Birth Stories

Women sit around and do this all the time.  Some of my male readers are probably going to be pretty appalled by this post.  You female folk have probably swapped stories like this or heard them before.

My older two are four days apart...and two years.  The oldest is turning fifteen in a couple days, the middle one thirteen (officially a teenager.)

Which gets any mother thinking about that day, fifteen and thirteen years ago, when they came into this world.

Me and Princess, 15 yrs ago  

My pregnancy with my daughter was pretty smooth.  I remember at one point wanting apple juice so bad and sending my husband up to the store to get some...and he came back without it.  I burst into tears and explained to him, "How on earth are we going to take care of a little baby if we can't even get apple juice?!??"

Needless to say, back to the store he went and when he returned with said juice, I chugged the whole gallon. No one had explained thoroughly to me pregnancy hormones so...uh...good times, those.

When I went into labor, I was very determined NOT to do any drugs.  I wanted it to be as natural as it was possible to be...I had some seventies bullshit idea that it was going to be beautiful or some crap like that.

It hurt like hell.  I asked the nurse at one point if I could cry.  "You can do whatever you want, Sweetie."  I didn't cry but dammit it hurt like a bitch.  They finally said I could push.  I discovered, about one push in, that WHILE PUSHING it didn't hurt.  It was like some magical internal light switch.  Push-no pain.  Not pushing-deargodmygutsarebeingrippedout.  Uh, I pushed.  I pushed really hard.  It only took one or two and there was a little kid there.  She was sooooo pretty.  I can still remember being shocked because I thought she was supposed to be icky or something.  I mean, she came from INSIDE me.  But she was perfect, looking like someone had taken a baby, dipped it in water and handed it to me...coincidentally at my crotch.

Me and Deej, 13 yrs ago
He is the lump

My son was NOT pretty when he was born.  Then again, he got stuck. 

He, like her, decided to be two weeks late.  Unlike her, the water did not break naturally in the nick of time.  They broke it.  They then put me on the drip from hell.  I call it the drip from hell because it accomplished nothing but pain and no progress.  Then they had the firey lotion from hell.  This was applied directly to the cervix and immediately dilated me to ten centimeters. 

So they said I could push.  Dandy.  I remembered pushing.  Pushing meant the pain would stop, remember?

When I tried to push with him, a feeling like bone crunching fire shot through me.  I stopped.  That wasn't right.

I told the nice nurses and doctors this.  "Uh, it hurts when I push."

"It is supposed to hurt.  It is labor."

No one ever listens to the woman on the table.

After awhile of trying to convince them that something was rotten in the state of Denmark (or my hoohah, depending on how specific you want to get with the geography lesson), I gave up.

"I quit.  Seriously.  The show is not going on without me.  You can't make me do it.  I quit."

I laid back and refused to give birth.  I cried.  I moaned.  I hollered.  I refused to cooperate further.

After an hour of this, the baby was in distress, I was going into cardiac arrest and they decided to check my progress...because even if I 'quit' my body should have been shoving the baby out with its contractions...and it wasn't moving.

Suddenly, it dawned on the docs that the baby was stuck in my pelvis and that was why I was saying it hurt.

No shit, assholes.

So, they toss me up and try to put in an epidural.  They couldn't get it in. 

When they flip me back onto the table, there is talk of just slashing me open like a ripe fruit to get the baby out without drugs.

I notice something.  I can push now.  They shifted something in all their tossing me about like a limp bag of clothes.

When I try to tell them THAT, they aren't interested in listening.  My mom ends up kind of pinning the doc to the wall and telling him off and I end up delivering my son myself. 

When he comes out he does NOT look like he was dipped in water.  He is all greyish bluey and covered in muck and goo and my first words upon seeing him are, "What is it?"

A cooing nurse answers, "It is your son."

I looked at her confused.  I was pretty sure I broke it.

After they cleaned him up and got some air to him, he looked much better.  After thirteen years, I gotta say, he is a very handsome fellow and very undeserving of my initial assessment.

My youngest was the easiest to deliver of the three.  They had told me, after the delivery debacle with my middle kid, that having another child would kill me.  (The doctors, I have noticed, are often wrong.  So I kind of hid that pregnancy until it was too late for them to do a thing about it...and then kind of sprung it on everyone in my 7th month..."Guess what?  I have been taking prenatal vitamins and probably am going to need a ride to the hospital soon!")

So, when they asked when I wanted the epidural, I asked if I could have it the moment I got to the hospital.  "Don't you want to experience any of the joy of childbirth?" a daft twit of a nurse asked me.

Me and Derf, 10 and a half years ago (he is the prized fish)

"Well, I have had two kids naturally.  I think I had all the joy I can handle for one lifetime."

Epidural safely in place...I was chatting with the doctor, legs in the stirrups, about another delivery he had done earlier that week.  I had tons of research type questions for him.  I mean, how often can an author question an actual delivery room doctor?

My sister pointed at the piece of paper charting my contractions, "Uh, she is having one...aren't we supposed to be having a baby here?"

The doc waved a hand at her to shush her.  "We'll catch the next one.  Anyway, as I was saying..."

So when my son was finally delivered, there are shots of me holding him, huge grin on my face (very unlike the worn and exhausted delivery room shots from my first two kids) like a prize fish for the camera.  If you look closely at the shot, just past my bent knee, you can see a bit of umbilical cord...still attached to me.  I was chipper as hell that birth.  So was he, surprisingly.  I thought that the drugs would make him groggy but he was a perky guy.

All in all, for three kids that came out of the same place, they were as individual in their ways of coming into this world as they have been each and every day since. 

Any of you ladies out there have a good birth story you want to share?  Mother's Day is coming up (the day after my daughter's fifteenth, actually) so for all you moms who went through this and more to bring us into the world...thanks.  You guys rock.

For me, I am off to snuggle one of my brood.



Goodnight, and happy writing!!