Things I Thought of While In Active and Transition Labor

I don't remember there being a significant difference between active and transitional labor.  My labor had two phases: before my water broke and after my water broke.  The first one being very painful and the second one being hellishly, please dear God, kill me painful. 

But for reference active labor went from about 1 am until approximately 4:30 am and transitional labor was about 4:30 am until 6 am.  This is based on a rough estimate of where my cervix was in centimeters. Active labor is 4 to 7 centimeters and transitional labor is 7 to 10 centimeters.

Things that popped into my head during the peaks of the contractions, which were happening God-only-knows how close together, but way too close together in my opinion:

"I am NEVER doing this again!"
"We are adopting the next one."
"I don't care if the baby dies, I want the pain to stop."
"Natural birth is a bunch of crap, I'd rather be dead right now."
"This is not worth it, I don't want to be a mom if this is what it takes."
"Make it stop, please make it stop."

I do vaguely remember getting a break from the contractions.  I believe I basically collapsed on the bed to rest.  People were telling me to rest in between contractions, so I did.  I had the freedom to move around with the external monitor, and I did a little in the beginning.  But the external monitor sucks because it slips and baby moves and the monitor constantly looses the baby and alarms go off in the hall.  I agreed to an internal monitor.  I didn't move off the bed much after the internal monitor was put on, and I frankly didn't have the energy to do it.  I did change positions in bed many times.  I barely remember how I was positioned or even where other people in the room were.

I did express some of the above things out loud.  At one point I said, "I don't care about the baby anymore."  My doula said, "that's not true."  Which I guess it wasn't, but I really needed to express how much pain I was in.  I wanted them all to know I was not fucking around here.  I was in PAIN.  I also told my husband to kill me, please kill me.

But I was also at the same time determined to do this without drugs.

I was not aware of time, but at about 5 am I knew it had been a while and I knew I wouldn't last much longer without pain relief.  I believe I said something like this, "No! I can't do it anymore.  The pain needs to end now."  My doula this time agreed with me and along with the midwife we all decided to do another cervical check just to see how far I was.  The midwife checked me and told my doula, who looked very happy.  "Do you want me to tell you the good news?"  "YES!"  I wanted the good news.  "You are 9 cm!"  Only 1 cm to go.  I decided to hold off.  By the time they would be able to get the anesthesiologist in and prep me for an epidural, I probably would be pushing.


I was still in the very awful transitional phase, but my mood changed a bit because I knew it was almost over, I believe I did a lot less yelling and was a bit less suicidal.  I had made it this far, what's one more centimeter?


I had heard that you don't need anyone to tell you when to push.  That your body knows and it tells you to push.  I also heard that pushing can be hard and that you can hold off on pushing and let the contractions push your baby down farther.  This can prevent tears.  But I found that if I didn't push during a contraction, the contractions hurt, and if I did push during a contraction, the contractions barely hurt.  Plus I wanted this to be over.  I wanted to meet my baby.  So at 6 am, I felt the urge to push, and I began to push.


I guess I would say that pushing was hard, but compared to transitional labor, pushing was amazing.  So at the time I was pushing, I loved pushing because it provided a huge pain relief.  I pushed as hard as I could and I was told my pushing was very effective, but I still had to push for nearly 2 1/2 hours, which is common for first births.


It did not feel like 2 1/2 hours to me.  I believe I was either falling asleep in between contractions or was totally dazed and out of it and unaware in between contractions, because to me, pushing lasted about 45 minutes in my head.  And it seemed like the contractions were right on top of each other with no end.  I do remember collapsing in between the contractions and closing my eyes and relaxing my body fully.  The nurses brought me juice to drink.  They called it special pushing juice.  It was apple.


They gave me little guidance, mostly encouragement, and told me I was pushing very well.  My husband says he was nearly falling asleep.  He had been up for over 24 hours by the time our son was born. 


Because of the meconium-stained amniotic fluid they wouldn't let me in the birthing tub, had me on continuous fetal monitoring, and had an infant resuscitation team in my room while I was pushing.  This is the one thing that did not go as planned.  I really wanted to be in the birthing tub.  There was also a chance that my delayed cord-clamping would not be allowed and that I would not get immediate skin-on-skin contact if he did not breathe and cry right away after birth.  This was explained to me.  It didn't freak me out at the time, because I knew he was alright, but it would have been scary had they cut the cord immediately and taken him away from me to resuscitate him. 


At 8:27 am, he was born and he did cry right away and was put on my chest for immediate skin-on-skin contact and breastfeeding a few minutes later.  I am very grateful for this.  This was the most amazing few minutes and I'm so glad I got to have them.  It made everything else worth it and in those moments I knew I would do it all over again someday.