The Opposite of Failure- Part 1 of Lil Bit's Birth Story

I didn’t mean for it to be like this. Me, sitting at the computer five years later trying to pull some semblance of  ordered memories out from this befuddled brain.  It isn’t that I was avoiding the truth.  It wasn’t about hiding it either, because I’ve told the story many times over always with an exultant rush of tears and joy.  There is just something about sitting here, banging away on this dilapidated laptop with missing keys, that makes in permanent. It puts it in the books. I don’t know how I want it to be. Or really if I want it to be at all. But I must.
Birth is never a failure. It never is. It’s an experience. A part of life we walk through, are dragged and drugged through, or are pushed through on a stretcher. In the case of the birth of my fourth child, it was all three of the above over the span of three days.

I haven’t really written my other three  births out either, so it would appear that I am just not the kind of girl to write them up.  The truth is, I knew that if I write the  first three, I must also write the fourth. So I didn’t.  I stalled. I said someday, but I never wrote. It’s so definitive, that last one.  It was my Alamo. My last stand. I did it, and did it well. I celebrate every contraction and every moment.   But sharing it gives others that opportunity to label it a failure. To see mistakes and a labor that was a lost cause.
No one needs to analyze my decisions but me.  For me to be able to share the first three stories I have to face the giant. The one where I said enough.  Where we decided it was done. It was time, and boy do I HATE it when an OB pulls that line. I have to share where I accepted being done and being broken all in one fell swoop that I didn’t see coming.  Where I surrender and moved on to being a mother of 4 and
The-doula-who-couldn’t-do-it-herself, all without losing my thankfulness and the beauty of it all. That wasn’t easy.  Birth is huge. It is powerful. It is not all of who I am or who these children are.

I refuse terms like “FTP” (Failure To Progress).  I progressed. I labored for 43 hours. That was progress, regardless of what my cervix decided to do about it.  There was progress in my soul, in my very being.
I don’t call it a “Failed” VBAC(Vaginal Birth After Cesarean).  My birth was an amazing beautiful success that didn’t happen to end in the use of my vagina for delivery. That is not failure. I am a success and I worked my butt off for my daughter, loving every minute of it.

So maybe I’ve held off because I don’t want words or acronyms to define this sacred experience of mine, yet my biggest struggle has been how to describe it to people because I want to.
The easiest way IS to say “I had 4 c-sections”.  Yet that doesn’t tell anyone about the strength and beauty I have found through my births.  About confidently fighting for your body to work, trusting it to do what it needs to, and then peacefully surrendering to the process that leads you, once again, into the O.R. for the surgical extraction of your child from your womb.
I loved every one of my births!! Yet in no way would you ever hear me say the phrase “I loved my c-section.”  Heck. No. Never.   They are a part of my life and growth, but they aren’t who I am. I can’t let them be.  They were something I went through, in spite of all efforts, that brought me these amazing little people that surround me. And in that I say, it is well. I am well. So is my soul.
And with that, the story begins like this:
About this time in the afternoon, 2:00pm on January 16th, I had the first few contractions for the day.  I didn’t think anything of it. I had been contracting for weeks.
The day before at 41 weeks and 2 days on a Thursday, I had gone to my OBs office and waited 2 hours to be checked and have my membranes stripped. That wait sucked but I had refused it two days earlier at my 41 week appointment.    I was in again that day, Thursday, for a NST (Non Stress Test) to check on Lil Bit since I was getting to the end of full term (Yes, you are NOT LATE UNTIL 42 WEEKS, LADIES).  
I decided that I did actually want to be checked and have my membranes stripped to see if something would happen.  I could have skipped it but I chose to do it. So the wait was my choice. It felt right and I didn’t complain.
So on Friday, 5 years ago about now,  when the contractions started I knew that it may just be the effect of the membrane stripping and not true contractions. I took note, but didn’t call the press if you get my drift.
It was about 4pm when I had that feeling.  The feeling I had at 8am the day that Big Sister was born.  That feeling I had after 10hours of contractions with The Brainiac.  I had it the night Ruckus was supposed to come and then everything fizzled into disaster.  I may not have had a full labor and vaginal birth before, but I knew this.  These were it.

Mr. Marvelous and I had plans to go out to dinner without the kids and eat the famous Eggplant Parmagian at Scallini’s. Did you know, they’ll give you a baby onsie if you have your baby within 24 hours of your meal?  Sometimes when a mom tells me that she heard about that and is on her way there… I laugh and laugh…

 
I sat through that meal contracting every 5 minutes. They were stronger than before.  This was changing.  I didn’t realize that this was the first day of labor and I had 2 more.  No onsie for me.  Actually, I spoke to the manager and they admitted that the success is partially due to moms that come in before a scheduled induction or c-section.  Posers!!!!
Anyway, It was good. I ate it.


To be honest, I didn’t eat much of it between the contractions. It’s hard to chew when your abdomen suddenly balls up in a rolling thunder trying to turn your whole body inside out.   I got a few fun looks from other patrons of the establishment. They could look all they wanted. After all the waiting I was one happy mama.
I suddenly realized that the problem was actually that I needed chocolate, in one of it’s most amazing forms, as all pregnant women know.  So across the parking lot we went, in the middle of January.
For Ice cream.

We didn’t stay out late. At this point contractions didn’t seem to be doing anything or changing. I figured we had a long night and day ahead and was in no rush. We picked up the kids and headed home to put them to bed, hoping that something was happening.
Five minutes after we got home, something did happen. Oh it happened, and it wasn’t pretty.
But right now, today in 2014, I have to go get that almost-fiver-year-old from preK.
Come back tonight if you want to hear more. 😉  Be sure to enter your email on the right to follow and get updates, or “Like” YOUR MOMSTINCT on Facebook!
 This birth took three days to happen. I foresee it taking that long for me to write. It’s that jam packed of twists and turns. Join me!
READY FOR MORE?  READ PART 2: MEC HAPPENS