First pregnancy and birth

We just returned from our honeymoon. We had discussed to wait to have kids. We already had a history together, after all we had dated for just over six years before we decided to get married. We wanted to spend time together as a married couple before "looking" for kids. But we did not use any method of birth control or better said we didn't get the opportunity to. We found out the month after our honeymoon that I was pregnant. Already just about seven weeks along.

This was the best news we could ever get in our life. Morning sickness was the worst experience for me. I got sick by just moving my head. Nothing helped. And it did not go away easily. I was sightly already overweight so I researched all I could not to gain too much weight. I ended up gaining just about 15 lbs total from start to end. In the first 5 months I actually lost weight, a total of just 7 lbs! All was due to the morning sickness in the first months. So I gained the 7 lbs back and an additional 8 for the 15 total.

Well my due date came and went. And each additional day that went by seemed like an eternity. I started to feel anxious and worry if I would ever go into labor. The wait was unbearable. I even had my membranes stripped. So when they suggested to me that maybe they would induce labor I felt relieved. I wish I knew what I know now then.

I arrived as planned 6:30 am at the hospital the day of the induction. The ob/gyn admitted me and the prostaglandin gel was inserted. And so began the wait. After about an hour I finally felt the first of many contractions. I felt finally relieved to feel the contractions. It was a sour sweet moment. I knew that it would be hard and long.

And so I labored ans the contractions grew steadily closer together and stronger. And I labored but could not get comfortable. The hospital was not the ideal place for me. I am a petite woman and so everything was either too high or too low for me to lean on. And oh how I wanted to lean against something. My husband is a very tall man and so I was not comfortable with him either. I was feeling panicky and at a lost. I just wanted to shut everything out and lean! But the nurses were in and out of the room checking my progress and good meaning family members were also in and out of the room. It was driving me crazy.

After many hours of labor and trying to maintain my sanity the doctor came to asses me. I started praying for me to have at least some progress. Anything valuable so that I wouldn't need a c-section. And then I saw the doctors face and my heart sank. I knew it, I just knew it. I was just barely 3 cm dilated. I was only still at the starting line. I started thinking "Lord help me get the strength to make it through the next 7 cm still to go!" That's when I heard the words I didn't want to hear in my life time: if when I come back to see her by 9 pm and there is no progress I will do a c-section. That is when I really panicked and became very serious.

I labored with an avenge! I walked all around the room, I squatted and changed position and tried everything I could remember seeing and/or reading about. But still the panic wouldn't leave me. For some reason the thought wouldn't go away.

Then came the hour of truth. At this point I was kind of already begging for some pain relief. I was panicking and that was making it more painful. my husband was trying all his best to try and stay calm through all of this. He was nervous, very nervous of something going wrong and losing me. The doctor checked my progress and conformed that I had not dilated much beyond 3 cm. Well my sentence was served. C-section it was then. Couldn't turn back, no hopes. Induction, who came with this crazy idea? Why had I done it? Why couldn't or wouldn't I wait? I couldn't remember anymore at this point.

So I was prepped and rolled away to the OR. And there I was sitting on the edge of the operating table wondering how did it come to this. And then I was helped to lie on the table and so the surgery started. I had a reaction from the spinal and started to feel very sick. I felt like I couldn't breath and I wanted to throw up. It was the most horrific sensation I have ever felt. All I wanted at that point was for my husband to be there to hold my hand. But due to the policy of the hospital he was not allowed into the OR with me.

And then all my discomfort left my body: I heard that precious first cry. It was amazing! It was a girl. I was a mom. It definitely wasn't the birth I wanted but I was now officially a mom.

The c-section route is not one that I wanted to go down again, but did happen two more times after. Both for different reasons. Now my advice is if you really want natural birth do try by all means to achieve it. I did. I did try to VBA2C (vaginal birth after 2 cesarean), which is very hard to do here where I live. But again was condemned as "failure to progress" and ended up with my most recent c-section. And at this point I'm not sure if I would be able to try next time (if it came) to VBAMC (vaginal birth after multiple cesarean).