Labor in a Time of COVID: A Birth Story
It’s a very strange thing, to grow a person. I’d thought a lot about pregnancy over my life, doubly so throughout my journey to conceive, but actually being pregnant, was, in a word: weird.
I loved my pregnant body. Pregnancy was actually the most confident I’d ever felt about my shape — it was the first time in my life since kids pointed out my rolls in middle school that I felt good about my belly. I wanted people to see it. I wore form-fitting bodycon dresses, empire waists and tight pencil skirts. I felt womanly and that I looked so good knocked up that maybe, just maybe, this is what my body was really meant to look like. This newfound confidence was made all the more ironic since I was pregnant during a global pandemic and literally saw no one my entire pregnancy, not even family- my only audience being the nurses at my OB’s office and whoever actually looks at my Instagram. I felt the need to capture every moment, because otherwise, this pregnancy hardly seemed real, which is tough for someone as nauseous as I was to fully rationalize, but when you experience such a large life change in a bubble, it’s nearly impossible to feel seen. After struggling to conceive and going through IVF I couldn’t control my body, so I took control of the only thing I could, the celebration of this pregnancy. Every post a statement of actualization, saying: I’m really doing this. I’m really, finally having a baby. You may not see me out in the world but I’m real. And so is this baby. I longed for any sense of normalcy, wishing just once I could experience the commonly complained about stranger touching my belly, or have anyone other than my mom ask, “Are you sure there’s just one in there?” I longed for unsolicited advice from strangers in shopping lines. But none ever came. If you’ve read my other pieces, you know I have an autoimmune disease, so as pro wrestler Randy Savage perfectly said, I was goin’ nowhere! In fact, I went more than one year without stepping foot in a grocery store, pharmacy, or mall. Unless I was headed to one of the many doctors on my team, I did not leave the house my entire pregnancy- and even then, I wore an N95 mask and gloves. My OB expressed shock at how pretty she thought I was when she guided me through some breathing exercises sans-mask around my 37th week of pregnancy- she had seen my face exactly once many months ago, and I guess thought I looked like Night of the Living Dead under there?
My path to conceive was challenging, and pregnancy was tough. My husband and I mused that maybe meant labor would be a breeze. Oh, how naive we were.
As a first-time mom, my body just didn’t seem to know what to do. Every other appointment things would alternate between going well and then not- I went from 0% anything to 60% effaced the next week, only for nothing to have changed at all one week later. My OB started every appointment with “let’s get this baby out of you”- and was planning to appeal to the head of the hospital to allow me to be induced early, COVID regulations be dammed, she wanted this baby out- this lovely and empathetic woman internalized, perhaps more than I did, just how much I was suffering. After three months of pneumonia and as many rounds of antibiotic, I’d almost gotten used to not being able to breathe, to waking up coughing up a lung, to feeling as though I was slowly suffocating, to coughing so hard it felt like my ribs were cracking. But every appointment, I just wasn’t ready.
So, when I went in for my last appointment before my due date only to be told I was still not far enough along to be induced, I was surprised and disappointed. As I’ve mentioned, I have a thing for numbers, and I really liked my baby’s due date of 10/10. So even though my cervix wasn’t cooperating, we made a plan. It was Tuesday, and I’d return to her office on Friday to check out how things were progressing, and if miracles exist, I’d be sent to the hospital to be induced with a Foley bulb, (a balloon contraption meant to open the cervix and move things along). In the days between I would see an acupuncturist and get an induction massage, bounce endlessly on my yoga ball, take my primrose oil religiously, and obsessively research women’s experiences of the Foley, which seemed to place the experience somewhere between a slight twinge of discomfort and total bloody torture.
We prepared for anything come Friday- in addition to my body needing to cooperate, the planets needed to align in the hospital too. We were told there was a chance there wouldn’t be a bed for me in labor and delivery on Friday and that even if things were moving along enough for me to induce, they might not be able to start the process, needing the bed for ladies actually in active labor.
