In November 2000, I gave birth to my son Liam after 50 hours of labor. I'd taken Bradley classes, was committed to a natural birth, and had educated myself well about many of the routine procedures during pregnancy and birth. I had originally wanted a home birth, but my first husband talked me out of it, promising he’d be supportive with subsequent children, but just wasn’t comfortable with my first birth being at home. I started seeing a group of CNMs, believing that care from a midwife would increase my chances of having the natural birth I wanted. They all signed off on my birth plan (standard non-intervention request, really). Between the Bradley classes, being raised in a pro-natural birth family, and the team of nurse midwives, I thought I was prepared to stand up for myself even in a hospital setting.

I could not have been more wrong.

I went into labor with Liam on a Sunday morning. It started very light, and picked up by that evening. By late that night, I was in active, hard labor, with contractions about 5 minutes apart, a minute or more long, and quite forceful, but never getting closer together than that. The contractions were strong enough that I couldn’t talk through them and I was very sensitive to noise, light, and movement. Because the contractions never got closer together than 5 minutes, and because I wanted to stay home as long as possible, I stayed home, walked, and tried to eat/drink enough to keep my energy up.

The next morning, I went in to see the CNM to determine if I was ready to head to the hospital, but I stopped having contractions while I was in their office. I have always had white coat hypertension, so I wasn’t surprised that my body would react to the stress of being in the office by ceasing contractions, but the CNM dismissed me as being in prodromal labor. I was dilated to 1cm, so she sent me home to continuing laboring, stating that this could go on for weeks and I probably wouldn’t be giving birth soon. I immediately started having regular, hard contractions in the parking lot, but went home and waited until the contractions were 3 minutes apart, which was around midnight or 1am on Tuesday. By the time we got to the hospital, I was already exhausted from 36 hours of labor, which had lowered my ability to stand up for myself significantly.

My water broke in the waiting room as we got signed in, so even thought I was only at 1cm, the nurses were insistent that I be admitted. The nurse assigned to me (who checked my cervix, as well; the CNM never checked me herself) was hostile. She wouldn't accept my refusal of the IV or the fetal monitor. Finally, the CNM arrived. She said I had to have one 20 minute strip on the monitor, but after that I wouldn't have to have it. I believed her. Of course, as soon as she ran the strip, she declared I was dehydrated and must have an IV and consistent fetal monitoring. I questioned how that could be so, since I'd kept up regular fluid intake, but she insisted I must go on the IV (though she had previously said I didn't have to). When I reminded her that the CNMs had all agreed I could avoid the IV, she told me I was mistaken, and she had never said that. She told me that if I didn't have the IV, and in fact, if I didn't do exactly what she said in every way, she would not treat me, and I would have to do this alone. She even implied I would be kicked out of the hospital. She was so aggressive, threatening, and utterly demeaning to me. I was exhausted, and I finally caved to the IV. This started the cascade of interventions.

She immediately began pushing me to accept pain medication, because I hadn't slept and I "needed to get some rest." She kept making comments about my failure to progress (I'd only been in the hospital for an hour, maybe two, and hadn't dilated past 1cm in this time), and ordered an enema, claiming it would make me dilate more by clearing out my bowels. Well, since my digestive track was already empty, all it did was make me crampy and miserable, which may have been her plan, as she continued to push medication on me, telling me that if I didn't sleep, I wouldn't be able to handle my labor. Again, the implied threat of abandoning my care – if I couldn’t follow her recommendations, then she would have to reconsider providing me care through the rest of my labor.

I was afraid, I was exhausted, and I allowed her to give me a shot of Demerol. I passed out and slept for four hours, awakening to the most intensely painful contractions and no ability to get control of them. It would take over an hour to regain my self control. The one good thing that came from this experience is that when I woke up, the horrible CNM was gone, and a much nicer midwife had taken over, as well as a wonderful new nursing staff, instead of the mean woman from the night before.

At this point, I got up from the bed and started walking the halls. This is where the doctor from the CNM practice cornered me and began telling me I needed to get Pitocin. I said that I wanted to continue to labor without pain medication, and that I understood Pitocin caused very painful, irregular, and unnatural contractions that would be difficult to manage without medication. He told me that I was wrong, and Pitocin didn't cause "unnatural" contractions, it caused "real" contractions, and the contractions I was having then weren't real because I wasn't dilating. I told him he was lying, and he just smiled at me patronizingly. He started pushing me to have an epidural at that point, refuting my claim that the drugs would affect the baby by claiming "the drugs don't enter the baby's bloodstream or yours, because if that kind of drug got in your blood stream, you could die. It just goes in your spine and doesn't cross the placenta." Again, I told him that he was flat-out lying to me; I had read quite a few studies on the effects of both Pitocin and epidurals on infants. Again, my concerns were dismissed and I was treated as some ignorant, histrionic child.

More time passed. I had still made no progress, but the fluid I am leaking was now tinted green, indicating meconium. Though the monitor (which, by this point, the CNM was insisting I be strapped to for 20 minutes out of each hour) showed no problems, but suddenly the term “fetal distress” was being thrown around. The new CNM checked my cervix, only to discover that my water had NOT in fact broken. The outer bad had sprung a small leak, but the inner bag was intact. I'd been admitted based on broken waters, only to find out hours later that it never happened, and I could have been spared the whole night crew.

