mommaniecy-blog

[mommaniecy-blog]

The “C” Word

Mason

I still remember hearing the c word from my doctor for the first time during my first pregnancy. I had anticipated hearing the words for weeks. Every time my doctor checked me and commented, “Your pelvis seems narrow” or “The baby is still pretty high up there” I would feel my face flush...my heart beat faster..because I knew where this was headed. I think most women imagine the day they deliver their baby much like they imagine their wedding day. They imagine what it’ll feel like, what they’ll look like and how they’ll handle the experience. Of course, nothing ever happens the way you imagine it but how can you explain that to a first time mom who naively plans out every detail of her delivery (hello birth plan). Although I am much more of a “let’s see how it goes” type of person I thought that how it would go was how I wanted it to go. I thought I would deliver naturally..holding my husband’s hand and surrounded by aroma therapy candles and listening to Sade..or something like that. But then..at 38 weeks..my doctor looked at me and said it: c-section.

My heart dropped. It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t how I imagined my first delivery. I wanted to open my mouth to protest..to tell my doctor that this wasn’t my “birth plan”..but I just sat there quietly instead. I heard most of what he said after that...pelvic too narrow...risk to the baby...CPD (google it) and then the date was set and off I went. I was already hysterically crying before we even walked out of the office. Mostly because I felt like a failure. Isn’t this what women were built for? To deliver children? Why wasn’t my body able to do it? Of course, my husband and my family all said the same thing. Think of the baby. As long as the baby is born healthy, why does it matter? But it matters. At least, I always thought it did. Until suddenly, after a day of crying and mourning the birth experience I would never have, I suddenly realized that it didn’t. Why was the birth experience I wanted, what I had envisioned for myself, more important than my baby’s well being? My doctor’s diagnosis of CPD meant a lot of things..it meant there was a risk the baby would get stuck in the birth canal during delivery. It meant there was a chance the baby would spend hours trying to “drop” and would never - could never - get there. And what then? I would need an emergency c-section anyway after hours of laboring for nothing. So I stopped crying and I accepted that what I wanted may not be what’s best for the baby. I would brave undergoing major surgery and whatever came with the recovery afterwards if it meant ensuring the safe arrival of a healthy baby and for that I would do anything.

A few days after that doctor visit my water broke at 5:00am, a week before my scheduled c-section. I was terrified and excited. Did this mean I would get a shot at delivering the baby naturally? I hardly had the time to think about it between the increasingly intense pain of my contractions and the rush to the hospital. Then came the questions from the nurses. Why was I scheduled for a c-section? What had my doctor told me about my chances of delivering naturally? My doctor would not be delivering my baby because he wasn’t on call so the doctor who would be performing the c-section decided to check me to confirm my doctor’s diagnosis. And confirm he did. Now I wonder if he just didn’t want to step on my doctor’s toes and tell me anything different. Doctors have each other’s back like that (and my doctor happened to be the head of the obgyn unit at that hospital).

By 9:00am I heard the cries of my firstborn child. “It’s a boy!” the doctor said and the nurses clapped (I had waited the entire pregnancy to find out what I was having). “Of course. I knew it. His name is Mason.” I said and I cried. Not because the way I welcomed my child into this world was laying flat on an operating table under harsh fluorescent lights surrounded by people wearing surgical masks. Not because a blue sheet prevented me from seeing my baby for the first few seconds of his life. Not because I didn’t get to have the birth experience I always pictured. In the end, none of that really mattered. I cried because I heard the nurses say the words that mattered most..the words that matter more than the dreaded c-word. “He’s perfect.”

Fast forward two years later and I think of how silly I was to feel like such a failure when I was told I would have to deliver my baby via c-section. I look at my son and I realize how little it matters how he came into this world and how much more it matters just that he did. He does not walk around with a scarlet “C” on his forehead. No one will ever care whether he was born vaginally or by c-section nor will he share that tidbit in the “About Me” section of whatever social media platform is relevant 15 years from now. My son is everything to me and he is as perfect today as the day (and the way) he was born.

So why include this whole story of my first birth story in a blog entry meant to share my VBAC experience? Mainly because I want women to know that a c-section is birth. Whether this is your first, second or third baby and you’re hearing the “c word” for the first time just know that you are not a failure. Putting your baby’s health before your own expectations is what it means to be a mother. I would never take it back. I still question whether I could have done it if I had been given the chance. Whether I trusted my doctor’s diagnosis or doubted myself too easily. Yet still, I would never take it back. For ten months my body nurtured and carried my son and on the day it mattered most my body did not fail him. I have the scar to prove it.

WTF is a VBAC?

The first time I heard the term VBAC I was browsing pregnancy profiles on Instagram. I saw this beautiful picture of a woman crying tears of happiness holding her little newborn baby while sitting in a bathtub and she shared how happy she was to have experienced a VBAC. So naturally I googled the term (and then rolled my eyes for not figuring it out on my own) and asked myself the same age old question everyone asks: don’t you have to have a c-section for every delivery after you’ve already had one? I read up on the statistics, I read up on the risks and I realized maybe not. I mean, if Instagram was any indication a VBAC is a piece of cake (this sentence is dripping in sarcasm if you can’t tell). Still, I didn’t seriously consider it for my second pregnancy. Almost immediately I told myself it was more likely than not that I would have to have another c-section and I was at peace with that. No tears, no mourning, no protest. When people would ask me (or assume) I would be delivering my second child by c-section I would just say “We’ll see.”

