I was wary of making a birth plan. I knew that the unexpected is par for the course in childbirth and was afraid that the more demands I made, the more I was tempting fate. I had already been so lucky, pregnant with the last embryo (number 18!) from our second round of IVF after two tumultuous years of trying.
But what I did want was to give birth in a hospital, vaginally, without an epidural. Was that too much to ask?
As the weeks wore on, my belly swelled, my back ached, and my resolve to have the birth I wanted took solid form. We switched to a doctor with a very low C-section rate, at 4 percent. I bought a Pilates ball. I did yoga. I religiously recorded kick counts and talked to the baby every day.
I hadn’t recovered from the idea that I was only pregnant thanks to modern technology, that if we had just let nature run its course I would have remained barren. Secretly, I wondered if it was a sign that I wasn’t meant to be a parent. I felt, privately, like I had to do everything “right” in order to prove that I deserved this baby, and, to me, this meant giving birth without medical intervention.
I was thrilled and terrified when contractions began in the middle of the night. I was three centimeters dilated when we arrived at the hospital. I spent the next six hours crouching in the shower, rocking and moaning through each contraction. But when the doctor checked, I hadn’t even progressed another centimeter.
Disillusioned, I crawled back into the shower. The doctor recommended that we try Cervidil to speed dilation and Stadol for the pain—but soon, she said, we might have to talk about Pitocin, which can pose risks I was hoping to avoid. So I said yes to the Cervidil and the Stadol and fell asleep seconds after they hit.
Then suddenly I was awake again. An hour—maybe more?—had passed, and the Cervidil had done its work. I was eight centimeters dilated and I was screaming. I was screaming too much and couldn’t get a hold on the contractions. My wife tried to talk to me in the calm, logical way we had discussed my birth plan at home, but the pain was immense. It crushed my ability to think complete thoughts and to speak full sentences. All I could manage to do was howl.
The doctor said we could either do an epidural or she could try to stretch my cervix those last couple of centimeters during a contraction. Holding on to my last flicker of hope for the birth I’d wanted, I asked her to try to pull my cervix. She did, and then I really screamed. I cursed and demanded that she get her hand out of me.
“Okay, then,” she said, snapping off her rubber glove. “Epidural.”
I felt like I had failed a test: I just wasn’t tough enough. If I couldn’t get the baby out without help, then maybe that meant I didn’t have what it took to be a mother. In hindsight, I can see that this is an absurd standard to which I would never hold anyone else, but at that moment, and even long after, it felt irrefutably true to me.
After hours of fruitless pushing, I was offered another ultimatum: forceps or a C-section. I chose forceps, and my son was delivered quickly, but it took two doctors a long time to repair what I later learned was significant tearing.
Those two days in the hospital, I was silently grieving the loss of the birth experience I had longed for and hoped I could achieve, all the while distracted by my beautiful son and the work of nursing him.
Once we went home, I went over the story again and again in my mind. Where had I gone wrong? Was it arriving too early at the hospital? Was it not having a doula? Or was I just, clinically, a wimp? I was angry at the staff for the way I was treated, angry at my wife for not having been able to provide the support I needed, and mostly, angry at myself for what felt like an enormous failure on my part.
I remember walking through the park with my wife, my son cozied up against my chest, my breasts leaking into my new nursing tank top. I looked up at the horizon, my eyes filling with tears, and said, “None of this is going the way I planned.” First the epidural, then the forceps, then the bottles of supplemental formula we’d had to use because my son became dehydrated. Even the diapers weren’t the cloth ones I had planned on using.
My wife gently reminded me that while there was nothing we could do to change the birth experience, I could take action regarding all the rest. We could use whatever kind of diapers I wanted, for starters. And so I began there. I found a cloth diaper service and signed us up, and ordered cute diaper covers online. I taught myself how to fold the diapers and hook them together with a little rubber clip called a snappi.
I found a lactation consultant who came to the house to diagnose my breastfeeding troubles. Then I pumped and took medication and fistfuls of herbs in order to maximize my milk production. And every time I expertly wielded a snappi or slid my breast into my son’s hungry mouth, I reasserted some of the control that the birth process had taken from me. He was my baby. I was the expert in taking care of him. These were my choices.
Four years later, I was pregnant with our daughter. This time, we hired a doula. I screamed and swore as much as I liked, and no one took issue. Again (thank you, narrow pelvis) I required help pushing—this time with a much less invasive vacuum assist. I didn’t exactly feel like a superhero when she was born, but I didn’t feel like a failure, either. Her cloth diapers were piled up on the changing table. My milk-increasing supplements were waiting for me on the kitchen counter. I was the person in charge, here. I was, after all, her mom.
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