Lessons Learned from the (Mostly) Unmedicated Birth of My 10 lb Baby
Baby boy, affectionately nicknamed Cinco, is here! We could not be more grateful he came early, especially because he was originally scheduled to be induced during a blizzard! While I am not generally one to share a lot of details from my personal life online (not ideal for a blogger, I know!), I learned a lot this time around that I hope will help others (And I’ve been careful to avoid falling into the TMI category!)
And of course, you know that this is all my own personal experience, not something that should be taken as medical advice.
As I entered my 3rd trimester I began to be drawn to the idea of delivering this baby without an epidural. I’d had an epidural with all of my previous boys and never had any issues nor complaints. I’d considered going without before but had never been super committed nor prepared and with longer labors, I went for the pain relief. But this time around I wasn’t sure if it was my ever-increasing desire to avoid unnecessary medical intervention or a gut feeling to prevent further difficulties, but I really felt drawn to staying in tune with the labor process.
I began learning from books, podcasts, friends and online research. My favorite resource was EvidenceBasedBirth.com. Started by Rebecca Dekker, a nurse with her PhD, Evidence Based Birth is a compilation of research surrounding birth practices. Rebecca started the website after researching the hospital procedures she experienced with her first baby, including keeping her and her healthy baby separated for hours following the birth. She discovered that most of what happened was more of hospital culture and norms and not at all supported by research. She’s made it her mission to look at all the studies that have been done on birth-related topics and share them on her blog. These include Signature Articles that very detailed and peer-reviewed.
The information available on Evidence-Based Birth all become very valuable when I learned at 36 weeks that my baby was in a breech position, AND his head and abdomen were both measuring 99th percentile or OOR – out of record or off the charts! I had planned to talk to my doctor about my thoughts on a more natural birth process, but instead our discussion centered on scheduling an ECV (External Cephalic Version) and possibly inducing the baby early IF he turned and we could avoid a Cesarean. Being able to read the positive research on the ECV helped put my mind at ease about going to the hospital and having the doctor try to turn the baby head down from the outside. I had 10 ten days before my appointment so I was doing all kinds of things to try and turn the baby, hoping I could avoid an extra visit to the hospital!
I watched a lot of YouTube videos, tried all kinds of ways of turning upside down, and even purchased the hypnobabies breech track. I’d always thought hypnosis seemed a bit “out there” when it came to childbirth or anything else for that matter. However in more recent years I have really come to see the just how beneficial meditation is, having learned and practiced it myself and read more about it’s benefits for everything from heart disease 1 to trading on Wall Street 2.
Recognizing that hypnosis was essentially meditation under a different (and poorly chosen, if you ask me) name, and having read about its positive effects in childbirth3, I decided it was worth a try. I listened daily, and although ultimately my baby was still head up when the time came for my version, I’m glad I did the hypnobabies. It was a great way to shift my thinking toward seeing birth as a natural and positive process rather than a painful one to be dreaded. Further, when I went for the version baby was starting to turn and the doctor was surprised at how easy it was. She was especially amazed at how easy it was after he was delivered and we discovered just how big he really was!
I was really grateful he was only head down for 2 weeks, because I was significantly more uncomfortable, began contracting more and could tell things were moving in the right direction. We had a couple of snowstorms during this time and the contractions picked up—boy #1 was born in a big snowstorm so I was hopeful!
The weekend before Cinco was born I was contracting more and a few days later I woke up around 1 am, having more contractions that were just strong enough that it was difficult to go back to sleep. I’m not sure how much of it was the strength of the contraction and how much was my excitement and anticipation that this could be it, but they were definitely stronger and more consistent than they had been, and it seemed that it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be in real labor. I spent the rest of the night unsuccessfully trying to sleep, then slowly getting ready to go to the hospital while I waited for the contractions to pick up.
