Living Simply… Parenting by Instinct

I’ve been thinking about what it means to raise a daughter vs a son. I mean all my activism on the fronts of birth, pregnancy, breast feeding, and parenting takes on a whole new aspect. I realize changing societal views will affect my sons too but I’m not sure it’s necessarily valid but it feels like it would have a more intimate impact on my girl child. I’ve now had to consider the body issues and peer problems that boys seem to avoid or if not completely avoid they don’t have the long lasting effects that they have on girls. I realize she’s only a week old but the ramifications stagger me.

So I’ve been musing about my latest birth and I’ve concluded that except for a very few small details I had a close to undisturbed birth as is possible in the hospital culture. I was left alone for long periods at a stretch I ate showered and laboured as I wished with just my husband for company. I wasn’t bothered by even intermittant EFM or many vaginal exams at all. I really think that despite being the only one labouring at the time they just forgot about me. Until the final hour of my labour I largely escaped the hospital culture. I think my mostly satisfying and completely empowering birth is due to this oversight on the part of the hospital staff.

Shay’s birth was NOT all that I envisioned. It lacked a few things that I feel would have made it better for both of us but as a favourite blogger of mine recently wrote we should stop saying “it was a beautiful birth… BUT…” I love her analogy to a painting. If your painting is not quite what you had planned due to a breaking brush or running out of a shade of paint, the painting itself is not less beautiful for making due with some things.

                I felt my first contractions at 5 pm on Monday November 2^nd. They were steady and increasing although mild and I felt sufficiently strong to justify calling my husband who works an hour and a half away. He came home that night. My contractions were strong enough to prevent me from sleeping until about 2 am when they tapered down. The next day they continued. Strong enough to make me think the baby might come that night. I did not call anyone as I had planned a UC. I simply kept to my daily routine. The next day, tired and unable to force myself to eat very much we called my in-laws to come and help us with the boys. I made the decision to go to hospital as I felt with lack of sleep and lack of food I was at higher risk for complications than I was comfortable with. Wednesday the contractions kicked into high gear and, I felt for sure this was it. Throughout my long early labour (I don’t believe it was Braxton Hicks or false labour, simply a longer than usual early; my labours always have a long lead in) my husband liked to joke that the baby was definitely a girl and it was just like a woman to keep us waiting. At the ER they checked me and found me only slightly dilated. It was discouraging but we went home to wait.

                Thursday morning very early the contractions began to hurt. We checked into the hospital at 10 am for a NST. The baby was fine and the on-call maternity doctor (the same one who attended my younger son) checked me and gave me a choice to stay or to leave, as they did not feel my dilation was much more than the day before. This was at about noon or so. I believe my water had broken as the doctor examined me as there was a lot of fluid on the Chux pad afterwards. I elected to stay and good thing too. I went to have a shower and it was then that I believe I entered active labour although the nurses believe I was still about 4cm. The contractions began very suddenly to come fast and furious one on top of the other. I attempted showering to help with the pain. I tried all fours and side lying positions as well as walking. Finally, in desperation, I attempted side lying on the bed (though I knew that was it for me now they would force stranded beetle pushing position) to slow the contractions so that I could manage them. They were now lasting about a minute and a half and I was having only about a minute to breath in between them. It was the most intense, insane labour I’ve ever had. I caved in and asked and received a couple of shots of narcotic. I felt at that moment I had failed my child but I really did not know how far I was and could not handle the contractions. The drugs will have unintended effects I’m sure but I needed to breathe a bit between in order to conserve energy for pushing, I felt. I felt as if I was in the throes of induced labour but I wasn’t induced.

                My contractions continued very strong and very close. The hospital staff decided they would strip me of my support (I had my mother in law and my husband) by making my husband time contractions. I have no idea why this was so urgent but it apparently was. I mean, based on intensity alone I was progressing. With each contraction I was feeling pressure in my bottom and the urge to bear down. I tried not to force it, I just let my uterus do the work. A student nurse was talking to my husband at this point taking down my history when I turned to my husband and said, “the baby’s here.” I had felt the baby move down and checking with my hand, yes, the child was crowning. Apparently, the nurse was very shocked. He looked from my husband to my mother in law and both were laughing and telling him, “you better listen to her.” I was in labour land hard core by now. So the rest is kind of blurry.

