That I am pregnant again is an act of either incredible optimism or mind-blowing amnesia.
Obviously, you say.
I imitated mothers who seemed normal to me, cooing and tickling my son.
In truth, I was a zombie, obsessing about how I had ever let what happened happen.
What happened is this: In my 39th week, I am induced because of high blood pressure.
Within two hours, my contractions are one minute apart.
That’s the last thing I need: I’m at a pathetic 2 centimeters.
My doctor comes up with a solution for the pain: a syringe full of a narcotic called Stadol.
“Is this drug OK for me?”
“It sure is,” she says.
Within 10 seconds, I begin hallucinating.
I’m aware this notion is irrational, that these images are hallucinations.
But they are terrifying.
I buzz the nurse.
“Sometimes that happens,” she says and Purells her hands before leaving the room.
By noon the next day, 24 hours after I had arrived, I am only 3 centimeters dilated.
The new nurse, a nice lady, tells me the induction isn’t working.
“Your blood pressure isn’t even high anymore,” she says.
“Tell the doctor you want to go home.”
I’m worn out.
I hallucinated all night.
I’ll go on bed rest, if you want.
I just don’t think this is working out."
“OK,” he says.
“Let me examine you.
If you’re still not dilating, we’ll talk about going home.”
My previous dilation exams had been quick and painless, if not entirely pleasant.
This one takes a long time.
Suddenly, it hurts.
“What are you doing?”
“Why does it hurt?”
“He’s not examining me,” I scream at my husband.
“He’s doing something!”
My husband grips my hand, frozen, unsure.
I scream to the nurse, the nice one who had suggested I go home.
“What is he doing?”
She doesn’t answer me, either.
I writhe under the doctor’s grasp.
The pain is excruciating.
I know the hook is for breaking my water, to speed my delivery by force.
I scream, “Get off of me!”
He looks up at me, as if annoyed that the specimen is talking.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says.
He breaks my water and leaves.
The nurse never looks me in the eye again.
“Time for a C-section,” he says.
I consider not signing the consent form, ripping off these tubes and monitors, and running.
But the epidural I’d finally gotten won’t allow me to stand up.
It’s nearly midnight when I hear a cry.
My first emotion is surprise; I had almost forgotten I was there to have a baby.
I was desperate to find someonewho could tell me what had happened to me was normal.
To say, “You hallucinated?
Oh, me, too.”
Or “My doctor broke my water when I wasn’t looking.
Isn’t that the worst?”
Now, I’d never loved my doctor.
But I did value him.
Although I’d found him patronizing"Normal!"
It seemed to work, until it didn’t.
But that’s just what I told people.
I bring up doulas and birth plans because people who hear my story ask about these kinds of things.
Did I consider a home birth?
A midwife instead of an obstetrician?
How about The Bradley Method, childbirth training designed to promote unmedicated, spontaneous vaginal births?
The answer is no.
I am not holistically minded.
My philosophy was simple: Everyone I know has been born.
It can’t be that complicated.
But hospitals aren’t so interested in giving women back their birth.
I rolled my eyes at the doula-attended, birth-plan-clutching mothers before, but I am humble now.
I have a chance to do it all over.
Would I benefit from thinking more holistically?
Should I bother taking back my birth?
During my pregnancies,friends gave me two books; their spines are still barely cracked.
In the end, she learns that, yes, her body was made for this.
Sam asked to be taken to the hospital.
The change of scenery did her good.
“At that point, I had been in labor for 40 hours,” she says.
“I entered the relaxed zone.
The epidural took the edge off, and I kept it low enough so I felt my contractions.
It was a sacred space.”
Needless to say, she was relieved that she was in a place where blood transfusions were readily available.
As it is, she believes she will want midwife care at a hospital next time.
Mayim Bialik had a similar experience but came away with different beliefs.
Bialik and I are very different.
She can recall only two times when she left them with anyone other than her husband.
I wanted to have power over my experience.
Not to be a martyr but because my body was made to do this."
Bialik’s first birth didn’t go the way she wanted.
After three days of labor at home, she stalled at 9 centimeters, one short of the goal.
All of our plans for bed sharing, nursing on demand, bathing himgone."
The experience was scarring.
She considers me, knowing my story.
“It’s not like when people have a C-section.”
