My First Birth Story

Transcript

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Hello, today I have with me myself.

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I have, at long last, decided to begin the journey of sharing my own birth stories.

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I have hesitated to do this for a while because, in my head, I thought that I needed somebody to interview me.

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However, I just realized that that was an excuse to avoid sharing my own story.

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So I've decided to accept my own challenge and share the stories that are the reason for me embarking on this journey.

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As a podcast host and birth advocate, I'm not sure really what my hang up was when it came to sharing my stories.

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I think that I wanted to be able to impart such deep wisdom and advice for new parents.

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I had such a standard that I didn't think that I could meet my own standards for sharing wisdom and advice.

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I realized that in seeking that perfection, I was holding back on sharing my story and helping others Without further ado.

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Today, I am not only sharing my birth story on my podcast for the first time, but I'm also attempting to record the podcast as a video for the first time, and I'm hoping to take the first steps to having my podcast on YouTube.

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Here we are.

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Alright, here we go.

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I've printed off the questions that I send to each guest.

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So I think I'm just going to get started with those.

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First of all, you're going to get kind of an insider view because as I read my questions, I'll share them with you.

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When I send this email to guests, I say tell your story, including the following how many pregnancies have you had?

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How many children have you had?

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Was conception easy or challenging?

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And was pregnancy easy or difficult?

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Did you have any health conditions that affected your pregnancy?

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Did you have a birth plan?

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Did your birth go as planned?

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So let's start from the beginning and I'll answer those questions and then we'll move on.

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I got married at the age of 34, so I was automatically terrified that I wouldn't be able to have kids because I knew that once I hit 35 that would be considered advanced maternal age, also known as elderly pregnancy, or I would have been an elderly primigravida, which is a horrifying term.

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Another term is geriatric pregnancy, all those things that just sound scary but don't necessarily mean anything.

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It does mean that you're past the age of 35 and statistically in human history that's when risks start to go up, essentially for complications in childbirth.

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But if you're essentially healthy, it may not mean anything.

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I remember expressing my concerns to my husband and he happened to be friends with a fertility specialist and got me on the phone with that person to have a conversation, and I shared all of the things that were scaring me, all of my fears about conception, pregnancy, birth and bringing a child into the world at the age of 35.

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My concern wasn't just my age.

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My concern was that I have asthma and I thought that that would make my pregnancy even more high risk.

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But my asthma hasn't been severe enough to really cause much of a problem and to date I have, as a labor and delivery nurse, 10 or so years later I have rarely seen asthma as a complication for pregnancy.

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The only thing that it's ever done has really been a contraindication for certain hemorrhagements, namely hemobate, which I don't like using anyway because it causes copious diarrhea, anyway.

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So our friend assured me that I didn't have a lot of relative risks and that the main risk was the age of 35 or older and that just meant that I was basically going to be followed more closely by my doctors and maternal fetal medicine specialists.

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So I got to see my baby more on ultrasound and I got to hear my baby's heart rate more when we did NSTs, which NST stands for non-stress test.

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So they listened to your baby's heart rate and analyzed your baby's heart rate while your baby is under no stress theoretically Okay.

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So I've had two pregnancies and I have two children.

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Conception for us, surprisingly was super easy.

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Funny story In 2014, my daughter was conceived during what I believe was the ALDS championships, like the very beginning of October.

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This is important because in my head I knew exactly when her due date was and when we had the first ultrasound her due date was July 1st.

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Then later on they changed the due date and I was enraged by that.

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They changed it to July 3rd.

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I knew in my heart that that was wrong and I was right because my daughter was born before July 1st, so I felt very vindicated in that.

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So anyway, like I said, conception was easy.

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I'm pretty sure we conceived within the first attempt, within a month of going off birth control, and we were thrust into the potential of parenthood shockingly quickly.

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So a lot of regrouping there.

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We thought it would take six months to a year and that we would need fertility treatments and all that fun stuff.

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So it was like, wow, okay, here we go Now.

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Pregnancy was not as easy as conception.

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I probably had low-key hyperemesis.

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Never got treated for it other than Zofran, but I was nauseous the entire pregnancy.

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I threw up the entire pregnancy Like clockwork.

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I was a night shift nurse at the time.

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Like clockwork, every morning, right before change of shift I would go running to the bathroom to throw up.

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My OB who I worked with that followed me during my pregnancy was not the same OB that delivered me, unfortunately, but he would come down.

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He worked Tuesday nights on call and so I usually worked Tuesday nights and he would come down Wednesday morning and see me running to the bathroom and he's like yep, it's that time of day, isn't it Just horrible?

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Nausea I also contracted during my entire pregnancy.

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Probably had more to do with being a night shift nurse and being on my feet all night long than anything else, but, yeah, miserable.

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I'm also 5'2 and having another human growing inside a five foot two inch frame is just a challenge.

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I felt like there wasn't space for a normal sized baby in there and I had a normal sized baby.

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I envy people that are six feet and have babies the size of mine.

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I wish I had that much space, but I did not.

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Breathing was difficult, walking was difficult.

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I had tons of round ligament pain, like I said, I contracted all the time.

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It was just, it was hard.

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I ended up developing sleep apnea.