                Suddenly the room filled with people, nurses and residents mostly. One nurse I remember most clearly was telling me I could not push on all fours, and telling me that my perineum would not stretch enough for the baby to be born at the same time as she was telling me not to push as the doctor was not there yet. The doctor came running in; apparently he had been at his office across the parking lot at the time. My husband informed them I did not want an episiotomy and I wished for the cord to be delayed cutting. They insisted on, on the back pushing and purple pushing. I did not like this part. I did my best to just ignore the nurse. She could push my legs up to my chin but she couldn’t make me hold my breath. J I finally informed them they could cut if necessary. I’m not entirely sure if it was or not. I only received three stitches but I have had two previous episiotomies and feel perhaps the scar tissue is an issue at this point (?) My beautiful baby girl was born at 3 pm. She weighed 7 lbs 5 oz and was 19 and ¾ of an inch long. They put her on my chest, did suction her (but not too severely), delayed cutting the cord until it stopped pulsing. They left her there while I attempted to push out the placenta. They asked my permission before removing her to weigh her and poke her but she never left the room. My placenta was a bit sticky but the physician decided to have patience this time; he was the one who ended up with me in the OR at my younger son’s birth due to impatient traction on the cord. It took a while and a shot of Pitocin but we got her out this time in one piece which they put in a bag for me to take home. I spent the night in the hospital ( I was given a choice to leave or stay) because I felt uncomfortable with the amount of bleeding. I had not eaten again on the Thursday and feel that it had a large impact on my labour both on my energy level for my intense contractions and my bleeding afterwards.

                All in all, it was a good birth. I felt in control for the most part which is unique in and of itself for me and a hospital birth. I was permitted to labour in any way I wanted, free to move and shower. No IV just a heplock. Only the pushing phase was less than I hoped for. I had hoped to push any way I wanted. I had hoped to avoid an episiotomy. Overall, I feel I made the right decision to transfer to the hospital; I don’t feel that in my conditions of hunger and fatigue I could have dealt with the active phase at home. I do know what I will do differently next time, when I again attempt a home birth though. I will exercise more during pregnancy to ensure my endurance levels come up and I will ramp up my diet to provide more energy. I’ll eat during labour if I have to forced it down my throat. And I will speak up and tell the nurse where to go if I have to transfer and they want me to push on my back.

I will also hire someone if I have to, to take pictures of my labour. I regret that for each and every one of my labours I have no pictures until well after the baby is born. I will tell my husband next time I want pictures of the baby crowning, I want pictures of me moving through a contraction, I want pictures of the placenta and the baby at breast right after birth.  That is another of my greatest regrets.                           

Let me rant at you for a moment. Let’s talk about the terms we all use when discussing childbirth and choice. I’m talking about words like “allow” “let” and “policy”. We talk about health care workers allowing us to go X weeks overdue or X hours of active labour before having to do a c-section; we talk about allowing food and drink or not; about letting women move around freely or having a policy of EMF monitoring, IV or epidurals. A friend of my sister’s was recently talking about how her sister was disappointed because she wanted a normal birth and was told she had to have an epidural for reasons unclear to me. WAKE UP WOMEN! It’s your birth and your body. No one need give you permission to do anything. I am completely amazed that in a medical society where refusal of chemo or blood transfusions are everyday and ordinary; where no one thinks twice of suing doctors for going against a patient’s wishes, that maternity care providers are still permitted to be gods and make choices for their clients. In this atmosphere of everyone knowing their rights, judges are still making blatently illegal rulings like the recent forced c-sections that have been in the news in the last few years. WOMEN STAND UP AND TAKE BACK YOUR RIGHTS! You know what is best for you and your body. Stop deferring to these “experts” who claim rights over your wellbeing because as a woman with child you suddenly forfeit all control. Okay, I’m done now.

Today, to put my husband’s mind at ease I agreed to meet with the midwife just once. Well, I’m glad I did. It reassured me with regard to my being drawn to UC. The appointment was about 20 minutes long. She had met me twice before when I had seen her in December for that pregnancy prior to my miscarriage, so she knew my feelings about the "routine" prenatal testing. This time she didn’t even discuss them with me she just filled out the lab requestion forms and handed them to me. I fail to understand why these test are routine. I am not a IV drug user, I’m in a five and a half year monogmous relationship (and have had the STD tests with each of my prior children), I had a rubella booster with my first child, I don’t believe that glucose testing is valid and if the test is positive that treatment improves outcomes, I have had my blood typed with each child and with my D&C (but apparently she cannot just take my word for it) and it would be easier to obtain this information from visiting the adjoining office where the doctor who attended Xander’s birth practices. But what kills me the worst is that I am not given a choice in this matter. I am just expected to turn myself up at the hospital lab with two toddlers in tow when my health care provider orders me to. Does OHIP give her more money for each additional prenatal test ordered? Does she have to provide paperwork to OHIP to keep her licence? And if so why could a waiver from me not suffice?? Truly, this makes me even more sure I do not need a birth attendant who I will continually need to battle with all through my pregnancy and birth for my rights.

Nic has made me agree to one more meeting with her to see if we can come to an agreement (so if we need back up we don’t need the hospital) but I know what will happen, she is too enmeshed in the medical model to truly trust birth I think. She only does about four homebirths a year; most of her practice is hospital based.