My final baby, Piper, will be FOUR in two days. I figured it was probably time to finish this birth story I started typing in...checks notes...August 2017. I know. I don't remember this birth as well as I remember the first but but I figured I need to get it down. So here we go...this is the story of a scheduled c-section after an emergency c-section. I wish I had read more like this in the weeks leading up to November 2015. (If you want some context, here is big sister Ellerie's birth story.)
Nearly everything about my pregnancy with Piper was different than Ellerie's.
With Ellerie, I was anxious to be pregnant and took pregnancy tests for seven months until finally, one Saturday morning I woke up, crossed my fingers and finally saw a double line on pregnancy test. With Piper, I was laying on the couch while Ellerie napped and my husband Paul slept off a night shift. I sneezed and felt a tug in my stomach. "How odd" I thought. I remembered that sort of pain from my pregnancy with Ellerie but hadn't felt it since. I did the math... technically it was possible that I was pregnant... but seriously?
I rummaged in the bathroom for a leftover test, took it and stood in the bathroom shaking when the faint double line appeared. Then I chugged water and drove to the drug store to pick up a second test. This one was also positive. I used an app to determine her expected due date (Nov 4) and paced around the house until Paul woke up to tell him the news.
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With Ellerie, around 20 weeks, my OB told me that they had found CPCs in her brain during the anatomy scan. "It might mean nothing but it might also be a marker for some chromosome disorders." I was by myself in the office and I felt my vision tunnel into darkness as he kept talking. "Can you write this all down?" I remember asking. "I am not comprehending what you are saying and will need to tell my husband." A week later, in a very dark room, I watched silently as another doctor examined a more detailed ultrasound screen. "Everything looks fine. Aside from the CPCs I am seeing nothing abnormal." I let out most of the breath I had been holding and 20 weeks later, I let out the rest. With Piper, the 20 week anatomy scan was completely uneventful.
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With Ellerie, I had gestational diabetes that thankfully was managed by diet. With Piper, I passed my first glucose test. The only difference is that I was walking so much more my second pregnancy (those were my 10k a day fitbit days!) so that would be my suggestion if you had GD and want to try to avoid it the second time.
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With Ellerie, Paul was deployed for my entire third trimester. He was able to come home a week prior to the birth, see her arrival and then he left again for a month. With Piper, he was home. We were not at risk of him missing anything.
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So with all of those differences, why not? Why wouldn't this baby come early after two hours of natural labor? As soon as I knew I was pregnant I had wanted to attempt a VBAC. I was clear at all my appointments and each doctor I met with agreed to make it a priority. They were also clear that they wouldn't induce for a VBAC. I would need to go into labor on my own. (Challenge accepted.)
The pregnancy progressed normally and without any complications. I had frequent braxton hicks contractions starting around the 30th week. As my due date got closer, the contractions would come on nightly and with just a few weeks to go, I would even time them hoping (hoping so much) that this would really be it. I wanted to do this! I wanted to use the contraction timer app I had downloaded. I wanted to go into labor. I wanted to look at Paul and say "This is it! Time to go to the hospital."
But of course, my contractions would always stop. I would go to bed and wake up, painfree, hoping that instead this would be the day.
On my due date, Wednesday, November 4th, I had my 40 week appointment. My OB that day, who I had seen for most of my pregnancy, was my favorite. I trusted her and wanted so badly for her to be the doctor that delivered my baby. She checked me and said "I'm sorry but we are not even close." She said things were so not headed towards labor it wouldn't even be worth sweeping my membranes. She checked her calendar, looked at me and said, "I am here Friday. Want to schedule a C?" I took a breath.
In seconds all the scenarios flashed through my brain. I wanted a VBAC. I knew I could tell her I wanted to wait. But I was so scared. I didn't want to go through all the labor again and end up on an operating table. I was scared to schedule one. But I was more scared of ending up with one. "Yep." I said. "Schedule it."
I went home relieved to have an end date but also cautiously optimistic. 48 hours?! So much could change in 48 hours. I could go into labor! Everything could go fine!
