snowtrekker
New member
After 40+ weeks of planning and preparing for an intervention free birth I found myself throwing all my plans into the trash when I woke up at 40+6 at 2am with back labor. I was fully prepared for how everyone had described contractions, feeling intense period like or diarrhea cramps. I was, however, not prepared for the sensation of fire searing across my lower back in combination with spikes being driven into the sides of my hips. Also, nobody told me that back labor never relents, it has peaks but the pain remains constant.
I labored at home for as long as I could tolerate and went to the hospital when my contractions were peaking every 3 minutes at 7am. My emotional breakdown started when I was informed I was only dilated to 1cm and I lost total control of my labor at that point. All the breathing practice, the positional changes, and the counter pressure went out the window, there was no touching the agony. In fact, movement made the pain worse, all I could do was freeze.
Thankfully I was told since I was overdue it was unlikely that I would be sent home, but I did have to continue to labor on my own to show progress to be admitted. My poor husband held me as I sobbed through another hour of increasingly intense fire and stabbing until the attending physician took mercy and admitted me at 8:30am. 9 months of talking a big game of an intervention free birth had me so humbled as I begged for an epidural the instant the question was asked. The second stage of horror started as I had to relax and hold still for the epidural, which took two tries and 30 minutes as the first went in my spinal column too far and turned into a spinal tap.
But, once I was numbed I felt like a new woman. My nurses were amazing in twisting and turning me around to get baby moving into a more optimal position, which was tremendously successful as I progressed from 1cm to 10cm in just 5 hours. I laughed and joked with my husband in renewed excitement for our first born surprise gender baby and when it was time, I pushed for 20 minutes before our baby girl was born only 12 hours after the start of labor.
A long story short, interventions can be so helpful and I truly would not be able to look back on my l&d with any sort of positive feelings had I not accepted the help!
I labored at home for as long as I could tolerate and went to the hospital when my contractions were peaking every 3 minutes at 7am. My emotional breakdown started when I was informed I was only dilated to 1cm and I lost total control of my labor at that point. All the breathing practice, the positional changes, and the counter pressure went out the window, there was no touching the agony. In fact, movement made the pain worse, all I could do was freeze.
Thankfully I was told since I was overdue it was unlikely that I would be sent home, but I did have to continue to labor on my own to show progress to be admitted. My poor husband held me as I sobbed through another hour of increasingly intense fire and stabbing until the attending physician took mercy and admitted me at 8:30am. 9 months of talking a big game of an intervention free birth had me so humbled as I begged for an epidural the instant the question was asked. The second stage of horror started as I had to relax and hold still for the epidural, which took two tries and 30 minutes as the first went in my spinal column too far and turned into a spinal tap.
But, once I was numbed I felt like a new woman. My nurses were amazing in twisting and turning me around to get baby moving into a more optimal position, which was tremendously successful as I progressed from 1cm to 10cm in just 5 hours. I laughed and joked with my husband in renewed excitement for our first born surprise gender baby and when it was time, I pushed for 20 minutes before our baby girl was born only 12 hours after the start of labor.
A long story short, interventions can be so helpful and I truly would not be able to look back on my l&d with any sort of positive feelings had I not accepted the help!
I had a few stitches, and actually the worst of it was when I got home and was recovering - I had a couple of the tails of the stitches inside that were slightly too long and poking/chafing the inside of my vagina with every movement and was excruciating. A trip to urgent care a couple days later to trim the stitches fixed it almost immediately.
but yeah I kept imagining this is what it must be like for paralyzed people...