Several years passed, and the Lord began working on my heart, first just about being on the pill and the dangers to my health that
imposed, and also enlightening me about how the pill works in two different ways. One way is to prevent ovulation, so one doesn't get
pregnant, but the other was to thin the lining of the uterus, so that if one DID become pregnant, the fertilized egg could not implant, and a
spontaneous abortion would occur. I was devastated to think that I could have unknowingly been responsible for discarding a baby that way. So I
convinced my husband that we shouldn't use the pill anymore. We started using a new thing at the time called the sponge. It's a spongy donut
shaped thing containing spermicide that you insert. It was comfortable, and even though it always seemed to shift, it was effective.
But then the Lord began to really go after me. Was it any different, He seemed to challenge me, to stop a life after conception
than to prevent a life from being conceived in the first place? He showed me that if I had had my way, neither of my daughters would have been
conceived, and I was struck how awful that would have been and how much I would have unknowingly lost. And I saw that He didn't want me in charge
of who would be conceived or not conceived or when. I was, however, less successful in convincing my husband right away to throw all caution to
the winds.
Still, the Lord had His own way of doing things, and somehow he touched my husband's heart, too, and I suddenly found him willing to take
chances. My second daughter had just turned five when I got pregnant again.
The Lord had also orchestrated a "coincidence" for me during this time where I "accidentally" tuned into a Phil Donohue show where he was
interviewing two women about unnecessary c-sections. I listened in awe as they described the circumstances that had led me to my first one, and the
lies that had resulted in two more planned ones. I found and devoured their book, Silent Knife by Cohen and Estner, and became convinced that
I'd been ripped off. With this pregnancy, I wanted those births redeemed. My husband and I agreed that we would not go back to the same doctor, but
would find someone willing to give me a trial vbac.
This was a long, agonizing search. I was torn between a belief that my doctor should be a Christian this time and the belief that I
should not be examined by a male doctor anymore. But the Christian doctor I interviewed had a "We can try it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I
were you" kind of attitude. He told me a lot of horror stories, and culminated with the one about the couple who decided he wasn't the man
for the job, and they'd gone off somewhere else, and ended up having a c-section anyway and had to come back and ask his forgiveness. I felt
really uncomfortable with what I perceived as not much faith in God's natural processes. So I ended up deciding on a female doctor who was not
a Christian, but who seemed to be very supportive of the idea. She was fairly willing to answer all our questions, although once, when I asked
her if she would wait for the cord to stop pulsing before cutting it, she replied, "That's bull----. The cord doesn't pulse." I kind of wondered,
but everything else seemed to be okay.
Labor started on a Friday and poked along, off and on, throughout the weekend. Sunday evening it seemed to pick up some steam but not
really take off, and I had an appointment Monday morning anyway, so we just went in usual time. The nurse could immediately tell I was in labor,
but when my doctor checked me she said I was less than 1 cm. dilated. She had me go home and let her know how things went. Occasionally, she'd call
to see how I was doing, but it just kept poking along. Sometimes it was hard to handle, and sometimes it was barely there. On Tuesday around
noon, when things hadn't really picked up, she had me come back in. She checked me and I wasn't much further along. She was concerned, though,
when she detected a puddle of meconium-stained amniotic fluid. So she told us to go straight over to the hospital so they could start
monitoring.
We did. An external monitor was put on, but in almost no time, the nurse expressed impatience with its accuracy and said she wanted to
put in an internal monitor. We knew that that meant breaking the water and also screwing a sharp thing into our baby's skull. These were some of
the issues we'd discussed beforehand and said we didn't want. Already we were being pressured to do it, and our doctor insisted she felt it was
important. So my husband, already upset and feeling helpless, agreed. At the same time, my mom, who was taking care of our three older children,
called to say she had taken the kids to the park and locked the keys in the car. My husband had to leave and missed the next comedy of errors. It
took four tries to get the internal monitor attached correctly. Each time it ended up being hooked somewhere on my cervix or something. Finally
they called in some supposed expert who never missed, and he missed, too. They did manage to get it in the right place, poor baby, in the end.
I was pretty much confined to bed because of the monitor, but I did have a little bit of freedom to sit up rather than lie down. Still
nothing seemed to be progressing. After several hours of contractions with no progress, the dreaded pitocin was suggested. I begged to be
allowed to move around first to see what would happen. Because of the monitor, though, they still couldn't let me go walking or anything, but
they agreed to let me sit up in a rocking chair. I started rocking as hard as I could. Finally things started to move. The contractions got
closer and harder and I could actually feel the baby move down. I had a really sweet nurse on duty for several hours in the evening who
encouraged me so much, praising me about how well I was handling the contractions, and letting me know that progress was being made and saying
she bet the baby would be born before she went off duty.
