The Birth Story of My First Little One

And My First Ego Death

Note: I did not use AI at any point in the writing of this piece including drafting, writing, or editing. The pictures are all my own as well.

I have a piece I want to share. It is about having hope for more children and actively deciding to get pregnant even after two “bad” birth experiences. But I feel like before I can share that, I have to actually share my birth stories. I tried to distill them down to just a paragraph each in the aforementioned piece, but I just wasn’t doing myself or my babies justice by doing that. We went through a lot. And every time I’ve read stories similar to mine, I’ve let out a sigh of relief. Shame lifted off my shoulders. So today I’ll share the birth story of my first child, which I have never shared publicly before. 

Some background information: I actually became a doula about 2 years before I got pregnant, so I was on the homebirth-unmedicated-labor train for a while already. I imagined my first birth in a birth center, but in Connecticut where we were living, the closest one was over an hour away if you were not driving during rush hour… so that option was out.

Looking back, my first pregnancy was the most challenging so far. I had just begun teaching full time in a town that was an hour and a half away in rush hour traffic headed toward New York City. I awoke each morning at 5, ate breakfast, and did my best to get to school dressed and with a happy face by 7 am. School got out by 3:30, but I did not get home until 5 or later – just in time to eat the dinner my husband so lovingly made and then collapse into bed at 7 pm just to do it all again the next day. Morning sickness ruled my life between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm until I was about 15 weeks along. By the time I was about 6 weeks pregnant I was falling asleep during all of my planning periods and recess. I was also in and out of the hospital with what I found out was a fibroid causing level 10 pain that we all thought was an ectopic pregnancy. It was not. I had to tell my principle at 10 weeks pregnant that I would be starting my maternity leave when I reached 36 weeks because I feared going into labor while at school and having to drive myself home in bumper-to-bumper traffic through contractions.

I hired a homebirth midwife, but I still received my anatomy scan from the hospital who oversaw my care with the fibroid (which we decided to let be). The fibroid had grown a bit by 20 weeks, so they asked me to come back for a 28 week scan to check on it. At 23 weeks I started feeling like my blood sugar was off so I borrowed a friend’s blood glucose monitor. Two weeks later, I informed my midwives that I had gestational diabetes, and they began monitoring my numbers and trouble shooting with me. I employed all the “tricks”: inositol, ACV, oat straw, etc. Things were going well, I enjoyed the second trimester a lot.

At the 28 week scan, I was informed that my baby was in the 90th percentile and I had too much amniotic fluid. The doctor told me this is indicative of uncontrolled diabetes, but this was strange because most conventional doctors don’t even test for gestational diabetes until 28 weeks and I had already been trouble shooting mine for over a month at that point. I began to wonder if the fact that I got COVID at 21 weeks had anything to do with all of this. We all got a little freaked out, but pushed on, knowing these late scans are usually wrong. Even so, my midwife coached me on what we would do if a shoulder dystocia happened. Homebirth midwives receive a lot more training about how to resolve shoulder dystocias physiologically compared to OB’s, so I felt I was in the safest hands. 

Around 32 weeks, our landlord informed us she would be increasing the rent by $300 a month, and if we couldn’t pay it and renew our lease we would need to be out by June 30th. We could already barely afford our rent as it was. I explained I was due with my first baby on May 30th, and could very well go two weeks into June. Could we possibly have a few extra weeks or an extra month? She said no. We asked my husband’s job about transferring to a few different locations where we thought it would be easier to afford me being a stay at home mom. In two weeks they had two positions we could choose from: Ashland, North Carolina or Greenville, South Carolina. We chose South Carolina, with plans to move July 1st. 

On our baby moon in Charleston, South Carolina, we received the news that my husband would receive a job offer in Greenville, SC. It felt like God’s hand was on it all, even though we knew that changing homes so soon after birth was not ideal.

My blood sugar numbers looked good, but they were getting harder to control. I stopped gaining weight in the third trimester. I felt like I was starving myself to keep things in check. The clock was ticking. We were being kicked out of our home where I was supposed to homebirth, my baby was apparently huge, and I developed polyhydramnios. At the end of 37 weeks I asked my midwife to do a membrane sweep. I didn’t want to go into labor then, but I knew if we did a little bit of encouraging every so often, it might have a cumulative effect. I didn’t want to wait until crunch time to encourage things along. 