 I went through my entire pregnancy and deliberately left that question up in the air. When it came time to talk about my “birth plan” with my doctor (worth mentioning it wasn’t the same doctor as my first) I told him what I didn’t say the first time around: if she does what she is supposed to then I want to try. Of course, this meant I had to be informed of the risks. It meant I had to sign a document stating I was aware that I could die or my baby could die. It meant my doctor had to carefully review my surgical record from my first c-section to confirm that my first cut was a “bikini”’cut because otherwise a VBAC was not an option. Luckily, my doctor did not disregard my curiosity in wanting to see if I could do it or criticize my non committal attitude towards either birth option. As my pregnancy reached its final stretch he did not see any reason for me to have to undergo a c-section but did tell me he wouldn’t feel comfortable with a vaginal delivery past my due date. To be cautious, he scheduled a c-section for the day after my due date and told me the baby would have to come on her own before then if I wanted to take a shot at delivering her naturally. I had been experiencing pre term labor for weeks so I knew she wouldn’t wait until her due date. The wait was on.

Aella

Even if you don’t live in Florida you know that the hype for Hurricane Irma was real and rightfully so. The hurricane looked like a perfect storm someone drew on the tv screen and it was a monster. So there I was, nine months pregnant, knowing that one of the biggest hurricanes ever was heading straight towards me. My family wanted me to wait the storm out at the hospital. Everyone warned me about the barometric pressure that comes with a hurricane and the belief that the pressure triggers labor. I considered riding the storm out at the hospital but I didn’t want to be apart from my son and even if I could bring him too I couldn’t imagine him spending the night at the hospital lobby (he’s two years old...enough said). I wanted to be comfortable while the storm passed overnight and I wanted him to be comfortable too since this was his first big storm so I decided against it. I told myself (and everyone else) that the baby just needed to wait one more night before coming. My husband agreed. I mean, what are the chances she comes on the one night we needed her to stay put? Kind of sounds like the last words spoken by that group of teenagers in the movies who decide to camp out in the middle of nowhere for the night and hope for the best. Of course there’s a murderous psychopath waiting to kill you in the woods! And of course my daughter decided to come the one night I gambled she wouldn’t.

At 2:00 am I woke up to hear the storm in full force. The windows were shaking, we had lost power hours earlier and the rain was pounding. Thankfully the storm did not hit us at full strength but you wouldn’t have known it from the sound. It was intense. That night I had put Mason down to sleep in our bed and crossed my fingers he would sleep through it all. When I woke up he and my husband were sleeping soundly next to me while the storm raged on outside. I knew immediately something was happening. I had constant Braxton Hicks contractions since week 34-35 so the feeling of contractions wasn’t immediately alarming but something felt different. I decided to track them and sat in bed for almost an hour timing how far apart they were. I didn’t wake my husband until they were 3 minutes apart and had increased in intensity. I was in labor, I was sure of it. I still remember what I said to him when I shook him awake, careful not to wake Mason. “Don’t freak out. I’m in labor.” Even in the dark I could see his face and his expression. He was trying to keep it together. Quietly and nervously we packed the last few items we needed for my hospital bag and changed. All the while the wind howled outside serving as a constant reminder that there couldn’t be a better time for this to be happening (again...sarcasm) and I thought....you gotta be fucking kidding me.

Luckily we are staying with my mom so we had someone to leave Mason with in the middle of the night. The contractions had picked up and I was in real pain...half sure I would be delivering this baby on the bathroom floor if I didn’t get to a hospital. Yet still I laid down with Mason for a little while after putting him in my moms bed and hugged him close. I kissed him and hummed to him to go back to sleep knowing that it was the last time I would hold him as my only child. It was such a bittersweet feeling for me leaving him to give birth to his sister. I held his hand and told him I loved him and that I had to go to the hospital so that the doctor could take his sister out and she could come home. I wonder if years from now he’ll remember that in the middle of all the craziness...in the middle of rushing to get to the hospital to give birth to his sister...his mom took the time to hold him. I hope so.

It was a little after 3am when we left. The news had said the worst part of the storm would be passing over us between 2-4am (my daughter has perfect timing) so we hoped the worst was over. My doctor had advised me to go to a closer hospital if the baby did decide to come during the storm. I didn’t tell him that wasn’t going to happen..I just smiled politely and agreed...but that wasn’t happening. The hospital I was set to give birth at was about 20 minutes away and both my husband and I agreed that if we were driving through a hurricane to any hospital it was going to be the one we had chosen. By then the rain had let up but the wind was powerful. We first drove in one direction and turned around when we almost hit a downed power line. We decided to take the highway (less debris) and saw two vehicles crashed on the side of the road, one was an ambulance. There was absolutely no one on the road but us and the wind kept pushing our car out of the lane. All the while I crossed my fingers that we would get there alright and breathed through my contractions. I thought of all those stories I had always heard about women giving birth in their car on the way to the hospital. That would have been the cherry on top.

