Who the hell knew that life as I knew it would change forever? I mean I know people tell you that ALL the time, especially when you get serious about planning for a baby, but come on! I expected life to change but no one told me HOW it would change. Things like experiencing the magic of feeling the very first baby kick or having my husband talk to my very large pregnant belly or even the joy of telling our family and friends that we were finally pregnant. All of those were wonderful changes but what about the not so wonderful changes? No one told me that you could be winded from being kicked from the inside, that sleep would be a luxury even before the baby comes, or that you could puke so hard you would pee yourself… in public.
All of those little things, while surprising to me, were nothing compared to the journey of actually becoming a mother. While I had many plans and I had envisioned my birth going my way SO many times, I really wasn’t prepared for what birth would do to me. I have never in my life felt so raw and vulnerable and helpless as a woman, yet so strong and empowered and instinctual. The transformation of birth for me was how I imagine a phoenix must feel during its final stages before it burns to ashes and begins to rise again. I was changing from the person I was, into an entirely different person and that transformation required fire and pain, the kind of pain that causes you to laugh in the face of failure. Imagine your soul has a voice, and that voice is the overwhelming, all consuming sound of a lions rawer. That was the person birth was turning me into, but I didn’t know that while I was going through the fire. The burning stage of a Phoenix, where the unknown and self doubt creeps in and all you have to go on is faith… that stage, that was fucking hard.
Patience, as I learned was also just as hard. Little miss moons “guess date” was suppose to be August 21st and since that was also the day of the “Great American Eclipse” I thought it was the perfect day for her to make her arrival. But apparently my uterus was just too cozy of a place to leave, especially since she stayed in for another 13 days!! You want to talk about feeling like a whale! I felt like I was a whale who ate another whale. I was done being pregnant and at a point where I was willing to try anything. I tried spicy food, sex, walking, acupuncture, some strange homeopathic stuff my doula gave me, more sex, more walking, jumping up and down, meditating, talking to my belly, castor oil and more god damn walking. I was determined that I would get this baby out on my own, I did NOT want to be medically induced and I was willing to walk 500 miles if I had to. It was more like 10km a day but you get the point.
Finally, I started getting twinges that felt like more than just poop cramps (don’t judge, castor oil is a bitch) and I started getting excited. This was on Thursday, August 31st, 4 days before her actual birthday. My husband noticed right away and he also started getting really excited. We double checked that we had everything packed and I let my Doula know what was going on. She encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing and she would check in with me in a couple of hours. To our disappointment my waves came and went like the ocean and eventually slowed down which did allow me to sleep through them. Que Friday morning when they picked back up again and I spent the whole day timing my waves that were 3 to 5 minutes apart and lasting 30 to 60 seconds long with no real progression. Despite the walking and more castor oil, along with a million other things I did that day, they slowed down again around 10pm leaving me discouraged and exhausted. I went to bed knowing that I would need as much sleep as I could get if I were to go through a 3rd day like this before meeting this stubborn little one. At 1am I woke up not knowing if I was sweating (it was a hot summer) or if I peed a little in my pants. It turns out my water was leaking but it wasn’t like the movies, there was no gush of water all over the bed. It was honestly so little that a genuinely thought it might even just be watery discharge. When I went to the bathroom, I saw my mucus plug in the toilet and I knew that I was getting closer. I called the hospital and they advised me to go back to bed and try to get as much sleep as I could before coming in. So that morning (after not sleeping from pure excitement) we grabbed breakfast and went to the hospital. We had a wonderful student doctor who checked me and confirmed that it was amniotic fluid I was leaking and that what I had been feeling the past 2 days was in fact contractions. I had the choice at that point to either be induced or to leave and keep trying to induce stronger labour on my own until I hit the 24-hour mark (since my water “broke”), which is when I would have to return back. So off we went to do MORE walking and a lot of ball bouncing. By 10pm we headed back to the hospital, feeling a little defeated that I couldn’t get my body to build up stronger contractions on its own yet still hopeful of what was to come. I chose to be induced with oxytocin rather than having them fully break my water at that point (for my own reasons) and that is when the metaphorical burning of the phoenix began.
Keep in mind at this point I was the talk of the labour and delivery ward. I came with high expectations on my Birth Plan, which included using Hypnosis and words like “waves” instead of contractions. On paper I was basically either a nurse’s nightmare or a “nice change of pace” and it would be a gamble which nurse I got. Either way I knew how to win them over... I brought cupcakes and rice crispy squares, and lots of them! I ended up with a SAINT of a nurse, who to this day I still praise every time I tell my birth story. Her name is Corrine and she was the nicest person I have ever met, and I am so grateful to have had her with me along this journey. She took such great care of me and made sure to use the correct Hypnobabies terms and was eager to learn all about it. My transformation into mother hood started with women like Corrine. Caring and maternal, ready to be my guide as I struggled through the ups and downs of early labour and the frustration I had with my own body as it had not progressed passed 3cm in almost 9 hours. The experiences I had with all of the staff, along with my Doula, my friends (Thank you Mama Bear and Papa Bear!) and my amazing husband at each point in my labouring journey, were small mile markers along my hike to top of the metaphorical mother mountain. Feeling defeated yet loved by everyone around me, it was time for shift change… let’s just say I should have saved some cupcakes for this lady. She was so awful my Doula almost asked for a different nurse. Things got a little fuzzy around this time but there was a moment of panic when I was alone in the shower and my waters finally broke on their own, and boy was that a shock to the system! My husband was napping (ladies I told him he could, calm down) and he woke up to me screaming and not knowing what was happening. It was the one and only moment I saw him look white. Which in all fairness I could understand; exhausted, screaming wife, blood, startled awake… I mean I get it.
