long story, part 2

The second I found out I was having twins, I began mourning the loss of my birth experience. Dramatic? Probably. But would you expect anything less from me? I am a natural birth girl. Medication, needles, scalpels and augmentation are not for me and quite frankly freak me out. I don’t care if you want drugs during birth or would prefer to have a c-section but all of those things are not my cup of tea. I gave birth to W and CB without so much as a Tylenol because I’d rather have the pain of labor than deal with all of the interventions and their side effects.

When you give birth to twins, the chance of you having intervention is extremely high and the chance of you having a c-section is over 50%. Plus, most hospitals require you to deliver in the operating room, on the operating table. Whoever came up with that idea was clearly a man, because they have obviously never had to think about what it would feel like to go through the hardest part of labor flat on their back on a “bed” that feels more like a slab of concrete.

Coming to terms with the possibility that my birth was most likely going to be filled with things I didn’t want was very difficult. I agonized, cried and had panic attacks over it for weeks. After seeking the advice of other (amazing) doulas and doing some serious soul searching, I finally started to feel peace about the possible ways I would birth these babies. That being said, I was very prepared to fight for what I wanted and needed during the birth and I was not planning on being a complacent patient.

I knew that in order to have a birth that somewhat resembled the ideal I had in my head, I would need to have a doctor who was ok and on board with at least some of my desires. Out of the 4 doctors in the practice, 2 were ok with the fact that I didn’t want an epidural or even want the catheter placed but only 1 of those 2 was ok with delivering a breech baby, should baby B turn breech after baby A was born. 1 of the doctors in the practice told me that he required all of his “twin mommies” to have an epidural and if I didn’t get an epidural, he would just go straight to a c-section and wouldn’t even let me labor. Um, WHAT?! First of all, did you just say “mommies”? And second, how the HECK does that make any sense?? Freaking control freak. Then he went on to tell me that there weren’t any risks to having an epidural… Really? Homeboy had no idea who he was talking to. Don’t even try to pull that crap on me. And the other doctor was the doctor that I talked about in my previous post.

I firmly believe that labor is a mind over matter thing. If you are not 100% mentally ready to labor, you will not go into labor and if you do go into labor, it will not be an effective or efficient labor. Every time my contractions would pick up, I would call the office to see who was on call at the hospital that day and if it was one of the 2 who scared the crud out of me, my contractions would stop.

The night before I went into labor started out like any other night. But then M made us dinner, and decided to add some extra red pepper flakes to it. After dinner my stomach started to get upset and I silently started cursing at him for giving me food poisoning. Then it hit me that this could be my body getting ready for labor so I decided to take a walk around the field across the street. We had barely made it down the driveway before I had a contraction. By the time M and I were halfway around the field, I was getting uncomfortable. I made it home as the contractions picked up, as did my upset stomach. A couple of hours later I was feeling better, but the contractions were still happening every 7-10 minutes. I knew that night the “no epidural = straight to c-section” doc was on call, so I decided to go to sleep and prayed hard the contractions would slow down or stop until at least 7 the next morning.

Through the night I was woken up a few times from contractions, but they weren't horrible. Around 7 I got up and got the kids ready for school, got myself dressed and then we left the house. I told M to grab the bags, just in case. I wasn’t feeling too bad, but I felt a lot of cramping. After we dropped the kids off at school we went to get the oil in the van changed. As we were waiting in line I started feeling more cramping. When we finally got to the counter to check the car in, I told the guy we had to have the car done by 10:45 because I had a doctor’s appointment across town at 11:20. I jokingly added that I didn’t think he wanted me to give birth on the shop’s floor. He said no! and promised to have the car done by 10:30.

As we walked (well, I waddled) into the waiting area, this woman turned to me and said the dreaded, “Oh my! You look like you are going to POP!” Without thinking, I bitterly responded, “I do NOT pop.” That should have been my first clue that something was up. The van was done, as promised, at 10:30 so we had some time to kill before my appointment. We went to a bookstore and looked around, got the kids some books and M got some crossword puzzle books because he's a big fat dork. I was feeling more and more tired and crampy and anxious to get to my appointment. I was hungry so I went to Starbucks to get a snack, but took one bite of it and decided that I really didn’t want to eat anything. Obvious clue I was in labor #2.

When we got to the appointment, all of the girls at the front desk exclaimed that I needed to have those babies that day—I guess I had “the look”. I told them that I would give them 20 bucks to go back and convince the doctors that today was the day. I told them they could say I went all “crazy pregnant lady” on them and jumped over the counter and held them at knife point, I didn’t care, I just needed these babies out. The doctor I was seeing that day was the doctor that I had seen in L&D 2 days earlier. When he walked in the room he said he was completely surprised that I was still pregnant and that after we had left the hospital 2 days earlier, he regretted not augmenting my labor because he was sure we were going to show up at L&D that night and he really didn’t want to deliver the twins at 2:30 in the morning. Yeah, you wish dude.

When he finally checked me, I was 5cm and 100% effaced and at a 0 station. For those of you who don’t speak birth, that means I was pretty much halfway to the point at which the babies would be born. It was go time, for real this time. Even though I wasn't feeling like I was in active labor, or even labor for that matter, I had a sneaking suspicion that if we went home instead of going to the hospital, the babies would probably be born in the car on the way to the hospital later that day.