The new CNM performed an amniotomy and the water that flooded out was very green, full of meconium. Everyone panicked and the countdown began. It was noon on Tuesday, 48 hours into active labor, when the new CNM informed me that I had to go onto Pitocin. They were worried that the baby was in distress (though, again, the monitor showed no distress). They began to irrigate my uterus (amnio-infusion) with water to flush the meconium, and, without my consent or even my knowledge, screwed an internal fetal monitor electrode into my son's head. I had only dilated to 2cm, and apparently that was just not fast enough.

While I was trying to find a way to avoid Pitocin, the doctor I'd spoken with in the halls earlier explained to my mother and then-husband-now-ex that due to my long labor (only 11 hours of which had been in the hospital at this point), exhaustion, and meconium, that if I didn't make significant progress in the next half-hour, I was being wheeled in for an emergency c-section. This was never discusses with me, incidentally -- I only was told afterwards. My mother and then-husband, however, suddenly began agreeing with the doctors that I should have the Pitocin -- my ex, because he was scared, and my mother, because she'd been forced into an unwanted c-section with me and wanted to protect me from that). I consented, and, completely defeated and broken, and no longer believing I could give birth on my own, also agreed to the epidural. The medical staff seemed so triumphant that I'd given in.

The anesthesiologist came in right away and put in the epidural. 10 minutes later, they started the Pitocin. My feet got numb. The skin on my legs got numb. I started having very hard contractions, and told the CNM that I could still feel them, and they were very painful. She took that as a request for more meds, and upped the epidural. I kept trying to explain what I meant, that I was really feeling them strongly, so they turned up the dosage again. I couldn't understand why I couldn't make them understand what I really meant -- that I felt like I was making progress, that I was ready to have the baby. I understand now I was in transition, and that's why I couldn't communicate. After 20-30 minutes on the epidural, I said "I have to push."

The CNM chuckled at me indulgently, and said, "Ok, well, I'll check, but I don't expect...Oh MY! We have a baby!" I had dilated to 10cm in that 20-30 minute time period and was, in fact, ready to push. I had never lost the feeling in my pelvis at all. I was sat up into lithotomy position, legs spread and feet up, and began pushing. It took about 15 minutes, and three good contractions, to push out my son, Liam, after 50 hours of hard labor. They immediately cut the cord and whisked him away for suctioning. I couldn't see him -- my vision is very poor, and I had to ask several times for my glasses just to see my own son. A few minutes later, they brought him back and placed him on my chest. He latched on right away and nursed for several minutes before falling asleep, while the nurses painfully pressed on my abdomen to make me expel the placenta. I am still not sure if it was manually extracted. Remarkably, even though my son weighed 9 lbs, and I'd delivered on my back, I didn't tear at all, just a small “skid mark.” This became one of the focal points for “things could have been worse” – I didn’t have a c-section, an episiotomy, or a tear. Sadly, this was one of the only ways in which the birth could have been worse.

The rest of the stay was a nightmare. Someone came in every hour to wake me or the baby up. He would no longer nurse, so they sent a "lactation consultant" who came in with a bottle of formula, telling me "big babies are too hungry for just breastmilk" and who put formula on my nipple, claiming the smell would make the baby want to nurse. I made my then-husband throw the bottle and the formula sample into the trash right in front of her. The hospital said they wouldn't let me go home unless the baby nursed or we gave him formula. I lied and said he had nursed well. The nursing staff was so patronizing, treating me like a mildly retarded child.

Liam was so exhausted from the birth that he didn't nurse for three days -- he just slept. Knowing him like I do now, I realize that he had shut down completely due to the barrage of interventions, from the internal fetal monitor to the suctioning to the PKU tests and Vitamin K shots to the constant awakening for exams. I didn't blame him one bit. I was exhausted, ashamed over my failure to birth naturally, utterly defeated. I decided then and there to never have any more children. I told my then-husband that I would not have sex again until he'd had a vasectomy and a zero sperm count confirmation.

I had horrible flashbacks to the birth every time I tried to fall asleep for the next few weeks. I couldn't nap, because the stark terror and pain, the feeling of being out of control, would start to rush back as I drifted off. It took me over a month to physically recover from the birth – I was exhausted, couldn’t rest, and even short forays from the house sent me into a panic. My mother, who had a c-section with me, told me that she, too, had experienced flash backs after my birth – she said that PTSD was common after a traumatic birth experience, but that the flashbacks would pass in time. It took several weeks for me to be able to close my eyes without revisiting each horrible moment in the hospital over and over again.

I also had a bad reaction to the epidural. I developed an itchy rash on my body from the insertion site down, a grainy, raised rash that looked like welts all over my body, much worse in the areas where fluid would have pooled while lying on my back. The days after birth were a combination of fear and worry over my son’s unwillingness to nurse, horrible after pains, discomfort and itchy from the rash, and anxiety from the constant flashbacks to the birth.

Everyone told me it didn't matter how the birth went, that having a healthy baby was all that mattered. If that was true, why did I have such horrible flashbacks? Why did I feel like my body had failed me? Why did I feel so defeated? I knew that many things had gone wrong with the birth, starting with the hospital. When several years passed and I began to think I might someday want more children, I decided immediately that I would home birth, come hell or high water.