Unfortunately it wasn't. She went off duty only to be replaced by a nurse who breezed in, glanced at the monitor chart, and announced
without explanation that I had to get back into bed. She insisted I lie on my left side, the absolutely most painful position to handle
contractions I've experienced, and almost immediately I was having a very hard time keeping myself under control. I began vomiting again from the
pain, like with my first birth, and feeling like a failure. I was still only five cm. dilated, and there was kind of an unspoken assumption that
since that's where I got stuck before, that's where I'd stay stuck now. At that point I was pretty much given the choice of a c-section then or a
trial with pitocin, so I opted for a trial, and things got worse and worse, more painful, harder to handle, etc. I was given an epidural,
which was welcome comfort, but still nothing. Finally they decided they were going to give me another epidural and increase the pitocin, but
before they increased the pitocin, they wanted to take a fetal sample to make sure the baby was handling the stress okay. Interestingly, there had
been no mention of stress following the initial discovery of meconium, in spite of all the monitoring. When the nurse went to take the fetal scalp
sample, she asked if anyone had checked me lately, and announced that I was fully dilated. Unfortunately, I had just had my second epidural, so,
although now everyone was saying I could push, I couldn't feel the contractions. After a couple of coached pushes that were ineffective,
someone tried a vacuum extraction to try to get the baby down lower, but that didn't do anything either. In the meantime, the baby's sample was
analyzed and the nurse came rushing back in alarm to say the baby's oxygen level was way down, and they needed to rush over to surgery.
On the way down the hall, my doctor, who I must credit with seeming quite disappointed, too, kept coaching me to push whenever she
saw a contraction coming on the monitor, but the timing just couldn't be well coordinated, and nothing happened. I went into surgery and my second
son was delivered by yet another c-section at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday. He weighed 6 lbs. 8 oz. Because of the alarm preceeding his birth and the
meconium, he was rushed to the neonatal ICU and had an intravenous feeding tube installed through his umbilical cord site and was put on
oxygen. Within a short time, though, they admitted he wasn't as sick as they thought he'd be. Still, it was two days before I was allowed to hold
him and try to feed him. In the meantime, I was pumping to get colostrum and establish a milk supply, and the stress and letdown and guilt were
incredible. I felt like my husband was blaming me for insisting on trying this, and he felt like I was blaming him for letting everything get out
of control.
The baby was required to stay a full week to check for infection, but I was not allowed to. In order to be close enough to nurse him, I got
special permission to stay in a little room in an old nurse's dorm. Whenever it was time to nurse, they would call me. In the meantime, I was
expected to pump to try to build up my milk supply. The stress in increased because they would weigh him before and after each feeding and insist he
wasn't getting enough. One time the nurse even said he'd lost weight during the feeding. He would seem content at the breast and wanted to
nurse a long time, but I was often rushed and encouraged to be done. One time, when I was just relaxing and enjoying the nursing session, a nurse
said brusquely, "That's enough time on that side. Hurry up." I also found out that he often cried right after I left, and they'd give him the
little milk I'd managed to pump, then give him something else. Needless to say, nursing was not getting off to a good start. If my doctor asked
me how much I got when I pumped, and I said quite a bit, she'd wonder why there was so much left after nursing. If I said hardly any, she'd wonder
why my milk supply was so low.
The next three months were a nightmare of the deepest depression I've ever experienced. I was angry over the failure of the vbac and angry
over the way I was being thwarted trying to nurse my baby. The day I got home with my baby, my milk gushed in. He gained four ounces in one night.
But in spite of that, my doctor didn't want me exclusively breastfeeding, and gradually the supply decreased. So on one side was me convinced if
they'd just leave me alone, I could easily feed my baby and on the other side them convinced I didn't have enough milk and insisting I keep
supplementing by pumping or with formula. My husband and I were as distant from each other as we'd ever been in our marriage, and I didn't
care one bit, because my whole world seemed to have fallen apart anyway. I can't explain how I got through that period of time, other than by the
grace of the Lord. Eventually it was over. I had taken back control of nursing my baby and was out from under any doctor's supervision. My son
was doing fine.
