One Baby, Please, Hold the Sugar: A Birth Story
One baby, please, hold the sugar is my daughter’s birth story told from her perspective. These words are her own and don’t necessarily express my personal views or opinions. I welcome all women to share their birth stories! Please contact me if you’d like to publish your birth story on The Incomplete Guide to Parenting. If you are interested in my doula or lactation services, please visit my website Disclaimer: No artificial sweeteners here I’ve gone back and forth about putting my story out into the world. I never wanted to scare anyone, and so when asked, I would come up with a glossed over, toned down version of my story, the “polite” version. But I recently read a birth story that was such a blatant bunch of sugar-coated bull**** that I laughed out loud. I felt like it skirted over the gory details to maintain that polite, perfect facade. The thing is, those kinds of stories hurt me (and many others no doubt) because while I know they’re not honest, there’s a part of me that questions it. Was my experience so out of the ordinary? Why do all these women talk about their births like it was a beautiful dream come true while I still have nightmares about mine? I catch myself feeling resentful towards those moms, and that’s not fair of me either. But it’s how I feel, and I know I’m not the only one. This story is not one of rainbows and candy-coated truths. This story is real and raw, and if that’s not something you can or want to hear, I suggest you move along. I tell my story the way it is because I owe it to myself and to every other woman out there who wonders if she alone has suffered. I hope that others might find solace in knowing that they are not alone and that they might find the strength to talk about their own authentic experiences. Birth: Early Labor I went into labor on a quiet Saturday morning in October. It was 2 am when I awoke to mild contractions. I was five days past my due date and had been impatient for the last couple of weeks, so I eagerly began timing them and saw that they were about 10 minutes apart. I didn’t want to get my hopes up – I’d had Braxton Hicks a few times already. So I tried to relax and go back to sleep, but the contractions continued. Around 6 am, my husband stirred a bit beside me, so I took the opportunity to tell him that I believed labor had started. We were both well prepared for a long haul. I’ve watched and learned from my mom’s and sisters’ pregnancies and knew that, especially for first-time moms, labor could take a while to get going. So we went about our business as usual. I showered and made pancakes. I almost would have forgotten that I was in labor if I didn’t get a little twinge in my back every ten minutes. My mom – who’s also my doula and lactation consultant – had an event to go to that afternoon. She offered to skip it, but I waved her off. I’m sure nothing will happen before tonight at the earliest, I said. Oh, boy was I wrong. Birth: Active Labor It was so sudden. I was taking a bath. One minute I felt relaxed, and the next, my body was just in agony. Contractions – real contractions, not those mild early labor contractions – feel white-hot and twisted, like someone’s wringing your organs as you burn from the inside out. I was crying, and I grabbed my phone to text my husband to come be with me. He timed my next few contractions, and we realized they were 2-4 minutes apart. I was so prepared for a drawn-out labor, but here I was only 10 hours from the first contraction and suddenly in active labor. The shock of it all had me feeling whiplashed. It was barely noon. Should we be going to the hospital? It didn’t seem logical. We called my mom so she could drive with us. She reminded me that I could be expected to labor outside the hospital if I wasn’t dilated enough to be admitted. I hesitated, but at this point, I was barely speaking and was spending a lot of time doubled over crying, so we went. “Contractions feel white-hot and twisted, like someone’s wringing your organs as you burn from the inside out.” The 40-minute drive to the hospital was not pleasant. My contractions were now just one minute apart, lasting for a minute or less. I contracted approximately 20 times in the back seat of a small sedan, crying into my husband’s shoulders while my mom rubbed my back. Being in labor anywhere sucks, but it somehow sucks even worse when you’re confined to a small space. When we finally got there, I was desperate to get in the tub as I had planned for a water birth. I didn’t want an epidural, so being in the water was crucial for me. And what a world of a difference it made. I was still contracting hard and fast, but it was so much more manageable. Birth: Transition My midwife met us upon arrival. She’d watched me through a contraction and admitted me but didn’t check to see how dilated I was. After laboring in the tub a bit, I wanted to know what kind of progress we were making, if any, so I asked her to check me. I was 9.5 centimeters dilated, and the baby was in the -1 station. I was shocked. It was about 1:30 pm. I’d been in active labor for less than 2 hours. I started to feel hopeful that our baby would be born quickly. (Haha that didn’t happen) My water had yet to break, and I was impatient, so I eventually asked my midwife to break
When Life Gives You Lemons
