Owen’s Birth Story

I want to start off by saying that Owen’s birth did not go AT ALL how I planned. My plan was for a natural, unmedicated childbirth. The hospital that I was delivering at had a “natural birth” floor, where the rooms had big birthing tubs.

I felt that I was as prepared as I could be. I read the natural childbirth books, listened to tons of podcast episodes, saw a chiropractor regularly, hired a doula, had a birth plan, ate dates, took my “gentle birth” tincture, took natural childbirth in-person classes, walked a ton, etc. I went into birth feeling very educated on how birth works and the normal progression of labor and delivery. I wanted to have a natural birth to avoid the “cascade of interventions”. In a typical birth with an epidural, often the contractions are less intense, which leads to the need for Pitocin to have more productive contractions, which leads to the need for more epidural medication to help with the pain, and more Pitocin, and then eventually all these medications take its toll, the baby’s heart rate drops, and then they rush you to the OR for an emergency C section.

Before you read the details of my labor experience, I want to remind you that my birth experience will likely not be the same as yours. I am writing my story as a way to remember the details and help others. I am not putting this story out there to scare others in ANY way. Birth is a normal, natural process that goes perfectly smoothly most of the time. Of course, there are some times where medical intervention is needed, and I’m so thankful we have medical resources available. But please do not read “horror” birth stories and think that that will happen to you. Again, birth is a normal process that typically requires no medical intervention! Your body knows what to do.

My due date was August 10, 2022. I knew first time moms often went past their due date, and I was fully expecting to go until 42 weeks. Sunday night, August 14th I got into bed for the night. I was about to fall asleep, when I felt a warm sensation rush over me at 1 am the morning of August 15th. I reached my hand down, and felt a puddle of water. I looked over in the darkness to my husband Cooper, who had just fallen asleep, and said “I think my water just broke.”

He jumped out of bed, and as I got up I realized there was a massive puddle on the bed. When I say a puddle, I mean it. There was so much liquid that it hadn’t all absorbed in. You could have splashed around in it. Thankfully, we had put a waterproof mattress protector on around 37 weeks, in preparation for this moment.

When I got out of bed, I continued to gush fluid all over the floor. I didn’t know what to do, so I jumped into the shower so I wasn’t leaking all over the floor. By this point, I knew it was go time. I was uncontrollably shaking, which I later learned is called the “labor shakes.” I called the midwife, who asked if I was having contractions. I was so shaken up that it was difficult to tell what was real and what was nerves. I told her I didn’t think I was having contractions.

By this point it was around 2 am, and my water had broken at 1 am. The midwife said to wait it out at home for a bit to see if I began having contractions, but to be at the hospital by 6 am regardless because my water had broken.

Soon after, I began having contractions that felt like a “tightening” that would intensify and then slowly go away. It felt like a wave rising and then coming back down. The contractions were very manageable, and didn’t require me to breathe through them. They began happening pretty consistently every 5 minutes. I was continuing to gush amniotic fluid and was soaking through the jumbo pads within a couple minutes. By the time it was around 4:30 am, we decided to head to the hospital.

Once we got into the triage room, the contractions were becoming more intense. I would breathe through them as they were happening, but could talk and joke afterwards.

The midwife on call came into the triage room to check me. She first used a strip to test the amniotic fluid and make sure my water had actually broken, which (shocker) it had. If that amount of another type of liquid was coming out of my body, I think I would’ve already been dead.

The midwife then checked me to see how dilated I was, and I was shocked at how uncomfortable/ painful it was for her to check me. I told her that I didn’t want to know how dilated I was. I know so much of labor is mental, and once your body starts feeling tense and worried, labor can stall. It’s like when you are trying to poop and someone is next to you- it’s hard to go! The same thing can happen in labor.

When I told her I didn’t want to know, she was like “are you sure? It’s really good.” So the curiosity got the best of me and I had her tell me, and she said I was 4 cm. I remember saying, “I thought 7 cm was good.” And she replied, “If you were 7 cm, you wouldn’t be acting like this.”

