Unbiased Reviews by Real People
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Unbiased Reviews by Real People
You are five centimeters dilated and you aren't feeling the contractions yet?Jun 14, 2000 Write an essay on this topic.My experience with birth probably was not that much different from everyone else’s experience here at Epinions. There was lots of pain and at the end I got a wonderful eight pound twelve ounce baby girl. I feel that I need to let my story be known though. However, I must warn any women who are pregnant with your first child, you probably do not want to read what I am about to write. You especially will not want to read this if it is getting close to your due date. As a matter of fact you are not going to want to read any of the Epinions in this birthing method section. So without further ado here is my story. Now mind you it has been over a year since my daughter was born so I might be a little fuzzy on the details, but you should get the gist of what I am trying to say. It was an unseasonably cool late April day in Connecticut with overcast skies. My husband and I spent the day in bed that day until three thirty. It was my 40-week check up (exactly forty weeks to the day). I went to the doctor’s office with my husband. I wasn’t sure if my husband was going to come to this check-up. Earlier that day we had a little fight because he had made a comment about not really wanting the baby if it was not a boy. So of course this made me upset. He came to the appointment any way. This turned out to be a good thing. We walked into the doctor’s office and the nurse immediately put me on some monitors and took my blood pressure. Well all of this was done after I had peed in a cup and had been weighed. The nurse took my blood pressure twice. It was abnormally high. So she called the mid-wife in to see if she got the same blood pressure reading. She also got a high blood pressure reading. They were concerned that I might have a condition called Pre-Eclampsia. So they checked to see if my ankles were swollen, but they were not. They decided they had better call to the hospital and tell them they were going to send me in. So not really knowing what was going on my husband and I drove the couple of blocks to the hospital. There we checked into the maternity ward. They took my blood pressure again and put me on the fetal heart monitor. My blood pressure was now normal and guess what? I was having contractions. I certainly wasn’t feeling it, but I definitely was having contractions. The nurse kept asking me, “Aren’t you in any pain?” I just kept telling her I felt fine. So she called the mid-wife that was on call there to examine me. Would you believe it I was almost five centimeters dilated? I guess we wouldn’t be going home that night. Still no one could believe that I wasn’t feeling the contractions. The nurses kept whispering under their breaths, “This is her first baby and she is going to deliver on her due date.” Everyone was shocked about how I was reacting and about my first child possibly being born on her due date. Of course no one was more shocked than my husband and me. We began calling everyone we knew especially my mother. I wanted her there with me when I delivered my baby. My husband of course had to call out of work for the evening. It was a pretty understandable situation though. And of course not being prepared for me to be in the hospital over night my husband had to go home and get some things for me. So my husband left and I was all alone. So I decided to take a walk. There were other women that were making their rounds around the maternity ward, but they were all in a lot of pain. Some were even hooked up to IVs. Here I am in my hospital gown of the maternity ward walking around without any pain. I felt so out of place. Of course this was better than being in pain I guess. I quickly got bored with making my laps so I went back to my room to relax. Shortly after I got back my mom got there and my husband came back. This was much better. Now I had someone to talk to at least. I was also getting very hungry. I hadn’t had anything to eat since about one that afternoon. And here it was going on six. I was starving. Of course you can’t eat much of anything when you are in labor. Although I was not feeling it at the time I was restricted to Jell-O. Great! This isn’t going to make my hunger go away. There was nothing I could do though. Periodically during this time the doctors and nurses would come in and check on me. Everything was going great. I was progressing nicely. I still was not feeling anything though. All the nurses kept telling me what a great job I was doing and how most women who were as far along as I was would be screaming their heads off right now. So I am feeling pretty good about myself right now. I was feeling so good that I decided to play a card game with my mother and husband. All the fun was spoiled though at about nine thirty p.m. The mid-wife came in, shocked to see that during my labor I had decided this would be a good time to play a game of cards. She said to me, “I have never seen a woman in labor play a game of cards