Even though I did acupuncture with my IVF treatment and transfer and actually got pregnant, I’m still not 100% sure it does anything. At the very least, it doesn’t hurt, but I can’t say for sure what it does. All I know is, from Tuesday to Friday, everything changed. Come Friday morning, my OB and I were both pleasantly surprised to find that not only was I ready to be induced, but the pains I chalked up to regular pregnancy discomfort had actually been contractions and it seemed I wasn’t going to need the Foley balloon after all! One quick call to the hospital and a very unflattering photo of me and the hubby at the insistence of my OB later, we were on our way to the hospital. It was Friday, October 9 and my doctor said we’d have this baby the very next day!
After waiting quite a while to be admitted, the shenanigans began when we arrived upstairs at labor and delivery. I had gone to the drive-through COVID test at the hospital a few days earlier, but now no one was able to locate my test results. After a lengthy and confusing conversation it was determined they would just put me in a room, keep looking and eventually do a rapid test if necessary, which it later was. Also, as luck would have it, labor and delivery was full, so they put me in a room down the hall in the long term maternity ward for people who had to be under supervision or hospital bed rest for a lengthy period of time over the course of their pregnancy, with the plan to move me to L&D the next day.
My OB was confident I was progressing, so she started me on Pitocin and had me sit on a birthing ball, which proved quite difficult while strapped into a number of monitoring machines including one for the baby that didn’t have the appropriate strap. If you can believe it, the hospital had a severe shortage of, of all things, straps, so they were using random bands in an attempt to MacGyver the situation. Having a very active dance machine/karate expert/Olympic gymnast baby who moved every time I did made it nearly impossible to keep track of his always fine, but ever-moving heart rate. Our first night in the hospital was, dare I say, fun. We watched The Addams Family movies on ol’fashioned cable TV, and I barely felt my contractions. It wasn’t until later that night when they started doing my cervical checks when things begin to get, at minimum, uncomfortable. While my night nurse was lovely and sweet as could be, the woman had 3-inch acrylic nails. Let’s just say, cervical checks and acrylic nails do not belong in the same sentence. My progression had once again slowed to a halt and the new plan was to go back to the original plan, the next day I’d get a Foley ball after my epidural and we would go from there, my OB still confident in a Saturday delivery despite my dwindling belief.
Saturday arrived and with it the promised move to L&D. The room was large and bright, and I was full of optimism. Once in labor and delivery my OB started me on respiratory therapy several times a day to help combat the aftereffects of my pneumonia — I got to wear a fun mask and our door had to be kept 100% closed for an hour after each treatment. Other than that, it didn’t seem to change much. Except it made me newly emotional about having pneumonia in the first place. I recently saw the quote, “Over explaining can be a trauma response from having your truth ignored.” My truth was ignored so much as a child I wasn’t even sure what it was anymore. Part of me didn’t even believe I really had pneumonia, even though I had X-rays to confirm it. Every time I brought it up during my pregnancy it was almost to convince rather than complain. I simply had trouble believing that my illness along with the rest of me, was valid- a validation I search for in all parts of my life. I suffer from a deeply broken part of myself that just never believes my feelings are real, or matter. Or matter enough to be real. Part of me had always felt this way, but it was especially cathartic to weepily express it before becoming a mother.
