same system that failed my daughter and I.
   
     I like to think of myself as an advocate for natural childbirth, but when faced with people for whom my message would be most timely, I freeze.  I can talk for hours about our broken maternity system to anyone else, but stick a pregnant woman in front of me (or expecting father) and it's like I'm stopped dead in my tracks.  I think it's because I'm afraid that I'll be sticking my nose into a very personal situation.  How you decide to give birth is deeply personal matter.  I'm afraid that they would see it as me butting in where I'm not wanted.  Besides, who wants to hear that the people you put all of your trust in (doctors, medical establishment, hospitals) are not giving you the full story and, as a result, could (and likely may) be putting your life at risk?

     I broke down and asked one of the women, Katie, where she was having the baby.  (I figured it was a good starter question and would get the ball rolling.)  She told be that she was seeing a doctor who was in practice with several other doctors, any of whom could be the one to actually deliver her baby.  She likes them all except for one.  She plans to give birth at HealthPark (which has an excellent NICU.)  I asked her if she was nervous and she said she wasn't.  She then asked me if I had gotten an epidural.  I told her I had not nor did I need one.  She looked at me like I was a little crazy and then said she was "scared to death".  (I'm not sure how she went from not being nervous to being scared to death, but my guess is that the latter was the more honest answer.)  She asked if it hurt with an epidural and I told her, honestly, that it didn't really hurt until the last couple centimeters, that it was mostly discomfort.  I told her that, knowing a little about her medical history, I thought she could deliver without pain medication and she would find it so much more rewarding.  I let her know that I believed in her and knew her body was made perfectly to have her baby and that I was more worried about her husband than her... she could take! he might pass out.  Then I made the mistake of using the term "ring of fire."  I'm pretty sure that once she heard that term it was all she took away from our conversation.  There was no way to her that it's just a sensation that serves a physiological purpose.  Nope, I tried to chime in but she just hung on to the image of her vagina lit on fire.

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     On the home front, Juliet turned 16 months old a couple days ago.  I can't get over how fast she is growing.  We just took her to have pictures taken.  Boy, do those photo studios know who to get you!

     Her personality has changed so much from the super-laid back baby she was.  I'm certainly not saying she's difficult, she's just very strong-willed and opinionated.  She's so funny.  She'll flail and squirm her way out of your arms and the second you put her down she wails until you pick her back up.  My poor baby.  It can't be easy to have such conflicting emotions (all which she feels legitimately and intensely.)

   

Juliet's Birth Story

This story comes 14 months and 20 days after my daughter's birth.

Juliet was born December 15, 11 days before her due date.  My blood-pressure had been rising throughout the final months of my labor and the time came to make the call to induce.  I had hoped to have a minimally-invasive "natural childbirth" attended by my physician.  I knew once the induction bell sounded there was little chance of that happening.  My hopes to walk around during labor were dashed when I was informed at the hospital that I'd have to lay on my left side and could only get up and move around to go to the bathroom.  I didn't want continuous-fetal monitoring, but with the pitocin drip I, once again, didn't have a choice.  "Labor" began at 8:30am, though I use the term only of the medical, technocratic sense.  Four hours later my doctor dropped by and broke my water to "speed things along" even though my blood-pressure was fairly stable.  I begrudgingly agreed.  That's when I feel labor really began.

I had a feeling (as did my doctor) that labor would progress quickly.  About 2 hours later I started getting uncomfortable... not in pain really, just quite uncomfortable.  It was around that time that my husband Mike (and I really do love him to death) chose to bring up a really bad topic.  It was with that action that all of my mental fortitude broke down.  I could no longer focus on staying relaxed and letting my body do what it needed to do.  Suddenly the tension in the room became tension throughout my body... not a laboring woman's friend.  It was as if flood gates had opened and pain was washing over me in torrential rushes.


