Trigger warning: this post contains several uses of the word vagina and scenes (verbal only, who do you think I am?!?) from my own labor and delivery. My experience may not be typical, nor does it mean that everyone will experience any or all of these things (I’m sure labor norms vary from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, and state to state).

I want to start this blog post with my recognition of the fact that overall, my experience delivering our daughter was not actually that bad, and I’m so grateful for her, my husband, and our amazing healthcare team. However, I decided to share this in the interest of holding space for multiple feelings including gratitude, grief, sadness and trauma, to hopefully help others preparing to embark on this experience, and to try and stop that minimization thing we all do where just because things could be worse we somehow think we don’t deserve to feel sad (side note ladies, we really gotta stop doing that).

I also want to state that I am lucky to have amazing health insurance and the financial stability to have been able to afford things like a doula and an out-of- network hospital with an amazing L&D team. I truly believe that this made all the difference in my experience, particularly in comparison to some of the stories I’ve heard from friends who’ve recently had babies at other hospitals in the area.

That being said, there were a few things that I wish I had known going into my first labor and delivery and some pearls of wisdom I learned along the way:

1. Even if you’re the type of person that gets hella hangry like me, you will be able to get through a relatively long stretch of time during labor without needing to eat solid food. I held out on getting an epidural for FAR longer than I should have because they wouldn’t let me eat solid foods once I did and I was scared about how I could possible handle multiple hours with no food (side note: this is all despite this approach not really being standard of care anymore; however, my OB preferred to err on the side of caution when it comes to this particular rule). If I hadn’t been so worried about not being able to function on little to no food for an unknown amount of time (in my case, almost a full day), I would have probably gotten the epidural much earlier on rather than trying to stick it out amongst my painful back-to-back contractions like some sort of insane superhero.
2. In related news, popsicles are truly the best thing ever when you are in labor. One of our nurses (bless her heart) offered me one about 10 hours into the process of my cervix dilating, and I genuinely almost cried at how amazing it was.
3. Many women will end up getting this crazy version of the shakes when they are fully dilated and their body is ready to push. Again, despite having an amazing doula who did a lot of pre-education, this came as a complete surprise to me. I truly thought I was having some kind of febrile seizure. I got super cold (as in, I couldn’t warm up despite what must have been approximately 15,000 warm blankets), and my entire body was racked with the shakes for almost an hour. My understanding is that this has something to do with adrenaline and your body trying to get you to channel that energy into pushing a baby out. Neat. It does pass, and starting to push does help (at least, it did for me), but it still would have been nice to know that this is a relatively common experience before it happened.
4. When you’re trying to push a baby out of your vagina, their not-so-little head has to clear the pelvic bone, and they often spend some time rocking against it during each contraction and pushing cycle. During this time, your healthcare team will likely be saying things like “you’re so close!” or “one more push!”, but there’s really no way to know how many pushes or how long it’s going to take for your baby to FINALLY clear the pelvic bone. In my case, it took approximately 100,000 hours (in reality, maybe two or three). You will want to murder the people who say these things. Your baby will eventually make it out.
5. A good way to prevent tearing is by letting the baby descend slowly (a.k.a. push for a really long time). This sounds great in theory and does help with early postpartum healing; however, it comes with its own unique downsides. The first and most obvious one is that it’s exhausting to push for an extended period of time, especially if you haven’t eaten. This is the part of my experience that truly felt like a marathon.  As one does when they do CrossFit, I compared it to doing several back-to-back Murphs (if you know, you know…or honestly, you can just google what Murph is. In fact, here, I did it for you). The other thing this does is put you at higher risk for prolapse, which is basically when your organs start falling out your vagina. Super neat.
6. This may have just been a result of me not advocating for myself (thought TBH my mental clarity was fairly low at this point in the process), but when I started pushing it felt like my epidural “wore off” a bit, and it seemed like my healthcare team encouraged me to keep the dose low (despite me mentioning this) so that I could “feel to push”. This, combined with the hours of pushing, made for a fairly painful active labor that could potentially have been an entirely preventable experience. I also don’t know if this would have been mitigated had I turned up the epidural dose, but I think the biggest pain (and honestly, super weird) feeling was the sensation of skin stretching and pressure from the baby’s head descending. Again, this may have just been a me thing, but based on some of the comments from my healthcare team, I suspect this might actually be fairly typical in terms of how epidurals work. For those of you like me for whom knowing what to expect actually lessens pain, hopefully this post is helpful.
7. If you are taking an SSRI like so many of us are to help deal with life/the world/multiple simultaneous existential crises, this can slightly increase the risk of your baby having breathing difficulties at birth. In my case, several NICU nurses showed up towards the end of active labor in case there were any issues. One of them does a countdown once the baby is out, and your little brand new bundle of joy has essentially one minute to start crying. If they fail to do so, the healthcare team will quickly cut the cord and whisk your baby away to the other side of the room. In our case, our daughter was actually breathing without crying, which would’ve been nice to know. However, the nurses failed to mention that critical piece of info, so my husband and I spent several VERY stressed out minutes wondering what the hell was going on and worrying that our baby wasn’t breathing. So, if you are reading this and happen to be in the business of helping to bring babies into this world, maybe give a quick status update to the stressed out worried parents. Shout out to my doula who suggested we do a “placenta tour” while all this was going on as a form of distraction. It sort of worked, and I finally got to hold our precious baby girl after about 20 minutes, which it made all that pain and stress worth it :).

That’s all for today, folks. I hope this was helpful, and thanks again for being here! Drop a note in the comments with any questions, feedback, or other topics you’re interested in hearing my thoughts on. Until next time!

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