I point out that natural childbirth in the hospitalher “failure"was my best-case scenario.
But I also understand when she says, “Everyone is allowed her own sense of loss.”
She realized her vision when her second son was born at home.
I don’t consider myselfa candidate for a home birth.
The risk of uterine rupture from an attempt at vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) makes it unthinkable.
But I’m also not really interested in a home birth.
After labor (or surgery or both), I think the hospital is a great place to be.
But I’m also not interested in another C-section.
A narcotic that made me hallucinate after it had helped so many others is bad luck.
A doctor breaking my water without consent is something to write the medical board about.
So I’d like to attempt a VBAC, but I know that it doesn’t always succeed.
But my primary goal is more modest: not to be retraumatized.
Their husbands were there, but the women weren’t relying on them for anything other than love.
Perhaps I had put my husband in a bad position by asking him to be my doula, too.
I told four doulas my story.
One spoke of how I had to “vindicate” my last birth.
Another extolled aromatherapy and how it might have helped me dilate.
“When you trust yourself again,” one said, “you’ll be able to dilate.”
But what if my bodywasn’tmeant to do this?
Just because I was born with all the parts doesn’t mean I am able to conceive easily.
Just because I have breasts doesn’t mean I can produce an adequate amount of milk.
Would we ever tell someone whose liver has failed that it was because she didn’tbelievein it?
I think about my appendectomy, back in 2003.
Had I not made it to the hospital in time, I would be dead.
What would it be like to refuse medical intervention?
I’d call my family, say my good-byes.
“I’m sorry,” I’d say.
“But I’m not evolutionarily favored.
It’s time for me to go.”
This attitude, that everything was better back when there were no doctors, seems strange to me.
C-sections, although certainly done too often, can save lives.
As the weeks passand my belly grows, I can’t stop thinking about Sam.
Her pregnancy was a sacred time, and she had truly looked forward to labor.
Is that what I should try fora meaningful birth, as well as an untraumatic one?
At what point had people like Sam and me learned to feel entitled to a meaningful birth?
“I think that birth should be a beautiful experience,” says obstetrician Kimberly D. Gregory, M.D.
Naturally, one would assume that Dr. Gregory advocates birth plans.
When I ask her this, she laughs.
“You get everything on that list that you don’t want.
It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The birth-plan group trended toward a higher C-section rate and more interventions.
“There’s a certain personality bang out that tends to be more anxious.
Maybe the anxiety hormones themselves put them at risk,” Dr. Gregory theorizes.
Walking in with this list appears to set up an antagonistic relationship.”
In light of this insight, I ask Dr. Gregory about doulas.
“Doulas can be helpful,” Dr. Gregory muses.
“So can a well-informed friend.
As I’m leaving my interview with Dr. Gregory, my phone rings.
It’s another doula returning my message.
I tell her my story, prepared for another lecture on believing in my cervix.
Instead, she is silent.
I ask if we could meet.
When we do, I sit back and listen.
I want to remain someone who doesn’t want a doula.
Yet I find myself asking this kind, professional woman if she is free in mid-July.
And later that evening, my husband and I pick out a name.
In the past three weeks,I’ve had the same dream.
As I reach down, I notice my C-section scar is gone.
I wake up upset.
“Who took it?
Maybe I’m not so different from the women I spoke with, after all.
Bialik had a successful natural childbirth but felt like a failure because it was in the hospital.
According to Dr. Gregory, women are now requesting a C-section for their first birth, even without indication.
“A lot of people are uncomfortable with the unknown,” she says.
Plenty of people are wary of C-sections by choice, from holistic moms to obstetricians.
But isn’t this, too, taking back your birth?
Refusing to be out of control seems to me the epitome of taking it back.
You don’t have to have an unattended birth in the woods to be considered a real woman.
It’s what your grandmothers did.
It’s what their grandmothers did.
I don’t know how this story ends.
I’m still not convinced my body was made to deliver vaginally.
But here’s what I do know: I will insist on kindness.
I will insist on care.
And I hope I will be open to being treated kindly.
It’s harder than it seems.
I have another hope, too.
Before these questions wrapped around my neck, choking me for answers.
I will know that I am his mother and he is my son.
I hope I mean it.
Photo Credit: Vincent Besnault/Picturerequest
