Childbirth is Sometimes An Unplanned Planned Event
That sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? An unplanned planned event. I will tell you about my first childbirth story to make sense of my choice of words. What I mean is that we all plan our childbirth. We know what we want, we pick our doctors, we decorate our nursery, and we usually know if we want pain medicine, and where we plan to have our child. However like all well laid plans, sometimes the unplanned takes us by surprise.
Living in Virginia with just my husband I was determined to do one thing when I went into labor. I did not want to call everyone and tell them I was in labor only to have to call them back to say it was false labor. So my plan was to call my relatives once I was in the hospital and checked in when the time came.
One Sunday afternoon I had not been feeling well and a few hours later I knew why. A week and a half overdue you can imagine what was on my mind. When I started to feel a little crampy I said nothing to my husband but went about my morning. When they started to feel a little stronger I decided to take a shower. I lifted my foot over the tub and stopped in mid air, the contraction I was having was no doubt a full blown contraction.
After my shower I started the “counting” and within the hour my husband and I were on the way to the hospital. No calls had been made like I wanted. We arrived and were put into a room, as soon as my epidural was in we had planned to call our moms to let them know the day had come. As soon as the fiasco was taken care of (a story for another day) I layed back for a final check and prepared for the wait. This is where my planned childbirth became unplanned.
My son was said to be efface which is a position that put his forehead against my cervix instead of the back of his head. Besides that my son”s heartbeat was falling. I really think the intern that put the monitor on could not get it positioned right but they were not going to take any chances. A paper was shoved into my face to sign for a c-section. I was given oxygen and whisked away from my husband. I was told I was going to be out while my baby was born but not to worry. Those words sank through and I became worried immediately.
Thankfully my son’s heartbeat became normal and there was no need to knock me out since they had already gotten the epidural in. However during all this there was one thing that was neglected. My mother was never called. My husband who thought he was going to be in my room awaiting to hear the news did get a chance to call my mother-in-law. All she knew as she left Washington, D.C. to get to us in Roanoke, VA was that I had been rushed in to have a c-section and we had no idea if the baby was ok. At the time she did not have a cell phone.
My mother was not called until a couple hours after my son was born. She had no idea I was in labor and that her first grandchild was on the way. We finally got a chance to call her once I was taken from recovery back to my room. Thankfully my childbirth ended well but it was definitely a well planned childbirth that ended unplanned!
Childbirth is such an incredible moment, and I’d love to know what went through your mind when you held your baby for the first time? By replying, you will be entered to win an exclusive Million Moms Challenge Gift Pack, which includes an iPad2, a custom-made Million Moms Challenge pendant and a $50 donation in your name to Global Giving.
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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Million Moms Challenge. The opinions and text are all mine. Contest runs October 17 to November 13, 2011. A random winner will be announced by November 15, 2011.