Everyone is different, and the same is true for each individual pregnancy, birth, and parenthood experience. September of 2021, I gave birth to my son. He was perfect, and I can truly say that my birthing experience was perfect for me. I had an awesome nurse and it was really just the nurse, my fiancé, and myself in the room for the most part. Being a very modest and private person when it comes to my body, I was grateful. In some ways, COVID had been on my side in that moment, only allowing my fiancé into the hospital during our stay. No hurt feelings toward family members not being allowed in the hospital, and less stress on us in our very overwhelming but exciting first family moments.
During my pregnancy, I decided to use a team of midwives at a hospital instead of a doctor or just one midwife at home. I liked the idea of having access to the hospitals resources if needed, but also liked the idea that I would definitely know the person who would deliver my baby. Don’t take that as an opinion that doctors aren’t great. If you have a family doctor or find one that you want to work with through your pregnancy and birth, that can be fantastic. My only concern with a doctor was they are not always available in that time of need. If that occurs, you could end up with a stranger. I didn’t feel comfortable with that concept. With midwives, you can either hire a personal midwife, or like me, go through a midwife center that allows you to meet all of them and always know who will deliver your baby. However, if you don’t agree with one of them, you won’t have a say if they happen to be the one on duty the day you give birth. My experiences with my midwives were great. They were attentive to my questions and provided me with a lot of educational resources to feel more prepared for the birthing experience, and my own bodily changes during pregnancy and postpartum.
Five months into my pregnancy, my step sister also found out she was pregnant. Her and I are pretty close, so this was exciting news as we got to share in the experience. We both had a nice support system through our pregnancies, and I could also share the lessons I learned along the way. I also persuaded her to use the midwives. However, in the end, our overall experiences with pregnancy, birth, and using the midwives were very different.
My first few months of pregnancy were the hardest. I had pretty bad morning sickness, but fortunately it was usually only later on in the evening. My sister on the other hand, she had really serious morning sickness all day long and could rarely keep anything down. She ended up losing a lot of weight drastically while I had no such problems. My morning sickness also began to taper off around week 14, which is the average time that most soon to be moms begin to lose their morning sickness. My sister on the other hand had it till well into week 26, and on and off again throughout the rest of her pregnancy. Her morning sickness also put her in danger of dehydration and other stressors so she ended up at the hospital for weekly visits to get intravenous fluids pumped into her system as well as some vitamins to try and help fight off her morning sickness.
I was also lucky that I really had no mood swings. The sudden influx of hormones in your system from growing a baby are most likely responsible for any nausea you might experience, but also random highs and lows in your mood (you can read more about this here). Many mothers report feeling very emotional in situations they normally do not. My sister was very susceptible to these swings in emotion and it caused her great anxiety. Her anxiety got so severe, she was prone to panic attacks. This led her midwives to prescribe her medication to help stabilize her moods and prevent panic attacks. They were also worried that she was more likely to develop postpartum depression.
Comfort wise, I did mostly ok. I had some sciatic pain, but found a maternity belt that helped immensely. I also had some swelling, but was able to use some compression socks that helped with this. I was told having a daily routine of going for walks, which I did most every day. I was also told putting my feet up often and drinking lots of water would help, but the socks were really the only thing that helped me.
My sister on the other hand only had swelling the last week of her pregnancy, and she didn’t experience as much sciatic pain. She was exceptionally tired the last few months, so she found it difficult to go on too many walks. Her baby was positioned differently than mine, so most of her discomfort had to do with her urinary tract and sometimes hip pain. Her babies position was much more firmly on her bladder than mine, which actually resulted in a urinary tract infection. Unbeknownst to her, the urinary tract infection then turned into a kidney infection that required her to seek medical attention. She spent multiple days in the hospital hooked up to an IV distributing her antibiotics.
The day I went in to labor started like any other day for that last 3 weeks. I woke up early in the morning and my fiance and I went for a walk. We filled the day with activities and tried to stay busy. By the late afternoon, I was feeling a little off. I ended up feeling labor pains, and by 7 that night I was in the hospital on my way to delivering my baby boy. The toughest part for me was figuring out what position my body wanted to be in to deliver my son. It took multiple different positions over the course of several hours before we were seeing any sort of progress. I had about 12 hours of labor, 2 hours of pushing, and my beautiful baby boy was born at 4:55 the next morning (Labor day of all days).
My sister had a much harder labor than me. While most women don’t really feel pre-labor, she was having noticeable pains pretty early on. She woke up at 2 am on Friday and started feeling pretty bad cramp like pains. She questioned it and called the midwives who told her they didn’t think she was in labor. She ended up going in to see the midwives later that afternoon to be sure, and they said she was only 1 centimeter dilated, that it could be days yet and they sent her home. She went home and tried to sleep, but found the pain too intense. She found herself back at the hospital the next day, but she was still only 1 centimeter. They ended up giving her some pain medication to try and allow her to have some rest before they would induce her. After some rest, they induced her, but even after that it took almost another 20 hours. She was finally able to deliver her baby boy early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, he was immediately rushed off to be incubated and supervised for Meconium Aspiration after inhaling meconium on the way out, but he ended up being taken off the incubator after 6 hours. He was nice and healthy and they were able to go home two days later.
My sister and I are just two examples of how completely different everyone’s experience can be. We all have different needs, different bodies, different tolerances, different babies, and different support systems. Child birth is a type of trauma. It can be a beautiful trauma, or it can feel quite devastating. You can have everything planned out and still find that you are not prepared. You can try to control most every aspect, but ultimately, our will is not the will of the other people around us or the many circumstances that could happen. And as much as it is possible to give birth on your own, I don’t know of a single person who would recommend it. So my words to any future moms or dads is, prepare yourself as much as you’re comfortable, but also be aware that you will have to be very patient and open to the unknown and unpredictable.