Brianna's Birth Story

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, momma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird….”

After a thousand different affirmations, a dozen books on coping with labor and a hundred different websites and e-groups suggesting how to get through contractions, that nursery rhyme was my mantra for about 85% of the contractions I went through. I sang it to my baby, and the contractions always ended before the rhyme did. It was nothing planned. It just came out of nowhere when I was sitting rocking through contractions in the middle of the night. It saved my sanity, calmed me unbelievably well and gave me an almost ethreal connection to my unborn child.

So what do I say about this birth…. It was such an amazing event, so awe inspiring, so incredibly uplifting. My faith in my body and myself has increased 10,000 percent. If I had it to do over, short of having a few dozen warm towels I would do it all the same…every moment, every wonderful contraction, even the almost 2 days of labor. People speak of birth as though it is the most horrific pain a woman can ever endure, and how frightening that pain is. The pain of this labor was so insignificant in the scheme of things. If I had chosen any other option, I would have ultimately had a knife slice through me, a cold white sheet over my exposed body, and a fight from the second things began until the second I walked out of the hospital. If my wedding had gone half as well, I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life wishing we had pocketed the money and spent it on a vacation instead. It is so hard to put the whole birth experience into words. I was in a state of pure euphoria for days afterwards unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I wish I had been motivated enough to write this during that period of elation.

Saturday night, the day after my “due date” I was having painless contractions, soon after taking a brisk walk with my husband. I wrote them off as more “false labor/bh contractions” and went to bed. I don’t even think I told my husband, as they seemed so insignificant. Sunday morning at 4am I woke with “tummy aches”. I had decided months ago to pretend it wasn’t labor and not put time limits on anything until I couldn’t deny it anymore. (I would thank my lucky stars for this approach later on!) I figured that way I wouldn’t start to panic if it took too long. I’d already had enough of that with due dates and foreboding doctor’s visits. When I woke Sunday morning, the contractions were very manageable, but they were just intense enough to make sleep difficult. I lay on the couch and timed them just to see if they were real or not. My contractions were about 7 minutes apart. Sunday I tried to continue with business as usual. I took a shower, took a walk, watched football, ate, and generally didn’t alter our routine at all other than pausing to relax through contractions more and more as the day went on. We had decided months before to focus on our room for the ‘hard labor’ and birth, so we set up the kiddy pool and made the bed with a plastic sheet between 2 sets of bed sheets. (Both tasks that I would appreciate VERY much later on)

Late Sunday night I told my husband to go to bed and get some rest. I promised not to have the baby without him. J After agreeing to wake him if the contractions got down to 3-4 minutes apart or my water broke, he finally relented and went to bed. I didn’t think things were going to start very soon and just wanted to make sure he was fresh when I really needed him. Monday morning I told him that he needed to stay home just in case things progressed before the end of the day. I really wasn’t worried about time at all. Through the whole process, I kept assuming that I had another 24 hours to go at least. We went for a walk Monday morning, and he made me breakfast. The contractions were taking a lot of focus at this point. At the start of the day I was swaying against the wall during contractions, while hubby cleaned the whole house, which made me happy. (When my house isn’t clean I always feel like I have to do something, ya know?) After the house was cleaned and contractions were getting stronger, hubby started rubbing my back during contractions, and eventually I was hanging onto his neck during them and he was reaching around me to rub little circles on the base of my spine. I wasn’t having back labor, but it felt good and gave me something to focus on instead of the contractions. He kept saying exactly the right thing during the contractions. We didn’t follow any “rules” or anything from any of the birthing books (we didn’t even use the birth ball because it was just annoying and uncomfortable to me to sit on for some reason). I just followed my own intuition, rocking in the rocking chair, walking, swaying in my husband’s arms, and he followed my lead perfectly. Throughout the labor I did not panic at all, and I handled all but maybe 2 contractions without problem. Sometimes I would forget to breath, so intent on making my way through them, and he would whisper “breath honey, don’t hold your breath, breath through it, you’re doing great”. Some time after lunch on Monday I did start to say things like “I don’t think I can do this for another 2 days” and “if I don’t have this baby by tomorrow night I’ll go to the hospital”. I probably would have eventually, if things continued for too many days. At this point I was no longer able to sleep beyond 3-5 minute intervals, which was starting to make me tired. I told hubby that as soon as I had the baby all I wanted to do was see that she was ok, shower and go to bed. Of course once I saw her, I was completely revitalized. J Throughout labor I ate every meal, and did not skip a single one, although I started to eat lighter and lighter fare as the days went on, mostly because I just wasn’t hungry. I never felt sick to my stomach at all. I drank lots of water using bendy straws (they are LIFE SAVERS lemme tell ya!). I also walked each day. Early Monday morning we took our last walk before the baby would be born. We don’t usually wander our neighborhood so we were seeing new territory each walk. This morning, we walked past a house with a new mommy dog and her little pups. Because she was let wander and we were in front of ‘her’ house, she almost attacked us. It was pretty comical looking back. I wasn’t afraid, but she was being very aggressive (protecting her pups in her mind) and my husband was being very aggressive and staring her down, talking about turning her owners in to the police, going to the front door, shouting towards their house about them not taking care of their dog etc…basically protecting his unborn baby…just like the doggy was. (The dog was about ankle high at best J )