The membrane sweep was probably the most physically painful thing I ever endured up until that point. I got a second one a week later. Four days after that I woke up on a Saturday and stood in front of the fridge. Suddenly, I felt a pop and a gush of warm liquid ran down my leg and splatted on to the floor. I knew it was my waters. I ate my breakfast and called my midwives. They said to take it easy and spend time with my husband that day to get oxytocin flowing. I told them I bet I would wake up in labor that night. During the day my husband and I went for a walk and a picnic. We went to my best friend’s house so she could braid my hair. We snuggled and kissed and excitedly went to bed, expecting to wake up in active labor. I did not. When I awoke, I called my midwives and said “As you can probably hear, I am not in active labor.” They said they would come over and pull out all the stops to get things moving. I asked if I could go to Mass first (it was a Sunday) and they of course said yes. 

After Mass, my midwives arrived. They listened to the baby. They listened to me. We talked about things we could do. I was a few centimeters dilated, but contractions were not regular or very painful. I got undressed, sat on a birth ball, and we tried pumping while I watched a show about cute baby animals. When that didn’t seem to do much, one midwife gave me a hip and back massage while I was on the birth ball and the other midwife whipped up a few herbal remedies and eventually the notorious midwives brew (active ingredient: castor oil). By four pm that day, the midwives said it had been 36 hours since my water broke. I was only 4 centimeters dilated. They were worried that if I went back to sleep that night and had to transfer to the hospital then I would be 48 hours with my water broken and the hospital might not let me labor at all. My contractions were still irregular and not painful. They asked me to transfer. My husband and I took a walk. I cried under a blooming cherry tree. I looked at the pink petals on the concrete through blurry eyes. This wasn’t supposed to happen.  I curb walked the whole way, trying to get things to pick up. We went home and packed a hospital bag and despite living around the corner from Yale Hospital, we decided to drive 45 minutes away to UConn, believing they would be less scalpel-happy. There was a doctor on staff who enjoyed attending homebirths and he was on shift that night, so that felt hopeful.

The cherry blossoms by my house, just a few days before I went into labor. Each year, these help me to remember that season fondly, even if it’s bittersweet.

As we drove I became increasingly uncomfortable. The contractions were coming on strong. I was writhing in the passenger seat as a thunder storm rolled in. I remember thinking “this is not a good sign.” The lightening flashed and my womb contracted and I moaned in pain. My midwife met us at the hospital and after I was checked in, the nurse performed a cervical check. I had dilated to 5 centimeters on the way to the hospital, and was firmly in active labor land. With the help of my midwife and husband I labored for 12 more hours with no further dilation. The contractions were coming on top of one another, and I could only cope if I stood in the shower and my husband and midwife took turns running the hot water over my body. After the 12 hour mark, about 48 hours since my my water had broken, the hospital staff wanted me to get pitocin. I discussed with my midwife and decided that I would not endure pitocin contractions without an epidural. So, first, they gave me the epidural and let me rest for a few hours, and then the pitocin began. At this point my midwife had been with me for almost 24 hours without rest, so we told her to go home and we would call her if things took a turn.

The epidural was very strong. I could not move my lower body at all. However, I knew it was critical that I change positions often, so I had all kinds of balls and devices and asked everyone to help reposition me every hour or so. And every two hours someone came in to do a cervical check. My husband and I waited with baited breath each time, expecting them to say things were not progressing enough and we would have to have a cesarean. But each time, by the grace of God I suppose, I had dilated just enough to satisfy the doctors. Baby and I were tolerating everything well with no signs of infection. If I wanted to keep going they said they would let me. 

At one point I fell asleep in the middle of playing a game with my husband. When I woke up my whole body was shaking and my teeth were chattering. He held my face close and said “Jazz, I think you’re in transition.” This information helped me to lock in and completely surrender, and just before midnight I was fully dilated. The doctor came in and told me it was time to push. We were so excited and my husband started to cry just from pure relief. But in the back of my mind I heard a voice say “I’m not ready to push.” 

The lights were turned low. Long story short, I pushed for 4 hours and 45 minutes, according to the hospital notes. They brought out a mirror so I could see what was happening. I swear the doctor said “just one more push” at least 25 times. In the last five minutes we all watched the monitors religiously. My baby’s heart rate dropped and the room went quiet. Suddenly there were a lot more providers in the room. The doctor said “I need you to push as hard as you can, and then I am going to ask you to push even without a contraction.” After pushing with the contraction, suddenly a nurse was on top of me pushing down on my belly as the doctor yelled to push as hard as I could and not to stop until he said so. The world swirled. Suddenly she was out and placed on my chest but only briefly as the doctor handed those silly scissors to my husband to cut the cord. As soon as he did, our baby was whisked away. I let out a pathetic cry: “My baby. Where is my baby?” over and over. The doctor told me were waiting for the placenta to deliver. When it did, I felt crazy relief. It kind of felt good! But still, I wailed for my baby. The doctor said I had torn a little, and he was going to stitch me up. Still no baby. Sam had been praying the rosary over me, but I asked him to go to our baby. The NICU was in the room, resuscitating her. When she came out, she was not breathing. Her apgar was 2. He walked over to her and he said her name, when she heard his voice, she came to, letting out a cry. The room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

