I've had a lot of people ask me about my birth experience, I wasn't sure that I wanted to share it at first. I heard so many horror stories while pregnant and I don't want to scare anyone. But I've had so many wonderful friends and family come forth with their cesarean stories and it's really helped me come to terms with my own. So here it goes:
I was induced at 9:30pm Tuesday June 23rd. Labored all night. His heart rate kept randomly dropping so the nurses were keeping a close watch on us. Wednesday morning my doctor broke my water because of his heart rate issues and I wasn't progressing past 2cm. That fixed the problem for awhile but it also caused me to go from 2cm to 5cm in an hour. Which was insane. I probably could have handled the contractions if I didn't also have back labor with sharp pains shooting down my legs. So I got an epidural, which caused my blood pressure to drop significantly so they had to give me a shot to counteract that drop. He kept having occasional heart rate issues but I progressed super fast. Ended up being in labor for 21 hours and pushing for 2 hours. He just couldn't come out because of his size, mainly the size of his head (15in). Because I spent so long pushing I developed an infection in my uterus which caused my fever to spike and sent us both into tachycardia. At that point my doctor insisted on an emergency c section. Which I had a complete meltdown about but was clearly the right call on her part. When they wheeled me into the operating room and strapped me to the table I puked because I was so scared. Luckily everything went smoothly and quickly. My OB has decades of experience and as one nurse said "must have been a seamstress in her past life". The anesthesiologist kept me updated and calm the whole time and made sure I could see Mauricio immediately after they pulled him out. He was born at 6:56pm June 24th. Not being able to hold him right away was hands down the hardest part of the whole experience. I cry whenever I think about it. I'm still not sure how I feel about having a cesarean birth. The scar doesn't bother me (although it totally freaked me out for the first few days) but mentally I'm having trouble accepting that absolutely nothing went the way I expected. I feel like I missed out on the experience of a vaginal birth, a natural birth. Especially because my OB recommended I consider a scheduled cesarean for the rest of my pregnancies. I didn't gain that much weight while pregnant and I was very healthy, I just had a genetically large baby. And I looked terrible after my surgery. I was so exhausted and had basically went through two deliveries so I had lost a lot of blood. I looked like I died and came back to life. Overall the most important thing is that Mauricio is healthy and we're both alive. I just keep reminding myself of that when I feel disappointed. I was lucky to deliver at such a fantastic hospital with a very experienced OBGYN and the best nurses I've ever had contact with.
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