Around this time, I retreated to the bathroom.  It was there that I was most comfortable, not only laboring, but avoiding the tension that was on the other side of the door.  It was while having a contraction on the toilet that I knew things were picking up there pace.  Reluctantly, I headed out to the room and asked the nurse to check me.  (She had checked me just before I'd gone in and said I was merely 5 cm and had said I had a good 5 or 6 more hours to go.)  She did her exam, and said that nothing had changed.  But it had, she just didn't seem to agree.

I couldn't imagine another 5 or 6 hours in the pain I was in, let alone laboring on no sleep (I hadn't slept for more than 4 or 5 hours over the last several days.)  It was then that I decided to give in to the fear and asked for something to help me rest.  I remember asking Mike if I was selfish for not being able to get through it, but he assured me I wasn't because we both believed we had several hours ahead of us.  The nurse walked back with the syringe and I waited from the grogginess to to take over.

All the while, deep down, I knew that the nurse had to be wrong.  I knew my body.  Though this was my first pregnancy I believed that I knew, my body knew, how to birth my baby.  Less than a minute after receiving the drug, I felt the urge to go to the bathroom again.  I really needed to go!  With hesitation, she let me go back to the bathroom and nothing came out.  Knowing that feeling like I needed to go to the bathroom could be a sign that the baby was pushing on my bowels as she descended I asked, once again, that the nurse check me.  The frustration was visible on her face, but I insisted.  I told her I thought I was getting close.  (Mind you less than 10 minutes from her last exam had passed.)  She checked and immediately shot up, looked flustered and said that she had to go call the doctor because we were going to be delivering the baby.

After that, things are a blur.  I don't know if it was from the drugs the overwhelming pain or both.  All I can remember before the doctor arriving was telling myself over and over again not to push (which of course I was because I no longer had a say in the matter, my body had taken over.)

Once the doctor arrived, I was told I could push.  Pushing was surreal.  It was as if I had turned in to myself.  Eyes shut and, with the relief of pushing upon me, I was transported to another time, another place, another reality.  I was outside my self, but within myself in the deepest way possible.  All I could hear of the outside world was my husband, apparently underwater, counting to 10 in the most pleading voice I've ever heard.  I vividly recall feeling the doctor cut my episiotomy, but at that point I wasn't able to complain.  I was other-worldly.  I wish I could describe it better, but to this day, that's the best I can come up with.

After only 20 minutes of pushing, Juliet entered the world.  I wish desperately that I could remember it.  I have a vague recollection of her coming out and a flurry of activity.  After that, a swirly sense overtook me.  I guess that's when I started to hemorrhage.  At some point I felt the doctor tug vigorously on the umbilical cord, trying to free the placenta.  I, again. vaguely recalled that he shouldn't have been doing that, but was unable to complain.  I just figured at the time that he knew best.

Juliet, as it turns out, had shoulder dystocia

Had I listened to my body, not the nurse, I would never had agreed to the medication that likely caused her breathing problems.  Had I been awake and aware, I could have changed laboring positions and could have helped push her our more effectively.  That being said, I also believe the strict rules about only being able to lay on my side as a contributing factor to her shoulder dystocia.

I was after learning what can happen when you don't trust yourself that my re-birth began.  At the time my daughter was born, I told myself that I knew what to do and how to do it.  The problem was, I didn't believe it.
While I am grateful to the people who resuscitated my daughter and stopped my bleeding, I firmly believe that the 'cascade of interventions' caused by the distress my daughter and I both suffered.

Now, as I write this I know that I should trust my body, my inner voice.

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As a side not, Juliet is a beautiful, perfectly healthy little girl who suffered not ill side-affects from her traumatic entry into the world.

It was through these events that's I have discovered things about myself and women in general.  We were designed by God to birth our baby's naturally without intervention.  Advocating natural childbirth is now my passion.  I hope to inspire other women to trust themselves and their bodies.

We are all asked at some point, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  I followed my dreams from long ago and pursued a career working behind the scenes as a television newscast director.  Now, as a 29-year-old re-born woman who has "grown up", I can say I want to be a doula and eventually a midwife who can help women believe in their bodies and in their own inner strength.