Au Naturale

When I was pregnant with Bryce, I was scared. Being adopted, I never saw my own mother pregnant, nor in labor. In fact, up until about the age of 10, I believed in order to have a baby, you just went to the hospital, put in your order, and they gave you a baby. That being said, I decided pretty early on that I wanted an epidural for pain. I had friends and relatives both who told me that was definitely the way to go. There were of course the "crazy" women, the ones who had their babies NATURALLY, without an epidural and pain meds, and they tried in vain to convince me I should have a NATURAL child birth. At the time, my thought was, "If God wanted women to suffer infinitely in childbirth, he wouldn't have created the doctors who created epidurals." And frankly, though I've matured some, I am still of the opinion that anytime you deliver a child, whether with pain meds or none, vaginal or C-section, it is NATURAL. There is nothing more natural than a woman bringing a child into the world.

Toward the end of my pregnancy with Bryce, I developed pregnancy-induced hypertension (apparently not full-blown preeclampsia, but pretty damned close). They put me on modified bedrest, and about a month earlier than normal, I began my weekly trek into the OB's office to give blood, urine, and have my blood pressure monitored. It was always the same: I was always running about 5 minutes late, so I'd be racing to the office, so my BP was up. They'd have me lay on my left side for 5-10 minutes, test me again, and it would be normal. They'd tell me to put my feet up, drink plenty of water and come back in a week. At week 39, nothing went as planned.

I went in for my appointment, and my BP was up per usual. But after 10 minutes, it was still elevated. My OB looked at me excitedly, told me to head for the hospital and call Brett. He was going to have me induced.

Long story short, I'm at the hospital, Brett is there, I'm hooked up to an IV, and we're just waiting for a nurse to become free to monitor me. Oh yeah, my BP was normal again, but hell, I was there, so they may as well induce me, right? So, every 3 hours a NEW routine starts. A nurse comes in, tells me that they're just about to finish up with another woman and then she would be MY nurse and would get my pitocin drip started. Inevitably, someone else would go into spontaneous labor and that nurse would become HER nurse. Apparently, I was in the hospital the day every nurse decided to call in sick or take vacation, and every woman in Puget Sound decided to go into spontaneous labor. Because my BP was normal and Bryce wasn't in distress, we were bottom of the priority pole. Next morning at 6AM, my OB came in after being on call all night, told me he was heading home, and that I could either stay a few more hours to see if a nurse finally freed up, or we could just head home and he'd schedule me in for an induction within the next few days.

Brett and I looked at each other, and I knew that we were thinking the same thing: We came here to have a baby, and we're not leaving here until we have one.

The pitocin drip started at 7:30AM. When I hit about 4 or 5 cm, they broke my water. I felt about 1 1/2 hours of REAL contractions and was then given my epidural (I apparently told the anesthesiologist that he was my hero in front of Brett, who was not very thrilled with my comment...if only he understood...). At 9:32PM on August 9th, we had a 7 1/2 lb little boy in our arms. We were so happy! And we got our baby!

Now, what's the big deal, you may be asking yourself. You had your baby, had your epidural, he was healthy and all was well.

Well, here's the deal. Sometime later (much later, after sleep deprivation was a thing of the past and we were thinking about possibly adding another child to the M Clan), I began to realize that, I never got to pace around the house, timing my contractions. I never got to wander around the hospital in an unflattering gown, holding hands with my husband, stopping only momentarily to breathe through a contraction. I didn't get to sit in the brand new jetted spa tubs they had just installed in all the birthing suites to help ease the pain. My labor didn't start on its own. My bag of water didn't break on its own. And the pain I WAS able to feel was NOTHING compared to what most women experience. So, really, other than the fact that I brought a child into the world (which truly is nothing to shake a stick at), there was nothing NATURAL about my birthing experience.


I haven't explained this to Brett yet, because I know he'll think I'm absolutely crazy. And, I would never jeopardize the health of our baby in order to have things MY way. I just think that, now that I've gone through it once with very few opinions as to how things went, this time I'd like to see what I'm really capable of. I'd like to have those experiences that I didn't get the first time around. Is that nuts?