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I was told to go get a sleep study to see if I needed to go on CPAP.

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But at the time that it was recommended I was about 36 weeks pregnant and I was like no, I'm not going to go on CPAP for the last part of my pregnancy.

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I just won't sleep.

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That's fine.

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Not sure if that was the best choice not recommending that but it was just what I wanted.

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I did not want to have to go on CPAP during my pregnancy.

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And CPAP, if you don't know, is like a pressurized breathing machine.

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It maintains a certain amount of pressure to keep your airway open.

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I can't remember what it stands for CPAP.

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Let's look that up.

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What does it mean?

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Continuous positive airway pressure.

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So it gives you a little bit of pressure constantly to prevent your airway from closing.

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And what happens?

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What happened to me is I had so much pressure on my chest and so much swelling that when I was falling asleep, everything relaxed and constricted my earway and then I would wake up when I was no longer breathing.

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It was horrible.

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I would wake up out of breath and terrified and realize that I have to, like, roll over to breathe.

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Awful, awful.

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I was dumb and scheduled the glucose tolerance test after a 12 hour shift Right around Easter.

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It was also during, so, if you don't know, easter is around the time of nurse appreciation week, and so that night at the hospital all of the nurse appreciation treats were out, which basically is candy.

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I just was eating jelly beans all night, so do not recommend eating jelly beans all night before you do your glucose tolerance test.

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I almost didn't pass, but I did, and that is just a testament to my pancreas' ability to process sugar, which I mean.

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I think my pancreas could win awards for processing sugar, but I digress.

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So, yeah, my pregnancy was challenging.

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It was uncomfortable, it wasn't fun.

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I didn't love being pregnant.

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I loved getting to know my daughter.

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During the pregnancy I felt her move.

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I remember the moment that I felt her move.

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It was about one o'clock in the morning.

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I was 13 weeks pregnant.

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I know it sounds ridiculous, but Same thing happened with my second pregnancy.

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About 13 weeks is when I felt my baby's move and it was spectacular.

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It was so amazing and I loved that part.

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I feel like I knew my children before they were born.

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I feel like finding a name for them and understanding their personalities was really easy for me.

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Bonding with them was really easy.

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But both pregnancies were very difficult.

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Let's see health conditions that affected my pregnancy.

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I didn't have any specific health conditions other than being nauseous all the time, but that's not necessarily a health condition.

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I was on Zofran for that.

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I have mixed feelings about Zofran in pregnancy but I don't know how I would have made it through without it because I was just so super nauseous.

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Other conditions during pregnancy I had an anterior placenta, which again not a condition, just part of the pregnancy.

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My daughter had a two-vessel cord, so we were followed even more closely for that.

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And then also there was follow-up with pediatric cardiology to make sure.

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We did a specific echocardiogram test in pregnancy to test for any cardiac anomalies that could have been associated with the two-vessel cord, because having a two-vessel cord increases the risk of cardiac anomalies.

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Nothing was found during pregnancy but I was followed more closely because of that.

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So during my pregnancy, to prepare for pregnancy, because I was terrified of getting a C-section, and the reason I was terrified was because I had my appendix out in the Dominican Republic when I was 21, and that was a horrific experience, basically because having my abdomen cut open was awful and, being somebody that was very physically active, that just basically took the wind out of my sails.

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I felt completely debilitated by that.

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I no longer felt that I had access to my abdominal muscles.

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Nerves didn't fire right after that, muscles didn't fire right after that.

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Nothing felt right after that, and so that experience made me not want to have any kind of abdominal surgery ever again, unless it was absolutely 100% necessary, and I wanted to make sure that it never became necessary.

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So a C-section for me was definitely not something that I wanted to pursue and I wanted to prevent.

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If I could have a safe birth without a C-section, I absolutely wanted to exhaust all options for a safe birth without a C-section.

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So in order to prepare for that, I had a friend who was a doula at the time, who's now a midwife, and she encouraged me to take a class with another midwife who taught the Bradley Method.

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So I believe I took about a 12-hour birth class.

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We went every weekend for three to four hours and we went to the group of couples and we learned how to advocate for yourself, which I'm really, really glad that I did.

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I learned about the options and the risks and benefits for interventions and tools that are used at the hospital.

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It was in New York City at the time.

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I was living in New York City and I learned about the options and hospitals and policies in the city at the time, which, if you don't know, there's not a lot of infrastructure for hospitals compared to where I was from In the Midwest.

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There's lots of spades, lots of rooms, lots of options.

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So there weren't a lot of rooms in New York City.

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A lot of people were doing home births because it's just, even if you do get to the hospital in time, there's not necessarily space for you, which was kind of my experience, but we'll get to that in a minute.

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So my birth plan was to hopefully have a natural, unmedicated birth and I was taught some positions and some coping techniques in this class in order to achieve it and I was encouraged to get a doula, which I did, and I got a doula that I aligned with that she's a fairly newish doula.

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I could afford her, which was really huge.

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Probably the number one barrier to getting a doula was price, but she was affordable and I interviewed her and she was wonderful and I aligned with her on so many different levels and we both kind of wanted to treat birth as a marathon and we trained for the marathon and we know that it's going to take a long time.