I had also learned following my 36-week appointment that I had tested positive for Group B strep, an infection that is harmless for me but could have serious effects for my baby. I was told that if I didn’t receive at least 4 hrs of antibiotics prior to delivery that baby would need to stay at the hospital for 48 hrs instead of 24 for monitoring as group B strep can cause serious illnesses in newborns such as meningitis. I’d had a friend in this situation end up with a very sick baby and I knew it wasn’t something to mess around with. And an extra day in the hospital sounded almost as bad as a sick baby (okay, not really but we always want to get home as soon as possible!!)
I’d also been hoping that my increased exercise and consumption of dates (research here and here) would lead to faster delivery. I was having mild-moderate contractions—I’d have 3 or 4 that were 4-5 min apart, but then would have a 20 min break or longer. So as the middle of the night turned into morning, I let my mom know to be ready and went about the morning getting my kids off to school. Things still hadn’t picked up by mid-morning, but they also hadn’t stopped. I knew my doctor was working the labor and delivery floor that day AND if it has been up to her she would have induced me that week anyway (I was 39 weeks and 2 days) due to baby’s large size. I was really hoping to go into labor on my own so I had chosen to hold off on an early induction, but at this point I suspected I was down to the last 24-48 hours of pregnancy and didn’t want to lose another nights sleep if I could help it.
So given all of that, we decided to go ahead and go to the hospital. It was slow going, but ultimately they gave me the option to stay at the hospital and have the doctor break my water to move things along. After a couple of hours walking laps around the hospital (we ended up walking a total of 4 miles that day and knowing our way around the floor quite well!), they started my antibiotics and finally around 4:40 pm broke my water. Although still on the slow side, it was clear the contractions were becoming stronger and closer together, so I passed on the multiple offers to have a little pitocin to move things along a bit quicker. Things were slowly increasing but manageable until around 10 pm. I was dilated to a 6 at that point. The pain did not seem worse than the pain I felt with my first just getting to a 2, so I was feeling optimistic.
I continued listening to calming meditation (sure wished I had gotten some of these) and diffused some calming oils. Whether they were a placebo or not, it felt great to have a focus and feel that I was in control. The contractions increased and although I felt like we were doing fairly well managing the pain, the fetal monitor was going off every time I had a contraction. Before I could even really feel the contraction I knew one was coming by the familiar and increasingly obnoxious beeping. Having read that continuous fetal monitoring has not been shown to decrease infant mortality but has been shown to increase the rate of cesareans decreased my worry but increased my frustration.
It seemed that I was just so big and round that every time I contracted the monitor would pick up my heart rate instead of baby’s. It’s hard to say what was really going on, but the beeping and nurse constantly trying to rearrange the monitor didn’t help with my efforts to relax and let my body do what it needed to.
It took more than 2 hours to get from an 8 to be fully dilated, and I was stuck at a 9.5 for much of that. At this point I had been awake for about 24 hours and was dosing off during the short break I had between contractions. Ultimately the doctor recommended I have some nitrous oxide and local anesthesia to take the edge off, allow me to relax and fully dilate. I agreed (I would have done anything at this point), signed the consent and was soon inhaling the nitrous, even though I knew most of the hospital staff thought it was a bit of a joke. Apparently, the hospital is more strictly regulated than the dentist and are not allowed to give nearly as much as you might get for dental work. But they said it disassociates you so you don’t care quite as much about the pain and I guess you could say that was true for me.
The other major issue was that the doctor said baby was not in the right position. I had already been using the peanut ball, which was nice because I could lay down and sleep for a minute or two in between contractions. I did a little more of that and then spent some time on my hands and knees—something I don’t know how I would have done with an epidural. I did ask for an epidural somewhere in there, mainly worrying that if he was in the wrong position I still had a long and rough road ahead. But thankfully the epidural didn’t happen and miraculously he made his way into the right position.