Monday, late morning, I got into the pool for about an hour. It felt great, although it really didn’t affect the contractions much. At this point nothing was actually affecting the contractions, and it was now just about focusing through them, and not about easing the pain. Being otherwise comfortable, or otherwise occupied during them was the only way I was continuing. I still didn’t use any kind of labor device or strange positions at this point. All I was doing was hugging hubby and listening to his soothing voice and enjoying his hands rubbing my back. After an hour I got out of the pool. I didn’t want to get in too early and slow down labor. It had gone on for 2 days, so I couldn’t imagine making it any slower by choice.

My labor lasted from Saturday night until Monday afternoon, and I transitioned around 3:30-4pm. Although I had not wanted to slow it down, I am still glad that it went on as long as it did. The way things progressed was perfect. If labor had gone fast, I wouldn’t have had time to adjust and prepare for it to increase in intensity. The increase was so gradual that I barely realized that things were progressing. Because of this, even after 2 days of labor, I was still surprised when I hit transition and the dreaded or adored “pushing phase”.

I was in the pool for the second time, just trying to get comfortable without emptying the whole pool onto the floor. I was leaning over the edge and my husband was in a kid’s chair. I had my head on his lap and my arms around his waist. Contractions were coming closer and closer together. Jason was being so great and supportive. He looked at me and said, “So I can watch Monday Night Football tonight right?”. He was joking of course, but I told him in less than civil terms how I would dismember him if he tried. Suddenly, I felt the strangest sensation and I knew that something had changed. I told my husband that something felt different, and I wasn’t ready. This is the only part of the birth that I really lost it. Having never had a baby before, it is easy to compare contractions to stomachaches, period pain, etc. There is NO WAY to describe what it feels like to have the baby coming down the birth canal. Suddenly, after all of my work and preparation, I was terrified. I just wasn’t ready for this. I have no idea why, after 2 days of contractions without issue, months of preparation, and multiple times telling doctors where to stick their “required cesarean” orders this change made me so afraid. I didn’t even think logically about the fear that I was having, just that it was going to hurt and I wasn’t ready. I went completely primal. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, saying no no no I don’t want this, I am not ready, make it stop. My poor husband. I was begging him not to let the baby hurt me any more. Looking back, it felt as though I had completely lost my mind. I barely remember what I was saying, just that this absolute terror shot through me over and over again. Jason tried to get up from the chair saying he had to prepare for the baby, but I wouldn’t let him go. I had a death grip on him and told him very unpleasantly that he did not have the option of moving from the chair. I was on my knees now on the (thankfully) inflated bottom pool and I was feeling the ‘urge’ to push very intensely. I stubbornly refused to push, still in almost comical denial that I was even in that ‘stage’. I put my hand down into myself and felt something ‘squishy’. As the bag of water never noticeably broke, I’m assuming that what I felt was the bag over her head. I told my husband that I felt something ‘squishy’. I definitely did not relate what I felt to a baby in any way shape or form. I gave in once to one push, and pushed only at the peak when I had no choice. After that I put my hand down again and…. The most amazing thing in the entire world happened. I felt her ears, her nose, her mouth. I just cant begin to describe how incredible that feeling was. Suddenly I went from being in labor and giving birth to actually having a baby. It was as if, until this moment, it was not real and she was not an actual being, and suddenly the whole process came into focus and I realized my purpose with a sharp clarity that nothing else will ever come close to. I said “oh my god, I felt a face!”