Initiation into motherhood~ The story of my first birth in 2014
This is something I feel I need to share before I share my most recent birth.
I want to share the story of first birth ~ this birth is one I’ve never shared publicly but recently I realise these kinds of stories are important. As I share the way in which my latest birth has healed my first one, I hope it reaches other mamas who may be doing the same, approaching a new birth & healing another at the same time. All birth is sacred~ & all stories deserve to be told, no matter what they look like.
My first birth, my first initiation~ is the catalyst for recently choosing to go down the journey of having a wild pregnancy & freebirth, taking full responsibility for my pregnancy & birth & using nothing but my intuition to guide me. This is what felt the most safe & empowered for me on my pregnancy journey. Gaining knowledge along the way to ensure at all times I felt confident in my decision, tuning in with my body & baby regularly & following my own internal navigator towards what I needed during pregnancy & birth.
My first birth 7 years ago, was a pretty typical hospital birth. I was pregnant at 23, oblivious to the coercions of “system”~ an unplanned pregnancy that was mostly spent trying to survive a toxic relationship in a highly anxious & depressed state, disconnected from my intuition~ one of the darkest nights I’ve journeyed through. Birth hadn’t become an online topic at this point, there weren’t podcasts or empowered birth stories as easily accessible as there are now. I didn’t make time to plan my birth, I didn’t even know that I should, instead I looked outside of myself, to those around me who I thought were experienced & I trusted that the system was where “I had to” be, the only place to be. I thought “I had to” get all the scans & tests, I trusted what the medical system told me over trusting my own body.
I was told again & again what I “had” to do, but not once was I told to listen to my own body, or my own baby.
With what I know now, it was all SO backwards~ a journey that only took me even further from my intuition & my connection with my body & baby. My body became theirs & not mine. I listened to the “your baby is measuring bigger than what you say your dates are, so we’re going to forget that & tell you how many weeks you are instead”. I listened to the “you’re at risk of preeclampsia & must be monitored” (I constantly high blood pressure due to stress), I listened to the “you’ve got a posterior cervix at 41 weeks so you need intervention” & I listened to the “we’re going to have to induce you as your body is not progressing”... that young version of myself, so naive coerced into believing my body didn’t know how to do what it was made to do.
So off I went, wide eyed & excited hearing “The sooner you get induced the sooner you’ll get to meet your baby”
“You’ve waited so long, just get it over & done with”
When these words are spoken to you as a young, vulnerable first time mum who is 41 weeks pregnant, you don’t think anything of them. Of course I’m excited to finally meet my baby, of course I don’t want to wait any longer. Induction sounds amazing if it means I don’t have to wait any more.
But no one told me the risks. No one prepared me. No one told me what induction even was, other than that it “moves things along to make labour happen so you can hold your baby soon”.
No one told me that I had a voice to say no, or to make my own choices.
So there I went on, to receive multiple methods of induction. The first was the internal poking & prodding, a recipe for infection~ the second one being a tape (cervadil) I would have an allergic reaction to~ but when I told them I was having an allergic reaction just minutes after it was inserted, I was patronised with a pat on the back & an “oh it’s meant to hurt honey you’re probably having contractions”, making me doubt my own intuition, leaving it inside of me for 3 more hours until a high fever & a fast developing infection made them suddenly realise I was right.
This delayed things, resulting in more induction methods & waters broken until they finally reached for the pitocin, instantly turning it up at full steam because they’d already messed around for “too long” & didn’t have time to wait any longer~ “you & your baby are at risk so we have to get this baby out”.
Hours passed as I travelled the deepest thundering, bone shattering pain that was NOT natural, or normal, or welcomed.
Now that I can compare this feeling to true labour contractions, transition doesn’t even touch the surface of the contractions that this induced labour produced. My body wasn’t ready, my body wasn’t given the time to produce the hormones it needed to journey through the natural rhythm & natural birth pains of REAL labour~ instead cascaded with interventions & lies disguised as words of encouragement & positivity because “soon you’ll get to meet your baby”.
My body communicating its objection to this madness with an infection. Left in a helpless confusion, desperate to feel anything but what I was feeling,
I felt my soul fragment itself as it tried to leave my body with every surge that amplified the most foreign unnatural pain that echoed the shadow of a system so very broken.
I tried everything. The gas, the morphine, an epidural. Anything to take me away from this nightmare that was a shock to my system, so very far from how I imagined birth would be. Those substances masked as relief didn’t give me relief other than take me even further from my body, my emotions, my dignity, my intuition & my baby. It left a smoke filled haze within the memory of it all. 8 hours of that madness until I birthed my son, but really it had been 38 hours since I’d entered the hospital. The drugs may have made my memory hazy, but I won’t forget the student nurses standing at the doorway of my room, taking notes as my legs were pinned up on stirrups as they witnessed my fearful panicked & drugged out state of mind, with people surrounding me convincing me not to give up.
What were those students learning & being taught exactly? That this is birth?
