A FTM birth plan thrown to the wind

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!
 
@snowtrekker No shame in accepting help when it’s offered to you! I’m an anesthesiologist who does lots of obstetrics anesthesia, epidurals are a huge game changer. Everyone has their own right of course to labour how they want, but no one should be shamed for their choices!
 
@cconversation Many places do this, but not all. The nurses are usually given a range, so they can titrate the epidural infusion up and down - if you feel “too frozen” towards the end you can ask them to turn it down or off completely (it takes an hour or two for it to wear off so even if you turn it off you’ll still have some pain relief).
 
@cconversation Mine were not tapered, I was completely numb and literally didn't feel anything from the belly button down lol I was extra numb due to having the epidural done twice as the first time, it only worked on one half of my body. I have a really strong core though so when the nurses told me to push, I just did the most intense ab crunches of my life and baby was out in 6 pushes 😂
 
@brooksie2013 Exactly the same! Well, minus the amazing core! lol! Super numb on my left side, but right side was just numb enough to be comfortable! It felt wild! At first, the anesthesiologist was like “it’s normal to still feel pressure”! No ma’am, this is not just pressure! I could feel all the pain of contractions on my right side!
 
@zanness Oh for sure! My left leg was completely dead and lifeless, meanwhile I could still feel and lift up my right one, and felt all the pain on that side...the Dr tried a couple extra hand bolus' to get more medicine in thinking it would spread, but ended up just having to redo the whole thing in a slightly different spot. Which was fine, because the administering of the epidural itself was so fast and painless I didn't even know when he was doing it lol
 
@cconversation I was incredibly numb from my epidural literally only felt pressure and to me it felt like I couldn’t push hard enough, evidently I did because I have a 14 month old now, 2nd degree tear but really very minor. A mirror really helped me to push
 
@cconversation I actually barely had a second degree tear, and only internally in the vaginal wall, perineum didn't tear at all - and they said the only reason it was even that bad, was because little miss decided to shove her hand through right after her head was born 😆 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.

With the pushing I did not use a mirror but I used all the same breathing techniques that our gym coach taught us to use when lifting weights and doing core exercises, and I was just visualizing my abdominal muscles doing those movements - worked like a charm! Lol
 
@brooksie2013 They gave me an extra dose an hour before my son was born! lol I was starting to feel pain, as it had been about 7 hours since they gave the inital epidural to me, so they gave me more medicine in it. I was almost TOO numb lol I didn’t like it.

But I did enjoy not feeling the two 2nd degree tears & stitches at the end!!
 
@stu80 Oooh the sensation of seeing your legs and watching them be moved by other people, and not feeling anything at all or have any control over them was one of the grossest feelings lol but I was glad for it after going through full strength contractions 1 minute apart at only 4cm dilated 😳 but yeah I kept imagining this is what it must be like for paralyzed people...
 
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