. My energy was renewed and I began to push in earnest. I had gone from refusing to accept the ‘stage’ to saying outloud “I need another contraction…I wish it would hurry”. After I felt her face, it took 2 contractions to push out the rest of her. The whole transition/pushing stage only lasted about 5 contractions but felt like an eternity, all of it etched in my mind. I pushed her out into the water, and caught my beautiful daughter myself. Right as she slid into the water my husband said “ok now breath, relax, get ready for the next one”. My response was “hold on I have to get the baby”. J I laid back in the very dirty water, baby at my chest and looked at my beautiful little miracle. She was pink from the moment I saw her, and made a couple of tiny little cries before quietly laying on my chest. There was a small nick in the cord and it was not pulsing, plus I wanted to get out of the tub asap, so we decided to proceed and cut the cord. Her daddy clamped and cut the cord and took her into his arms as I got out of the pool and into the bed next to us. At that point her brother Cody came into the room. I was surprised but our son was fine with seeing us that way, and he did not even flinch at the umbilical cord or the seemingly large amount of blood all over. The placenta came out (not in the best shape unfortunately) about 10 minutes later and I went in to grab a shower while my husband and son cleaned up. I got out of the shower feeling absolutely incredible, and when I got back to the now clean room there was a beautiful bright eyed little baby and my wonderful family waiting for me. I was checked out by a friend later that evening to find that I did not have even the smallest noticeable skid mark, and no tears or other trauma. She said that if she didn’t know better, she wouldn’t have known that I had given birth because my body had handled it so well. Even my fear of pushing had its purpose…it kept me from tearing or bruising or otherwise wounding my perineum and birth canal. I felt so great that I was up and about (and being chastised for it) not hours later. I could have conquered the world in that first 4 days.

To this day I cannot believe that I did it, that she was born into my hands, out of my body, without the control of medical intervention. When I got pregnant, I was terrified of what being pregnant would do to my body and what medical interventions I would be forced to go through. I came such a long way from there to here. I never would have believed it if someone told me that I would birth my baby at home, with the fantastic support of my incredible husband, and in peace and quiet harmony. I learned later that my husband cried during the birth, not out of fear or empathy, but out of awe at how beautiful and amazing the birth was. I wish I had caught a glimpse of him, so that I could tell him how much I loved him in that moment. Even knowing about it brings tears to my eyes. I have the best family in the world, and Brianna had the most amazing entrance into the world that I could have ever imagined possible. No birth situation is right for everyone, but we definitely found one that was right for us.


-------------


Reprinting my husband's birth story as he wrote it at mothering.com, in the weeks after our daughter's arrival.

Our Birth Story

---

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I think I'll finally write some of this down. My baby girl Brianna Elizabeth was born on Oct 10th and it was simply amazing, however I'm sure everyone says that but the journey we took to get there is extraordinary.

Brianna was my dw's 2nd child her first was born 10 years ago via c-section due to toxemia. The doctor then told her she would never have any problems having natural birth later in life, but little did she know then what would happen this time around. When we found out we were pregnant we looked around and found what we thought was the best OB/GYN in town for prenatal care. When they found out her previous birth was a c-section they informed us that we could look into a VBAC, which they supported. Not knowing what a VBAC was we hit the net and researched and figured out that hey this doesn't sound so bad, and let them know we wanted to do it.