Who invited these students in to see my sacred body temple in her most vulnerable state? because I sure don’t remember consenting to them witnessing me. & I would assume that a woman in a position of this kind of vulnerability who is on substances lacks the capacity to give consent, especially when it comes to her being witnessed & studied as if she was a lab rat taking part in an inhumane experiment. Why would someone even have the capacity to think inviting them in that space was ok?
I don’t remember much from there, until the point where a woman looked me in the eye, telling me it’s been too long & that I’m not going to have much longer to get this baby out to ensure the safety of my baby.
Threatened with the safety of my child, the feeling of giving up crept in & I threw away the fight I had left in me & mentioned maybe a c-section was the only way. I wanted my baby to arrive here safely, I was numb, how could I push out a baby if I can’t even feel if I’m pushing. & with the series of events that had unfolded, I truly didn’t believe in my body anyway. But my sister, the one who I invited in for support, looked at me & reminded me “no you don’t need to do that you can do it common let’s do it” & in that moment I called on the last bit of determination & power I had in me, & I forced myself to push while they also used a vacuum. They reached for the forceps & although I might have been in a mostly incoherent state I told them no forceps. “But we might have to” I don’t care I don’t want them used. The thought of them using these foreign tools only gave me more power, I didn’t want them to hurt my baby. I just wanted to hold him. I had requested delayed cord clamping (not a common request back then) but with the series of events unfolding, they told me they’d have to take him straight away do a “quick” check on him to make sure he’s not displaying signs of infection.
There I was, experiencing the ultimate death as I pushed out my beautiful boy that I had waited 10 moons to meet,
They placed him on my chest for what felt like a mere 2 seconds
before instantly severing him from his life force & taking him away from me. I starred at his naked squirming body laying upon a sterilised table metres away from as he screamed. My heart ripping into pieces as I grappled onto every breath that struggled to make its way to the bottom of my lungs~ my primitive self just born as a mother, hyperaware but breathless & babyless. “Can I have my baby yet” “I just want to hold my baby” “I want to feed him”. I begged & I laid there for what felt like eternity as my soul ached with grief, I didn’t know much, but I knew how important the first moments of skin to skin to were for a new baby & his mama. & it’s all I wanted to give him. But I was told I couldn’t. Instead I had just been stabbed with an injection to prematurely birth my placenta & as a result, was haemorrhaging. I wasn’t told of this injection prior to birth, I didn’t even know what it was. But “hospital protocol” they injected it into my leg as if I didn’t have a choice, or that it was the only way. A baby forced from my body too early, & now my babies life-giving placenta. I did not consent to any of this.
As they tried to get control of the bleeding, they finally allowed my baby to sit on my chest, allowing me to give him his first suckle. “I’ve never seen a mother so eager to nurse their baby” a nurse said jokingly. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
Finally, I was holding him, but those first moments that felt like hours were robbed from me & in comparison to my recent birth, that first cuddle was so far from the physiological connection that was meant to happen. 5 minutes. That’s all I got. Before they told me they had to take him to NICU for monitoring & I was rushed to shower, have one last 2 minute visit to my baby in NICU & be taken to bed where they would hook me up to pitocin again to stop my bleeding.
There I layed, in a darkened room alone because it was late & no visitors were allowed at the hospital then. Having painful contractions & wondering what the fuck had just happened & why I wasn’t laying there with my baby I had just birthed.
Where was my baby? I longed for him. I longed for a different story. I couldn’t sleep, hyper aware in my primitive state filled with adrenaline. At 2am when the nurse brought my baby in for a feed before wanting to take him back I told her “he’s with me now” & I didn’t let her take him.I had finally sobered up enough & the intensity had settled enough for me to finally find a voice to say no more. & that wasn’t the end. Days spent in hospital fighting for them to stop poking & prodding him. Threatened multiple times by a paediatric nurse that I was endangering my child for not wanting to give him meds or antibiotics for an infection they didn’t even know he had. But I knew he was ok, I didn’t need to feed him with poison. & I was right. Those days, the longest, hardest, darkest I’ve endured. Those moments of “golden hours” & newborn baby bliss robbed from me & instead spent in a primal fight or flight mode trying to protect my baby from predators. I crumbled.
A piece of my soul got stuck inside those four walls with fluorescent lights & beeping machines. I was robbed & a wound was left inside me that took many years, many tears & a deep journey of healing to claim it back. I do not wish this experience upon anyone, which is why I share this story next to my latest birth story to show others there is another way. I know my story to some seems pretty “average” & not as bad as many other births because “at least your baby was healthy, that’s all that matters” or “at least it didn’t end up in c-section” because apparently any kind of vaginal birth is considered a “successful birth” especially when you didn’t tear given the circumstances, congratulations
But I know now my story could have been avoided if I didn’t allow a system to take control of my body during pregnancy, to dictate my “due date”, if I wasn’t coerced into induction, if I knew I could refuse unnecessary scans & tests & instead remain connected to my own intuition,body & baby & looked after my own well-being & health during pregnancy, & if I knew the power of my own voice~ I KNOW this, because I’ve just achieved this with my most recent birth~ story to come.