So we make our way up to the 4th floor of the hospital, which is the natural childbirth floor run by midwives. The rooms have big birthing tubs and a queen-sized bed. From what I can remember, it didn’t take long after getting into the room for contractions to intensify and for me to get in the zone. I did very little talking and didn’t want anything. I had a music playlist and essential oils prepared, and I didn’t want any of it. The only thing I used throughout some of labor was Built to Birth affirmation recordings.

During contractions, I would mostly sit on the edge of the bed and rock back and forth, breathing deeply and doing a low-pitched moan. I can’t remember the exact specifics or the times of many things, but after many hours it was becoming difficult and I was getting tired. I decided to get into the birthing tub.

The warm water definitely helped. My doula would use the hose to spray warm water on my abdomen, which did give some pain relief. I remember going in and out of the tub multiple times.

After I was in labor for maybe 12 hours, I was really starting to want it to be over. I asked the midwife to check me, and I was 5-6 cm dilated. That was when a little bit of panic crept in. I had been laboring for many hours, and the end still seemed far away. I just kept thinking, how much longer is this going to be.

I feel like around this time is when back labor started to set in. I would sit on the toilet to try to pee, and every time I sat down, I would start having another contraction. Even when not on the toilet, I was having multiple contractions in a row, and was having pain on the sides of my lower back. It is something difficult to describe unless you have experienced it, but it felt like my body was trying to poop out a bowling ball.

I don’t remember exactly how this was discovered, but based on the midwives’ exams and palpation, they said that the baby was OP (occiput posterior), meaning his head was “sunny side up”. This position is why I was having the back labor, because his back was against my back.

I felt really in control with managing contractions and keeping my breathing and voice low and steady for many hours, but once the back labor became more intense was when I was beginning to struggle. I don’t know if I said it out loud, but I kept thinking I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

My doula was giving me different positions to try to flip the baby to have his head facing the opposite way. There was one contraction in particular that I will never forget. She had me lay on my left side and had me hang my right leg off the bed, so my right leg was over my left leg. Having a contraction in that position was one of the most painful things I have experienced in my life. Despite trying all the different positions, the baby had not flipped.

Around 7 pm on August 15th, I was truly at the point where I was suffering. I had been in labor for 16 hours and needed to know how much longer I had. I asked the midwife to check me, and she said I was 7 cm. Being that I had been in labor for 16 hours and was only 3 more cm dilated from when I started, I was very worried that it would be at least another 16 hours to get me to 10 cm. I told the midwife that I had carefully thought about this decision, and I wanted to get an epidural.

She talked with me about the decision, because she knew that my plan was unmedicated birth. She offered to try other things like morphine or other pain medications. I also wanted to note that a couple hours before that, they talked to me about trying the nitric oxide gas, which I did end up doing. It was basically a mask you had to breathe into and was supposed to help with pain. When I put it up to my mouth, I felt like I was gasping for air and couldn’t breathe. I did a few breaths of the nitric oxide here and there, but didn’t feel any difference.

I appreciated the midwife giving me options and trying to make sure that I would be happy with my decision. I told her that I had been seriously considered the epidural for about 4 hours, and was ready. My doula had told me that there is a difference between being in pain and suffering, and once you are suffering, intervention should be used. I felt like I was at the point of suffering.

Once I decided to do the epidural, I had to get an IV to get a liter of IV fluids first. (They didn’t do the IV before because my veins were small and hard to get, and we weren’t using it for anything.) It took about two hours to actually get the epidural from when I said I wanted it, because of needing the IV and fluids. Those two hours were really difficult – I had already accepted that I wanted to have some pain relief, but I had to endure the contractions for another two hours before I was able to get the epidural.

Getting the epidural was uncomfortable, but nothing compared to what I had been going through. It felt like a needle scraping against your spinal bones, but it was quick. I began having significant relief within a few minutes after the epidural. I was praying that the epidural would work.

It did work for a matter of minutes, but then I began getting a slight ache on my left hip/back area. This ache slowly intensified until it became extremely painful. The anesthesiologist came back and gave me another dose, and the pain went down again.

I should also note that around the time of the epidural, they started me on Pitocin to keep the contractions strong. There were some issues with my blood pressure dropping, so they didn’t want to give me as much of the epidural. They were increasing the Pitocin, but decreasing the epidural, so I was beginning to have intense contractions again. At this point, the front contractions were pretty much gone, but the back pain on my sides was excruciating.