Now at this point my dw started to relate that one of the biggest fears she had about being pregnant was having another c-section. Her previous one was horrible, got infected and all she remembers about the first 3 months of her son's life was feeling pain and being miserable. I 100% absolutely supported her for a VBAC, and then the worst news possible hit us. Florida only requires hospitals and doctors to retain their medical records for 7 years (our son is 10), and our current OB/GYN could not get the surgical records to prove what kind of uterine cut my dw had. Now the problem was that without the records the doctors just assumed it was a classic T-cut (which hasn't been used in 20 years...) and thus refused to do a VBAC.

So, what at first was positive assurance that a VBAC was possible quickly turned into "Have a c-section or you and your baby will die." (That’s a direct quote from the midwife and the doctor; the same two who promised a VBAC was possible in the first place!). My wife was mortified, and she had 6 months to go. With no where else to turn she hit the internet to research what the doctors were talking about, and ran into a group call ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network) which I believe saved her life, well at least her sanity.

Through ICAN we discovered that not only was the doctors lying about the risks, they were doing so to protect their own self-interests. At that point I was open to alternative solutions that didn’t include someone who wanted to potentially hurt my wife and child just so their insurance company can sleep better at night. We started to look into a midwife/doula for a homebirth, but ran right into the South Carolina medical system. See, here in SC a VBAC is considered a high-risk birth and because of this midwives are not allowed to assist them at risk of losing their license and or jail time.

So we couldn’t get a midwife to help us, and the OB/GYN were threatening us with claims of death every time we walked in the door. Needless to say our prenatal visits were miserable and my dw’s blood pressure shot through the roof and this was a major problem considering her toxemia from before. Thankfully the folks over at ICAN suggested taking some supplements and drinking Red Raspberry Leaf tea. This stabilized her BP, and she only felt a few effects at the very end of the pregnancy.

So we continued the prenatal care just to CYA incase anything really did go wrong during the pregnancy, but we began to plan for an unassisted homebirth. We got the kit, read the books, bought a kiddie pool and sat through probably 100 or so of those Birth shows. I really didn’t like those birth shows because I wanted the birth of my daughter to be special and not just another birth I got to see. I knew what to do, and we planned out the trip to a hospital incase anything went wrong. Thankfully we found a midwife who agreed to examine my dw before and after the birth, but naturally couldn’t be there during the process.

So on Sunday at about 2am my dw felt the first real contractions (I was asleep, go Dad!). We had a normal day on Sunday watching Football like we always do and did some walking around. We kinda knew this was it; we were finally on our way. We started to use the heart monitor about every hour or so and Brianna was doing great, and my dw’s bp was keeping steady but still a little high.

Monday rolled around and my poor dw at this point was up and down all night because of contractions. When the 24-hour mark hit we joked that if we were in a hospital the doctors would be sharpening their knives right about now. I took this as a cue to start getting the pool ready, and going through the birth kit and running around trying to find something to do. We went for another walk in the morning, had a light breakfast and at about noon the first hardcore contractions hit. These were the ones that she couldn’t talk through anymore.

She got into the pool after about an hour of hard labor, but it wasn’t time yet and we heard that getting in a pool too early could prolong labor, and that wasn’t anything at this point my dw wanted to do. So out of the pool and I just helped her find some sort of position around the house that was comfortable. My biggest priority at this point was making sure she breathed through the contractions, and getting her water to sip on. At about 3:30pm we moved back into the pool because the contracts were really hurting her now, and the water helped a lot.

