Birthday
I don’t care how many stories you’ve been told, how many books you’ve read, how much exercising you do. Nothing and I mean NOTHING can quite prepare you for labor. The only thing you can really do is hold your breath and hope for the best!
“Giving birth should be your greatest achievement, not your greatest fear.”
I’d be lying if I say that I wasn’t scared the closer my due date got. I had heard so many horror stories and I really wasn’t looking forward to recounting anything like the ones I had heard. You know those far and few in between stories that boast of how smooth labor and delivery was? Yeah I wanted to be apart of the selective few secret society. Clearly, there were other plans for me. That became evident at 6pm sharp. That was just how sharply the pain sliced through me and I had to promptly put an end to my telephone call without warning. While I was happy to go through it so that I could quickly get over it, I was in utter agony.
“I will NEVER DO THIS AGAIN,” I managed to get out.
“How do people have multiple kids?!”
I simply could not believe that there had been so many women before me who had made the decision to have two, four and five kids KNOWING what labor and delivery felt like that very first time around. My mind could not process the logic.
Plenty of deep breaths.
Standing to sitting to laying on repeat.
Pacing back and forth to the bathroom.
Nausea. (I thought I gave that up back in trimester one.)
At this point, all of these memories come back to me in small snapshots. The clearest moment that remains etched in my brain, however, is the moment that my doctor asked me the question that she knew the answer to: “Do you want the epidural?”
As I parted my lips to reply, “NO” came out quicker than my vocal cords would comply. My son’s father reiterated what I had said several times in pregnancy. I remained rooted in my “no” up until that 11:30 mark. I had ONLY dilated 5 centimeters; that’s 3 centimeters more than I was when they admitted me... over twenty four hours ago.
I was no longer willing to endure the pain especially not knowing when this boy would decide he was ready!
With the spotlight on me, and an empty room with the exception of the administering professional, “sit up straight and don’t move” was the directive I was given.
Prayer.
That was the only thing that would’ve allowed me to stay still.