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You have to conserve your energy and you have to take everything one step at a time.

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Just really loved her values.

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And Ashley Webb she's been on my podcast.

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Love her.

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Hi Hash she was a wonderful doula, wonderful advocate, wonderful friend.

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The birth and when she had to go back to her job at the New York Stock Exchange the next morning she had a second doula that came in as a backup doula.

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So I just felt really supported by her.

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So, yes, I had a birth plan.

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I learned from the course that I took and felt like I was fully prepared.

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Most of you who have followed me and listened to my podcast know the end of the story and that I was not fully prepared.

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There's something that was missing and that was mental, emotional and mindset prep and I feel like that was lacking being able to emotionally go through some of the scenarios that you would go through during your labor and birth and some of the things that might come up for you and make it difficult for you to really advocate for yourself.

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I wasn't fully prepared for that.

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Another thing that I feel like I wasn't prepared for was or I'm not sure that I loved in my preparation was there was an emphasis on defensive advocacy.

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I'm not even sure if that's a term, but that's how I would describe it.

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It felt a lot like you're going to have to go into the hospital and defend yourself against these interventions and while that maybe true to some extent, I'm not sure if that is the mindset that was serving me the best at the time.

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I think being able to work as a team with your birth team is more important, and that's why I advocate for that now.

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So my birth plan, as I said, was a natural labor, natural childbirth.

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I didn't want an epidural, I didn't want any interventions, I wanted to labor at home as long as possible, all of those things.

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So everything started out good.

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I went with my parents to see my friend Angel in Chicago the Musical she was playing Roxy Hart, and I didn't want to miss that.

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So, 39 weeks pregnant, I went to a Broadway musical and as soon as the curtain went up, contractions started.

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I don't know if it was just the uncomfortable position that I was sitting in or what I mean.

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It probably was the fact that I was nearing my due date and was going into early labor.

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I just remember thinking, oh my goodness, first of all, I don't want to miss this.

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Where's the exit?

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And how can I position myself so that I don't break my water and squirt it all over the person in front of me?

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Those were my thoughts.

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So I believe I sat on the aisle seat because I wanted to be able to leave if necessary.

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But I was there with my parents and I just remember angling my knees toward the aisle because I really just didn't want to make a big mess on anybody if my water broke.

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And I sat through the whole show contracting, and after every contraction my daughter would just kick and kick and kick, and I'm not sure if it was the music that she loved or if it was because I was in early labor, but it does hold true today that she is definitely a singer and a dancer and maybe that was just her first introduction to Broadway.

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So made it through that show, not sure how, because I was in pain and squished into teeny tiny seats.

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I mean when I say I was afraid that my water would break on the person in front of me.

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Literally his head was almost touching my knees.

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That's how packed you are.

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If you haven't been to a Broadway show, if you haven't been to the I think it's the Ambassador Theater, where Chicago the Musical has been for like decades If you haven't been, then just trust me that you were really packed in like sardines.

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So after the show saw my friend Angel faked my way through contractions, pretended like I wasn't in early labor, got in a cab hardest well, not the hardest car drive of my life, but one of the hardest car drives of my life because I was super uncomfortable went home and just kind of while I was resting.

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It was hard to sleep that night but contractions did kind of slow down, so didn't go into the hospital, made it through the next day and then the next night I went out to dinner with my parents.

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We went to Cougans, which is no longer there, unfortunately.

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There is a documentary on Cougans restaurant in Washington Heights that was directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda before the restaurant shut down.

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It was a historic restaurant, loved it.

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It was right next to the hospital and saw a couple of friends on the way to work sitting outside eating my at the time.

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I love the steak Caesar salad there, so went out to dinner and then we walked home.

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At the time we had a dog.

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He was a 100 pound Rottweiler German shepherd mix and we took him to the dog park every night so that he could hang out with his friends and run off his energy and go for a walk and all that fun stuff.

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And I went with my dad and my husband and as we walked my dog home actually no, in the dog park, this is the first significant thing I saw my friend, Michelle, who she'll probably remember this.

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She had a dog named Dexter and we were just hanging out talking and she has a son that's close to my daughter's age, who was born several months before, and her dog was like just circling me and like doing figure eights in between my legs, wouldn't leave me alone.

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And then other dogs started coming over and one teeny tiny dog came and peed on my dress and Michelle looked at me.

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She said are you in labor?

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And I was like I don't know.

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And she was like well, if you're not, you're about to be, because dogs never act like this.

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They know what's going on.

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And she was right.

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I had been contracting for a while and things were starting to really pick up and the contractions were starting to feel different.

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For those of you that don't know, brexans, hicks contractions are kind of like just tightening of the sides of the uterus, but once you start having like real contractions, the top part of the uterus will contract and squeeze from the top down and the whole point is so that the baby will go down in your pelvis and out.

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And I started having those types of contractions and they started stopping me in my tracks and on the way home I was really really trying to work through contractions and it just it was harder and harder and harder.

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So my dad was staying at a hotel at the time in New York because they came to hang out and wait for my daughter to be born.

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She was the first grandchild and he went home that night and I tried to hide it from him, but I'm pretty sure you could tell and I went upstairs and about an hour later I started texting my doula.

