Myka's Birth Story

            In case you don’t follow me on Facebook, I’ve been doing a fun little “Random Daily Question” on there for the past few weeks. It’s just a fun way to interact with you guys and get to know you better. Anyways, today’s question was, “If you are still planning on having more children, what, if anything, would you do differently with future children than your current ones?” I had intended on getting answers on how people might discipline their kids differently, interacting with them more, that sort of thing. Instead, it turned into a discussion mostly on how we would want to do our labor and deliveries differently, which is totally fine! I actually found it way more interesting than what I had planned. Plus, it was my fault for not wording it very well. ; )

            With all of that being said, I felt like it was finally time for me to share my birth experience with my daughter. I don’t know why, but I always enjoy reading other people’s and was obsessed with “A Baby Story” on TLC way before I even had my own baby. So grab some popcorn and gather ‘round for the tale on how I became a giant hypocrite.

           

            Before I was even pregnant, I swore up and down I wanted to have as natural a birth as possible. No inductions, no epidurals, no c-sections. My husband and I even looked into and seriously considered having a home birth. To this day I still wish I would have had one. But I didn’t and I’ll get to that. However, I did end up getting the above 3 things.

            John and I thought long and hard about the whole induction business especially when I got up to the last couple of weeks of being pregnant. I really didn’t want to do it, but gave in when I hadn’t made ANY progress as far as dilation and all that since 37 weeks. I realize that’s pretty common, especially with first babies, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to come out any time soon. I had read there are risks involved if you let your baby stay in there too far past your due date too. (I know, I know. There are risks with everything, right?! :P) Plus I worry too much for my own good a lot of times and had that “What if?” scenario playing in the back of my mind. By God it had taken us this long to get pregnant, I wasn’t going to risk anything!

I think this was the day before I was induced.

            So, we went in at 8pm on Wednesday, October 10, 2012 to be induced. (Those of you who have been induced, how weird is it to go up to a counter and basically say, “Hi! I’m here to have a baby!”?) My first nurse was really nice, but she “forgot” to tell me not to get up and use the bathroom for at least half an hour after they stick that pill in your nether regions to start dilating you. I’m sure you can guess what I did. I had a feeling you probably weren’t supposed to get up, but the nurse would have told me if I weren’t, right? - _- Then you have to wait 6 hours after the first one before they put another one in. Double unamused face.

I got one, ONE hour of sleep that night! Besides nerves, it's damn near impossible to get comfortable with 50 billion wires hanging off of you.

            Fast forward to 4am and they stick the second weird pill thing in. By the time the doctor comes to break my water at 7am, I am finally starting to feel some slight contractions, like uncomfortable period side effects, but nothing major. Anyhow, personally, I think having your water break is just about the single most weird feeling in the world. You always hear about how “it’s like you’re peeing your pants”. Bullshit. More like if you were a horse peeing your pants…and you keep on peeing periodically for awhile after the initial tidal wave.

            Moving on from that lovely visual, my labor progressed really fast after that. Which at the time I thought was great because 1) Who wants to be in labor for a long time? And 2) I had read that it can be really slow going sometimes with inductions. If memory serves me correctly, I was dilated to 7/8 by around 11am, at which point I caved and got the evil epidural. I had tried to do the IV drugs, but didn’t really like the possible side effects to baby and the fact that you could only get them ever so often. They just weren’t going to cut it with my labor moving as fast as it was.

            I know what you’re thinking and I STILL ask myself the same thing: Why did you even get it if you were already that far? That’s a good question that I don’t really have an answer to other than I didn’t think I could handle any more at the time. I soooo wish I hadn’t gotten it, though. As if pushing while lying on your back (SO unnatural and uncomfortable!) wasn’t bad enough, dry heaving while doing so is even more fun. I think it was mostly from the fact that I begged the nurse to turn the epidural stuff up because it wasn’t doing anything for the first half hour. So yah, my own fault, I guess.

            I started pushing around noon and continued on through the afternoon until around 3/3:30 when the doctor came back to check on me. (She had checked on me more times than that, just to clarify.) I was pooped out, this obviously wasn’t going anywhere, my daughter’s had was stuck/coming down at a weird angle, and my cervix kept pointing the wrong direction. So I gave in AGAIN and decided to have a c-section.

            The actual surgery part went pretty well…I felt sorry for my doctor, though. I have really hard to find veins, evidently, and I swear I could feel when whatever crap they were pumping in there went into my veins because that shit hurt! I kept saying “ow” and freaking her out, though. Oops. Sorry lady. Least of my concerns right now. I’ll let you know if you’re actually hurting me down yonder when I’m NOT trying to fight back more nausea.

            Lo and behold, after less than 24 hours after the whole ordeal started, Myka was born at 4:03pm on October 11, 2012 weighing 7lbs. 3 oz. and 19 ½ inches long. Was she healthy? Yes. Am I happy nothing was wrong with her? Of course! Would I go back and do it again the way I had really wanted to? Absolutely.

            As usual, I should have listened to my instincts and just done it the way I had wanted instead of turning myself into a giant hypocrite. Yes, it’s been 10 months since she’s been born and I still regret doing it the way I did. I think it would have worked out if I had been able to get into a position that “felt right”. (I forgot to mention I kept wanting to sit up and they kept making me lay back because supposedly the baby’s heart rate kept dropping or increasing when I did that. I’ve done research. I’ve read that that’s normal. But hey, I don’t work in the medical field.)

            Up until a few days ago, I had at least been holding on to the fact that my daughter had a large head at birth. I could at least use that as an excuse for “having” to have a c-section, right? Nope. I can’t even remember what prompted me to look it up, but I finally found the average head circumference of newborns the other day. Myka did have a large head compared to the average…for girls. It was even slightly larger than the average for boys, from what I saw, but still.           

            Maybe next time things will be different. I hate the thought of another c-section, let alone a scheduled one. Regardless, though, I couldn’t be happier with how happy, healthy, and smart Myka has turned out to be. : )