From Kellie: I have never met Nicole personally, but I was reading another blog about birth where she had made a comment about her first birth experience and it really broke my heart. I wanted others to learn from her experience, so I reached out to her and she happily obliged me with a Guest Post. Stories like this are the reason why I started this blog in the first place, it kills me that this can even happen, but it does. One lesson to be learned here should be that you cannot put blind faith in anyone just because they are a Doctor or Midwife, YOU need to educate yourself....this is YOUR body and YOUR baby!
I was an uninformed 19 year old. I had never heard of birth choices except who your OB/GYN was, so I picked the closest one in proximity to our rental home and I wanted a woman; Dr. L delivering out of Arlington Medical Center. Starting at 16 weeks she did vaginal exams, they were uncomfortable but I didn't mind because it kept her in the room a split second more than her usual 2 seconds. She never explained why she started doing them and I never asked. Several years later I requested my records which indicated that she did so because I had had a LEEP procedure 6 months prior to becoming pregnant. (The LEEP procedure can diagnose and treat abnormal cervical cells). I've researched and understand that there is a raised risk for preterm labor but it continues to baffle me that I wasn't made aware of the risk and I'd love to hear from a provider as to why an exam would lower the risk and not raise it.
She terrified me into an induction at 39&1/2 weeks because of suspected large baby. I didn't know that much about natural labor except that my mom had 2 of them so I could too. They briefly touched on natural labor in the hospital Childbirth Class but mostly the ins-and-outs of pain medication.
The morning of the scheduled induction I was blasted with so much pitocin that I was crying through my first induced contraction; I begged for the epidural . Five long hours later it was time to push. The epidural had been unsuccessful in numbing the uterine pain but pretty successful in eliminating any sensation to push.
Despite everything I was feeling good and eager to accomplish pushing my baby out. Two pushes in she asked if I was tired, I replied "No, I feel great"! The next push she said I wasn't pushing hard enough and she was only going to let me push one more time. Before I could even ask her what the HELL she meant, she pulled out the vacuum that was already prepared and yanked out my baby so fast that I received 4th degree tears.
I'm still unsure of the urgency to deliver, there is no indication in my record of fetal distress. My healthy 9 pound baby stayed with me for an hour, made eye contact, latched like we were both pros, THEN my LAST uneducated mistake was letting them take her to get a bath. We will never unravel the mystery that followed but she stayed in the NICU for 7 days, for unknown reasons why. I fought tooth and nail for every breast feeding. I'm so thankful that we bonded so early on because it could have been much more devastating. Despite all that, and not knowing any breast feeding moms, we successfully breast fed for 13 months.
As a footnote, I would like to say that, now as a Doula, I have met and seen doctors that work beautiful in emergency and heightened risk areas. Though I have yet to write my following 5 birth stories, I will tell you that I continued with one more slightly less traumatic induced labor, followed by a very peaceful high risk birth that led me to the path of peaceful births and natural living. I stalked a local midwife, got pregnant and with the support of my husband, she helped me birth 3 of my babies at home free of intervention and no tearing.
If you would like to know more about how this journey has lead me to become an Herbalist and Doula please follow me at http://instictiveroots.blogspot.com/p/services.html
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