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. What if the lemons are rotten or too sour to make tasty lemonade? Or if you don’t have the stamina to process the instructions to create said lemonade? I entered my 40’s feeling young and vibrant, only to have the wind knocked out of my sails due to devastating life events. Follow along with the previous blogs to understand the whole story. Starting off this decade, I have a 3rd husband, seven children, a dying mother, and my 13-year-old becomes very ill. What appears to be a persistent cold turned into a sinus infection, which seems like no big deal at the time. With the strongest of antibiotics, my son continues to be ill and wakes up one morning with a swollen eye. The short end of the story is he was suffering from an epidural abscess. We stayed for two weeks in a children’s hospital while they tried to figure out what germ infiltrated his body and what the best course of action would be. It was scary. Not Enough of Me The day we were shuttled to Philadelphia, I was bringing my mom home from a month-long hospital stay. She was still battling many cancers, and this time culminated in her having her spleen removed. It was a very long month of ups and downs in her health. I honestly didn’t know if she would ever come home again. Keep in mind, I am an only child, and she is a widow X2. It was challenging to find someone to care for a very sick mom at home when I abruptly had to leave her and be by my sons’ bedside in Philly. My other children were also in need of supervision and feeling the stress of my absence. Primarily, they were caring for each other. My youngest was 20 months and still breastfeeding, so this wasn’t very easy. The oldest had already moved out, so it left my 17- & 16-year old to care for the 11, 4- & 20-month baby. The teens were homeschooling, so it didn’t affect their missing presence in a classroom. It was easy enough to catch up on studies once the order returned to our home. My husband went back and forth and brought the kids occasionally to stay with us at the Ronald McDonald House when possible. Thank God for the mom tribe I had established over the years. Friends that would drop everything to help out whenever available. They pitched in, brought meals, and shuttled kids when necessary. Are You Kidding? More Lemons While at my mother’s bedside and days before the trip in an ambulance with my very sick son, my oldest daughter informed me that she was tying the knot AND converting her religion-to Mormonism. She wasn’t announcing the wedding for next week, month, or year, she was getting hitched in a few days. I was dumbfounded as they had been together for only a few months, so I assume she is pregnant but later discovers she is not. I explain that I cannot be there and wish she would wait for a better time as well as honestly reconsider her religious choice. As any adult-ish child would do, she cannot hear me and proceeds to do what she set out to do, without any of her family in attendance. I had a hard time processing who came first in the pecking order of chaotic necessity. It was hard to make lemonade out of this series of events. I decided to be there for my son and mother while wishing my daughter well, from a distance. Staying in the Ronald McDonald house and praying, my son and mom will be ok was all I could handle at this time. Facetime wasn’t a thing in 2008, so any communication with my children or mother was via phone. I kept up with the goings-on back home as much as humanly possible, but it seemed everyone was going off the deep end. I was learning things that could’ve broken me to the core, including that my oldest was newly pregnant (unbeknownst to her at the wedding time). No Freaking Way; Can’t Make Lemonade My son spent his 14th birthday in St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospital and eventually came home with a PICC line and nurse visits throughout the summer. He continued to have sinus infections and later needed more surgery, but overall did recover well. In the fall that same year, that same son, the extreme sports kid, decided to jump off a trampoline with a snowboard on his feet into a pile of leaves, while my 5-year-old watched. I’m sure I don’t need to paint much of a picture of the outcome. Two broken elbows, a stay in the local hospital, and a chance for another surgery. I should’ve played the lottery that year! My gray hairs quadrupled, andI’m still in awe that I didn’t jump off a cliff. That same summer (3 months after their wedding), my newly pregnant oldest daughter and her new Mormon husband came on a camping trip with us, so we could get to know the new son in law. It was clear to me that the relationship was abusive, almost instantly. After a heart to heart with my pregnant offspring, she left him. While displacing a few kids to fit my oldest back home, her siblings create a room for their sister and nephew-to-be. Being a single mom wasn’t a terrible thing with a family like ours. None of us would let her and the baby suffer. Incidentally, the father of my first grandchild has never seen, cared for in any way, or inquired about his child. Maybe listening to your parents has some merit! Losing a Parent is Like Nothing Else Entering my 40’s caring for a very sick mother and many children under 20 was another hell to go through. We all know our parents are going to die someday, but it always seems so far off. There is little thought
