Great expectations

"There was a moment when the irony of all my birth preparation came tumbling down on me. Delayed cord clamping? Golden hour? Not only had I not held my baby, I hadn’t even seen her."

by Sanni H. 

The other day someone casually mentioned my “birth healing process” and how hard it must have been. I laughed because, in my mind, it felt quite obvious that, of course, I had not gotten around to that. 

Most moms with traumatic birth stories nod when I talk about putting that process on hold. Many have told me that it is usually around a baby’s first birthday when you find yourself thinking back to their birth, knowing there is still a lot of confusion and pain to resolve. Knowing, too, that it was more important to focus on keeping them alive, enjoying them, and getting to know them in that first year.

Well, here I am, on the precipice of my daughter’s first birthday, thinking back to the night she came into the world.

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Sometimes I wonder if some part of us knows, deep down, what our fertility, birth, or newborn journey will be like. We intuitively know what will go right—and what will go wrong. And the thing we know will go wrong becomes the thing we fear. 

Or maybe this is just my thinking. Because, in my case, the thing I feared most about birth came true.

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I remember one detail in particular from my mother’s story of giving birth to my sister. She had begun pushing, but my sister was stuck, and her heart rate was dropping. The doctor told her that if she didn’t push this baby out “now,” they would perform an emergency C-section. Thankfully, Mom dropped the metaphorical hammer, and Jaime was born vaginally and unmedicated soon after—the first of two births my mother would give in this manner.

I remember another similar story I heard from a coworker. They were in a teaching hospital with 10 people in the delivery room when the baby's heart rate dropped. A doctor asked if they wanted an emergency C-section. They agreed but later learned about the undisclosed risks of having a C-section and regretted not pushing for a bit longer.

I also remember the third and fourth stories I heard along these lines.

So when I was pregnant, my birth mission felt clear: Learn all the birthing tactics to avoid getting “forced” into an emergency C-section and not fall prey to the “cascade of interventions” used in Western hospitals with outrageously high C-section rates. 

But let me rewind to the story of my baby’s conception.

I have always wanted to be a mother. It was not something I ever doubted or questioned. 

I would have wonderful dreams of being pregnant, waking up with my hand on my belly, aching for the feeling of carrying a baby in my womb. In fact, motherhood has been on my mind for so long that my daughter’s name came to me in college, while sitting at a small, round table in the tiled basement of my rented house. June: That would be her name.

What I should say is that I looked forward to becoming a mom—right up until I saw the plus sign on the pregnancy test. And then my world shattered. 

We were not “trying” to get pregnant. I had gone off the pill a year before to see what I would feel like without the hormones I’d been putting into my body since high school. I’d been methodically taking my temperature each morning and tracking my cycle so we could be safe. We also had the occasional night when we knew I was far enough out of ovulation to have sex without a condom. 

But alas, we somehow slipped up. Ironically (or perhaps intuitively), during the month I was unknowingly pregnant, we started talking seriously about when we would start trying. It wasn’t far into the future—just a year away, perhaps. So when we saw the faint plus sign, we didn’t question whether or not we would keep the baby. This was our path; we had just arrived at it slightly earlier than expected. 

I will say, however, that I’d spent a lot of time talking with friends about the difficulties of infertility and very little time thinking about the flip side: the emotional intensity of an unexpected pregnancy. 

I floundered alongside the hormonal cocktail of the first trimester and the shocking realization that my world and my body were about to be turned upside down. I couldn’t look at other babies. I couldn’t think about what it would be like to be a mom. I went from being absolutely confident in my mothering skills to doubtful and unsure. The fact that I felt so down made me angry toward myself and sad for the baby that would have to be my kid. It didn’t help that, despite appearing like a healthy, normal pregnancy on the outside, I was incredibly nauseous and puking for a good portion of nine months.

My husband and friends comforted me by reminding me that these feelings would pass, that I’ve always loved kids, and that my body would return to normal. By the time the 40-week mark rolled around, I had ridden the wave of surprise, hormones, and uncertainty and arrived back to myself: A woman who knew she wanted kids. A woman who knew there was, and had always been, a mother in her soul. 

So, one day after my due date, my husband, a friend, and I donned our warmest coats and danced under the light of the full moon, willing this baby to join us in the world. I had already experienced multiple nights of evenly spaced, regular false contractions that left us empty-handed. But that evening, they came. Again and again for hours. It was beautiful, for a while, facing the pain in my bathtub, holding my husband’s hand, watching the full moon set and the sun beginning to rise. We headed to the hospital, our doula trailing in the car behind us. 