This was the final hour now, and my dw started to scream through contractions. She tried to check herself but really couldn’t tell what was what, but we assumed something was happening. About 4:00 a really hard contraction hit her, and she said “wow, what an odd feeling, I’ve never felt this before” which translated into baby was going into transition. This was it, baby was coming and nothing was going to stop it. My dw was really getting primal now during contractions, and I had all I could do to help pull her out long enough to convince her to breath through them. She reached down at one point and said “omg I feel something, it’s squishy!” and I think this was the baby’s water breaking and the sac was coming out first. The next time she reached down she said “omg I feel a face, her face it’s here I can feel it!” and that was it the next push and Brianna was out and as soon as she hit the air gave us a little cry that turned into a full on happy wail. She was here finally, and just like we didn’t need anyone to conceive her we didn’t need anyone to birth her either. At 4:30 on Monday Oct 10th Brianna Elizabeth was born, an unassisted home VBAC and my respect and love for my wife grew a thousand times.

Cody's Birth Story

I promised myself that I would write up Cody's birth story... ahhh what to say. It was so long ago, in a time in my life when I simply wasn't doing well over all. To set the scene, I had gotten engaged to get married in May 1994, literally weeks before my graduation from high school. I was pregnant by the time we got married on 6/24/94. I had only known my husband a few months before we got married. Looking back, I think that I was more in love with the idea of being in love, than actually in love with my husband. Its so hard to tell now. I just realize looking back that I didn't know him, or myself, at all in those days. I was still trying to understand what my place was, in the world. For some reason, I had a romanticized view of marriage and family. Perhaps because my parents were always so good to me growing up, and my family extended was full of many siblings and very few divorces or single parents (on my father's side, almost everyone had 2-9 kids, my cousin homeschooled her 9, my other cousin now has 4 or 5, my aunt and uncle have 7, and on my mom's side, which is less "warm and fuzzy" my grandma still had 7 or 8 or 9 kids). I just thought that what women did when they grew up was get married, stay at home and have children. Looking back, it was more like "playing house" than actually doing it.

During my pregnancy, I don't remember really feeling pregnant. I remember feeling big, even more awkward than my pre-pregnancy high school awkwardness (which was a LOT), and just not feeling well at all. I didn't realize what a big thing being pregnant was, and my baby was going to be the first baby that I had been around since I was a young child (we'd moved away from all of those large families that I modeled myself after). It was a struggle to get up every day, and I spent the first part of my pregnancy in a home no bigger than a camper, with no air conditioning. I remember it being so hot that I just laid on the couch with a fan blowing right on me, and wouldn't even use the bathroom unless I couldn't wait any longer, because of the heat. It was such a dismal situation. We moved around a bit during pregnancy. Paul had a lot of trouble holding down a job, and I'd never even had one. He didn't want his wife to work, so I was all too happy to accomodate him, thinking that I was getting a free ride out of it all. We moved in with my parents towards the end of the pregnancy. I had been diagnosed with "toxemia" and was told to take it easy, rest a lot, restrict my activity. During this time, my husband tried very hard to cheat on me, or so I was told. A friend said he had stopped by their house trying to hook up with someone, and complaining about how I wasn't putting out anymore. Between living with my parents, sleeping on a pull out couch together with very limited privacy, and being 6 or 7 months pregnant atleast, him lying to me and acting suspiciously, I closed up completely. I was still shocked and horrified to learn that he had shared that though. I guess from that point on, I always knew I couldnt trust him. But it set the scene for a very negative birth and post partum experience. He was a truck driver, and randomly worked "over the road" so there were points during my pregnancy that I didnt see him for a week or two at a time. I was so young and nieve. I really needed him there with me... or someone. All of my friends had their own lives to live, most planning for college, while I was planning a baby. My mom and I didn't have a very good relationship at the time. I guess I was still defensive and resentful over some of the problems we'd had when I was a kid. I blamed my parents for so many things. It took me years to realize that they did the best that they could, and their best was better than most. It makes me want to cry to think of what I put my mom through back then. She came from a very messed up neglectful and abusive household. It was wrong for me to expect her to be perfect, when she had no role models to go by. I'm proud of her now, for doing as well as she did for us, and I love her for it very much. I just remember back then, feeling so alone, and so confused and nieve.

