One Baby, Please, Hold the Sugar: A Birth Story

One baby, please, hold the sugar is my daughter’s birth story told from her perspective. These words are her own and don’t necessarily express my personal views or opinions.

I welcome all women to share their birth stories! Please contact me if you’d like to publish your birth story on The Incomplete Guide to Parenting.

If you are interested in my doula or lactation services, please visit my website

Disclaimer: No artificial sweeteners here

I’ve gone back and forth about putting my story out into the world. I never wanted to scare anyone, and so when asked, I would come up with a glossed over, toned down version of my story, the “polite” version.

But I recently read a birth story that was such a blatant bunch of sugar-coated bull**** that I laughed out loud. I felt like it skirted over the gory details to maintain that polite, perfect facade.

The thing is, those kinds of stories hurt me (and many others no doubt) because while I know they’re not honest, there’s a part of me that questions it. Was my experience so out of the ordinary? Why do all these women talk about their births like it was a beautiful dream come true while I still have nightmares about mine? I catch myself feeling resentful towards those moms, and that’s not fair of me either. But it’s how I feel, and I know I’m not the only one.

This story is not one of rainbows and candy-coated truths. This story is real and raw, and if that’s not something you can or want to hear, I suggest you move along. I tell my story the way it is because I owe it to myself and to every other woman out there who wonders if she alone has suffered. I hope that others might find solace in knowing that they are not alone and that they might find the strength to talk about their own authentic experiences.

Birth: Early Labor

I went into labor on a quiet Saturday morning in October. It was 2 am when I awoke to mild contractions. I was five days past my due date and had been impatient for the last couple of weeks, so I eagerly began timing them and saw that they were about 10 minutes apart. I didn’t want to get my hopes up – I’d had Braxton Hicks a few times already. So I tried to relax and go back to sleep, but the contractions continued.

Around 6 am, my husband stirred a bit beside me, so I took the opportunity to tell him that I believed labor had started. We were both well prepared for a long haul. I’ve watched and learned from my mom’s and sisters’ pregnancies and knew that, especially for first-time moms, labor could take a while to get going.

So we went about our business as usual. I showered and made pancakes. I almost would have forgotten that I was in labor if I didn’t get a little twinge in my back every ten minutes. My mom – who’s also my doula and lactation consultant – had an event to go to that afternoon. She offered to skip it, but I waved her off. I’m sure nothing will happen before tonight at the earliest, I said. Oh, boy was I wrong.

Birth: Active Labor

It was so sudden. I was taking a bath. One minute I felt relaxed, and the next, my body was just in agony. Contractions – real contractions, not those mild early labor contractions – feel white-hot and twisted, like someone’s wringing your organs as you burn from the inside out. I was crying, and I grabbed my phone to text my husband to come be with me. He timed my next few contractions, and we realized they were 2-4 minutes apart.

I was so prepared for a drawn-out labor, but here I was only 10 hours from the first contraction and suddenly in active labor. The shock of it all had me feeling whiplashed. It was barely noon. Should we be going to the hospital? It didn’t seem logical. We called my mom so she could drive with us. She reminded me that I could be expected to labor outside the hospital if I wasn’t dilated enough to be admitted. I hesitated, but at this point, I was barely speaking and was spending a lot of time doubled over crying, so we went.

The 40-minute drive to the hospital was not pleasant. My contractions were now just one minute apart, lasting for a minute or less. I contracted approximately 20 times in the back seat of a small sedan, crying into my husband’s shoulders while my mom rubbed my back. Being in labor anywhere sucks, but it somehow sucks even worse when you’re confined to a small space.

When we finally got there, I was desperate to get in the tub as I had planned for a water birth. I didn’t want an epidural, so being in the water was crucial for me. And what a world of a difference it made. I was still contracting hard and fast, but it was so much more manageable.

Birth: Transition

My midwife met us upon arrival. She’d watched me through a contraction and admitted me but didn’t check to see how dilated I was. After laboring in the tub a bit, I wanted to know what kind of progress we were making, if any, so I asked her to check me. I was 9.5 centimeters dilated, and the baby was in the -1 station. I was shocked. It was about 1:30 pm. I’d been in active labor for less than 2 hours. I started to feel hopeful that our baby would be born quickly. (Haha that didn’t happen)

My water had yet to break, and I was impatient, so I eventually asked my midwife to break it manually. That’s when we learned that there was meconium present in the amniotic fluid; a potential risk for baby, especially with a water birth. The tub helped so much with my pain, so losing that option was a turning point.

Wrong way, kid

This is right about when things got hard(er). What I didn’t know at the time is that my son was coming down the birth canal in the wrong position, called posterior. He was facing up to my tummy instead of towards my back or hip. Hence the reason I was only feeling contractions in my back instead of in my abdomen. These kinds of births typically end in cesareans, are more painful, more difficult for pushing, and have a higher likelihood of tearing. (Woohoo)

My midwife started to suspect that this was the case. She had me moving into all sorts of different laboring positions to encourage the baby to turn. I had a feeling that something was off because she’d been pretty content to let me be until now, but I was in too much pain to ask questions.