Finally around 12:50 am I felt like it was time to really push. I was really regretting my decision to forego the epidural at this point and just wanted baby OUT! It seemed to take far longer than #4 who was 8 lbs 11 oz. I didn’t know it at the time, but things got quite tense when baby’s shoulder got stuck behind a pelvic bone, which is known as shoulder dystocia. They called for help and a nurse began pushing on my stomach to dislodge baby. Thankfully he arrived before the additional nurses could even get in the room. What a relief! Although I wasn’t prepared for the pain that ensued afterward as they pushed on my stomach for what seemed like forever and took care of everything that needed to be taken care of.
I’d heard about the surge of adrenaline following a natural childbirth but was so exhausted (and slightly medicated) and didn’t feel that. Baby nursed well and long—most of the 6 hours following his delivery he was ready to nurse. I don’t know how much he was getting but figured it was a good thing! Particularly since big babies are required to have their blood sugars checked every few hours after birth, I suspect that anything he could get would help with that.
The nurse seemed fairly certain that his size would lead to poor blood sugar numbers and we would need to supplement him with either some formula or donor breast milk, but thankfully he tested well and we were able to avoid it. Initially I didn’t feel like he was significantly more alert than my other babies, although now that I look back on it I doubt he would have nursed so well had I had an epidural.
I didn’t get out of bed for more than 2 hours until the nurse made me get up and change rooms, at 3:30 am! Ugh. All my other babies had been between 11 am and 5 pm and this middle of the night delivery was not fun!
Would I do it again?
The entire time we were in the hospital I thought I should have gotten the epidural. Then I would have been more comfortable getting the Pitocin and maybe moving things along a bit sooner, preventing the “I’ve been awake for 24 hours and now I have to deliver a 10 lb baby scenario.”
I’d talked to a handful of family and friends about their natural births, and it wasn’t until it was really past the ideal time to get an epidural that I realized they had all had much shorter labors and smaller babies than I do!
I was still sore and uncomfortable and didn’t notice a significant improvement in my mobility while in the hospital over my previous births, however, my husband seemed to think that I was doing quite a bit better.
After getting home from the hospital, however, and maybe having a little more time to forget the intense pain of those final hours of labor, I realized I did feel really good for only having 48 hours after delivering a 10 lb baby.
Furthermore, it occurred to me that I probably should have been feeling significantly worse having had such a big baby, and so being slightly better than my smaller babies was notable.
Most importantly, we feel like being able to get up on my hands and knees to help baby move into the right position at the very end of labor may not have worked or at least may have been much more difficult had I had an epidural.
Ultimately, now that it’s been more than a month I can say I’m glad I did it and chances are good I would do it again should I ever need to make that decision again. I can honestly say that I can credit my gut feeling to Divine Guidance that I should forego the epidural, and even though it was probably the most painful experience of my life, I believe that in the long run those last few hours of intense pain prevented or lessened a lot of the issues I could have had with such a big baby. Thankfully I’ve had a great recovery which is a huge plus when you have 5 boys in the house!
One thing I realized was that hospitals have one way of doing things, midwives and birth centers have another. While some situations necessitate the hospital, in many ways I have really come to appreciate the midwifery approach over much of the hospital approach. So it would have been nice to be more aligned—my hospital advertises resources for a natural birth which they do have, however they have 75-90% of patients get epidurals so I just didn’t feel like they had the mindset and experience to make natural birth as smooth as possible.
Natural childbirth, at least in my hospital, felt a bit like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I wish I had made time to read this book, which comes with good reviews. Even though I generally don’t like hospitals and try to avoid them, overall I have been happy with my hospital and REALLY appreciate my doctor who has been incredibly supportive and accommodating. If she were no longer an option chances are good I would be quick to find a midwife.
Ultimately I learned the beauty of trusting my gut feeling. I truly believe that Heavenly guidance helped me to have a better experience than I would have had otherwise. Heaven is not going to protect us from every hard experience–many are needed for our growth and learning. But some difficulties CAN be avoided, and I am grateful that this time things worked out the way they did.