When I was 30 some weeks along, the doctor told me that I should consider having a cesarean. He told me that it would save me the pain of labor, and out of terror at the thought of pain, I agreed. I was such a wreck at all of my prenatal appointments. Any time the slightest thing happened, I would burst out crying, and just be terrified. I wished my husband could go to them with me, but he always seemed to be away. The doctor gave me a list of symptoms and told me that if any of them happened I should go to the hospital. He also wrote me up for a ton of tests (glucose, blood work, in hospital monitoring, etc) and I had to go to the hospital for each of them. It ended up seeming as though I was "in and out of the hospital" all the time. If my tests came back the least bit "off" he'd make me stay in the hospital over night (of course he wouldnt talk to me himself, just relay this to a nurse and have her tell me). On more than one occasion, I showed up in the early afternoon for my couple hours of monitoring, and they would want me to stay "one more hour" and that continued until about 7pm, at which time the doctor just had them keep me over night. MORE than once, in doing this, they refused to give me dinner "because I was going home soon" and in the end when it became apparent that I wasn't going anywhere, they said "sorry the kitchen is closed now so we cant get you anything... but we have some broth and jello and juice in the fridge if you want it". On one of those occasions, I went to bed hungry and in the morning woke up to a mis-requested plate of what looked like gel or slime or something, it was their "easily digestible fare" accidentally requested because they thought I was there for surgery, and I was just there for bedrest. I tried to tell them they were wrong, but nobody would listen to me. Probably the thing that sums up my hospital experiences the best is "nobody ever listened to me". I ended up shoving the tray away saying I wasn't going to eat that crap, and the wheels on the tray hooked on the underside of the bed. My tray went FLYING across the room and into the wall. It was pretty funny thinking back on it. My poor mom cleaned it up. I know she wanted to help by being there, but I was so untrusting of my parents in my youth. She just felt like one more person who was trying to tell me what to do, and not listening to what I wanted. She was trying to be the mom, and I thought I was too old to be told what to do so completely refused to talk to her about anything she said. (my poor mom, :( )

On January 24th, 3 weeks before my due date, and about a week before my scheduled cesarean date, I woke up around 4:30-5am, nausious. I threw up, and that was one of the "signs" that I should head to the hospital. I got my mom and dad up, and we headed to the ER at Spring Hill Regional Hospital. My bp was high, they said (although I have no recollection of what the numbers were). The doctor decided to schedule the cesarean ahead of schedule. I think I kinda snapped at some point, because I refused to let them touch me until my husband was there. He'd been in Miami when all of this happened, so had to drive back. He showed up in the late afternoon, and the cesarean was performed at 6:30pm. Cody was born at 6:59pm. During that day, everything is a blur of rude nurses, invasive and painful "preparations" and uncontrollable fear. They weren't letting me eat again, the lady used a "larger than normal IV needle, in case they had a problem in surgery" and hurt VERY bad, putting it in. This is the same woman who told me I couldn't eat throughout the day (making me dislike her from the start), shaved me, did an enema and put in a catheter... Never once asking, or warning me ahead that she was doing anything. Just showing up with random scary torchure device. (keep in mind that I have NEVER been in a hospital before this for anything, beyond the ER) I remember getting my spinal just before the operation and then commenting during delivery to the anesthesiologist that I'd rather have 5 more spinals than 1 more IV placement. I hadn't realized at the time that the nurse who did the IV was assisting during surgery, until I heard the doctors laughing and "picking on her" for it.