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I needed to give her plenty of time to get there because, like I said, she worked at the New York Stock Exchange but she lived in Queens and so she needed to get home, get changed, get all her stuff done.

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I told her to eat and come whenever she could get there and she drove up to Washington Heights.

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Takes about an hour drive, even though New York is so close just hard to get places.

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And after texting her, I told my husband that I thought I was actually didn't tell him I was in labor.

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I told him that I needed to do laundry and I started gathering up the laundry to do it and I said, well, part of it was because I needed to clean the pee off my dress.

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And he was like oh, we'll just do it tomorrow.

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I was like no, we're not gonna be able to do it tomorrow.

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He's like what are you talking about?

00:20:38.513 --> 00:20:39.857
I'm tired, I'm gonna do laundry.

00:20:39.857 --> 00:20:41.288
And I was like nope, we're doing laundry tonight.

00:20:41.288 --> 00:20:45.057
I don't want this sitting overnight and we're not gonna be able to do the laundry tomorrow.

00:20:45.057 --> 00:20:46.134
The whole house is gonna stink.

00:20:46.289 --> 00:20:47.315
And he was like what are you talking about?

00:20:47.315 --> 00:20:48.314
I was like I'm in labor.

00:20:48.314 --> 00:20:50.792
He's like yeah, right, didn't believe me.

00:20:50.792 --> 00:20:53.356
And so I was like okay, cool, you don't believe me.

00:20:53.356 --> 00:20:56.035
Well, ashley's on her way over here, so get on board or don't.

00:20:56.650 --> 00:21:08.278
And then he started seeing me sitting on the birthing ball like hands and knees on the couch All these weird things and kind of like, trying to talk to me, and during contractions I wasn't talking.

00:21:08.278 --> 00:21:14.817
He was like oh my God, this is serious and I have a video of him that I filmed in between contractions and I think I'm gonna post this because it's so funny.

00:21:14.817 --> 00:21:27.057
But when I told him, when he finally realized and accepted that I was in labor, there's this video of him going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, back and forth in the house.

00:21:27.057 --> 00:21:28.375
It's just, he's such a goofball.

00:21:28.375 --> 00:21:30.256
If you know him, you totally understand this.

00:21:30.256 --> 00:21:32.057
But yeah, it took him a minute to get on board.

00:21:32.057 --> 00:21:53.434
He went and he finally did do my laundry and our Jula got there, I believe around nine o'clock and so this was like between seven and nine I believe close to seven, when I started really knowing that my contractions were serious and they were about five minutes apart, and I texted her and she got there on nine and she hung out with us like all night, like literally all night.

00:21:53.809 --> 00:21:55.657
As soon as she got there, I asked her if she ate anything.

00:21:55.657 --> 00:21:56.534
She said no.

00:21:56.534 --> 00:21:58.314
My husband said do you want a roast beef sandwich.

00:21:58.314 --> 00:21:59.017
And guess what?

00:21:59.017 --> 00:22:00.415
She never got her roast beef sandwich.

00:22:00.415 --> 00:22:00.750
I didn't.

00:22:00.750 --> 00:22:01.875
My husband was so distracted.

00:22:01.875 --> 00:22:04.775
I still to this day.

00:22:04.775 --> 00:22:06.259
Oh, ashley, a roast beef sandwich.

00:22:06.259 --> 00:22:09.653
I think I might just like send her one through DoorDash or something like that.

00:22:09.653 --> 00:22:13.954
She doesn't even live anywhere close to me anymore, but yeah, so we labor there.

00:22:14.016 --> 00:22:16.776
For a while, contractions got more and more intense.

00:22:16.776 --> 00:22:30.717
Basically, in my brain, I fast forward from sitting on the birthing ball kneeling on the couch texting my Dula telling my husband what was going on, to being in the bathtub.

00:22:30.717 --> 00:22:44.298
And in New York we have these shower heads that are like in the middle of the bathtub, which is completely the most convenient thing in the world, because I just turned the shower on as hot as I could and it was basically aimed on my belly.

00:22:44.298 --> 00:22:54.178
And what was wonderful about the bathtub is and I didn't know, I didn't understand this fully at the time and I wish that I had taken spinning babies before.

00:22:54.178 --> 00:23:00.678
I don't even think that 10 or eight years ago spinning babies was a thing, but I wish that I had this information.

00:23:01.211 --> 00:23:04.539
But what I understand now is what was comfortable in the bathtub.

00:23:04.539 --> 00:23:09.455
I was laying on my back, which isn't necessarily recommended, but it isn't recommended actually.

00:23:09.455 --> 00:23:48.311
But that was what was comfortable for me because I wanted that hot water on my belly and I had an exercise ball Is it a Pilates ball or it's like a soft ball that has air in it and it was very squishy and it was about the size of a pumpkin and I put it behind me and leaned on it in the shower because it was waterproof, obviously, and when I leaned up against it or sorry, in the bathtub with the shower on, when I leaned up against it, my feet were able to touch the bottom of the bathtub and I'm short, so it gave me an affirm to do that and what I would do between contractions is push up from the bottom and do that.

00:23:48.311 --> 00:23:52.924
Basically, I was giving myself counter pressure on my pelvis.