My husband and I now were in agreement to let the Lord have control of our family planning. So, not surprisingly, I was pregnant
again soon after this son's first birthday. I had done more reading in the meantime, and one book in particular was helpful. It was from NAPSAC
and gave the names of some Christian midwives who might assist me with my next birth. This seemed ideal since I would this time have both a female
and a Christian. My thought was that I would have a midwife with me during the labor and birth in a hospital to run offense for me against
whatever doctor I had. Plus, I figured she would know a sympathetic doctor she had worked with before. I was sure my husband would not
consider a home birth after how badly the last birth had gone.
When I contacted the closest midwife and told her my situation, she was so encouraging and sweet. She was very excited that I would want
to have a home birth. No, I hurried to explain, I don't think my husband is ready for a home birth. She lived almost 90 miles away, so she
referred me to someone much closer, another Christian midwife. As I talked to her, she let me know that she would be delighted to work with
me towards having a home vbac. Oh, no, I rushed in, I really don't think my husband would go for that. She offered to meet with my husband and me
to talk things over. When I approached my husband about the possibility of employing a midwife and meeting with this particular one, I said,
"But, I think I should warn you that I think she's going to try to convince you that a home birth is the way to go." I nearly fell over when
he answered, "Well, I just don't think we're ever going to have a successful birth in the hospital."
Our meeting with this midwife was a turning point in our lives. She was a woman so full of faith in the process God had created to birth
babies, and she was confident I could succeed. She put up with my many idiosyncrasies, such as backing out at the last minute of an exam by a
male doctor who was agreeable to do backup for a home birth. She never hesitated to explain anything or answer questions. And when only two days
before my due date tragedy struck when my sister's baby died within hours of a home birth, she succumbed to only a moment's panic, wondering aloud
if we should quickly find a backup doctor. When I repeated that I felt the Lord had led us to her and that she was the one we were to stay with,
she agreed immediately, and plans proceeded.
My sister's baby's funeral was on Monday, and I began having irregular contractions during Sunday night. The funeral was about 90
miles away, so we called the midwife in the morning to see what she thought of me taking the trip. She didn't think this first natural labor
would go quickly, so we went ahead, planning on leaving our older children with my mom, and then coming home and giving birth!
After the funeral, driving home, I was excited to be able to feel real contractions about twenty minutes apart. When we got home around
noon, we got the bed ready and our supplies out, timed contractions, and stayed in touch with the midwife. The contractions got closer together
and harder, but manageable. I wasn't at all experienced in how hard contractions got before they were serious, and I kept wanting the midwife
to be there. Around 4:00 p.m. my water broke during a trip to the bathroom. There was meconium in the fluid. I knew from reading that this
didn't have to mean there was a problem, but I wasn't sure how my midwife was going to receive the news, since meconium had been such a big issue
in my last birth. We left the fluid in the toilet so she could assess it when she got there, and paged her. We waited and waited and she didn't
call. We tried again. Contractions were getting more intense, and we really thought she should know my water had broken.
Finally she called and agreed to head on over. When she arrived, with an apprentice midwife along, she was confident and businesslike. She
assessed the meconium as being light and not a problem. I was so relieved. The rest of the time she was just there to encourage me, help
me through the contractions, make sure I emptied my bladder frequently, monitored the baby's heartbeat, and helped me move from place to place.
Mostly I was on the bed sort of semi-reclined, and that's the position I was in when I was told I was fully dilated and could start pushing.
Sometime during the pushing, my midwife said that there was too much blood. A moment later she was more emphatic. "We have to stop this
bleeding." We all started praying against the bleeding. My husband commanded it to stop in the name of Jesus, and the midwife exclaimed, "It
stopped! It was just like a faucet being turned off." After that, though, she said the baby had to be born right away. I'm not sure if it was
because she was afraid the bleeding would start again, or if there was something actually wrong with the baby, and for some reason I never asked
later on. But she had me push even when there were no contractions, and she sort of reached in and helped him out. She later said that was a
miracle, because normally there would never be enough room to do that. The baby was fine, and I didn't bleed any more, but when the placenta was
delivered, it was folded in half! The midwife said that probably meant it partially detached before the birth. I was so grateful that she hadn't
panicked right away, but trusted God and turned to Him first. Everything turned out perfectly fine. By the way, this baby weighed 8 lbs. 6 oz., my
biggest baby yet. Not bad for someone who was "too small" to deliver a 6 lb. 12 oz. baby. He was born at 7:24 p.m.
Continued
