Unexpected_Delivery

Unexpected Delivery ENG101 When I found out I was pregnant with my now almost three year old daughter, I imagined her birth to be a calm, blissful, life-changing experience. Although it was single handedly the most life-changing experience of my life, calm and blissful wouldn't quite be my next choice of words. Having an induced labor, unimaginable pain, and an unexpected change of plans vastly differed from the picture I painted in my head. I had heard the story before, a mother to be wakes up in the middle of the night and notices her water has broken. Her husband rushes her to the hospital, and in what seems like minutes they're holding their new bundle of joy in their arms. My story doesn't quite go that way. I do wake up in the middle of the night, but that's because I'm over forty weeks pregnant and swollen all over. My blood pressure is through the roof, and my doctor tells me that if I don't go into labor over the weekend he'll have to induce me. This news devastates me because I'd always wanted the picture perfect delivery - which included me going in to labor all on my own. After another weekend of sleepless nights and ankles the size of bowling balls, I decided to go along with my doctor. Me and my fiancée anxiously packed our bags and made the drive to the hospital. This was the last time we were to go anywhere as a couple, we knew when we left we’d be leaving as a family. "Hee-hee, hoo-hoo" I had often heard this mantra repeated over and over in the movies and on television, which is supposed to help a woman cope with the pains of labor. Unfortunately that mantra does not work, it doesn't even come close. There are really no words that can describe the pains of labor. I haven't felt a pain that even comes close to comparing to a contraction. I imagined a delivery with no pain medicine what-so-ever; I wanted to go natural. Over the course of my pregnancy I’d watched in awe stories about women who had all natural births, and I thought if they could do it so could I, Boy was I wrong. After about the first five contractions I was begging the nurses for medication. With a good dose of medicine in my IV I was feeling a lot better, and so was my fiancée! But the bad thing about contractions is the pain only intensifies the further into labor you go. After a few hours of sleep my medication wore off and I began feeling like my insides were being squeezed by a boa constrictor. Luckily for me there's this little thing called an epidural, or as I like to call it a life-saver. It completely numbs you from the waist down, so you don't feel those pesky contractions. This decision may have not followed my plan, but as long as I wasn't feeling the horrendous pains of contractions, I was willing to alter my "perfect delivery". Nine months of waiting. I was so close. For nine whole months I dreamt of hearing my doctor say, "It's time to push". Not once did I ever imagine that this dream wouldn't become a reality for me. After sixteen hours of labor, I hadn't made much progress at all. I was only dilated to four centimeters (which isn’t even half way there). My doctor was starting to become concerned about the stress that being in labor for so long was putting on my unborn baby. This was all I needed to hear. Knowing that the health of my baby could be at stake was enough for me to completely toss aside that idea of a perfect delivery. Now all I cared about was getting my baby here as healthy and safely as possible. As they wheeled me back to the delivery room for a cesarean section I felt more emotions at once than I thought humanly possible - excitement, nervousness, fear, you name it I was probably feeling it. In the delivery room they transferred me to an ice cold metal operating table. Above me was the possibly the brightest light I’ve ever gazed into. As they placed the curtain below my face my heart started pounding. This was it. All this waiting and the moment I’d daydreamed about for so long was finally here. I held my fiancée’s hand as the doctor began to operate; the smell of burning flesh filled my nose as he cut into my abdomen. I could feel everything that was happening, just not the pain of it. It was the oddest sensation. After some tugging and pulling I felt a release and moments later I heard the most amazing sound in the world, the cry of my 7lb 15oz beautiful baby girl I named Caitlyn Grace. Things don't always go the way you expect them to. I learned this first-hand from the birth of my daughter. My idea of the perfect delivery was tarnished from the get go. I could have been upset or even mad that things didn't go the way that I had planned them out in my head, but as my fiancée and I held our healthy newborn daughter in our arms none of that mattered anymore. I may not have that picture perfect story of her birth to tell her when she gets older, but it’s her story, and that makes it perfect to me.