00:23:52.924 --> 00:24:01.605
So because I was laying on my back and I was giving myself counter pressure from the hard bathtub bottom, it was pushing on that spot on my pelvis.

00:24:01.605 --> 00:24:03.861
That was painful and I labor like that for hours.

00:24:04.255 --> 00:24:23.643
And then finally started, my doula noticed change in the vocalization pattern that I was having and she noticed that my uterus looked lower in my pelvis and that I had some bloody show and she suggested that we go to the hospital and our plan was to call our neighbor Lori.

00:24:23.643 --> 00:24:30.682
She had a car that was parked right up in front of our building, which in New York is just such a hard thing to find.

00:24:30.682 --> 00:24:35.840
She was so excited for my daughter to be born and to this day they just love each other so much.

00:24:35.840 --> 00:24:37.184
And she was ready.

00:24:37.184 --> 00:24:38.420
She didn't care what time I called her.

00:24:38.420 --> 00:24:45.183
So at three o'clock in the morning when my husband ran next door and started pounding on the door I have a feeling she was already up.

00:24:45.183 --> 00:24:47.214
I don't think she had gone to bed.

00:24:47.214 --> 00:24:49.804
I think I mean in New York apartments you can hear everything.

00:24:49.804 --> 00:24:51.179
So I'm pretty sure she heard me.

00:24:51.179 --> 00:24:52.343
The windows were open.

00:24:52.343 --> 00:24:53.538
It was New York in June.

00:24:53.538 --> 00:24:56.935
You don't have air conditioning, you just have the little window units, the.

00:24:56.935 --> 00:25:00.718
I'm sure the whole neighborhood knew I was having a baby, but she was ready.

00:25:01.075 --> 00:25:03.869
She helped me walk downstairs, which was so hard.

00:25:03.869 --> 00:25:12.881
Actually I didn't walk downstairs, I walked out to the elevator and leaned on the elevator rails to stand up, and my doula and my husband helped me stand up.

00:25:12.881 --> 00:25:23.165
And then Lori went and got her car and I just remember now that was the worst car ride ever Short of when I had appendicitis and my car ride to the hospital that was pretty bad.

00:25:23.165 --> 00:25:25.923
But Lori just all smiles, driving the car.

00:25:25.923 --> 00:25:27.900
She's like you've got this, you've got this.

00:25:27.900 --> 00:25:29.965
Yes, scream as loud as you need to.

00:25:29.965 --> 00:25:35.317
I just remembered her tearing me on, my husband horrified in the front, and it was literally.

00:25:35.317 --> 00:25:36.702
The drive was four blocks.

00:25:36.702 --> 00:25:37.819
I mean I could have walked it.

00:25:37.819 --> 00:25:42.573
I couldn't have, but it was physically possible to walk if I weren't in labor.

00:25:42.573 --> 00:25:44.661
But I know in labor I would not have been able to.

00:25:44.661 --> 00:25:46.680
So it was so intense.

00:25:46.921 --> 00:25:47.824
We got to the hospital.

00:25:47.824 --> 00:25:55.685
They remember they just came out with a wheelchair, like I was, oh my gosh, just vocalizing with each contraction.

00:25:55.685 --> 00:26:03.923
I don't know anybody that's seen Ace Ventura Pet Detective where the scene, where he screams and he opens the door with the sound barrier.

00:26:03.923 --> 00:26:16.871
So it was like when I got on the elevator the contraction started and I just started shouting and labor and delivery was on the 10th floor and I shouted until the doors closed and I was still shouting.

00:26:16.871 --> 00:26:20.482
But I'm just from the perspective of the people out in the lobby.

00:26:20.542 --> 00:26:38.825
At three o'clock in the morning I'm sure I was just like and then screamed the whole way up to the 10th floor and his door's open, it was this crazy lady comes out the elevator and I don't know how long I spent in the waiting room.

00:26:38.825 --> 00:26:41.615
I mean, this is something that I just don't understand.

00:26:41.615 --> 00:26:46.424
Like how do you have somebody that's screaming and labor just hang out in a wheelchair in the waiting room?

00:26:46.424 --> 00:26:47.227
But there I was.

00:26:47.227 --> 00:26:51.786
There wasn't a seat for me in the waiting room, so I stayed in the wheelchair.

00:26:51.786 --> 00:26:57.914
It took a while I mean, like I feel like it was an hour, but maybe I'm exaggerating to get even registered.

00:26:57.914 --> 00:27:04.107
I was like how do you whatever, guess we're not triaging people.

00:27:04.107 --> 00:27:16.287
Then they didn't have a room for me, they didn't have a bed for me, so I just hung out there for a while and finally, when I got admitted, I was admitted To the PACU, which is the area where they do C-section recoveries.

00:27:16.287 --> 00:27:27.501
So it's basically a stretcher and with a curtain in between, and next to me was somebody that had just had a C-section and it was three o'clock in the morning, so she's recovering there with her baby and I'm next to her screaming obscenities.

00:27:27.835 --> 00:27:38.625
And I labored on that stretcher for another couple of hours and let me just tell you the comparison of laboring on a stretcher and laboring at home in hot water is night and day.

