Many thanks to Nicole Cox for sharing her birth story with us. Stay tuned for her second birth story that will be posted soon….
About three weeks before I was due, I started having a lot of anxiety. Suddenly I began to wonder how I was going to get this thing out of me! A friend told me about a doula that she had met. I called her and I just knew I had to hire her. My husband and I had a big fight about it because he didn’t want to hire her. And I said, “I am the one going through this and this is what I want!” We ended up hiring her.
I loved her. She was incredible. She was so supportive and I was at peace because I knew I would have the support I needed. My husband is great, but he is really emotional and he had never done this before.
I did a ton of research on labor and delivery. I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want. I didn’t want an epidural. I wanted to have her naturally. I had eaten so healthy the whole pregnancy and changed our whole eating habits, so why would I fill her with drugs at the very last minute? I didn’t want to fill the baby with drugs and I wanted to be able to walk around.
I was so disappointed when the baby didn’t come by her due date. Eight days later, I was induced. I got to the hospital at 7 a.m. My doula was there from the beginning. It was new for her because she had never been at that hospital. They knew she was the doula and that she was my spokesperson. She knew what I wanted. I had a pretty crappy nurse. When I told her I wanted to do it naturally, she sort of laughed at me. I was being monitored by a lot of different things, but my doula was there to help me move as much as I could, and she was great. I was up and moving and using the birthing ball.
Now with Pitocin, contractions come hard and fast. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my doula. She was so strong. She knew where I was in pain even when I didn’t and would push on my back in the right places. She was encouraging me and telling me I could do it. I really felt strengthened.
At a certain point I got so tired. The nurse that had laughed at me came in and I said, “I can’t do this, I want the epidural.” She said, “No. You are so strong and you are almost there. You can do it. I am not giving you the epidural.” She did give me a shot of Nubian. The doula thought I had a long way to go, so she went to grab a sandwich. Right after that I just started pushing. When you really get to that point, your body just takes over and you just start pushing. So I was sitting there going, “Uuuggghhh. Uuuggghhh.” I said, “Jeremy, I think I am pushing.” So he called the doula and she ran back up from the parking lot. They checked me and I was complete. So I went from 5 cm to fully effaced and pushing in 1 hour.
They put me in the bed and that was horrendous. The contractions were so intense and I just wanted gravity to do its work. With Pitocin running through your body, you just can’t stop it. I pushed for 10 minutes and I just felt like was being ripped apart, being ripped in two. But 12 hours after arriving for the induction, Addison was born.
My birth plan didn’t stop with labor. I had a bunch of weird requests for after birth as well. I didn’t want them doing a lot of tests and thankfully my doula was there looking over their shoulder because they just kicked into gear and started doing some of the things I had requested them not to. She was saying, “Don’t do that. They requested you don’t do that.” The nurses were upset about the fact that we were messing with their routine.
Our struggle wasn’t over. That night I was trying to nurse and I knew something wasn’t right. I asked the nurse to help me and she said, “You are just not making anything.” She said she had to weigh her. When she came back she brought a bottle of formula and said, “Your baby needs to eat.” I said, “No, I am going to nurse her.” I insisted and I did nurse her without supplementing, but I feel like if I were anyone else, I would have been bullied into feeding her that bottle. We did get the hang of things. After all, I nursed her until she was a year.
