The Birth Story of Brianna Joan

I attended college throughout my pregnancy, right up until the first week of March. One morning I had back pains and when I went pee there was blood. I had a doctor check-up booked in that morning anyhow. First I went to the massage therapist, and by the time I got to the doctor clinic the pain was gone. However, I was admitted to the hospital in case of a bladder infection although it turned out to be a kidney stone.

I spent a couple of days in the hospital. I went home on Wednesday, and on the following Tuesday (March 11), (perhaps a bit of nesting instinct?) noticing that all my cupboards were EXTREMELY bare, I went grocery shopping.

Let's just say, that I got everything into one cart, but by the time it was bagged up I had to leave the store with two carts. My husband picked me up from the store, carried everything in, and I put everything away in the kitchen. Don't forget, I was due in two days. Well, surprise... that night, I called up the hospital and asked what exactly was the mucous plug supposed to look like? Anyhow, I went to bed and forgot all about it. And woke up about 2:45 am with contractions. For the next few hours, I got out of bed every fifteen minutes with a contraction, went to the bathroom, and engaged in some new activity there. It's a lucky thing that the toilet and sink are right next to each other!! About 7:00 I called the hospital, and they said the physio department would be open at 8:00 so I could come in for the TENS unit. By this time my contractions were five minutes apart.

We both showered and dressed, and I packed my bags. I didn't feel like eating, all I had was water since my dinner last night, and it just kept coming back up. By the way, the contractions hardly hurt while I was in the shower with the water on my back. Should have stayed there!

My husband went outside and warmed up the truck... there was still lots of snow outside, in fact, it snowed all week. The hospital was about 5 blocks away from our house. We drove away, got about two blocks, and ran out of gas. However, he jumped out and filled the tank with some gas out of the jerry can he keeps in the back while I screamed in the cab with increasingly stronger contractions.

We got to the hospital, and went up to the second floor and signed in and everything. First thing I had to do was throw up again. By this time I was pretty tired after having only a few hours of sleep, so I thought maybe I could just relax on the bed for a while. Before long I was sleeping in between contractions, which had slowed back down to every fifteen minutes. My doctor came in and suggested I get up and walk around because they didn't want my labour slowing down any. I walked to the end of the hall with my husband supporting me, and promptly headed for the bathroom and threw up. We walked back to my room, and I headed into the bathroom there for a repeat of the experience. By this time, my throat was burning from the stomach acid, so the nurse came in and gave me some liquid antacid and a shot of gravol, and I crawled back onto the bed and refused to move off it. This is not exactly the picture of labour that I had in mind.

I went back to sleeping between contractions, which returned to being five minutes apart. I really didn't believe it when I read it in childbirth books (sleeping between), but apparently it can be done when you're tired enough!

The next few hours flew by. I don't remember much except at some point I screamed for drugs so the nurse gave me a shot of demerol, which didn't seem to do anything for the pain and made me sort of dizzy for many hours after. My poor husband remained by my side the whole time at my request, because as I pointed out, he couldn't hold my hand from outside the room. Around noon he left briefly to grab some lunch from home and returned with my best friend (who was living in the basement suite in our place at the time)who insisted she wanted to watch.

At some point I remember the nurse saying IT WAS TIME! and hurrying to get my doctor. They wheeled in the nitrous oxide thing for me and began to coach me through the final stages. It was really hard to suck on that mask, it was just so hard to inhale! All the stuff they say in the childbirth books about entering the second stage, and transition and all that, I have no idea when any of it happened. All I did the whole time was lay on the bed and alternately sleep and wake up screaming. When the time did come to push the baby out, the doctor and nurse and my husband were all going, "Breath, breath" and I was getting really annoyed. Since I couldn't really make the doctor or nurse go away, the logical choice was to give my husband a shove with what meager strength I could muster. The doctor looked over at him reassuringly and said, "Don't worry, this always happens," and smiled. In the mean time I was busy practically crushing this nurse's hand to dust. It took me a couple of hours to push that baby out... at one point, my doctor said, "If you can't manage to push this baby out in the next few minutes, we'll have to do a little episiotomy," and I thought: not the E WORD! and out I pushed my precious little baby, all six pounds nine ounces.

The doctor said, "It's a girl!" and the nurse said, "Oh my, she's beautiful," and the doctor piped in how her and the nurse thought it was going to be a scrawny baby but she wasn't she was plump and just beautiful... I'm pretty dizzy lying here... looking across the bed at my darling's big dark eyes. She was totally quiet. As she came out and they suctioned her mouth briefly, she had let out one brief cry, and again when they gave her the shot in the leg. They wrapped her up and handed her to my husband, who was looking totally stunned.

They wheeled me out to a regular room, and my husband went and called my parents, who drove an hour in the snow and arrived that evening to look at their first grandchild. She was born at 3:00 pm on March 12, and my older brother had been born at 2:45 on March 12, 27 years ago. I was still dizzy and tired and puffy (you should see the pictures) as was my new baby. Finally I fell asleep at some point, totally exhausted.

The next week was the most intense. She lost weight for a week, and we only spent the weekend at home and then came promptly back to the hospital to cup feed her with formula for the next week and valiantly try to teach her to breast feed. It was months before she was well established with breast feeding. However, she's now 13 months old and still going strong! Healthy too. Only two minor ear infections, and two colds that lasted half as long as mine, and she has been sick only half as often as we have. To date I have not given her any vaccinations, as I have read much on the subject.

Anyhow, the next time I have a baby, I won't bother with the drugs and so on, because none of it helped at all!

Copyright 1998 by author
Used by permission