00:27:38.625 --> 00:27:46.298
Whereas the contractions were manageable at home, it was absolutely not manageable on the stretcher and my poor husband and doula.

00:27:46.298 --> 00:27:49.846
We did not have a lot of resources in that little area.

00:27:49.846 --> 00:27:51.099
That was not a labor room.

00:27:51.099 --> 00:27:55.596
There was no labor equipment other than the monitor where and the reason they had the monitor?

00:27:55.596 --> 00:27:56.919
To listen to the heart.

00:27:56.919 --> 00:28:00.386
It was just so that they could prepare people for a C-section.

00:28:00.386 --> 00:28:05.555
So it was set up to prepare for a C-section and to recover from a C-section.

00:28:05.555 --> 00:28:07.080
It was definitely not set up for labor.

00:28:07.080 --> 00:28:18.067
So a flat stretcher on my back again not advisable, because that position not only is uncomfortable, it puts your baby in not the most optimal position for labor.

00:28:18.275 --> 00:28:20.423
And so my labor became dysregulated.

00:28:20.423 --> 00:28:26.959
Additionally, as I mentioned, new York in the summer, with no air conditioning, I hadn't had anything to drink.

00:28:26.959 --> 00:28:33.478
For hours I had not had a sip of water or anything to drink because I just didn't feel like I could drink anything.

00:28:33.478 --> 00:28:39.779
My whole body was contracting, it felt like, and I didn't think that there was any space in my stomach for anything.

00:28:39.779 --> 00:28:46.807
So I'm sure I was intensely dehydrated and my contractions began to get very dysregulated.

00:28:46.807 --> 00:28:48.940
I remember at one point sitting there going.

00:28:48.940 --> 00:28:50.124
When is it going to stop?

00:28:50.124 --> 00:28:51.298
This hurts so bad.

00:28:51.298 --> 00:28:54.002
There's no relief in between contractions.

00:28:54.002 --> 00:28:55.882
I'm not able to rest between contractions.

00:28:55.882 --> 00:28:57.934
I feel like my uterus is not relaxing.

00:28:58.476 --> 00:29:04.326
It was awful, but it was such a busy night that there was no one there that I could talk to about that.

00:29:04.326 --> 00:29:05.169
My nurse was busy.

00:29:05.169 --> 00:29:07.442
She was doing C-section recoveries.

00:29:07.442 --> 00:29:09.526
That's kind of a one-to-one thing.

00:29:09.526 --> 00:29:10.819
It is a one-to-one thing.

00:29:10.819 --> 00:29:18.520
So the person in natural labor whose baby is tolerating the natural labor wasn't the priority and I wasn't skilled in fetal monitoring then.

00:29:18.520 --> 00:29:26.381
So I have no idea whether they could tell if I was contracting that frequently or if, because I was moving around so much, they couldn't even really see my contractions.

00:29:26.381 --> 00:29:32.077
But nonetheless, they got to the point where my uterus was not relaxing between contractions and I was just in agony.

00:29:32.077 --> 00:29:38.544
So, not understanding what that meant, I just asked for an epidural because that was the only tool that I felt like I had at the moment.

00:29:38.544 --> 00:29:43.122
There was no peanut ball, there was no birthing ball, there was no other chair that I could sit in.

00:29:43.122 --> 00:29:45.099
Really, I got up to pee once.

00:29:45.099 --> 00:29:57.300
Normally I'm peeing every 10 minutes, so that's an indication that I'm dehydrated right there, and when you're dehydrated, your uterus can't relax, and so of course this was happening, of course my labor was getting regulated.

00:29:57.795 --> 00:29:58.719
I didn't have an IV.

00:29:58.719 --> 00:29:59.582
I'm not sure why.

00:29:59.582 --> 00:30:05.762
I'm not sure why I wasn't even offered an IV, but that's usually the first thing is a labor and delivery nurse that I offer to a patient.

00:30:05.762 --> 00:30:11.126
If it's a natural laboring patient, they may not need it, but I would have gladly accepted an IV.

00:30:11.126 --> 00:30:14.845
I didn't walk in with a written birth plan.

00:30:14.845 --> 00:30:16.260
I didn't refuse an IV.

00:30:16.260 --> 00:30:18.102
I didn't ask for it but I didn't refuse it.

00:30:18.102 --> 00:30:27.607
And so I'm just kind of looking back on this kind of shock that I was never offered an IV, because I think that probably could have been the start to making my labor a little bit more regulated.

00:30:27.607 --> 00:30:29.258
So, anyway, no IV.

00:30:29.258 --> 00:30:30.381
I asked for an epidural.

00:30:30.381 --> 00:30:32.464
Took about an hour for the anesthesiologist to get there.

00:30:32.464 --> 00:30:33.066
Still no IV.

00:30:34.075 --> 00:30:48.886
Did not get an IV bolus before my epidural, which I don't understand and when I got ready to go to the hospital, I put on the gown that I bought, because I knew that the gowns at the hospital were not really conducive to labor and breastfeeding.

00:30:48.886 --> 00:30:51.241
They weren't the gowns that unsnap.

