I am so blessed to be able to announce that we have added a second child to our family! After trying to conceive while breastfeeding, a complete molar pregnancy and two chemical pregnancies, the past nine months of pregnancy after loss have been incredibly challenging. But we made it, and in this post I am going to share with you my 2nd natural hospital birth story.
Pregnancy after loss, especially after recurrent loss, is a whole topic on it’s own that I will address in another post at some point in the future. For today, I will be focusing specifically on my 2nd natural hospital birth.
Update: Read my post on pregnancy after recurrent loss here.
To read the story of my natural hospital birth with my first daughter, check out this post. That birth experience was so special and really my dream birth. My 2nd natural hospital birth was very different, although still a positive experience overall.
Whenever I used to hear moms say that each pregnancy and labor can be so different, I realize now that I didn’t really understand just how different they can be. I feel as though my two birth experiences happened to two separate people because of how drastically different they were in many ways.
Both births had their positives and negatives, and I hope that the combination of my two birth stories encourages some mama that natural birth – and birth in general – can happen in a variety of ways and be a positive experience regardless.
So let’s dive in. This is my 2nd natural hospital birth story …
The End of Pregnancy and the Beginning of Labor
In contrast to the end of my pregnancy with my first daughter five years prior, I was so ready to be done with this pregnancy. This pregnancy was very hard for me, somewhat physically but especially emotionally, and I felt like it would never end.
It didn’t help that I began having consistent Braxton Hicks at 37 weeks. For the last three weeks of my pregnancy, I had multiple false starts to what I knew may or may not be labor. It was frustrating and just made the whole thing seem even more endless.
So after a couple weeks of discouragement (along with lots of pineapple, dates, red raspberry leaf tea, walking, squats and stretching), I decided I would try the midwives brew on my due date.
However, I did not end up needing that little cocktail because my water broke a little before 8 in the morning on my due date. Due to the detachment I struggled with throughout the pregnancy, I could not really feel any excitement over labor starting but I was profoundly relieved.
I also knew exactly what I wanted to do that day. I had known ahead of time two things about how I adamantly wanted to handle my labor: 1) I wanted to be left alone and stay home as long as I felt I was comfortable there; and 2) I was going to walk this baby out.
So, after a somewhat stressful phone call with a nurse and subsequently with a midwife who were pressuring me to come to the hospital sooner rather than later to get antibiotics for my +GBS status, I ate some breakfast and started doing laps around our house. Up one flight of stairs and down another, round and round for a couple of hours.
My mom and I also took a walk in the neighborhood and my cramping began to feel more like trackable contractions during that walk.
I really believe that all the walking and stair-climbing I did in early labor are what allowed me to have a substantially shorter labor than my first. With my first labor, I was afraid of using up too much energy and only went on one relatively short walk in early labor. I think if I had done more walking, my 37-hour labor could have been shortened.
This time around, I had been told so many times by other moms and my midwives how important walking is in labor and I knew it could speed things up.
I really needed this because the midwife was also pressuring me that I had to deliver within 12 hours of my water breaking because of the GBS. She said that I would need to have my labor augmented with Pitocin if I did not deliver soon enough. I was determined not to let that happen.
So I walked. And walked. And walked. I walked as the pain intensified. I did stretching lunges on the stairs through contractions. I kept slowly inching down the hall when it got hard to walk through the contractions.
Now this is where the feeling of labor took a completely different path than my first labor. Initially, labor started almost the same as with my first labor. My water broke, and I gradually began to feel very mild cramping that I could not call contractions for the first couple of hours.
With my first labor, I never felt like I could really track my contractions and they didn’t really feel like how contractions had been described to me. They were not nearly as painful as I had expected and they had vague beginnings and endings.
With this labor, my cramping did eventually turn into trackable contractions and they felt like extremely painful period cramps that escalated as I got into active labor.
Going to the Hospital
There came a point when I saw a bit of blood when I used the restroom and right around then I began to feel zoned out. That zoned-out feeling is how I knew it was time to go to the hospital with my first.
When my mom said she thought we should leave for the hospital, my head cleared just enough to agree with her. So I told my husband it was time to head to the hospital.
Almost simultaneous with this announcement to my husband, my contractions became too painful to talk or do anything through. Once outside, I stood beside the car waiting for a contraction to pass and then climbed in and we were off to the hospital.
As is typical, my contractions did slow down on the ride to the hospital and during the check-in process. However, they picked back up pretty quickly once we were in our delivery room.
