Christian UC: Unassisted Childbirth

Peter's Hospital Birth

I don’t remember what day of the week I went into labour. I remember it was exactly two weeks past my due date, because at my last doctor’s appointment, the doc gave me a date by which they would induce me. Looking at the calendar on the nurses’ desk on the way out, I thought, “How nice, it looks like he’s given me almost an extra week.” A few days later, I received a brusque call from a nurse, saying, “You were given the wrong date. You have an induction scheduled for tomorrow morning.” There was no discussion. When I told her the date the doctor gave me, she said, “Well, he gave you the wrong week. You have to come in tomorrow morning.”

I panicked and cried. I fell asleep on the couch late in the afternoon. David woke me up when he came in from work at about six. I felt a few contractions at that point, but I didn’t dare hope.We went for a walk around 7:00, by which time I was sure I was in labour. We met up with a friend who was also expecting her first, and she was surprised I was calm and walking around.
By about 11:00 that night, we called his mom to come down, and by midnight we went to the hospital. By that time, I was having to work through the contractions. I didn’t really want to leave the apartment. Surprisingly, the bumpy few blocks’ car ride actually felt good.

When we got to the hospital, I was gowned, checked and interviewed by an ill-tempered social worker who asked me whether my baby was “wanted” (I was only going on 19, but I had my wedding ring on my finger!), and got impatient when I had to breathe through contractions. Within five or ten minutes, I was completely demoralized and had no fight left in me.

It seemed like people kept coming in and out, swishing the curtain and breaking my concentration. Not to mention they were total strangers, even if they were nice. I was required to be on an external monitor for much too long, as far as I was concerned. When I asked if I could be taken off it, they looked at the monitor readings and said not just yet. I realized later they were using the monitor to keep track of me because they didn’t have the time to check in themselves.

I slept upright through most of transition with David holding me on the bed. When a nurse came to check on me the last time, my waters broke and got all over her. I don’t think she was very impressed. I remember feeling that I should apologize.

Shortly after, I was moved from the case room to a delivery room. In the middle of a contraction, I was told to move myself from the gurney to the delivery table. I said, “I can’t,” and was told abruptly, “Yes, you can. Get onto the table.”

They coached my pushing, which felt awful. It being my first baby, I didn’t know how bad this was. I was supposed to hold my breath for ten seconds and push on the nurse’s cue. As the baby was crowning, the doctor catheterized me without warning, which was extremely painful. When my son was born, the cord was around his neck. The doctor cut it before he was even out. He was snatched away from me to the assessment table, where I couldn’t even see him past all the other people. I was left sitting there with a tear that needed six stitches, shaking, while they fussed over him. I felt completely alone. They were going to rush him to the nursery and put him into an oxygen tent without even letting me see him, except that I called for him. They let me hold him for about two seconds before taking him away. Then I was left with a few blankets on me in an empty room to wait for the doctor to come back and stitch me up. I remember apologizing for the amount of noise I’d made, and he told me, “Oh, you weren’t loud.” David told me later that a woman was taken by in the hall, screaming and cursing and begging to have her labour done with. I never heard her, but my heart breaks for her now.

I was taken back to the case room where I was told to get some rest. I asked twice to be put in a wheelchair or something so I could go see him, but was refused. David was nowhere to be found. I felt betrayed by him as well, because he wasn’t there to help me. The nurse did get a blanket I had brought with me. I fell asleep feeling completely deserted, isolated and ignored.
When I woke up and found out my sister-in-law had had more time with my son than I had, I was furious, but I was too tired to say anything, and by that time I had figured out that no one would listen to me anyway. I was moved to a semi-private room, and four hours later, after I had sat there crying for my baby for most of that time, they finally allowed me to see my son. I cried when David gave him to me and told him how much I’d missed him. Learning to nurse him was a terrible trouble – the nurses’ way of teaching it was a time-saver for them, but useless to me and baby. They told me how much time I was allowed with him, and fortunately were too busy to come get him when they said they would, so I had almost an extra hour with him. I got him back again in the afternoon and kept him. I was asked a couple of times if they wanted me to take him to the nursery so I could rest. There was no way I was going to let him out of my sight again.

When I had to get up and go to the bathroom, I could barely walk. Voiding my bladder was just about impossible. The nurse turned the tap on outside the water closet for the sound of the water, and eventually I was able to empty my bladder. In the evening, I wanted to go home. They were telling David he had to leave. I asked if there were any way he could stay on a cot or something, but that wasn’t an option. I asked to be discharged, but they told me that wouldn’t be possible since there wasn’t a doctor around to sign me out. Again, I felt abandoned and it was reinforced that I would not be making decisions for myself or having input into them. I was utterly desperate to get out of that place, and no one would help me.

I felt constrained to put Peter in the bassinet they provided for the first part of the night. I would rather have kept him with me, but by that point, I was scared some nurse would disapprove and take him back to the nursery. There was no one there to advocate for me, and I had already found that David wasn’t emotionally able to stand up for my wishes. He was as intimidated as I was. When the baby woke me in the night to nurse, I didn’t put him back.

When I did get home the next day, David and his sister had decorated the apartment to welcome us. They had folded out the couch and made us a nursing bed in the living room where it was sunny. We had a couple of days as a family (I don’t remember how much time), and then David went back to work. During that time, Peter lost almost a pound of weight and wasn’t nursing well. Somewhere in there, my mom, a former La Leche League leader, came to visit and showed me how to get him to latch on properly. After that he started to pick up. People kept telling me what a wonderful birth I’d had, but my heart wasn’t settled with it.

David started work again, and Peter and I were in such blissful peace! We had a wonderful babymoon that set the standard for my postpartum experiences with all the others. It was such a wondrous time. I felt the need to keep telling him, “I’m your mommy,” mostly to reinforce it to myself, I think. I never felt that need with the others.

I just remember warm summer breezes blowing in the windows, sunny, lazy days of looking at him, and seeing him look at me and recognize me. I think in some ways the initial separation made my intent to bond with him that much firmer, and we became inseparable. I was altogether new with babies, and everything he did was a miracle.

My ideas of responsible birth at that time:

Choosing not to have drugs in labour
Finding the courage to ask the doctor if the cord could be left intact until done pulsing (summarily denied, told to find another doctor if I wanted that)
Asking the doctor not to do an episiotomy
Refusing the postpartum oxytocin shot (given to substitute for the effects of missed postpartum nursing on the uterus)
Taking Public Health's prenatal classes and touring the hospital
Choosing to have my first birth in hospital rather than home because I didn't know how my body would do

What I wish I’d known then:

Coached pushing denied my son the oxygen he needed and caused unnecessary injury to me
Cutting the cord prematurely effectively half-killed my son by cutting off half his blood (still circulating through the placenta) and thus also denying him the oxygen they felt he was short of
Hospital birth is never a responsible choice, because even when you try to take responsibility and make decisions for yourself, the choices are already made for you and few people have time or energy to listen in any case. They are often just trying to survive the environment too.
I had a kind, compassionate doctor and a nurse who was pleasant and caring in spite of working several hours' overtime and short-handed. The good intentions of these people made a difference to me, but they weren't able to overcome the oppressive environment created by hospital policy, outdated practices and understaffing. In spite of their caring they adhered to the medical paradigm of birth - an emergency on the brink of happening - and this affected their care.
The birth environment affected my relationship to my husband as well. I had counted on him to be able to support and assert my wishes to the staff, and he was unable to do this. I felt my trust was betrayed, and as a result felt I had to become self-reliant for labour and birth. I believe it was a stumbling block to full partnership between us in our home births.

~ back to story of Brian Mishael's unassisted birth ~

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