Best day of my life

I read the books and took the classes. I packed the birth affirmations, calming essential oils and cherry pit pillows. I had learned and rehearsed all the breathing techniques. Knew every best position, for every part of labor.

I was Ready to Birth my Baby.

But turns out what they say is true. Planning labor is about as useful as trying to solve an algebra puzzle by chewing a piece of bubblegum*

Things didn’t go according to plan entirely. But despite this, I look back on birthing Mia-Nur with nothing but love, joy and gratitude. I had a vaginal birth without tears, rips, cuts or any medical intervention despite her glorious 4.2kg and 53cm and it being my first birth.

Best day of my life. And I want to share it.

Early contractions started Sunday eve Nov 12th but I labored at home all night. We went to the hospital on Monday morning around 11am when contractions were about 4-5min apart. I remember successfully breathing through one particularly heavy contraction in the entry hall of the hospital. I felt like a champ ready for battle.

In pain, but elated. And most importantly: in control.

Upon examination I was 5-6 cm dilated. Not bad! But baby was not in an optimal birthing position.

I had handed my birth plan to the staff. Still fully optimistic about doing this unmedicated and without medical intervention.

However. My breathing exercises had not prepared me for the excruciating pain that is child birth. No lavender scent, birth ball bounce or low moaning technique provided relief. Cursed be those YouTubers!

I had gone in and out of the bath, tried all the different positions and meditated my tits off. But around 4.30 pm I was shaking uncontrollably, I had vomited on Huseyin, ran a pretty serious fever and was outside of myself from pain. If you had asked me my name, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you.

Still I wasn’t ready to accept pain relief. Surely I was fully dilated now!

Alas. I had only made 1-2 cm process in 5 and a half hours of pure torture. My water hadn’t even broken yet. I was looking at about 3 more hours of contractions before I’d be able to start pushing. And pushing would be hard and risky, with baby girl still facing forward.

It took me 2 more excruciating contractions to come to terms with getting an epidural. But when I accepted it, I felt a sense of relief going through me.

There are no prizes in pushing through this amount of pain and risking not having enough energy left to push baby out when the time comes.

Unfortunately the anesthesiologist took 30 more minutes to arrive. Contractions were 2min apart and lasted about a minute each. Those 30 minutes were the longest and most painful of my life (little did I know even more pain was to come later on…)

Very shortly after the administration of the epidural I sank into a deep state of bliss. But my body also sank. And still my water didn’t break.

From 5pm until 10pm there was zero progress apart from the sudokus we solved. My epidural had completely numbed my left side, but kept the right side fully awake. Was this gonna be an issue?

At 10pm they suggested an amniotomy, manually breaking the amniotic sac. To get things moving. This was one of the medical interventions I was hesitant about, but easily agreed with upon being explained the why. And good thing too, since baby had pooped in the amniotic fluid from experiencing the stress of such a lengthy labor with me.

The amniotomy didn’t hurt. But I definitely felt it. Looking back this should’ve been a sign that the epidural wasn’t doing its job anymore. But I didn’t think twice about it then.

Around 11.30pm we made the conscious decision to start pushing, despite me not feeling a lot of pressure yet. It was incredibly strange to go from experiencing excruciating pain to floating in an ocean of calm into this artificial pushing situation. But I wanted her to be born. And postponing it any longer didn’t seem like a good plan.

We tried on hands and knees first but with every push I started experiencing more and more pain again. 30min in we made zero progress apart from me pooping on the midwife. (uuhh.. I felt that too. Was I supposed to feel that? Is this epidural even still working?)

Moving onto my side was even less successful. And sure enough, the pain became unbearable again. This epidural wasn’t doing shit anymore! It decided to focus solely on my left leg… Fuck.

After an hour of those two positions being pretty unsuccessful, I was asked by the midwife if I was ready to try laboring on my back. Silly stubborn little me finally agreed. Massive thanks to my midwife who gave me time to accept the change of plan and made me feel like I had agency.

And ofcourse she was right. Pushing became much more successful, but I also started experiencing so much pain that I was shaking uncontrollably again. I felt every contraction, every touch and – yes it happens always – every defecation that happened. The only thing left sedated? My left leg.

1 hour of pushing on my back and 2 hrs in total, I could see the fear in Huseyin’s eyes. He had been standing down under with the midwife and could follow the (lack of) progress. Was this even going to work? I couldn’t take the pain anymore.. I had lost my voice screaming and desperately pleaded to the midwife and 3 doctors that had consecutively joined, that I wasnt gonna be able to do it. They had to intervene.

But my obgyn had taken note of my birthplan that explicitly read ‘no interventions unless there’s a medical emergency for my daughter or myself, no matter how desperate I am.’

And she took that to heart.

I can’t tell you how hard I cursed myself at that point.

At one point someone mentioned using forceps, or vacuum delivery. Instead of at least 30 more minutes of pushing, it would take 3 contractions and she’d be born. But she’d also have a headache for days and a misshapen head. And there was no medical need for it. Both her and me were doing fine. Actually, she said, I was doing amazingly.

Fine.

It was entirely thanks to the encouragement I got from my birth team midwife that I just kept going and didn’t reply to the forceps suggestion.

2.15 am and all of a sudden there was progress. And I felt it. The ring of fire was by far the most painful moment of my entire life. My primal moans and screams deafened my birth team, but right after that, my baby girl squirmed out of me. I heard Huseyin ecstatically cry out ‘OH MY GOD OH MY GOD’ as he caught her coming out of me, and I sank back down into the bed.

The moment they put my baby girl on my chest my life made sense again. I remembered who I was again. I felt like I was born again, with her.

I couldn’t believe what had just happened.

She cried for about 20min before she breast crawled over to my boob and started drinking… My heart melted into 5000 pieces 😭❤️

They let her lay on me skin to skin for 2 hrs, despite my fever and discomfort. After that I rinsed and huseyin had her skin to skin on his chest for another hour 💕

In the end I stuck with my plan despite the (not entirely functioning) epidural and some minor and very necessary medical interventions. I have no regrets and had agency over every decision we made. I couldn’t have asked for a better birth team.

When she turned out to be 4.2kg and 53cm I felt so so proud of her and myself. Nothing short of a miracle that we were able to do this without major issues or interventions.

Winning team from the very start.

It was truly the best day of my life.