HankandLucy

{laboring at home}

This isn't my birth story. It's a post about my ambivalence toward writing a birth story (which I always intended to write), but in order to discuss it, it includes an abbreviated birth story.

I pretty much always planned on having a homebirth, before marriage or kids or anything else was even in the foreseeable future.

That's not exactly right. I wasn't planning a homebirth any more than you plan on graduating high school, or perhaps one day marrying the person you intend to spend your life with. It's just kind of what you do. Homebirth, to me (and for me), is a normal thing that I always figured I would do if/when I had a baby.After I became pregnant and we began doing a little research, the choice to have a homebirth became intensely important to both Ben and me. Spoiler alert (for those of you that don't know); Henry was born at the hospital. Not because he was in danger. Or me. But because I wanted an epidural.

I can't be sure of course, but I think I experienced an intensely painful labor. I know. They are all painful. The problem really was lack of respite. I could manage the contractions. Fine. I was also having back labor. Ok, I was dealing. But in between contractions my back continued to spasm with pain. There was no rest. A contraction would end, but instead of having a brief break to prepare for the next, the pain would continue. After 24 hours I was about 5 centimeters dilated, my contractions were about a minute apart (and had been for most of those 24 hours), and the back pain was growing in intensity. And then the ligament pain started. It was overwhelming. Every part of my body seemed to hurt during and in between the contractions. I threw up everything in my stomach, then got back in the birth tub and sobbed my way through the agonizing decision to go to the hospital.

Our experience at the hospital wasn't awful, but it wasn't fantastic. Due to policy we left with an episiotomy and a vacuum assisted delivery under our belts, and narrowly avoided a C section. (Like, within a few pushes. And if we would have been honest (ahem) about when my water broke, I don't think they would have even allowed me to continue laboring from the moment I got there.) (Oh there was also that take home cathater, yay!) But hey. I was, in the end, able to deliver him vaginally (without the vacuum, thankyouverymuch). I was physically fine, and he was amazing- this is what matters, of course.

The days after my birth were spent in the hospital wondering what I could have done differently, and I was coming up at a loss (funny how the light and dark always go together, the pure joy and bliss of our sweet new son was the only anecdote to the rough physical and mental recovery I was experiencing).

As time distanced me from the vivid memory of the pain, and allowed clarity of thought (and that 20/20 hindsight), I have thought of a million things that I could have done differently.

More than anything I wish I could go back to that moment of decision, and do it over again.

The painful part of it for me is that I had the choice, we did not go to the hospital because it was needed. I haven’t been able to resolve this, the decision that I made. This is kind of where the ambivalence to writing the birth story comes in. I don't know the point of my story. I don't know what it has to offer of value to other mothers or mothers to be. I am not looking for answers from you all, just sharing where I am at with it. And some of you have asked about the birth, so now you know at least this much.

{perfect little guy!}