Ten hours in, I was still facing closely spaced, regular contractions when the doctors told me I had not dilated past five centimeters. I asked for the epidural. And then, for another 10 hours, my body labored. Nothing was happening. They broke my water with a large crochet hook and gave me Pitocin through an IV. 
Twice during this time, June’s heart rate dropped. The doctors told me that it was unusual; the dips were too long, they said. They mentioned a C-section if there was a third dip, but no one pushed it, and I wasn’t even close to entertaining it. 

People came and went from my birthing room. We changed positions—and changed positions again. At one point, I was helped onto my hands and knees. I waved my hips and took deep breaths, my hospital gown dangling down around me. At nine centimeters, my doctor encouraged me to gently start pushing. Between the pushing and stretching, I dilated to the full 10 centimeters. But for two more hours, June wouldn’t come. 

Later, I would ask myself what went wrong at this moment? Did I push hard enough? Was I too disconnected from my body because of the epidural? Perhaps it was my pelvic floor—was it too weak? Should I have done more kegel exercises during pregnancy? While I’ve been told that none of these things could be the cause, I still can’t help but wonder.

Eventually, more people came into the room. I could see their heads faintly bobbing in the darkness beyond the bright lights of my hospital bed. They tried a vacuum suction. No luck. And then, a woman with curly brown hair and an angular face came into my vision. “It’s time,” she said. I looked at my husband and our doula. They both nodded. “Okay,” I whispered. 

Suddenly my hospital bed was moving down a corridor into a well-lit room. A nurse hung a curtain in front of my chest. Someone was asking if I could feel them pressing on my abdomen. I said I could. There was motion behind the curtain. The energy in the room was serious as they cut me open. I was half asleep and confused. I tried to focus on my husband. It felt like it should be over, but it wasn’t. He was holding my hand and telling me he loved me over and over again. I kept asking where my baby was. There was nothing. Just silence. I pulled Alex closer, “Am I dying?” “Is the baby okay?” He didn’t know. 

Later he told me that when they pulled June out, she looked like a corpse. She was covered in meconium and lifeless. Her APGAR score was zero. I would learn that a nurse started crying in the corner as the room erupted into a controlled frenzy, and June was intubated. The NICU doctor arrived at some point. Afterward, I would wonder why he hadn’t been there the whole time. Eventually, they wheeled me out. I held Alex’s hand. We didn’t have a baby. 

There was a moment when the irony of all my birth preparation came tumbling down on me. Delayed cord clamping? Golden hour? Not only had I not held my baby, I hadn’t even seen her.

Over the next few days, June’s condition dramatically improved. Her brain and heart test results came back healthy except for a small dark spot on her MRI. The doctors didn’t know if it would affect her and said we could only wait for her to hit her developmental milestones. Three days after she was born, I wept with joy as I held her for the first time. On day four, our insurance didn’t cover our hospital room anymore, so Alex drove us home. It started to snow as I sobbed in the car. The doctors told me that she wouldn’t be cleared until they knew she was eating on her own, so I made it my mission to give her the one thing I could: breastmilk. I went back and forth to the hospital four times a day, a tightly wrapped bando keeping me from feeling like my insides would fall out. After each feeding, a nurse would ask me if she had fed for 15 minutes, and I would lie and say yes. It was good enough. I just wanted to take her home. 

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June turns one year old in a week. She is vibrant, goofy, and strong-willed. Her walk looks like she’s drunk and has places to be. The pediatrician believes she is hitting her developmental markers ahead of schedule. I adore her with every fiber of my being. 
On long walks alone or sometimes with friends, I turn my birth story over in my head. Usually, my thoughts lead nowhere and have no conclusion. What exactly went wrong?Is there blame to place? If so, on whom? My doula praises my OB for trying so hard to give me the birth I wanted. Doctors blame my OB for waiting so long to give me a C-section. My OB believes June’s delivery was shocking and couldn’t have been predicted. My girlfriends blame the cultural trend that led me to believe medical intervention was unnecessary if I was strong enough.

Or is the blame to be placed on me? Was I simply so adamant about a vaginal birth that I was too callous with the red flags? As someone who tries to live a full and rich life, I tend to ignore concerns about low-likelihood, worst-case scenarios. Is the universe telling me to be more afraid? Is that the lesson?

Mostly, these questions still ping-pong back and forth in my skull, and I wonder how long it will be before they lay to rest.

​My only conclusion so far is this: Had I been able to look into the future, I would have made different choices. But, just as I must accept every day as the mother of a one-year-old, the future is always unknown, and there is no telling what is around the next corner. All I can ever do is appreciate every moment I have, with June, in the present.