It took me 39 years to decide that I wanted to become a mother, and I was fortunate, conceiving straight away. Barring your standard first-trimester nausea, pregnancy was a breeze, and I felt nothing short of happy, healthy, and lucky. As the due date approached, so did the pressure to decide on a birth plan. In birthing classes, the (much) younger women around me spoke of drug-free home deliveries and birthing centers, of midwives and birthing pools. Although that sounded beautiful, I always knew I would give birth at a hospital, especially since I was having a “geriatric” pregnancy and would be 40 by the time the baby came. At my age, I really had nothing to prove and was careful not to place too much importance on how I gave birth—I was just focused on getting my baby here safely.
By some standards, you could say I had a pretty mellow birth plan. I didn’t have a playlist, or candles, or any hard and fast rules about how things should go, though I really wanted to try for a natural, drug-free vaginal birth, or at the very least, a vaginal birth with an epidural if I just couldn’t hack it. A C-section would be there in the wings in case anything went wrong—and it did.
After a (thankfully) uneventful pregnancy, my water broke 10 days after the due date—and some very spicy tacos. I immediately called my OB, took a shower, and asked my husband to put a frozen pizza in the oven to take to the hospital for sustenance. I calmly blew out my hair, grabbed my bag, and off to the hospital we went. I’ll remember that car ride, and the happiness it contained, forever. Here I was, about to meet the love of my life with a hot pizza on my lap—how could it get any better?
Contractions were slow to start at the hospital, and after a few hours of little-to-no dilating, and another call to my OB who was on her way, we decided to induce labor with Pitocin. It was explained to me that due to my “advanced” age (thanks again, guys), the water breakage, and the lack of progress, it would be best to help things along. I was OK with this intervention and fully trusted my team. Once administered, the contractions began immediately, and I labored long enough to know that I was done laboring without an epidural—roughly an hour. At this point, I still hadn’t dilated at all. I remember a kind midwife saying to me, “This could be a very long night, honey. Get comfortable.” Right.
A short time later, the anesthesiologist did what he came to do and sent me on my very high way. My OB arrived and I was told to hunker down, relax, let the Pitocin and epidural do their thing. For a moment, I relished the cool, calm wave that washed over me, taking all of my cramping away with it as I drifted to sleep. I later awoke to the sounds of monitor alarms and what seemed like the entire delivery staff rushing into our room. The baby was struggling. They gave me oxygen and encouraged me to breathe deeply. The alarms stopped and the staff cleared. They took me off the Pitocin. Still no dilation, no progress after close to 20 hours in hospital and nearly 24 hours since my water had broken.
After that, I was ruffled and began having trouble breathing, trouble relaxing into the epidural; I couldn’t feel my legs and I didn’t like that at all. Again, the alarms rang and the team flooded in. She’s struggling, I’m struggling—we are in this together as we have always been. My doctor gently asks me what I would like to do and I understand immediately what she means. I tell her that I would like to have an elected C-section rather than an emergency one, and she looks relieved. She says she would have been willing to duke it out with me for as long as it would have taken, but she could see the signs of a troubled labor ahead and wanted to be safe. And, natural birth plan notwithstanding, that was always the end game for me: to take my baby home, no matter the method.
The operation was a success, and as it turns out, my daughter’s shoulders were—are—extremely broad. My doctor believes she would have never made it out on her own, regardless of how long we’d labored, her little bruised face showing the signs of struggle. As the sweet sounds of Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken” played over my baby’s first cries, I felt grateful to modern medicine for getting her here—for getting us both here—and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
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