Thursday night I remember sitting in my living room talking to my mom who was in town to watch Ellerie. My stomach was doing its tightening and releasing and I looked at her and said confidently..."I am sure she will be coming before we have to do a c-section."
Except, of course, she didn't. On Friday, early in the morning, Paul and I kissed Ellerie good-bye and drove to the hospital with a bag each in the trunk and a second carseat in the back. We walked into labor and delivery with that nervous energy that only comes the day you are about to meet a person you're going to love forever. It's the single greatest emotion in the whole world.
We got situated in a room and I started to cry. I was no longer sure this was the best idea but it was too late to do anything about it. My favorite OB came in as I wiped back tears. "I am sad I can't go into labor." I cried to her. "I know." She said. A nurse bustled around the room. "Mama," she directed at me, "this will not be like your first one. A scheduled one is much better, you'll see." Still crying, I smiled, and thanked her.
And then we were off. I think they pushed me on a bed into the OR... but I remember climbing up on to the table myself and leaning over my knees as the anesthesiologist (in training!) put the epidural in. I laid down on the table and, still weeping, explained to the few people at my head that last time I had done this I was so claustrophobic under the blue sheet. "Please," I practically begged, "keep it away from my face." They were so sweet and kind and fussed with the blue tarp until I said it was going to be okay. They spread my arms out, lightly velcroed them into place and began heating up air-filled pillows that kept my upper body warm. It was so, so comforting. I had shook violently on the table at my last c-section and now that I could see and felt warm, this was already a better situation.
Paul arrived at my head and it was time.
It took awhile to get in and get her out. I remember that was alarming...with Ellerie I felt like I was on the table only moments but this was taking much longer. Finally though, there was a baby. A BABY. A whole human existed in the space where she hadn't before. The second I heard the cry I felt overwhelming relief. I was warm. I was rested. I was clear-headed. I was going to be able to handle this. Instantly, I knew that this delivery and this post-partum season wasn't going to break me apart.
Paul brought her over and I got to hold her on my chest for a few minutes before they wrapped her up and my stomach was sewn back together. I laid on the table, chatted with the folks at my head and felt a quiet, calm bliss.
I was wheeled back into our room and got to hold my girl. She had hair! So much dark hair! It was a mystery. I looked around the room and took it all in. At this point, my first time around, I was so exhausted I had stopped making memories. It was so fantastic to be alert! "Were there lights on last time?" I asked Paul. "What?" he said. "I remember everything being dark at the hospital with Elle." "No," he said, eyeing me strangely, "it was the same."
The next few days we existed in our well-lit baby bubble. Ellerie came to visit. Our families came. I placed headband after headband on Piper's sweet head.
And most importantly, Piper and I learned to nurse. The first time around I hadn't known anything except hearing over and over that "breastfeeding was painful." This time around I rejected that entire idea. I wasn't going to feel any pain. If she latched and it wasn't completely pain-free, I carefully removed her mouth and we started again. I squeezed extra breast milk out after each nursing session and made sure to keep my skin hydrated and healed. I never chaffed, chapped or bleed - all sensations that defined my first five weeks of motherhood. I spent our early nursing days taking deep breaths and relaxing my shoulders, neck and face. When the lactation consultant came in to see how things were going I told her great! "But," I added, "If we need to supplement because she is loosing weight or whatever, I am fine with that." "Nope, we don't do that anymore." she said. "It was too much pressure on the mamas." I nodded and thought "you don't say..."
And that was that! It wasn't a VBAC. But it was the most healing and wonderful second birth experience I could have imagined.
I am writing this four year later and I am still crying as I type. The emotions are so real. I have kids now. Amazing little kids that read books and draw pictures and tell jokes and do the monkey bars. I know that how they got here is just a tiny paragraph in the giant book that they are each writing of their own lives. But I am glad to have written my version of this story down anyway.
Ellerie and Piper...I wouldn't change a single thing. Every single day is a better day with you both. I love you.
