My Birth Story is an Expectful series honoring all birth experiences—the beautiful, difficult, empowered, and messy. If you want to share your birth story with us, please fill out this form.
Throughout my uneventful and virtually problem-free pregnancy, I would joke all the time that everything would change during my labor and delivery. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t joked about that, because that’s exactly what happened! Obviously, the most important thing to me was having a healthy baby, but I was also hoping to give birth at home in my own space. Turns out the journey would be much different—and much longer—than I expected.
Two days before my due date, I started having contractions. They were strong and regular from the start, which was confusing to me as a first-time mom. I had planned to go on walks and do all these things in the early stages of labor, but everything happened so quickly. My water broke a few hours later and shortly after that, my mucus plug passed. My doula and midwife showed up in the early hours of the morning, after my contractions intensified, making it difficult to speak.
I entered the pool to continue laboring, but my mind was elsewhere. I hadn’t connected on an emotional level with my doula, and she’d also asked to bring a friend over for the birth. I was too nice to say no, so I was in my head about having all these people at my house, feeling overly worried that they were bored and tired. Maybe because I wasn’t in the right headspace, I could feel my husband’s stress, and things were not as serene as we’d planned my labor stalled.
Eventually, my birthing team left, and we were left to our own devices for an entire day. I tried to sleep on and off through the contractions, did some breast pumping for nipple stimulation, and some other stuff to try to kickstart labor again. It was just a whole mess. Finally, my contractions started to get back to where they were the night before, and the doula and midwife came back. I got into the pool again, and like deja vu, my labor stalled again. I was still only six or seven centimeters dilated, but the midwife asked me to try pushing. My body was just so weak, though, that 65 hours into labor we decided it would be best to go to the hospital so I could get an epidural and some rest.
Once I had the epidural placed, I got some sleep and regained my energy. Things started to progress, but the nurses were asking me repeatedly if I was feeling things that I just wasn’t feeling. At that point, I had to make the decision to go on antibiotics to ward off infection from the prolonged rupture of the membrane and some meconium in the womb. The nurses explained each and every one of these choices, so I never felt pushed into them, but none of these things had been part of my plan.
After they increased the pitocin, they checked me, and I was fully dilated and ready to push. As I was pushing, everyone kept telling me I was so close, but then it felt like an hour would pass, and that was really frustrating. Transition was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I remember yelling, “Stop telling me how close I am and just let me do it!”
After 77 hours of labor, my beautiful baby girl was born. One of the nurses noticed that her nostrils were flaring, which meant she was having trouble breathing. So, they whisked her away, daddy in tow, and ended up putting her on oxygen, inserting a tube to clear out fluid, and doing a bunch of tests. Ultimately, she was fine, but having to make important decisions when I didn’t really understand what was going on and was sleep-deprived was a bit overwhelming. Then a really nice nurse came in and said, “Welcome to motherhood!” and that really put it all in perspective.
Granted, I didn’t get the home birth I wanted, but I think everything happens for a reason. Maybe my higher power knew that if I had stayed at home the midwife wouldn’t have noticed the breathing issue or my baby could have declined in a different way. Ultimately, I have no regrets.
As told to Allison Tsai