before. This is a first for me.” She then told me she was sorry, but she had to check how far along I was and I could go back to playing when she was done. At this time my bag of water was still intact, but I had not really progressed all that much. So she decided to speed things along that she would break my bags of water. Well that was definitely the end of my card game right there. Once she broke my water I began feeling those contractions and they were coming strong every five minutes. If you have been brave enough to read on this far even after my warning in the very beginning, then I will try and explain what those contractions felt like. They were like the worst menstrual cramps anyone has ever experienced. Except it is not really constant pain. However, it feels like once you get over the pain of one and finally get to the point where you are comfortable the pain hits you again. It was awful. Those breathing techniques don’t really work. Okay, maybe they would have if I was actually listening to my husband, but I just ended up making myself feel dizzy most of the time. I know I wasn’t breathing correctly even though I had taken the classes and everything, but I had enough going on at that moment. Those ice chips also did absolutely nothing for me. Trust me when I say there is nothing in the world that could possibly make the pain go away. After going through much pain for about half and hour to forty-five minutes the mid-wife came back in and checked me. I was fully dilated. “Monica, you can start pushing”, the mid-wife said. “What already. But…” EEEEEHHHHH! I was doing it. I was pushing. Boy did it hurt. And there are all these people milling about in my room trying to get it ready for me to give birth. They were breaking down the bed and sticking IVs in me. All of a sudden they are putting an oxygen mask on me and telling me to turn over onto my stomach. “What is going on, what do you want me to do?” All this I am saying in a totally hazy state. I had no idea what was going on around me. I later found out that they had lost the baby’s heartbeat. Everything was fine. She was just moving down and the monitor couldn’t pick up the heartbeat anymore. So now they have me pushing on my knees. This is not working. They have this stupid oxygen mask on my face that they won’t let me take off and I am in a very uncomfortable position. Things were not progressing in this position as they had hoped they would. So they finally decided to let me turn back over and push on my back. I was getting tired and I was in lots of pain. This baby just was not coming out fast enough for me. I kept screaming, “Get it out, I can’t do this anymore! Get it out!” I kept being told to push. “I can’t!” I exclaimed. “Yes you can!” Everyone kept telling me. “You can do it Monica. You are almost there. I can see the head. Do you want to feel it”, cried the mid-wife. “NO!” I screamed. “JUST GET IT OUT!” Shortly after wards the mid-wife was putting my daughter on my stomach. She was finally here, and I made it through. They took her and cleaned her all off. She was a healthy eight pounds twelve ounces and twenty-one inches long. She was quite a big girl. All of this happened in about fifty-three minutes. My daughter was born at eleven seventeen p.m. on April 22, 1999. She made in on her due date with forty-three minutes to spear. It didn’t take long for me to deliver the placenta. The mid-wife looked at the damage my daughter had done. She would not be able to repair it. They called for the doctor. He came in about twenty minutes later. They were finally giving me drugs. No I had not had any when my daughter was being born. I did a totally natural childbirth. No wonder why I was in so much pain. The doctor began sewing me up, unfortunately the drugs had not begun to work yet. So here I am squirming all over the place. The doctor keeps telling me to hold still. You had drugs; this shouldn’t be hurting you. You have got to be kidding me. I would have liked to see that doctor lying on the table in the same position I was in and see what he has to say about pain then. I didn’t feel the affects of the drugs until after the doctor had sewed me all up. As a matter of fact I passed out when they were getting my bed all cleaned up. It’s okay I landed on the bed and I didn’t get hurt. Well those long nine months were finally over and I had a little girl to show for it. You remember how I told you my husband wanted a boy. Well he is so totally in love with his little girl. The two of them are quite the sight. So that was my experience with delivery, totally natural. I am not so sure that I would want to do it that way again, but there was just no time what so ever to give me any kind of drugs. All in all I think I had a pretty good first birth experience. I just wish they were a little more aware of how big my daughter was going to be. This way perhaps they could have prevented me from tearing so much. I would love to hear anybody else’s experiences with childbirth. So please either leave me a comment or write me at monical2me@aol.com. Thanks for reading. Monica  |
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