X-Files, Animal Planet, and Epidurals: My Birth Story

Being a first-time mom, I could only guess at what was ahead of me when I went into labor. Since my due date was December 9th, I repeatedly kept telling people, “I’ll work until at least Thanksgiving.” However, Thanksgiving morning at 3 am, I began to see the first signs of labor. All kinds of thoughts were going through my head. Seems I had been having little contractions for some time, but I simply dismissed them as some minor discomfort, being nine months pregnant and all. As time went on-—the longest 3 hours of my life-—I realized that I was now in labor since they were starting to get more intense yet still sporadic.

I finally woke up my husband and wondered if I should go to my mom’s for Thanksgiving dinner. I decided to go. The contractions continued throughout the day, random and erratic as they were in the early hours of the morning—they’d be five minutes apart, then a half an hour apart. It wasn’t until well into the night, after watching The Matrix, that my husband and I determined that the contractions were getting steadier and closer together. After a quick call to my doctor, off to the hospital we went.

While I should have been relaxed I was not. My husband’s driving makes me nervous, so I had to deal with that too. Finally we arrived and first there was a wait for paperwork, which irritated me to no end since I filled out a whole s***load of paperwork well ahead of time and they seemed to think no such paperwork existed.

Then we went to the maternity ward and waited and waited. I tried to sit through a contraction while sitting in a rocking chair, something I saw in the childbirth class. Not a pleasant way to sit through a contraction if you ask me! Finally, we get into a room, get undressed and examined and I’m only 1 cm dilated. I was amazed. All that work and only 1 cm? Then, they say when you’re 3 cm we’ll admit you (in other words no drugs for awhile). That was not fun at all.

Finally they said they’d admit me, but because I was an older patient, I would need to be strapped to a monitor, and I wouldn’t be able to walk around or move. Before that happened, they allowed me to take a shower where my husband hosed me down with nice, hot water. This was another thing I saw in the childbirth class, and it was definitely a more pleasant way to deal with contractions. I later found out that I had pressed my forehead into the tiled shower wall so hard during contractions that I had a sore spot the next day. Still it was the best half hour of the whole experience so far.

Then I had to pick a drug, don’t ask me which one they gave me, all I know is that it was a “narcotic” and that my husband and I sat through most of an X-Files marathon after they gave it to me. At some point we both fell asleep. Then, I must have heard something in my sleep from the X-Files, and felt a contraction. I thought to myself, “A contraction in the X-Files?” It was then I realized the narcotic was wearing off. The nurse who attended me then told me that they could only give me one more dose of this particular drug during the duration of my labor. The next option would be an epidural, and they explained all the risks, but I said go for it. My husband seemed to think I didn’t need it, and wanted to smack him.

They gave me the epidural and by that time it was morning and the X-Files marathon was over. I then turned the TV to some series of funny animal videos showcased on the Animal Planet cable channel. Periodically, they’d move my legs; the sensation, or lack of it, was weird.

Finally I saw my doctor, and as she checked me my water broke—what a mess! Then there was a spell where the contractions slowed down, so they gave me something to speed them up again. Next, what seems like in the blink of an eye, I was getting that urge to bear down despite the epidural. Although I experienced 15 hours of hard labor, it seems that it wasn’t a very long period of time as I’m relating it.

Someone told me to push…”Push like you’re having a bowel movement.” So I pushed. “No, that was a bowel movement.” What’d they expect?!? Anyways, after some pushing, not very long, they give me a episiotomy, at which I yelped, “Ouch!” One nurse turned to look at me very strangely, like I wasn’t supposed to feel it. Yeah, right.

The nurse who had been tending me all night, said to me chirpily, “Can you tell I eased back on the epidural?!?” Yeah, honey, I can tell. But soon after that I didn’t care, because my baby came out and that warm slimy creature was on my chest but a moment. I touched him, and I murmured, “My baby,” and he was whisked away to be checked over, given his Apgar and all that stuff. But in that instant the X-Files, Animal Planet and the epidural were very quickly forgotten. Jimmy had arrived and nothing else mattered.