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I really don’t remember why I decided that my baby would be
born naturally and I would breastfeed. I’m the type of person who, when
confronted with a new situation, will spend hours researching and reading, so
it is possible that when I found out I was pregnant nearly thirty-two years
ago, I rushed out and purchased as many books (no Internet) as I could find on
childbirth and breastfeeding. I was greatly influenced by a book called The
Immaculate Deception, by Suzanne Arms, published in 1975, which described the horrors of modern childbirth. I
still have a copy of the book. [Ed. note: This book is now out of print, but apparently the author wrote a second one: Immaculate Deception II: Myth, Magic and Birth, in 1994.]
Natural birth was becoming the “rage” in the early '80s, with hospitals opening up “Alternate Birth Centers” called “ABC rooms,” so I’m
sure I was influenced by this trend, but there could have been other women in
my life at the time who influenced me. As I said, I don’t remember. I do know
that I wanted the very best for my baby, that she (I didn’t know it was a girl
until she was born – no regularly-scheduled ultrasounds then) would have every
benefit I could give her as she came into this mean, cruel world. I wanted her
to be perfect.
I was (and I guess still am, but with less energy) a
perfectionist and was not afraid of challenge or hardship, as I tended to push
myself over the limit in everything I did. I was also extremely stubborn and
tended to believe that if I wanted something, I would get it, so being an
officer in the U.S. Navy at the time did not seem an obstacle to fulfilling my
goals for my baby.
My pregnancy wasn’t anything interesting except for my high
blood pressure, which the doctors passed off as nothing since it didn’t get any
higher from my first prenatal visit. I gained more weight than I should have
and I tended to eat a lot of chocolate but I exercised and did yoga. I
expressed my desire for a natural birth and wrote up a “birth plan” to present
to the attending doctor when the time came.
I worked passed my due date without a problem. That weekend,
we went to a Triple A baseball game and fireworks at the stadium (the major
leagues were on strike that summer). My water broke in the middle of the night
and we called the hospital. They said to come right in. I knew that was a
mistake; that I needed to stay home as long as I could and walk, walk, walk but
I was also scared that something could happen with my water breaking so we
trudged to the hospital in the middle of the night. I was only one centimeter
dilated. They said that they preferred that I stay, because my blood pressure was high (no
kidding), and I had signs of preeclampsia and a chance of infection, and we were
too many miles away from home to turn around. I was admitted to a ward but I didn't want to just lie there, so my husband and I walked around the hospital
campus for a while. I was hurting and scared and knew that I was starting out on
the wrong foot, but I presented my birth plan to the resident. The poor guy; it
was early in his rotation to OB , and he wanted
to do well but was inexperienced, which is probably why he agreed to my birth
plan. It included no drugs and no IVs or monitors so I could move around. I
was hooked up to the monitors once an hour but was free to walk around the rest
of the time. Ideally, when the contractions started and I was well on my way, I
would gather my strength and all that I had learned from the myriads of reading
materials and move around. Alas, I didn’t. I lay there for hours on my back,
enduring the pain, which I could not believe was so bad, ignoring the breathing
techniques we learned in our Bradley classes, but still determined to avoid
drugs. I did not have an IV and did not drink anything, so I became dehydrated
and the baby also. The doctor would come in periodically and check on me. He
felt sorry for me and would induce a semi-trance to help me, which wasn’t
helping since it reinforced me lying still for so long. My husband came and
went, bored and scared.
The doctor did talk to me about a cesarean as my labor
wasn’t progressing as quickly as it should have, but I declined. After
twenty-six hours, on Monday morning, I was finally ready to push. I was transferred
from the labor room to the delivery room. My husband was prepared with his
camera but he had forgotten to put film in (no digitals then) so we don’t have
a record of the birth. I pushed and pushed but the baby wasn’t coming out so
the doctor took up his scissors (or whatever they were) and did the longest and
deepest episiotomy on record (at least it seemed that way to my husband who
nearly fainted, equating the sound to tearing a chicken wing in half) without
asking. I had also been doing exercises to avoid an episiotomy but I guess they
didn’t help. The baby slid right out amid a lot of blood and it was announced
that it was a girl. I asked to have her on my chest and see if she would latch
on but since her Apgar scores were too low, they let me have her for less than
a minute and rushed her off to the neo-natal ICU. Not part of the plan but I
was exhausted at that point.
I went to recovery and had to pee 1,000 cc’s before I could
go to the ward. I requested that I be discharged as soon as possible, that I
didn’t want to stay in the hospital. I had it in my mind to take the baby home
right away, as I wasn’t sick and therefore did not need to be in the hospital.
When the pediatricians visited, I told them I was going home and taking the
baby with me. They said I could go home but the baby was in the NICU and wasn’t
going anywhere. They had come to consult with me about her condition. She was
extremely dehydrated and had “thick blood”. Her white cell count was elevated,
suggesting an infection. They needed to take out half her blood and replace it
with plasma because it was too thick to travel her veins and she was headed
towards major brain damage if nothing was done, all because I wanted a natural
birth, but I was stunned from the pain and the contractions into a trance and
my doctor was too ignorant to compensate for the lack of modern intrusions like
the IV for hydration.
I went home eleven hours after giving birth; the baby
didn’t. I visited daily, tried to pump and tried to breastfeed her when they
would let me, but they convinced me to start her on formula so she didn’t lose
any weight so I agreed. She developed jaundice and spent five days in the NICU
altogether before she was released. Luckily, she recovered completely.
I was still determined to breastfeed and started
immediately. No one told me that babies can’t switch from formula to breast
milk smoothly. She was up the entire night crying and pooping, crying and
pooping. I knew nothing about the proper latch so every time she latched, I’d literally
cry out for the pain. We finally settled into a routine and I tried to pump in
between feedings (huh, she wanted to nurse all the time) in preparation for
going back to work. I had six weeks off and decided to stay home full time for
four of those weeks and return part time for four weeks, which was approved by
my command.
I needed to pump and store the milk at work. I marched into
my commander’s office and announced that I needed a private office so I could
pump. It never occurred to me that he’d disagree; I was that sure of myself. He
never said a word and I pumped until the baby was four months old and then had
to start “supplementing” with formula as I couldn’t keep up with her demand.
She nursed at night until nine and a half months and then stopped altogether,
probably because I didn’t have enough milk.
In a way, that inexperienced doctor with a heart of gold did
me a favor by not performing a cesarean, as there were no such things as VBACs
then and I would have probably not breastfed (although I don’t really know),
but there was also the real possibility of damage to my little girl because of
my shock when labor actually came.
I learned a lot with her and knew a lot more when my son came
along three years later. But, of course, my daughter is perfect!
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