This month marks the first installment of my new column in the Portland-area family magazine Metro Parent. I figured I should start at the beginning, so I wrote a little about Peeper’s birth story.
I had planned on having a medication-free birth but, for many reasons, I opted for an epidural. I sometimes felt like I should have had a “natural” birth (I use those quotation marks with a huge eye roll—having a baby by C-section or without medication is not unnatural!), but I’ve since come to terms with having an epidural.
You can pick up a free copy of Metro Parent all over town or read the full column here.
Were you happy with how your labor and delivery went? Was there anything you’d change? Did it take you a while to reconcile with your birth story?
The same thing happened to me. I took hypnobirthing classes and had a birth plan with no drugs. I had to be induced at 42 weeks and with pitocin my contractions were so strong, I was begging for an epidural. I was really upset at first but all that matters in the end is that you and your baby are healthy. My son, who is my first child, was 10lbs 1oz, thank god for the epidural! Beautiful picture, congrats!
Thank you! And congrats to you, too—a 10-pounder, you must be so strong!
Yup, 10 lbs would be my cutoff for an epidural….
I am relieved I had an epidural for both of my children’s births. With the first the back labor was so bad I thought my body was going to rip apart. I opted for the epi after about 9 hours of intense pain. I ended up being able to pull my daughter out if my own body in the end. With my second, after they broke my water I went from 4cm to 8 in an hour. I tried. Instead, I got to watch my ten pound boy come into the world because I wasn’t so focused on how much pain I was in. So happy with both of these stories and in retrospect wouldn’t do it any other way! We moms are too hard on ourselves and in turn we perpetuate the myth that there is a perfect way to bring someone into this world.
So well put!
My birth plan was “have a baby.” I never said no epidural but I also wanted to try and go as far as I could without it. Between the time I had one contraction and when my contractions were two minutes apart was 1 hour. I was only 1.5 cm dilated. I was also on a monitor to keep a look at kiddos heart rate so I couldn’t labor in the shower, tub, wak, etc. After 5 hours of contractions ever two minutes and being only 5 cm dilated, I got the epidural. It was wonderful. I could rest. It allowed me to rest so that I could successfully spend 2.5 hours pushing out my beautiful baby who had a head circumference in the 99th percentile! Thank you epidural for allowing me the energy to go all the way!
“Have a baby”—that sounds like the best birth plan ever! As long as you get a baby out of the deal, you were successful! 🙂
Much like Chrissy, my birth plan was “it will be one long hard day.” I did very little research and was much less interested in the process than I should have been. Looking back, I’m not sure that I would have done it much differently. I decided to forgo stressing about the birth–they’ll get here how they get here. They got here, each with an epidural and I may have been more excited about the epidural than the baby.
When/if that epidural comes, the relief is better than pretty much anything else in this world. I may or may not have asked to marry my anesthesiologist!
In my heart of hearts I wish I was the kind of woman who wanted a natural child birth. But I’m not that kind of woman. When I think of med-free birth I imagine how silly it would be for people to expect that we should all remove teeth, or replace hips, or even give someone stitches without medication.
I took my epidural and I got some sleep. I labored for close to 3 days, on Pit, only to wind up with a c-section. I needed the sleep!
Just like there are a million ways to be a good mother, there are a million ways to give birth. Wait, scratch that. There are a million good ways to labor, but only a few ways to give birth. 😉 The important thing is that the baby gets here!
Of course Epidural is for using it! Since anesthesia, Valium and other medicines have improved our life and made us suffer less, why Epidural is a shame for women? I hope it’s not due to religion, that women have to suffer to bring babies to this world… You’re not less woman for having used it, cause your girl would have come to this world with or without Epi, and with the same health problems: zero! 🙂
Thank you Lily! I’m glad modern medicine is available to help moms. And like you said, it’s there to be used—at least for those who choose it.
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