They brought her back to me and laid her on my chest. I held this giant (8 and a half pounds!) being who felt so alien, and yet was mine and had been growing in my body for almost a year. I was afraid to touch her. Soon, the lights were turned on. Some providers came over to me and said that we had a shoulder dystocia, where the baby’s shoulder gets stuck behind the pubic bone. They also thought that the umbilical cord was pinched between her shoulder and the birth canal, causing her wacky heart rates. Our baby’s shoulder was injured, likely nerve damage that may last her whole life, and in the future I should opt to have cesareans – most providers would not take a chance on me anyway. I received all of this information in the first ten minutes after I had endured a grueling labor, 60 hours since my water had broken. I had not been allowed to eat or sleep, and the nurses kept forgetting to do a catheter on me.

I could write so much more, but I think I should wrap up here. Our daughter was a champion breastfeeder (thank you to this book, whose advice I followed instead of what the hospital tried to tell me, so I attribute our success to that book), and before we even left the hospital her injured arm was already showing signs of improvement. However, I sustained a bladder injury where I had to do a catheter on myself for 6 weeks postpartum until full bladder function returned. 

My husband was an amazing doula through this all (he read my doula books to prepare), but ultimately he was traumatized. He said he had never been so afraid in his life, and that was before our daughter was born not breathing, when he was more afraid than he knew he could be. He did some counseling for a while, and I think that helped a lot. I share this because I think sometimes we write off mens feelings when it comes to these traumatic events. The mother endured it, who cares about the father? But the father sometimes watches his wife tremble at the veil, and he feels helpless, as usually he is. That helpless feeling is typically what makes an event traumatic, instead of just challenging or very hard. Throughout it all, he displayed heroic virtue. He never abandoned me, or checked out, and persisted on very little sleep. His attention was completely on me. He also endured the hardest thing in his life. He watched the woman he loves, who he is supposed to protect, suffer for hours and hours. So I encourage you: pray not just for your own healing or the healing of mothers, but also pray for the healing of the men who were in the room when it happened. It used to be that we were surrounded by a circle of tender and wise women during these events, and now often the husband bears the weight of this witnessing and often he is alone. Holy Spirit, cover my husband and renew the hearts of your faithful. 

My husband and our sweet Seraphina, when she was just over an hour old.

I wish I could say I walked away relieved. And I guess for a time I did. When we returned home and my midwives visited, I told them I thought we made the right call. But as time went on and I lived in isolation for months after our move, those 60 hours revisited me every time I closed my eyes. I began to feel I had failed my daughter by trying to get her to come earlier. I felt that I failed her by not telling my midwives that first I wanted to go to bed, and reconsider transferring in the morning. I felt I failed her by getting an epidural. I failed by being a doula and not being able to have an unmedicated birth. I felt weak, and stupid, and ashamed. If I had been stronger, it wouldn’t have happened that way. I should have known, and I should have done better. I felt I had surrendered my autonomy and intuition to the “experts”, and as a consequence I sabotaged both me and my daughter. 

Three years later, I’m not sure which parts of the last paragraph are true. What I’ve come to realize is that it doesn’t matter at this point. I did everything differently in my second birth, and things still got messed up. Maybe that’s because of the trail I laid with with my first. Maybe my body just wasn’t “made for this.” Maybe suffering in birth is just my cross to carry. I felt that I had been emptied out by this birth, that my pride had been disassembled, and my true decrepit nature was revealed. So… therefore my second birth should go smoothly, I had learned my lesson — my next baby would “slide right out”, as many people said. But I still had a lot of ego left to let die.

In many ways, my second birth actually redeemed my first. My second birth is when I realized that sometimes you can do everything right, and still shit just happens. That was when I realized that the perfect birth isn’t a gift I can give at will, even if I can hope and pray for it – even if it is a good thing to desire, hope, and pray for. There is an element of luck that most people in the holistic circle don’t like to grapple with. That is the story I hope to tell next time.

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About three weeks after she was born, celebrating Father’s Day at Mass. Unbeknownst to onlookers, I was still in a lot of pain and on a catheter at this time — but I was absolutely obsessed with our baby.