My experience with the nurses at this hospital was not nearly the exceptionally pleasant experience that it was with my first labor when we lived in another state. The nurse who was primarily attending me never even greeted me when I came into the delivery room. When she did speak to me, there was very little effort on her part to convey any sort of empathy or kindness.
If this had been my first labor, the whole experience would have been awful. However, because it was not my first labor and because I just wanted to be left to myself anyway, the lack of consideration and attention from the nurses did not bother me.
Soon after we arrived in the delivery room, another nurse said she needed to check my dilation. For some reason, I did not want to be checked, but she insisted that they needed to know my dilation. So she checked me and said that I was 7 centimeters dilated.
I was pleased with that, but I also was not nearly as concerned about being a certain number as I had been with my first labor. I knew that dilation happens in its own unpredictable timing and any given number would not actually tell me how much longer labor would last.
After this, the other nurse started my IV and administered the antibiotics.
I spent the next several hours swaying through contractions while my husband applied counter-pressure to my back. Even though I did not really have much back labor, the counter-pressure still helped to reduce the pain a little bit.
I will take a little detour here to say how much I appreciate my husband’s support throughout this labor. With my first labor, we had a doula who was absolutely wonderful, and she was my primary support throughout labor. This time around, we knew our medical bills would be much higher and did not feel we should spend the money on a doula.
Read here how having a birth doula helped me.
Throughout my pregnancy I worried that my husband would not know how to support me during labor since he didn’t have to do much of the supporting work during our first labor. But he made a wonderful birth partner and I cannot express how much I appreciate his sacrificial service to me during labor.
We arrived at the hospital sometime around 12:30 pm and my husband had not had time to eat lunch before we left. From the time we arrived, we both kept saying he should go get some lunch. But every time he started to leave, I would have a contraction and didn’t feel I could get through it without him.
I also wasn’t sure how fast this labor would progress and I was afraid he might actually miss the birth if he left the hospital.
So my poor husband never did get to eat lunch. But he stayed strong for me just the same.
Unpredictable Progress
I think it was sometime around 4 or 4:30 pm when I felt like I might be getting close to pushing. Although I was not pushing yet, I was starting to feel some of that rectal pressure the nurse kept warning me to tell her about.
I told the nurse I felt like I might be close to pushing, so she had me get back in bed so she could check my dilation again. As she started to lay the bed flat, I had a contraction and laying flat felt horribly painful.
In response to my, “No, no, no! Up, up, up!” the nurse quickly reversed directions and inclined the back of the bed again to wait out the contraction. Once it passed, she laid the bed flat again and checked me. I was 8 1/2 centimeters.
For a split second, I felt discouraged, wondering why I had only progressed 1 1/2 centimeters in roughly 4 hours. I had continued to stand and sway that entire 4 hours, knowing that my contractions would be less painful, and assuming they would be less productive, if I laid down. And sitting on the birth ball was just too painful during contractions.
However, I suddenly realized how exhausted I was and knew this could also slow things down. I was also in desperate need of a break from the pain. So I decided staying in the bed might ease the contractions so that I could try to get some rest and possibly progress in the process.
So I laid there in a semi-reclined position and slept for a minute or two at a time in between contractions. For some reason, I looked at the clock every time I woke up to another excruciating contraction, so I knew that they were only a couple of minutes apart.
I suppose the clock became my focal point. I know making the clock your focal point is not advised during labor (or any kind of waiting game for that matter), but it worked for me. I was not really frustrated by the amount of time passing or not passing. I just wanted to know how long I had been sleeping for some reason. It gave me something to think about besides the pain.
At this point the pain was almost unbearable. I was not even moaning through the contractions anymore. I was completely silent and still aside from rocking my head back and forth. As though my brain just knew that no amount of moaning was going to ease this intense feeling.
I was trying to think of something, anything, to just make the pain stop. I knew I could bear it if it would be over soon, but I didn’t know how much longer this would last. I knew it was likely too late for an epidural but asked myself if I would get one if I could. The thought of getting an epidural scared me more than the pain, so the answer was no.
After this conversation with myself, I realized all I could do – and the best thing to do – was to focus my mental energy on making progress through the pain. Despite how uncomfortable I was during contractions, I began mentally reciting variations of the affirmations I had listened to during pregnancy, hoping to make the contractions more effective.
I am relaxed. I am open. Let’s bring this baby down.
When you are preparing for natural birth, you will read many times over what a powerful effect the brain and emotions have on labor progression.
Read my post on how to prepare for natural birth here.
Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth is an invaluable book I read while I was preparing for natural birth with my first daughter and I read parts of it again while preparing for this birth. She tells stories of women whom she has seen change the course of their labor by how they focus their thoughts or what words they speak. This is because how we choose to think and talk can alter how we feel which effects how well our bodies respond to and work with the labor process.
I did not feel especially relaxed through the painful contractions, but I chose to envision my cervix relaxing and easily opening to support what my body was trying to do. I cannot say this made things feel any better or go easier, but my positive affirmations, along with getting some rest, definitely progressed my labor. And, as I kept reminding myself, progress was the goal rather than comfort.
After I had been laying in the bed for somewhere around an hour and a half, the nurse came in and checked my dilation again. She announced that I was fully dilated and could push whenever I felt the urge.
I was a little surprised I had finished progressing from simply laying in bed, despite the fact that I had hoped the rest would help. However, I was not feeling the urge to push and knew that I needed to get out of bed to get my body ready and willing to push.
The entire time I was in bed, I felt extremely tired, almost as though I had been drugged, and I still do not know why I felt so tired. But because I was feeling so incredibly tired, and because I knew the pain would intensify when I got out of bed, it took me a few minutes to talk myself into getting up.
More than anything I wanted to stay in that bed. But I knew the goal. The goal was to get this baby out. And I had to get out of bed to do that. So I finally forced myself out of the bed and stood beside it leaning into the contractions once again.
Time to Push
It took a few minutes, but shortly after getting out of bed, I began to gradually feel the urge to push. It was not very strong at first, but I tried to consciously push with the urge to move the process along and then I felt it more.
I told the nurse I was pushing and she seemed to take her sweet time getting the midwife. Or perhaps she had called the midwife and the midwife was with another patient, I’m not sure.
Whatever the case, my husband was getting concerned because I was standing and no one was there to catch a baby. He kept urging the nurse to do something to ensure the baby wasn’t going to fall on the floor.
Meanwhile, I was in my own world of pain and felt completely incapable of doing anything. My bowels were busy making room for baby and I felt powerless to prevent the embarrassment and mess because I was in too much pain to walk to the bathroom. I apologized to the nurse who was surprisingly understanding given her previous lack of empathy.
My husband kept insisting something be done to prevent the baby from landing on the floor and the nurse finally told me I had to get on the bed. I did not feel it was possible for me to move onto the bed in that state. But once again, I knew I had to. So, somehow, I did.
I positioned myself on my knees while holding onto the back of the bed and the midwife arrived shortly thereafter. She and several nurses got themselves situated behind me and she began coaching me to sit back and down into the pushes.
At first I was holding back because this felt so different than my first labor. I did not feel tightness or pain while pushing my first daughter out. But this felt tight, like my body was not quite ready to push the baby out. I was afraid of pushing too quickly and tearing, so I resisted in an attempt to slow it down.
But my nurse, reverting back to her unempathetic standard of care, asked me in a rather irritated tone why I wasn’t pushing. I told her it felt tight and I was afraid of tearing. I’m not sure if it was her or another nurse who responded telling me that just because it felt tight did not mean I would tear. That was actually encouraging to me and made me feel like it was okay to push again.
However, during this short time of pushing on my knees (maybe only 5 minutes), one of the nurses had been trying to get a reading on my baby’s heartrate and she couldn’t while I was in this position. So the midwife told me I had to either get the baby out with the next push or I would have to flip over onto my side so they could get a reading on her heartrate.
I pushed hard but I couldn’t get her out yet, so I was told I had to flip over. Another seemingly impossible feat with a baby between my legs. And yet, once again, I somehow managed it. It’s amazing what you can do in labor when it feels impossible. I had only begun to learn that at this point.
Getting Baby Out
Once I was on my side, the nurse was able to get a reading on my baby’s heartrate … and it had dropped. The midwife told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to get this baby out now.
It felt impossible to push something the size of a grapefruit out of a part of my body that did not feel like it was opening nearly that wide. I was so very tired. It was going to hurt. I would probably tear more than I wanted to.
But none of that was relevant. My baby’s safety depended on me getting her out and getting her out quickly. So I pushed beyond what felt natural, yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs just like you see in the movies. I think it took two of these pushes for her head to come out. Then with the third push, I got her body out. Our baby was born at 6:43 pm.
The cord was wrapped around her neck and she was not crying, but she was red and healthy looking from my viewpoint. The midwife got the cord off of her neck and then quickly clamped and cut the cord, handing her off to the nurses to check and revive her.