00:30:51.241 --> 00:30:57.943
I don't know why they didn't have them, but for those of you that don't know, most of the time the gowns unsnap at the sleeves.

00:30:57.943 --> 00:31:01.464
So right here so you can undo them and breastfeed your baby.

00:31:01.464 --> 00:31:20.346
So pull down and put your baby skin to skin and do all that stuff and then snap it, mostly for convenience, and you can buy gowns on Amazon that do that too, and I bought one that came down easily, went up easily, had space in the back for an epidural and untied in the front so that the monitoring equipment could be put on the belly.

00:31:20.346 --> 00:31:22.622
So I thought I had everything covered.

00:31:22.835 --> 00:31:26.663
Well, as soon as the anesthesiologist got there, the first thing he said is you're going to have to take off your gown.

00:31:26.663 --> 00:31:27.605
I was like what?

00:31:27.605 --> 00:31:31.231
That wasn't just a forearm, oh my god.

00:31:31.231 --> 00:31:35.201
So that was the first moment where I felt like I was no longer in control.

00:31:35.201 --> 00:31:39.289
The anesthesiology resident, not the anesthesiologist.

00:31:39.289 --> 00:31:45.289
So at that hospital it was a teaching hospital, so basically every medical provider that I saw during the night was a resident.

00:31:45.289 --> 00:31:57.250
So he made me take off my gown and put on the gown that I didn't like, not only because it's itchy, which at that point I didn't care, but I wanted to be able to do skin to skin with my baby and that really made it hard.

00:31:57.250 --> 00:32:01.289
So therefore, I didn't do skin to skin with my baby immediately after birth.

00:32:01.289 --> 00:32:05.240
It was a while after birth before I did it, I think it was at least an hour.

00:32:05.670 --> 00:32:34.289
And then when I sat for the epidural in the past when I have helped patients get epidurals so before I was a postpartum nurse, I was a Spanish interpreter and I worked with a population in the obstetrics department and I would stand there and let moms lean on me so that they would be in the correct position for an epidural while the nurse did all of the safety checks and everything like that, because you just need a person to help with that process.

00:32:34.289 --> 00:32:36.253
Well, that wasn't offered to me.

00:32:36.253 --> 00:32:44.141
In fact, I was specifically told no, that my husband had to stand in the corner, my doula was not able to support me and my nurse refused to do that.

00:32:44.141 --> 00:32:53.415
So I felt I was in so much pain at that point, I was so exhausted and I felt like I had no control over my abdominal muscles, like it just felt like my whole body was contracting.

00:32:53.415 --> 00:32:55.020
I felt like I couldn't hold myself up.

00:32:55.020 --> 00:32:59.279
So that was really really hard for me to sit for the epidural.

00:32:59.279 --> 00:33:01.953
So strike one was well.

00:33:01.953 --> 00:33:05.361
Strike one was laboring on a stretcher, but I digress.

00:33:05.361 --> 00:33:07.751
Strike one was laboring on a stretcher.

00:33:07.751 --> 00:33:10.195
Strike two was not getting an IV beforehand.

00:33:10.195 --> 00:33:15.085
Strike three was telling me to take off my gown and put on the awful hospital gown.

00:33:15.085 --> 00:33:20.182
And then strike four is not assisting me into the proper position for an epidural.

00:33:20.711 --> 00:33:22.337
Luckily, the epidural went in smoothly.

00:33:22.337 --> 00:33:24.748
It took effect immediately.

00:33:24.748 --> 00:33:40.884
However, and I have since talked to anesthesiologists about this next part, specifically an anesthesiologist that worked at the hospital that I delivered at, and my understanding at this point is that there are certain medications that are put in the epidural that can cause uterine tetany.

00:33:40.884 --> 00:33:44.269
And so that next moment, two things happened.

00:33:44.269 --> 00:33:54.037
I remember looking up at my blood pressure before the epidural and it was like 180 over 100, which my blood pressure is never that high, but I would imagine it was the amount of pain that I was in.

00:33:54.037 --> 00:33:57.402
And then after that, I remember it was like it was so super low.

00:33:57.402 --> 00:33:59.289
It was like 70 over 30 or something.

00:33:59.289 --> 00:34:08.289
That's the last thing I remember seeing as I passed out was the number on the blood pressure machine saying like 70 over 30.

00:34:08.289 --> 00:34:09.579
I know the bottom.

00:34:09.579 --> 00:34:13.289
The diastolic was 30 and I passed out Still didn't have an IV at that point.

00:34:13.590 --> 00:34:24.289
As I came to, I remember seeing a resident come in who touched my belly and said that I was in uterine tetany, which means that I was having a really long contraction.

00:34:24.289 --> 00:34:29.009
At some point after that I remember him saying something like she's been contracted for 10 minutes straight.

00:34:29.009 --> 00:34:34.289
Get the turb, which turbulent is a medication that stops contractions.

00:34:34.289 --> 00:34:39.289
I remember the nurse putting turbulent in my arm while I'm going in and out of consciousness.

00:34:39.289 --> 00:34:45.269
And also I remember hearing my baby's heart rate was in like the 80s and going down.

00:34:45.269 --> 00:34:48.289
Normal heart rate for baby is 110 to 160.

