I had a c-section
I had a c-section.
It wasn’t planned or easy or what I wanted.
April is c-section awareness month, and I’ll be honest, I’ve tried not to think too much about it in the two years since my OB cut through seven layers of my body to help deliver my son safely. Does it make you cringe a little to think about? Me too. Physically it’s uncomfy—the scar, the skin around it—sometimes it still feels numb, foreign, like it’s not part of my body. I’ve worked to try to desensitize it, but it really is work. It’s also hard for me to think about because I have to reconcile the absolute joy of my Rory being born with the traumatic way he arrived.
My best friend once asked if I had felt excited in the hospital when we knew he was coming, and it blew my mind to realize that no, I was never excited. I was terrified, sad, and so doped up on the awful medication I was on. I never got to be excited. I know that two things are true: I was absolutely wrecked with a deep love for our beautiful son and I was heartsick over my birth experience. I know these things can coexist, but when the child you’ve waited years for is finally here, that’s the bit you want to focus on. It feels selfish not to just push the other “stuff” aside. I’ve done a lot of pushing the other stuff aside, but that “stuff” is me… my experience, my body, my well being. So, I’m attempting to write about this for the first time to give myself permission to look at it. Not just the physical scar on my body, but the deeper wounds I’ve been carrying.
**I wrote out my story a year ago. But I got to a certain point, and just didn’t know what else to say. I was exhausted by reliving it all. I’ve been working through my trauma this year, and felt like now was the time to finish…
I didn’t have a birth plan. Infertility taught me not to plan too much, and I was comfortable just having some preferences. Healthy mom and healthy baby was all I knew I wanted because even that had seemed like a fantasy for so long. I know now that that is literally the bare minimum of care. We should be able to ask for more of a birthing experience. I don’t know if I’ll have another. So, it’s complicated to reflect on the one I do have, but I also think it’s important.
My last trimester was filled with maternal fetal medicine appointments, stress tests, and ultrasounds because my blood pressure had been a question mark since the start of my pregnancy. It always runs a little high in office, but of course, we wanted to keep an eye on it. I was monitoring at home and checking in. Everything was going well until I went in for my 35 week OB visit. I was seeing one of my doctor’s colleagues for this appointment so I could meet her in case she was on call when I delivered. She was more concerned with my blood pressure than my OB had ever been, and when my initial reading was high, she told me I needed to go to Labor and Delivery so they could monitor me. Luckily I’d finished packing our hospital bag that day. We were nervous, but hopeful that they’d have a plan in place to keep me pregnant a few more weeks as was the goal. As soon as we got to L&D everything felt impersonal and like no one actually knew what to do with me. When I put on that hospital gown, I had no clue I’d be wearing it for the next several days. We were told I’d be given medication and then could go home. Then they switched to medication and staying overnight. Then another of my OB’s colleagues was on her way to meet with me and send me home. Then my case was brought to a doctor I’d never even met who was home having dinner with his family, and, based on one data point, he made the choice that I should be induced. From his dinner table. Unfortunately, through some miscommunication, a nurse had already administered a drug to stop the mild contractions I was having that also had the effect of elevating my blood pressure further. It felt like I had just downed an espresso on an empty stomach. I was hormonal, hangry, and utterly terrified. It was too early. This was not how it was supposed to be. It felt like no one was listening to me. That powerlessness might be the most traumatic part of my birth experience.
I was taken to a delivery room where they started me on pitocin and magnesium. The magnesium is used to prevent stroke; which is the fear when blood pressure is too high. Magnesium makes you feel drunk and disoriented. You can’t focus on anything. Most of what I remember from that evening through the night was being miserably hungry and the last vestiges of my dignity taking a leap out the window as I had to use a portable potty next to my hospital bed. The next morning they decided to insert a foley balloon to help my body along. When your body is not ready to deliver yet, it takes a lot of outside work to force it into doing so anyway. That day was a dizzying parade of nurses—both kind and not so kind. I was allowed some broth, but nothing else. My OB finally arrived with some pithy, unhelpful remarks like, “Joanna, what are you doing here? This wasn’t the plan.” She and the unkind nurse argued about whether the foley balloon that had been in my cervix for 12 hours had actually done anything. The absolute worst moment was when my doctor did not believe my nurse’s assessment and the blinding pain as she forced her hand inside me to declare that I was in fact 3cm dilated and 0% effaced. Which meant there was the tiniest bit of progress, but that we still had a very long way to go. The other discovery she made at that moment was that my son, who had been in the necessary birthing position previously, had spent that last 24 hours turning himself breech. It was then that we were told a c-section was our best and safest option. My doctor could attempt a version and try to physically move him into the correct position, but chances were with the many hours of labor ahead of us, that he would flip himself once again. She could break my waters so that he couldn’t flip, but again, with the hours of labor still to come, there was an increased risk of infection. In this moment I was the most sad about birthing in the midst of a pandemic… I wished that I had had the opportunity to work with a doula, that I had someone to be there to educate me and advocate for me. But the regulations had just started shifting, and I had expected to be pregnant for a few more weeks. I wonder sometimes what my experience would have been like if I’d had a birth worker to take care of me, to make me feel confident in the choices being made on my behalf. Still, I don’t know what I would have done without my amazing husband there to walk with me through each moment. Especially trying to make the safest choices for myself and our child while my head was swimming with the hateful magnesium. (Did I mention he couldn’t leave the hospital at all once I was admitted?) While they gave us a few minutes to talk over our options, they stopped the pitocin and my contractions stopped along with it. My body was no where near ready to give birth to this baby. Yet there we were. A c-section simultaneously felt like the easy choice and the safest choice. I didn’t want it. It felt like I was giving up, but I also felt like choosing one of the other options would make me selfish. One of the other options meant a higher risk of something going wrong for Rory, a higher risk of ending up with an emergency c-section instead of getting to choose it. So, we said yes. His safety was so much more important than my pride and desire for a vaginal birth. Everything started to move once more. I got to take a few moments for myself in the actual bathroom. Dan made jokes about carrying our stuff around like a house elf which made him popular with one of the nurses. I had to go into the delivery room alone. The anesthesiologist was clearly a professional. I was cold and numb from the waist down. I started vomiting from the anesthesia and was grateful for the first time that all I’d had was broth for about 36 hours. They finally let Dan come in to sit next to me and hold my hand. He hid behind the drape by my head so he didn’t have to see them cut my body open. Seven layers. I heard my doctor say, “here’s his feet!” I heard my baby cry, and the relief and reality of him was like an anchor. Because he was early and they needed to check him out, I didn’t get to hold him right away. Dan went over to meet him, to see him weighed, to cut the umbilical cord, to take pictures. How strange and a bit sad that the first time I saw my son outside of my body was in a picture. My OB asked if she finally got to know his name as she stitched me back together. I said, “Rory. His name is Rory Jaymes.”