The operation went without issue, and I saw my son briefly before he was taken out to the nursery. I was pretty drugged, and throwing up during the whole surgery (not sure what I was throwing up though since I wasnt able to eat or drink anything). I remember going to my room and passing out from the drugs. At some point, they brought the baby in, and I was just so amazed that the surgery I had ended up with a baby. I really don't think I ever made the connection between pregnancy-cesarean-baby. Recently, I've compared it to having bladder surgery and then being handed a baby... it was just so disconnected for me. I didn't want to let anyone hold him. I just kept staring at him and touching him, trying to convince myself that he was mine. I think I was so intent on forcing that bond that I just didn't want to let anyone else touch him. Plus, I was so young, it felt like I was still young enough that people could tell me what to do... this was the first thing in my life that nobody else had any control over. He was mine and nobody else's. I remember before the birth being worried that he would be ugly and that I wouldn't be able to love him. I don't know why I had that thought. I guess it was just a side effect of being unfamiliar with birth, and being so young. He was a beautiful baby. But I still had a really hard time accepting that he was mine.

I remember being in the hospital for almost a week. Cody was there as well, having to stay an extra day for a "cold" in his lungs. They let me stay until he was discharged. I thought it was so great, that I was able to stay there, not because I was with my son, but because I could just lay there and not do anything all day, or worry about anyone other than myself. Cody was with me when I wanted him, and they took him away when I wanted to sleep.

When I got home, I was staying with my parents again. I wasn't breastfeeding because my husband thought it was "gross". Everyone was helpful, and I stayed at my mom's for the better part of a month before moving into our new home (we were buying our place in Crystal River… a trailer on an acre in the middle of nowhere, for a monthly mortgage of $150… my mom set it up through a friend of hers) I remember running out of pain killers a few days after I got to my parents house, and being in SO much pain. It was worse than anything I had ever dealt with in my life. I was begging for pain killers. It was a day and a half before the doctor got around to prescribing new ones for me. God I hurt so bad.

We eventually moved to our place in Crystal River. My incision was infected constantly. This went on for years. I remember living elsewhere when Cody was big enough to have a regular bed (and not a crib/toddler bed) and still having to clean the infection that kept the whole area moist. They had no reasoning for this. I lost a lot of weight, and started working at a club on the strip, and even when I was down to 140lbs and very active, I still had this nasty stomach that I was so self conscious about. L It made me so unhappy about my body. I remember telling my best friend at the time that if I didn't have that one problem, my ego would be out of control, because I thought I was "all that" except for my tummy.

The first 6 months of Cody's life were really hard on me. Its hard to tell what I really remember, and what just *seemed* horrible. It seemed like he would cry ALL the time. He just never stopped, and I never knew what to do about it. Eventually I had to put him in day care because I couldn't handle listening to him cry all day long. I was so depressed. I had gone from a fun loving kinda reckless high school girl, to a married woman with a baby, living in the middle of nowhere alone, inside of a year. My husband was driving over the road again. I remembered begging him so many times not to leave me alone anymore. One time, I begged and cried and pleaded, and he got mad and kicked or hit the fan, and it flew into a thousand pieces around us. I was sitting on the floor in our room, and he just walked out. The baby was crying in his crib, and I was laying in a fetal position on the floor in the next room, sobbing uncontrollably. I lost track of time after awhile. I cried and cried and cried until the sun went down. Eventually the baby stopped crying. He was safe in his crib, but I have no idea how much time passed before I went in and got him. I felt so alone… I kept trying to find resources, not realizing that a doctor could help me, but looking for free counseling or post partum depression help, and never did find anything. I felt like I was loosing my mind constantly. I wanted to die. I wanted to rewind the clock. I wanted to understand exactly why I put myself in that situation. I didn’t have to get married, I chose to. I didn't have to get pregnant, I chose that too. I didn't have to move to the middle of nowhere, an hour away from anything familiar… I chose that. Of course during all of this, I hadn't realized that I chose the cesarean… I just thought that was what I needed to do.