Birth: Breaking Point

I don’t know “normal” contractions, but posterior contractions feel like a white-hot knife stabbing into your back and then dragging slowly through every layer of muscle, tissue, and fat, all the way down your spine. Not only is it excruciating but also thoroughly draining. I cried, screamed, yelled pretty much nonstop, and told my husband over and over again that “I can’t do this.” I was still 9.5 centimeters.

It was about 6 pm when I finally begged for an epidural. My husband and I had talked about this point and how to know if I meant it. Spoiler alert: I meant it. But he hesitated a little, and when my midwife suggested I try a short term pain relief first, I took it. I was able to sleep for 15 glorious minutes before the pain returned, exploding through my body. The drug (Stadol) had also left me feeling drunk. I felt defeated and demanded an epidural with much more certainty than I had the first time. But when my midwife checked me, she found that baby boy was fully engaged, and it was time to push.

I remember insisting to my mom and my husband that I was not sober enough for this. It seemed ludicrous that they expected me to birth a baby through the thick haze fogging up my brain, nevermind that I was physically trembling with exhaustion. I also remember the looks they gave me, fear mixed with uncertainty. I’m sure now that they too were worried I couldn’t deliver without surgery. Maybe our collective fear of a cesarean was what kept me going.

Birth: Pushing

My midwife and all the nurses got set up, and they encouraged me to push with the next contraction, but I didn’t know how. Have you ever heard women describe “the urge to push?” Supposedly it’s uncontrollable, like a reflex. But you don’t get that urge with a posterior baby, at least I didn’t. They kept saying to focus my strength on my perineum or pelvic floor. I don’t have that much control over my body sober, so I definitely didn’t have it in my drunk, exhausted traumatized state.

I can confidently say the pushing phase was the worst part. As my baby made his leisurely way out, I felt like my body was splitting in half. I was struggling to breathe, shaking uncontrollably, and truly felt like I was going to die. My birth team kept encouraging me to push, and I remember wondering why no one seemed concerned that I was obviously dying.

But I wasn’t dying. And at 8:17 pm my son was born!

One baby, please, hold the sugar

At the moment they put him on my chest, I was not yet overwhelmed with maternal love. My heart was not full, and I was not elated. My one single thought was, “Oh, thank God, it’s over.” But (sigh) it was not over.

Many hands worked in the chaotic aftermath. My husband cut the umbilical cord, but I don’t remember it. They wrapped our son, weighed, measured, and returned him to me. It all seemed to happen in a second.

My midwife was talking to me, but I hardly registered it. She was telling me that I had a third-degree tear, and she needed to call in a doctor. I don’t think I could’ve cared any less about what was going on with my body at that moment, but that tear would prove to be my biggest hurdle.

It was then that she also told me that he had been posterior. I should be proud, she said, because it doesn’t get much harder than that.

Sometime during all of that, my mom helped me breastfeed (the one thing that actually went right for me, thanks to my mom), and I finally got to look into my son’s beautiful eyes for the first time. And then we slept.

Emotional and physical recovery

If you asked me which was harder, birth or recovery, I’m not sure there would be a clear winner. Because of my tear, I’d lost way too much blood. The first time the nurse tried to help me to the bathroom, I felt a hot, loud ringing in my ears and fell back into the bed. I was too dizzy and weak to get to my son, forcing my husband to be a caretaker for both of us, which was something we didn’t anticipate. My iron levels dropped so low that I was IV’d, and my doctors considered a transfusion. Meanwhile, my baby was jaundice and getting his own medical care

It didn’t get more comfortable when we got home. Childbirth is already physically traumatizing enough without actually torn flesh in such a sensitive and overused area. I cried every time I moved, sat up, peed, whatever. And despite my iron levels rising before being released from the hospital, I was still weak and having trouble performing simple tasks. At four days postpartum, my recovery took another dive when I began to experience chills, fever, fatigue, all stemming from extremely low blood pressure.

I literally couldn’t do anything without my mom or my husband helping me, and that included caring for our baby. That made me feel pretty frustrated, and I cried about that when I wasn’t crying in pain.

I was almost four weeks postpartum when I began to feel a significant difference. Still, it wasn’t until around 12 weeks that I felt normal, or as close to normal as my post-baby body will likely ever get.

Healing is a process

My son is now six months old, and he is incredible. I get to spend my days playing with him, watching him smile, hearing his sweet giggle, nourishing him from my body, and cheering for his milestones. There was never any doubt that I would love him. He is and will always be worth it.

But does that make the trauma any less real?

Of course not. Despite how often the notion is waved off (“You’ll forget about the pain.” “You’ll want another.”) it took me a long time to work through my feelings from my son’s birth. In some ways, I am still processing it.

If we did choose to have another child, it would not be because I forgot about everything I went through, it would be despite it all. Because yes, it is worth it, and parenthood is incredible. And because usually, the things most worth doing are the hardest.