I was so impatient lying there unable to move, unable to see him. And suddenly he was there and I was kissing his perfect cheeks. We got our obligatory post c-section photo. The one where mom is upside down that let’s everyone know she didn’t deliver “naturally.” Our time together after delivery was too short, and the magnesium was still making me fuzzy. I remember watching Dan looking at Rory on the warmer and writing a text to our loved ones to let them know he was here. I even talked to my mom for a few minutes which ended in me vomiting some more post anesthesia and my grouchy nurse telling me to hang up the phone and rest. I finally got to hold Rory on my chest which I barely remembered until I came across the couple of photos that Dan took of us. They kept checking his levels. He was a healthy 6lbs 2oz, but he was still early. They had given me some (but not enough) steroid shots during labor to help his developing lungs. When they took us to our room the baby nurses wanted one of us to stay awake with Rory through the rest of the night to keep an eye on him. It must have been about 4:00 in the morning at this point. Dan hadn’t slept and I could barely keep my eyes open. My crotchety nurse, bless her, stepped in to say we needed to sleep, and they took Rory with them. It was while we slept that they found he was having some blood sugar and oxygen issues and he became a NICU baby.
While the NICU team took care of Rory, I was doing my best to get to him. Post c-section you’re unable to leave your bed for about 24 hours. Missing his first full day was agony. My day was a revolving door of nurses, doctors, and lactation consultants. I was able to get into a sitting position that evening with the hopes of seeing him the next morning. Over night my blood pressure spiked again. See, the thing about high blood pressure during pregnancy is that delivery is meant to be the cure, the thing that brings it down again. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me. My OBs thought it was preeclampsia, other doctors weren’t so sure. I was told to pump and then not to pump because it wasn’t good for my heart rate. I was told I needed to rest and was woken every few hours. I was told I needed more medication, and I panicked that they were going to put me back on the magnesium that had finally started fading from my system. When I tried to ask what it was, my unkind nurse told me that if I refused medication that I wouldn’t be allowed to see my baby. My blood pressure was higher every time she was on duty. I could hear the sound of the blood pressure machine ringing in my ears even when it wasn’t going off. I learned when the sounds were good and when they were bad. Dan and I both learned which numbers made us breathe a sigh of relief and which ones required him to give my hand a squeeze. Some days I was allowed to see Rory and some days I was stuck in that bed. Dan would split his time between us and offer me his hands to smell when he’d come back because nothing is as sweet as that newborn scent. My super husband had to help me wash my hair because by day five in the hospital it was pretty unbearable. As covid restrictions changed he was allowed out to the hospital Starbucks and brought me so many Pink Drinks. He helped me in and out of mesh undies because my incision meant that I couldn’t bend over. But I couldn’t be home snuggled up and healing with my newborn because we were both still patients. I had to get my body to move to see my baby. Whenever I sat with him while he was hooked up to so many wires trying to get him to latch, to eat enough, my legs and feet would continue to swell until I had to leave so I could elevate them again. My blood pressure stayed much the same almost a week later. They ran labs and brought in mobile ultrasound machines first for my liver and then for my kidneys. On the day that they finally found enough medication to keep me steady almost a week later they found what they believed to be a renal artery stenosis that they viewed as the culprit for my elevated blood pressure. In the coming weeks I’d see my primary care doctor, a vascular surgeon, and a nephrologist all while healing from my c-section, bringing my baby home from the NICU, and learning to be a mom. More testing showed that there was no stenosis to be found. And after a scary tachycardia episode that sent me to the ER, I was also able to wean off blood pressure medication as it found it’s way back to normal.
And that’s where I stopped.
I poured out every small detail of our experience until it became this pile that I just couldn’t look at anymore. And I put this away for another year.
Since then I’ve requested my hospital records so that I could comb through them for answers. When I finished, Dan asked if I was glad I’d done it. I told him I didn’t know. I still didn’t have answers or closure. I’m still not sure if the calls that were made were necessary. I know for sure that there was a lack of communication, and that might be the most traumatizing aspect. It felt like no one knew what was wrong with me and no one could agree on how to best help me. No one walked me through it all once it was over. So, I’ve just been left to ruminate on my own. Which wasn’t getting me anywhere new. I’ve started therapy, and it’s added so much value to my life. I am working to feel unstuck, to find acceptance for my birth story, to go on with less anxiety and anger. I can’t change my story, but I can choose to continue writing it.