00:34:48.289 --> 00:34:50.938
So hers was half of that.

00:34:51.835 --> 00:34:59.626
And I remember getting my IV and then later I kind of came to and I couldn't feel anything from my waist down because I had the epidural.

00:34:59.626 --> 00:35:01.289
It was effective, but that was terrifying.

00:35:01.289 --> 00:35:05.269
I remember, as I passed out one of the times, looking at my doula saying what have I done?

00:35:05.269 --> 00:35:08.289
And she just said you know I'm here to support you.

00:35:08.289 --> 00:35:10.269
But that was terrifying.

00:35:10.269 --> 00:35:13.289
So after that I just felt completely out of control.

00:35:13.289 --> 00:35:23.257
Even though I was at the hospital that I worked at, even though I was a nurse in obstetrics in the hospital that I worked at among colleagues, I still felt out of control.

00:35:23.257 --> 00:35:27.289
So that all happened about 7 o'clock in the morning, right before shift change.

00:35:28.416 --> 00:35:30.128
At about 8 o'clock in the morning I got moved to a room.

00:35:30.128 --> 00:35:33.289
Finally I was comfortable, but I was no longer contracting.

00:35:33.289 --> 00:35:37.539
Oh, when that resident came in and said I was in tetany, he also checked my cervix and it was.

00:35:37.539 --> 00:35:39.003
He said I was 8 centimeters.

00:35:39.003 --> 00:35:43.001
Prior to that, when I arrived at the hospital the first cervical check, I was 6 centimeters.

00:35:43.001 --> 00:35:46.250
So when I got to the room I wasn't contracting.

00:35:46.250 --> 00:35:50.289
My day shift nurse put me in thrown position to try to bring the baby's head down.

00:35:51.231 --> 00:35:56.021
The attending came in and recommended a C-section.

00:35:56.021 --> 00:36:05.289
After checking me again and saying that I was only 7 centimeters and that my baby was low in the pelvis, but she had what's called capitis.

00:36:05.289 --> 00:36:13.250
So there was swelling in her head, not her brain, just like her scalp area, which is normal if your baby's been sitting in your pelvis for a while.

00:36:13.250 --> 00:36:15.762
She said that my labor had stopped progressing.

00:36:15.762 --> 00:36:20.230
But I made the argument that while it stopped progressing because you guys gave me medication to stop it.

00:36:20.230 --> 00:36:24.289
So maybe let's see if there's something we can do about that.

00:36:24.289 --> 00:36:29.170
So the option was given to me to start pitocin and I agreed.

00:36:29.170 --> 00:36:40.289
In the meantime, when the pitocin started, my nurse and my doctor were pulled into another birth and so I actually was allowed to labor for longer than they had anticipated.

00:36:40.289 --> 00:36:49.114
They said I'd have like an hour, but I got like 3 hours and luckily, by the time they came back I was complete and ready to push In.

00:36:49.134 --> 00:37:20.579
Between those times when I believe when the pitocin had started or maybe actually no, before the pitocin started when the doctor left the room to have us discuss a C-section, my husband called our friend who had been the fertility specialist that I spoke to before I got pregnant and asked what he thought we should do, and we sent him a picture of our baby's heart rate at that moment and he said at this very second, it looks good, the variability is good.

00:37:20.579 --> 00:37:21.344
She's having exiles.

00:37:21.344 --> 00:37:26.606
At this very second, I don't see any indication, any urgent indication, for a C-section.

00:37:26.606 --> 00:37:27.289
She looks healthy.

00:37:27.289 --> 00:37:38.269
So if you want a little more time, I would advocate asking for a little bit more time, and he presented the option of maybe asking if we could start a little bit of pitocin to get the labor back.

00:37:38.269 --> 00:37:46.289
It started because it had stalled out after the turbulence was given, and so that's what we asked for and we started pitocin at one.

00:37:46.570 --> 00:37:57.182
I remember looking at the pump to see what level of pitocin we were at, and over the next three hours we went from one to two to three and we landed on three.

00:37:57.182 --> 00:38:17.289
We stayed at three of the pitocin and I got to complete during that time Probably a little earlier than that time, honestly, because the doctor and the nurse were so busy with other patients that I don't think that they noticed that I was complete and they came in when my daughter started having D-cells, which is expected as your baby starts to crown.

00:38:17.289 --> 00:38:32.739
So, and the reason that I think that my baby was probably getting very low in my pelvis was because with the pitocin, there was a point where I just started pooping and could not stop, and that is an indication to me that my baby's head was pushing on my rectum.

00:38:32.739 --> 00:38:38.820
In my poor husband, I just told him to run out to the hall and ask for room spray and baby wipes.

00:38:38.820 --> 00:38:43.956
If they couldn't come in and deliver my baby, at least we could just, you know, clean up, and it was like he would hand me a baby wipe.

00:38:43.956 --> 00:38:45.099
I would wipe my own butt.

00:38:45.099 --> 00:38:59.289
I was turned out on my right side because that was my baby's favorite side, apparently and hand him the wipe with the poop in it, he would run over to the red he had a glove on and he would gag his way over to the red trash can in the corner and throw it away.

00:38:59.289 --> 00:39:00.199

My First Birth Story

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