Labor and Delivery – My body WAS designed to do this!
Three years ago I had made the decision to have a peaceful, calm birth with my daughter. I had an abundance of support around me and I was reminded on more than one occasion that my body had been made perfectly to give birth with little to no assistance. I was provided with the proof and encouragement I needed to calmly enter the labor and delivery experience. While it didn’t play out exactly as I had hoped I still felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment as I held my beautiful baby girl in the operating room.
Just a short three months ago I sat in the doctors office discussing my birthing options after going through a cesarean section with my daughter. The doctor checked everything out and happily informed me that I shouldn’t have to undergo another c-section!
I came home feeling revitalized and immediately started researching and recalling all the exercises I used in my last labor. I hadn’t completely dismissed the idea of using pain medication because I had heard the delivery of a boy is significantly more difficult than delivery of a girl. I had made the decision to induce naturally as opposed to the hospital form of inducement and that in itself would help me progress at a rate that I could handle on my own. My body and soon to be born baby boy had some different ideas though. The further along I got, the bigger I got and somewhere my body decided to move in the wrong direction, or should I say wrong position! Morning after morning I woke up with an intense pain in my hips. Every day seemed worse than the day before so finally I gave up praying it would get better and went to see the doctor. I described the last two weeks to her in excruciating detail to which she quickly came to a decision that my precious baby must have caused something to come out of alignment. She wrote up a referral to a physical therapist for which I thanked her profusely! The following week I went in for my physical therapy. Having played sports and been physically active in other activities throughout my youth, it impressed the hell out of me that my first physical therapy session was the result of a mini football player living inside me! Nevertheless, I was thoroughly excited about gaining some relief and possibly even a full 8 hours of sleep without the aid of Tylenol. After checking out my lower back and hip joints the physical therapist came to the conclusion that there was in fact a couple bones out of place that was causing my pain. He did a very thorough explanation of what the name of the bone was, where it was, and what it was doing. By the end of his med school lecture I was daydreaming of nights being spent sleeping instead of waking the neighbors with screams of pain! The therapist must have sensed my boredom so he finally transitioned into the ‘healing’ portion of my visit. He informed me that the best way (also known as the ONLY way) to fix my would be to lay me down on my stomach and start pushing until the bones went back to normal… Visions of me becoming a human teeter totter quickly filled my head following by me giving birth to my son right there in a semi-private closet they called an examination room. Apparently the therapist had the same vision so he quickly assured me that he wasn’t going to do that to me. The relief I felt didn’t last long though as he explained there wasn’t a lot he could do at this point. He offered a few positions to try and relieve the pain both now and during labor and told me to alternate ice packs and heat pads to help as well.
A week later my darling son dropped into the position required for a healthy delivery. On a pain scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, my number rose from a 6 or 7 to an eleven! I quickly came to the conclusion that my body had definitely been made perfectly for my first birth; however all subsequent births will undoubtedly require a substantial amount of pain medication!
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