I kept asking my husband if she was okay and he assured me that she was. The midwife said she was just “stunned” from her heartrate dropping. But, despite all the reassurance I received at that time, my husband later told me that the midwife appeared to be pretty concerned about our baby when she first came out.
They called the NICU doctor to check her, but by the time he arrived, she was fortunately doing well enough that they did not even need him to check her. She had started crying after the nurses had messed with her a bit.
While we waited to hold our baby, the midwife seemed to easily pull the placenta out of me and I immediately felt relief.
That relief was short-lived, however. As the midwife began her exam, I was immediately in agony again with her feeling and looking around for tears and signs of hemorrhaging.
Since I hemorrhaged after my first daughter’s birth, the midwife wanted to be especially careful and proactive about preventing excessive bleeding. She gave me Pitocin to prevent hemorrhaging but when that was not working fast enough, she gave me something else as well (I don’t remember what the medicine was called).
As the midwife continued her exam and prepared to stitch me up, a nurse brought my baby to me and I was able to hold her while the midwife did the rest of her work.
A nurse brought my baby to me and I was able to hold her while the midwife did the rest of her work.It felt like a really long time that she worked on me. First, she had to stitch me up in three places. She said I had two tears that needed stitches but I think she ended up stitching up one other place as well. She said I also had several micro-tears that did not need stitches. Although she numbed me, I could still feel some pain off and on as she pushed and prodded.
When she was done stitching and I thought the worst was over, she told me she needed to dig around in my uterus to see if I had any blood clots. She said it would not be pleasant (you think?) and asked if I would like some pain medication first.
At this point, I felt I had been through enough and eagerly accepted the pain medicine. The nurse told me it would make me dizzy and it did, but it was not severe enough to bother me.
Strangely enough, the pain medicine worked wonders to block the feeling of the midwife messing around inside a very sensitive and bruised area; however, when she had the nurse push down on my belly … well, let’s just say I could definitely feel that pain.
In between moments of crying out in pain, I was trying to help my baby figure out how to latch on. She struggled in frustration for about 20 minutes to figure out how to latch, but once she did, she nursed hungrily for an hour like a pro.
After the midwife was done with me and we were left alone, my husband and I just looked at our baby and began getting to know her. For me, the bonding feeling was not instant like it was with my first daughter. I knew that I loved her before she was born, but the bonding process has been a different experience than it was the first time around.
Recovery and Reflection
My recovery after this birth has been so much easier and quicker than it was after I had my first daughter. I believe this is due to three factors that were very different this time.
First, thanks to my midwife’s obsession over preventing it, I did not hemorrhage. After my first daughter was born, I felt weak for 2-3 weeks because of the blood loss. This time I regained my strength in less than a week.
Second, this labor lasted less than a third of the time of my first labor. My first labor was incredibly exhausting because it went for 37 hours. In addition to the exhaustion of being in labor for so long, this long labor also meant that I labored through and barely slept for an entire night.
This time labor was only 11 hours and my labor was over the course of a day, so I did not lose an entire night of sleep while in labor. Although I was obviously still exhausted after giving birth, I regained my energy much quicker.
Third, I am getting much more sleep than I did with my first daughter. I was getting about 4 hours of broken up sleep in a 24-hour period for the first month of my first daughter’s life until I found a way for both of us to get better sleep. This time, I knew how to get much needed decent sleep (especially after losing a lot of sleep the entire pregnancy) from the start, so I have been sleeping well since we got home from the hospital.
As I reflect on my 2nd natural hospital birth, I have a mixture of emotions. To be honest, I expected this birth to be much more difficult than my first because the pregnancy was much more difficult both physically and emotionally. I knew my emotional state throughout the pregnancy was very likely to effect my labor.
In light of this, I feel my labor experience was actually a positive one despite the fact that it was far more painful than my first. I wanted different things out of this labor experience than I did with my first.
This time around, I was not as concerned with having the ideal natural birth. I was more focused on having an efficient labor, being left alone to cope with labor how I wanted and keeping my baby safe. And those are exactly the results I got, so I am happy with how things went overall.
Becoming a Family of Four
It has now been five weeks since my 2nd natural hospital birth. We are learning what it means to be a family of four. My older daughter loves her new baby sister and that feeling is clearly reciprocated. It is precious to watch them together. It’s a scene I thought I would never see.
I am still processing the grief and complicated emotions that plagued me throughout my pregnancy. But whatever has happened and however our family of four has come to be, I am so grateful for this new little girl who has forever changed our family for the better.
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And don’t forget to check out these other birth stories published on Mama Rissa:
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