When we got to the hospital my doctor was called and they let me know he couldn’t come during the storm. He had no power and a tree in his driveway. I would have to be seen by the hospital’s doctors instead. At that point I was in so much pain I didn’t even care. I just needed to be seen by the person who gives the all clear for the drugs. It was at that point I saw a mixture of hospital doctors. Three different ones to be exact. All three asked the same questions: why was my first delivery a c-section? Had I discussed attempting a VBAC with my doctor? What did he say? Was I aware of the risks? And then I was counseled on the risks (repeatedly) to which I always politely listened and nodded while occasionally asking for a second to bear down through a contraction. My response was always the same: if she does what she’s supposed to, I want to try to deliver her naturally. If there are any signs of a complication we can discuss a c-section. And she was doing what she was supposed to. When I arrived at the hospital I was 100% effaced and 4cm dilated. She was a little high but things looks promising. I was told the hospital would not be giving me any pitocin to speed along her delivery because it was a VBAC (increases the risk of a complication ) so she and I were on our own.

After 8 hours of laboring I got my epidural. I had to wait a little longer for it because it was a special mixture that didn’t include any narcotics in it. I had a bad reaction to narcotics after my first c-section that I wasn’t looking forward to re-living this time around and thankfully the anesthesiologist went out of her way to prevent that from happening. The next 6 hours are kind of a blur. I slept, I ate jello, we waited. I was tired, I was nauseous and I was starving. During that time the only other doctor practicing in my OBGYN’s office showed up to deliver the baby. I had never met with him at the office during my pregancy but I instantly liked him. He explained the risks of a VBAC (again..) and said the baby seemed to be doing excellent. She was dropping and I was dilating. He trusted my instincts and agreed..if all continued to look well I would not need a c-section.

It was a little after 5pm when the doctor came in for another check. By then I had started regaining some of the feeling in my legs and I was shaking uncontrollably. The nurse said it was a side effect of the drugs but I think it was my nerves. I had never done this before. I hadn’t even researched breathing or pushing techniques for natural delivery. I wanted the chance to do it but when it came down to it I didn’t know how to do it. That’s when the doctor said the magic words: “She’s ready. It’s time to push.”

My two sisters arrived at the hospital literally minutes before I started pushing. My husband held my hand and my sisters turned into my cheerleaders. Thank God because I almost felt like giving up before I even started. I’ll spare you the details about how nauseous I was each time I pushed and how I literally could not stop vomiting through it all. I was exhausted and I didn’t think I had it in me to push her out. But I did. With every push I thought come on little girl, it’s time for us to meet. Forty minutes after I started pushing my little girl, my second child, was born. She came out with barely a cry, eyes wide open and taking it all in. She was perfect. 6lbs 12 ounces of perfection. The nausea disappeared instantly as I held her. Shit...that was tough. But so worth it. The nurse was smiling from ear to ear. “Great job mommy! You did that all on your own. You did it!” The doctor added, “Congratulations! You’re now a statistic.”

It took 16 hours of labor and 40 minutes of pushing to accomplish something I’m not even sure I thought I ever could. Ultimately, I trusted the process..I trusted my body..and I trusted my daughter. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have gotten a c-section if there would have been any hiccups along the way. My concern was always the well being of the baby so I likely would have agreed to a c-section at the first sign of a complication. Luckily, there weren’t any. The doctor said I couldn’t have had a smoother delivery and for that I am grateful. I’m grateful I got to experience a natural delivery for my second (and very likely last) pregnancy. I’m grateful all the stars aligned and my baby girl followed the exit signs like she was supposed to. I’m grateful that despite going into labor in the middle of a hurricane we were able to make it to the hospital safely. I’m grateful that I was surrounded by people I love encouraging me during the hardest and most physically challenging moment of my life. I’m grateful my daughter was born healthy above all else.

We always knew we were going to name her Mya. We struggled for months about her middle name. We almost chose something else but my husband wanted her middle name to mean something. After some googling, he came across the Greek name “Aella” meaning whirlwind or stormwind. In light of her sudden and dramatic entry into this world, it suits her. Mya Aella it is.

I could go on and on about the differences in recovery from a c-section versus a vaginal delivery. Maybe another blog post? For now I’ll just say both require time to heal in different ways. If you’re thinking about attempting a VBAC, talk to your doctor about it. Depending on the reasons for your first C-section and some additional factors, you may be able to give it a shot. Remember not every doctor is on board with a VBAC so if it’s something you really have your heart set on you will need to find one that is willing to give it a try. Lastly, don’t feel like you missed out if a VBAC never happens for you. Yes, delivering a child naturally is a beautiful experience. However, having a child period is the most beautiful experience of all...whichever way that happens. Holding your child for the first time, knowing you created that tiny person, realizing your life will never be the same...well, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?