After that it felt like time sped up but at the pace of quick sand. My waves started coming stronger and closer and I knew it would be time to push soon. By the time I hit transition I said those 4 little words that I was told I would say, “I can’t do this”. I was petrified of an epidural and thought that would have to be my next step because I didn’t know how I could go on any longer. My incredible Doula looked at me, wiped my tears from my eyes with my head in her hands and says “you ARE doing it! And you can try other options first, you don’t need to be afraid”. It was the beginning of believing in myself, and also the beginning of being super high on the gas! My nurse checked me and told me to call the doctor when I feel like pushing, and no sooner did she walk out of the room did my body decide it was time to push. “Candase are you pushing?!” I hear my Doula say with excitement and concern. I replied with a “NO…*grunting uncontrollably*”. I literally had no idea my body was pushing, instinctually it was doing it on its own. Which by the way is SUPER cool! I thought pushing would mean that the end was near and I would soon meet our baby boy or girl (we didn’t find out the gender!). Little did I know this would the biggest test of my life, a test that took 2.5 hours even though it felt like 10.
We tried multiple positions, but ultimately the only way she would come out was laying on my back. This was due to scar tissue I have around my cervix from a previous operation to remove a section of my cervix. She however was in a lot of distress and we had NICU waiting in the room to potentially take our little one as soon as she was earth side. I knew there was the potential that she wasn’t going to be okay, but all I could focus on in that moment was doing the one job I could do, which was push. Let me tell you, the feeling of having a baby sitting in your birth canal is like no other. It felt so strange and wrong and foreign yet I knew we were sooooo flippen close! As she started crowning my incredible Doula grabbed my phone and started taking pictures. Let me tell you, while I was not ready to see those photos until about a month later, I am so grateful to have those pictures now. Any time I am feeling down on myself and those thoughts of doubt seep through, all I have to do is look at those photos and think “I DID THAT, my body physically DID THAT!”. Those photos remind me that I can do anything and that I am a thousand times stronger than I think I am. As her head was coming out, I guess I tore, but honestly even without an epidural I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t experience a ring of fire or anything like that. There was some debate on whether or not her shoulders were “stuck” but shortly afterward she came out. Thank the Lord or the Universe or the Goddesses, what ever you believe in, but she was able to have delayed cord clamping and didn’t have to be rushed away! However, she didn’t cry right away, and honestly, I didn’t notice. All I could focus on was “I did it!” and the fact that in a split second I watched my stomach go from the size of a beach ball to this deflated sack that made me feel like I was wearing someone else’s skin suite. I know, not a pretty thought but it’s true and I couldn’t look away.
Then there was THAT moment, the one I had dreamt about since before we even talked about having kids, the moment I heard that first cry. *Insert ugly cry here*. This was the moment I became a mother, and let me tell you it was more than I had ever imagined. All those months of not knowing if I could even have children, then getting the green light from my oncologist that we could start trying, to the moment that stick turned pink for the first time ever! The first time I got to hear her heart beat, or the first time the ultrasound actually looked like a little baby and not just a blob. The special way I announced to my husband, and our family that the wait was finally over. The many times I spent wrapped around that toilet puking my guts out, the amount of sleepless nights and karate kicks from the inside. All of those moments led me to this one, the moment we finally met you. You were perfect! You had my nose and fit so perfectly in my arms. I was afraid to squish you but I was also afraid to put you down. I have never known love could be so intense, in fact I don’t know if I ever truly knew how to love until I met you.
I thought I loved your father, I thought that there was no way I could love another person as much as I loved him, but I was wrong. The truth is, watching him transform into a father in that moment is something I will cherish forever. We didn’t know the gender ahead of time, and even though we would have been happy with a healthy baby, we both really wanted a girl. The moment our Doula said “Chris do you want to tell her what you had?!” will forever be etched into my soul as one of life’s greatest moments. With the longest pause in existence, he started to choke up…through tears he cried “IT’S A GIRL!”. To this day I can’t relive that moment without tears swelling in my eyes, it is a memory I hope to be able to recall on my death bed.
My Birth Story will look different, some people may have similarities but at the end of the day each birth is unique and different. Each journey into motherhood is a tremendous one, no matter how it’s done. My birth did not go how I had planned, and I was very disappointed in my body for not being able to create strong enough contractions on its own. But I had to learn to have peace with that and grace with myself as well as gratitude for a healthy baby (when so man things could have gone wrong). I am not defective or broken, I am human and thanks to other incredible humans I had a beautiful healthy 9lb 2oz baby girl. I hope each and every mother owns her story and doesn’t feel shame around any part of it. We are all incredible human beings and whether you had an unmedicated vaginal birth, an epidural, a C-Section, Adoption, Step parents etc. Please never feel like you aren’t “mom enough” in any area of your story. Love your story and your own journey, climb that mountain, transform into a new phoenix and embrace the wildness within you because you are a mother… and we are bad asses!
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