Facing My Fears in Pregnancy

I have this repeated dream that I am lying strapped down to an operating table, people are moving quickly around me but ignoring my cries of pain. I pass out and its the end of me. The next thing I know I'm looking at myself from above the operating table. I'm gone and my husband is crying. Then I wake up and realize I should be laying in a different position or I should prop myself up a little more and my sciatica pain goes away at least for 10 to 15 minutes before the next position becomes extremely uncomfortable. The further I got along in pregnancy with my son, the more of a pain in the ass it was to sleep, this is happening again.

When I was about 7 months pregnant with my son, I fell on ice in the parking lot of where I worked. I was walking out to my car on my lunch break and bam, my head and hip hit the ice. I completely freaked out, screaming. Thankfully some others who were clearing ice off their car heard me fall and came over to help me up. Our receptionist closed down the office and took me to the hospital to make sure the baby was ok, because I was sure I was going to get a bruise on the side of my stomach from the way I fell.

I'm lying there on the ultrasound table, begging the ultrasound tech to let me sit up for a moment. My husband is sitting next to me, I'm not feeling too hot, I beg one more time for her to let me sit up, then I pass out and the ultrasound tech isn't sure what is happening, the last thing I hear is "We need a nurse in here". Then a bit later when I came too, a nurse has me partially sitting up telling the ultrasound tech not to have me laying flat on my back while performing an ultrasound that it cuts off my vena cava nerve. The tech was clueless and dumbfounded and  after I went home I wanted to punch her for her ignorance. What do they teach you in school about giving and performing ultrasounds on certain patients that might have certain needs? Apparently nothing, the patient doesn't matter.

Then of course you have everything that went wrong during my labor and birth with my son. I went to child birth classes to do it without drugs. I of course was admitted early due to pr-eclampsia and was in the hospital 3 days before they induced me to have J Myster a week before I was due. I was excited about being induced because I just wanted it all to be over with. Pregnancy is not so kind to my body. I wanted to be one of those women, who have a baby go home with them in their arms and days later they are feeling like their normal self again. I didn't want to be laid up in bed for weeks recovering from a surgery.  I've had major surgery before and its no peach.

So of course when I get in the bathtub and my contractions are feeling milder and more manageable, I think its time to get out because surely I should be in more pain than this. I welcomed the pain until I couldn't welcome it anymore, I gave in to the epidural which left me laboring in bed instead of on my birth ball where I wanted. 18 hours of excruciating pain and feeling like less of a woman for taking the drugs, it was either time to push or call it quits and when I only dilated to 8 and a half cm, and two hours went by and I was going no further, and too completely exhausted to object to a c-section, I just gave in. I let the doctors do what needed to be done. I had no energy to push anyway, after all when you are on an epidural they don't really allow you to get a big mac when you are starving and hungry and need the energy to push. Ice chips for 18 hours just don't really help. If I could do it all again differently I would just to see if I could do it. If it ended the same way in a c-section, then I guess that's the way it should have ended. I was told early on that I had a small narrow pelvis not ideal for natural birth, but I really wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt and I'm actually proud I made it to 8 1/2 cm. I won't even get to do that this time.

So this time living in a town that doesn't do v-bacs, I am forced once again to overcome major surgery with at least a 6 week recovery time being laid up on a couch and having someone fetch my baby for me. I feel robbed. I've researched home birth, but there is no way my paranoid husband would let me birth in any other place but a hospital. I'll take the 18 hours of labor all over again, if it meant I could function a few days later. The only thing this time that will be better, is I won't be completely exhausted after having a c-section and having to turn guests away just so I could sleep. But still, part of me feels robbed and like less of a woman for having to have this done.

The good thing is, it doesn't make me less of a mother. I have an amazingly smart loving toddler and despite my mistakes as a parent (like all parents make) I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job.

By the way, look how huge I'm getting! HELP!

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Posted in: Birth,pregnancy