Here I am, after being without Internet for about a week, and finding one of my submissions posted! I don’t know that anyone out there will even come back and read this, but I’m going to tell a bit of the story, anyway. I tend towards verbosity, so I apologize. I have learned that telling the story helps me toward healing, and I tell it whenever I get the chance.

This was my first baby (8 weeks with second now), and I was fairly ignorant, though I’d done a good bit of reading. I asked a friend who had the same insurance as me which doctor she went to and she recommended a group practice that she’d had a good experience with. Picked them. Huge mistake #1 (there were a lot of those).

My pregnancy was normal and I received decent care from all the doctors I saw at that practice. I was dilated to a 1 at 39 weeks. I was told when I went to schedule my next appointment that the only doctor who was seeing moms in the office on my due date was also the only doctor I hadn’t seen before, and that because it was my due date I had to see a doctor that day. I went along with it, though I’d have preferred a different doctor on a different day if necessary. Huge mistake #2 — I wasn’t confident enough to speak up.

I had been having semi-regular contractions from about 36 weeks on, but I had always felt that I was going to go to about 41 weeks. At my 40 week appointment, I had to wait for the doctor for about 20 minutes and had 2 or 3 mild contractions during that time. No big deal, that’s what I’d been doing. He finally walked in, said hello, stripped my membranes (during a contraction, I might add), never even explained what that meant (I knew already), and walked out, calling over his shoulder that “We won’t be seeing you again!” I guess he just assumed I’d have the baby? I don’t know.

I was MAD. I’m still MAD two years later. I consider this event to be assault because that’s how it made me feel, even if it might not fit the definition.

They claim that stripping membranes won’t induce labor unless you’re ready — I don’t quite agree with that. I think it will put you in labor if you were close but not quite ready, and that the labor will be more difficult than if it had started on its own.

That night just before bedtime my contractions picked up, about 5 minutes apart. They were intense enough (and I have a hard enough time falling asleep on a normal night) that I was unable to sleep at all that night. By 3am the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart. I stayed home and had my husband help me through them until about 6, when I felt they were intense enough that I must be making progress. Unfortunately, I was at barely more than 1cm and didn’t progress while being monitored. I was sent home with instructions to come back later that day when contractions picked up more, because then I would “definitely be in active labor,” or at least that’s what the L&D nurse said. Hours later when I went back, I still hadn’t progressed at all. This time I was put on pitocin. I had been awake for more than 36 hours at this point and couldn’t take the intensity of the contractions after the pitocin, so I got the epidural (hadn’t wanted it — I wanted a med-free birth) because I decided I was useless and just needed to sleep. Soon, contractions slowed down, so they up-ed the pitocin. And guess what? Baby heart-rate decels. So then they broke my water to do internal monitoring (I had been asleep and woke up when they were in the process of doing this — another example of not getting informed consent). Then they told me they needed to do an amnioinfusion. Then I needed more pitocin…and on and on.

It was sheer luck that my baby was born vaginally. I am so so so grateful for that, but everything else about it was miserable. I was ignorant, uninformed, and entirely too trusting.

Next time, no possible way. I have done my research, I have prepared, and I am working on finding a supportive caregiver (direct-entry midwives are illegal in my state, and while I could go underground, I think it might mess with my head and hurt my labor process to know I was asking someone to do something illegal for me). I have also adopted the no-internal-checks-at-all position.

My experience was no where near as hellish as some women have to go through, and for that I am grateful, but it has been a long healing process for me. I feel terrible that I subjected my son to such a traumatic birth. The events also took quite a toll on him.