Thinking back on it now, so many things were wrong back then. I've forgiven myself for the bad choices I made. I just wrote them off and tried to learn from my mistakes. Up until the middle of my current pregnancy, I thought that "learning from my mistakes" was just accepting that I wasn't the "mom type" and not reproducing again. I don’t hate my ex-husband for cheating on me, or treating his son and I badly. I don’t hate the doctor for performing my cesarean, or the nurses for not having a better bedside manner. I just don't want anything to do with my ex-husband, and will never set foot inside of Spring Hill Regional again, and wouldn't use my OB from that period for so much as a birth control shot. Was the cesarean unnecessary? Yes. Did I do it out of fear? Yes. But I won't make that mistake again. What I've come to realize though, is that it wasn't just having a cesarean that made the experience so traumatic. It was the way that I let people push me around, and let myself be a ragdoll, moved and poked and prodded without thought. The whole time that they refused to feed me, even when they were wrong to do so (the nights that I wasn't there for surgery) it never occurred to me to just get up, walk out, get in the car, and drive to McDonalds. I was young and nieve, and didn’t understand my rights… and nobody around me understood them either, and why should they? We grow up in a society where you are required to "listen to the doctors" and "doctors and nurses have our best interest at heart". It was nobody's fault really. IT was just an experience I needed to learn from. It took a long time to learn that lesson, but I have learned it, and won't ever forget it again….

Addendum:

I was really traumatized (by my birth experience, particularly being tied to the table during surgery "to protect me"). I have actually tried toget my tubes tied 3 or 4 times in the past, because I didn't ever want to go through it again. Even after I met my husband, we almost didnt marry because I knew he wanted kids of his own, and I didn't want to go through it again. It wasn't just that one part of it,but the whole experience. I just thought that if I was a "good mom" and had been able to "just focus on the happy baby" I wouldn't be so unhappy about the whole thing. I figured since I was a bad mother I wasnt cut out to have children, and wasn't going to have any more. I had other things happening besides just the cesarean though... my ex-husband cheated on me (with women who I thought were friends) while I was pregnant - pretty much ruining any possible enjoyment of being pregnant...even now I have problems with myself esteem. Thank god for my soulmate...my husband who reminds me a hundred times a day how beautiful he thinks I am. And I had post partum depression really bad. My ex-husband left me alone a lot right after my son was born, taking a job driving a truck across country (we had just moved an hour away from my family 2 weeks after my son was born) It wasnt until I was over 5 months pregnant with this baby, that I realized that it didn't have to be that way. I was having a VERY hard time even thinking about the fact that I was having a baby again. I was so miserable and afraid... I can't even put it to words. My husband wanted kids, and was completely upfront about that, but I fell in love with him anyways. But getting pregnant was my way of "getting it over with" something I was suffering through "because I love him", not something I thought I could ever enjoy or want to do myself. I was starting to really blame him for everything. All I saw was a halt to my life. During my morning sickness period I was crying everyday, and wishing for someone else's life. So afraid that my life was at an end...again. I was afraid that my husband wouldn't see me the same, and that I would be ignored and controlled and become less of a person for 9 months, again. I had even tried to talk my husband into adopting a baby so that we could have a beautiful baby without my having to "suffer".

Once I found ICAN, and my UBAC list, and started to do research though, I realized that it wasn't the baby that I was afraid of, or my body, or the process of being pregnant and giving birth in itself. It was the way that it was handled, and the feelings of helplessness and fear I had, that I hadn't let go of. It was like a lightbulb finally came on after all this time. I am so calm about it now, that it almost seems like another life, having had the experience I had with my son. I feel like I just became pregnant when I realized these things. I guess thats why I am not quite ready to have her born yet. We have some catching up to do. I giggle when she kicks me now,and spend so much time just talking to her, rubbing my tummy. And I think the most amazing thing of all... I catch my husband staring at me kind of in awe sometimes. When he sees me looking he always tells me how beautiful I am, and tells me how much he loves me...and then he leans down and his voice goes up a few notches and he says "hello brianna!! Hello in there!!" :)

I don't know if being strapped down itself traumatized me any more than anything else. It was either too much to handle, or the one final thing that put me over the edge. I just remember the feeling of utter panic and dispair that I associated with the nurse strapping me down. For some silly reason, I really didn't think I had a choice about that, or any other part of my son's birth. I was so young and nieve back then..