By this point my swelling had increased, my feet and legs ballooned like Violet Beauregard’s and they put those massaging calf things on me which would randomly alarm, and in the large room the echo would make it seem as if the sound was coming from somewhere other than the source- so the first time we heard it, with a room full of beeping machinery it took my husband and a doctor about 20 minutes to locate the culprit. Shortly after my arrival in labor and delivery a jovial anesthesiologist greeted us. The hubby immediately got an odd vibe, but I liked his sense of humor even though he didn’t quite seem to get mine. I had all the confidence in the world, until a nurse came in from the room next-door to say that the woman there in labor could “feel everything” and the epidural had not worked. Now, I have two ruptured discs in my neck, so I’ve had epidurals before. I know a thing about spine stuff and how it’s supposed to feel. The moment he put the epidural in I knew something was off. I was only feeling effects on one side of my body and as time went by, I knew I was barely feeling any effects at all. In fact, when it came time for my OB to place the Foley, I felt Every. Single. Thing. It was truly like a form of torture. I don’t know who those women were who said it was slightly uncomfortable, but they must be made of steel down there because let me tell you, that shit hurt. And the pain didn’t stop after the ball was placed. As it sat pushing my cervix open, every part of me ached. And then the contractions increased- for hours I found myself shaking-crying and basically freaking the hell out, experiencing the most all-encompassing pain I could imagine. All the while I kept telling my nurses that I was feeling everything. They kept saying “you’re going to feel pressure” …like I didn’t know the difference between pressure and pain. It wasn’t until my OB came in, and even then, she said it was a big deal to have to redo the epidural and to make sure I was certain, which I was. She went to find the anesthesiologist and by the time she came back she took one look at me and knew something was wrong. When the anesthesiologist first placed my epidural, he asked how tall I was, to which I replied 5’6”. This time when he came back, he blamed the improper placement on my being impossibly tall, saying the average woman he treats his 5’2”. The man could take one look at me and know I was not 5’2. But thankfully the second epidural worked, and I was able to get through the rest of the day and the night, oh the night. Once the correct epidural was placed, I was given what is called a peanut ball which sounds a lot squishier than it really is. This firm giant ball was placed between my thighs and I was treated to a nurse visiting me every hour on the hour to help me turn from side to side in order to help bring the baby down into birthing position. And every hour on the hour they’d give a little tug on the end of my Foley to see if it happened to break loose — and around midnight it finally did, I had gone from 0 to 5cm, things were looking up. But the night wrapped up and the morning rolled on, we ticked past midnight and all hope of a 10/10 delivery was gone, but nothing else changed. When my OB visited, she decided to immediately break my water and later have a specialty nurse come help me try some exercises that would help move the baby down. One position where they had me on my back for the first time really was quite uncomfortable. I told the nurse that it felt as if my epidural was being pulled out of my back, but they checked the tape and said it looked good and basically made me feel like I was crazy. An hour or so later when my contractions started to really kick up a notch, I once again found myself shaking and crying in pain, feeling everything. The day’s new anesthesiologist came in administering little bumps of extra meds and though I eventually did start to feel some relief, nothing else was changing. They put me on a machine to watch how strong my contractions were getting, and though the strength was increasing my cervix was not opening and the baby was not coming down. Every moment felt more emotional than the one before it. I hadn’t been able to eat due to the meds for over 24 hours. I was bad and snuck sips of Gatorade into my ice chips to make a poor man’s slushie. Everything felt uncertain, unknown, unknowable. Tears came streaming down my face when the music mix my hubby made went from Dumbo’s “Baby Mine” to “This Woman’s Work” from She’s Having a Baby. Suddenly it was mid-afternoon Sunday, and my OB was back. Our conversation turned from planning to immediate action. It was time for a c-section. This baby was way too comfortable and just didn’t want to come out. More concerning was the strength of my contractions- they were increasing but the baby just wasn’t coming down. In fact, my contractions were so strong that if we didn’t take action, I risked suffering a burst uterus. So, we called the grandparents with an update, I made one last video for my best friends as the nurse shaved my nether regions for surgery, and we prepared to meet our son.
A c-section. I just couldn’t believe that after all those days and all that pain, this would be the end result. Of course, I’d taken every birthing and baby class offered by the hospital but half tuned out anything c-section related because it OBVIOUSLY didn’t pertain to me. Funny enough, my husband called it. Weeks before he said he had a feeling I’d be having a c-section. I did not share the same premonition, but admittedly my sensor had been somewhat off throughout this pregnancy, I was even 100% convinced I wouldn’t have just gestational diabetes, which I absolutely did.