We had to call the anesthesiologist multiple times to give me maybe 3 more doses of the epidural medication because the back pain was intense. Even with having the epidural, this back labor was the most painful part of all of labor for me. It was so difficult to “give up” my plan of having an unmedicated birth, to still be in excruciating pain.

By this point, it is the middle of the night on August 16th and I have gone two days without sleeping and am running off of electrolytes in water and a couple granola bars.

Sometime in the early morning, maybe 4 or 5 am on August 16th, the midwife comes to check on me. It had been many hours since she did a cervical check. At this time, she checked me again and said that I was fully dilated at 10 cm, and said that I could start pushing.

I ended up pushing for around 4 hours, on and off. Throughout this time pushing, multiple doctors and midwives did a maneuver to try to flip the baby out of the OP position. There would be times where he would flip for a few seconds, and almost immediately would flip back.

One of the doctors came in and said that we could try pushing for another hour, but if he still wasn’t born we would need to discuss other options. Throughout this time, I could see the baby’s head and hair. He was right there, but for some reason wasn’t coming.

Another hour passed, and Owen still wasn’t born. The doctor assessed me while pushing and said that he was close enough that we could attempt doing forceps. Without going through this situation before, I would have NEVER agreed to forceps. However, I knew that my options were becoming more and more limited. My main goal was to avoid a C section, so I agreed to the forceps.

The doctor said that they would attempt forceps in the OR, but if unsuccessful they would proceed to a C section. Within probably 5 minutes, we headed down to the OR. They prepped me on the table, and the doctor attempted forceps during 2 contractions, but Owen was still not coming. They said that during the second attempt with forceps that Owen’s heart rate dropped, and said that they were going to immediately do a C section.

At that point I completely surrendered. I had exhausted every other option, and C section was the way Owen was going to be born. I couldn’t feel anything, but next thing I know I hear them say “it’s a boy” and soon after hear Owen crying. I was SO light-headed and out of it, especially after the experience I endured over the 36 hours of labor, that I felt almost nothing even hearing my first baby cry for the first time.

During the C section, I lost around 1.5 liters of blood. I remember hearing someone say that my blood pressure was 70/40, which I definitely believed. I was so incredibly light-headed that I knew if I closed my eyes I was going to pass out. I was also so nauseous from all the medications and lack of food/sleep, that I was gagging into a container they gave me. It was a really difficult time.

I remember seeing Owen and them asking if I wanted to hold him while still lying on the very thin OR table. I said I absolutely could not hold him and thought that I would pass out and drop him.

After I was wheeled into the post op area and got some water, I was finally able to hold my sweet baby boy. I started to wrap my mind around what had happened the last 2 days, and accept that his birth did not go to plan. But, we were both healthy, and little did I know how much of a gift that was.

The next day, one of the midwives came to tell me what had happened during my birth. During the C section, the doctor saw that I had developed what is called Bandl’s ring, which is a constriction or ring that can form in the uterus. This was essentially a band that was trapped around Owen’s shoulders. This band kept him from being able to move forward any farther (which makes sense why he wouldn’t come after 4 hours of pushing).

Bandl’s ring often develops from prolonged and difficult labors. If no intervention was done, it would have led to uterine rupture.

Over these past months, I have had to switch my mindset to how lucky I am that Owen and I are safe and healthy. If this situation happened many years ago, we likely both would have died. I am a big proponent of being your own healthcare advocate and not relying on others unless needed, and this is a situation where I am extremely grateful that healthcare providers were there.

I am still making peace with the fact that Owen’s birth did not go as planned, and getting over the shame I have put on myself for not having him naturally. Motherhood has been a VERY humbling experience, beginning with his birth.

I am sharing this story first as a reminder to myself, as I already feel the details slipping away. Secondly, I hope this experience will help someone out there. Everything might not go to plan, and that is okay. Advocate for yourself, and do what feels right in your heart. God might have a different plan for you than you thought for yourself, but His plan is always better. Even if you won’t find out that reason while on this earth.