Earlier that day I heard the woman in the room next to me give birth, heard teams yelling for her to push, a baby’s scream and cheers. That would not be me. Suddenly we were packed up and I was being wheeled down to the OR. My husband was left in a little waiting room while they prepped me, and I proceeded to come close to having one of the only true panic attacks I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve had a decent amount of surgery in my life, but this OR was overwhelming. Giant lights beamed overhead, strange medical machinery filled every part of the room, and I had to lay completely flat on my back to be prepped. One of the main remnants of my pneumonia was that when lying flat I felt as if I truly could not breathe. Even though my pulse oximeter read fine, the feeling of not being able to breathe mixed with the overwhelming reality of having a c-section combined with the fact that I would actually be meeting my son momentarily, it was all quite overwhelming after these several days of emotional roller coaster and pain I had just endured. And did I mention I hadn’t eaten in days? As I lay there, the anesthesiologist began using my second epidural to pump more meds into my system, pricking my sides with a sharp instrument to see if the meds were taking. Every single time I’d have to let her know I could feel every prick. She also checked the needle in my back and said the tape looked fine, there should be no reason I wasn’t feeling the effects of the medication, but here we were- so even though they were convinced I was crazy, or just had some impossibly low pain tolerance, they were going to undo the perfectly fine epidural and do a spinal epidural combo. I continued to be extremely uncomfortable repeating, “I need to sit up, I need to sit up!”until finally my OB let me. In fact, this lovely lady held me, saying she only had sons but that day I would be her daughter. She put my head over her shoulder and held me in her arms as they un-taped my supposedly perfect epidural only to find that the end was wrapped in an opaque gauze making it impossible to see that the end had, in fact, become dislodged as I’d been telling them all day.
I can’t tell you how many hours I spent over my days in the hospital trying to advocate on my own behalf, which is tough to do when you’re afraid, in pain and in labor. It’s especially tough to internalize when it turns out you suffered for nothing and were right all along. My spinal epidural combo, the third needle in my spine in just over 24 hours, took beautifully, I was laid down on my back and given a little bit of meds to help me relax. My husband was finally allowed in the room, and before I knew it, they were cutting me open. Shortly after, I heard the most beautiful scream, there was a lot of commotion, but I distinctly remember hearing the phrase “big boy”. Charlie was born with arms wide open at 5:08 PM on 10/11, always a fan of consecutive numbers, he was born to parents whose anniversary is 11/12. He had measured just over 7 pounds not long ago, so it was quite a surprise when he came in at 8 lbs. 14 oz., nearly 9 pounds. My husband got to take him while they sewed me up, and before I knew it, I was in recovery holding my newborn son. Everything was a blur, except for how upset I felt whenever anyone told me how big my baby was. He was also extremely long so everyone needed to back the hell off calling my baby big, OK?
The recovery room was stressful, nothing like the romantic golden hour I’d envisioned and was shared with a family who had just had twins. The husband wasn’t wearing his mask, my blood pressure literally and figuratively went through the roof. We were delayed in recovery for 3 times as long as we were supposed to be while my doctor ordered blood work to make sure nothing was wrong. It was overwhelming, but my strongest memory of recovery is how in awe I was of my husband in that moment. He sat in a corner crowded with medical equipment and a cart of our stuff, holding our newborn son, singing Oklahoma. I snuck a quick photo, and impatiently waited to be released down to maternity, where I’d spend the next 4 nights. I couldn’t get out of bed on my own, so once the catheter was removed (side note, after months of pregnancy bladder I freaking LOVED that catheter), getting up to use the bathroom was the worst, most painful part of my day. Aside from not being able to get up to pick up the baby from his bassinet cart and being completely reliant on my husband or nurses to bring me things I needed, my recovery went quickly and was filled with all the hospital food a gal could want. French toast. There was a lot of French toast. It’s weird to look back and know that my baby’s first almost week of life was spent in the hospital. He watched his first movie there- Beetlejuice, and we took endless photos, barely slept, and fell in love. Breast-feeding didn’t even seem half as challenging as people claimed it would be, sure my nips were bloody and sore for a bit but in general this boy latched like a champ. I did the math and came up that I’d been in labor for over 50 hours. When I mentioned this to my OB she laughed and corrected me saying, “Oh no, I just completed your file you were in labor for 77 hours.” Most recently I’ve thought that if I were in this position a century or so earlier, maybe even a few decades ago, I might not have made it at all. The mortality rate for pregnancy and labor in this country are still astounding, especially for women of color. I was lucky. Though we have pondered, perhaps that’s why I couldn’t get pregnant in the first place. Perhaps my body just knew that I, and possibly my child, if left to nature, would not survive the experience. But thanks to modern medicine I’ve got the stunning little nugget asleep in the next room. He’s perfect. He’s healthy. His laughter is the best sound on this planet. I am healed from my C-section. I am thankful every day for my family.
And I have something to hold over my son and husband for the rest of their lives- 77 hours of labor- and for a Jewish mother, that, my friends, is gold.