Some of you may know that I’m pregnant. I have one child, but he’s nearly 11, so I’m sure I’ve forgotten a bit.
I don’t plan to have an epidural, to which most people stare wide-eyed and say “Whaaaaaaat?”.
What I would like to know, is how you had your babies. Natural, with some form of pain relief, water-bath, home-birth, etc.
I’m 35 weeks - almost there!
Yay!
I tried natural, and it worked very well until it didn’t anymore. I did get into a spa at one point, but didn’t like it–too steamy. I was doing fine until I stalled at eight cm for hours and got exhausted, so I got some drugs so I could recuperate a bit. Eventually I had to have a c-section, and it turned out that she was over 10 lbs and turned the wrong way, so that she couldn’t descend at all. Her face was all swollen and squashed from the weight on it!
But if she’d been smaller, I think the natural thing would have been OK. I found that Lamaze didn’t help at all, and the nurses taught me to (ahem) moan during the contractions, which really helped me handle the pain very well.
Natural, no pain relief whatsoever: no one offered it, and I didn’t ask (I’m a Scot, so I’m tough).
I’m probably not going to be much help, but here ya go:
First baby: 26 hours of unmedicated labor, very little dilation, C-section; baby weighed 9 lbs. 1 oz.
Second baby: 34 hours of unmedicated labor, very little dilation, C-section; baby weighed 10 lbs. 6 oz.
Third baby: No labor, scheduled C-section; baby weight 11 lbs. 14 oz.
With all three, I had spinal blocks for the actual delivery, and morphine for post-surgery pain for about 36 hours afterwards. By late in the second day, Extra Strength Tylenol was all I really needed.
I requested and got Stadol for the pain- it didn’t take it away, but it helped me to visualize rising over the pain. Out of 3 deliveries, I got one epidural. It didn’t really work though, and I wouldn’t choose that again.
The one thing that made a *HUGE * difference in levels of pain was being induced. The first two were induced and the third was not, and I couldn’t believe how much less painful the third one was.
Congrats! I also did this nearly 12 years ago, and I’m pregnant again ( :eek: ) but only about 7 weeks.
(Are you sure you want to ask for L&D stories? You generally only hear the worst ones.)
My son was 6lb 3 oz, natural until he decided to give back labor a try. Ouch! They gave me Stadol (sp? It’s a combo of Demerol and and anti-nauseal), which I still don’t understand. It did nothing at all for the pain, only made me sleepy between contractions. As my labor lasted less than 10 hours, I don’t think I needed to sleep that badly. I won’t take it again.
This time, I want to try for a water labor. Not sure if I’ll feel like delivering in water, but it sounds wonderful to labor in. I’m planning on taking a Bradley class, as I’ve heard more positive things about Bradley than Lamaze.
With my daughter (16 years ago), I tried to do natural, but the pain was incredible and they ended up giving me Demerol during labor to take the edge off the contractions. The doctor never really asked if I wanted it, he just said, “Okay, here’s something to take the edge off the pain.”
I didn’t like how it made me feel; woozy and dopey and light-headed, like I wasn’t in control. It also made me vomit. The nurse said it wasn’t the Demerol, but I hadn’t been feeling nauseous before that. If I had to do it again (which I’m not!), I’d pay more attention during the chidlbirth classes and not take the Demerol.
With my son, I had an epidural because I had a c-section.
I’ve heard lots of good things about the Bradley method. I don’t actually know anything about it, but it seems like that’s what everyone’s doing now rather than Lamaze.
Good luck to you! Where are you delivering? Do you know if you’re having a boy or girl?
Oooh, labor stories! Yay, I love labor stories!
At 42 weeks, when my water finally broke, I was just so excited to get things over with it felt like I was so high/excited that no pain meds would be needed.
Something like 4:30 in the morning~ water breaks.
5:30~ arrive at hospital, get all settled in and checked, dilated to 3.
6:00- 10:00~ walk, walk, greet arriving family, walk some more. Contractions moved from the ‘ooh, I think that maybe I’m having one!’ to the ‘wow, lemme pause and grab the wall, whoa!’ variety.
10- 10:30~ lay down all strapped up for a monitoring session, now dilated to 5.
10:45~ informed that my labor is progressing pitifully slowly, get an IV with an inducer and a bit of demerol. Oxytocin maybe, I forget which medicine it was. Contractions were feeling pretty harsh by then, and I felt rather cheated…the Demerol would have probably made it feel much better but the inducer made everything start happening longer and faster and harder. It did take the sharpest edge off the contractions, so I was all good with that.
11:00- 12:00~ Serious discomfort, so wanted to be up on my feet as it felt like laying in the bed was the worse way to cope. Did a lot of twisting and flipping about trying for a more comfortable position, had the nurses tsk tsking at me because all my squirming around played havoc with the monitor strappy things ability to correctly measure the contractions.
12:15~ Glare evilly at the nimrod offering me lunch as if I could stop panting and moaning long enough to actually eat anything. Glare more evilly at the nurses who condescendingly encourage me to eat, since my labor’s going to take another 12-18 hours and I’ll need my strength. Glare worshipfully at my husband and mother when they finally get the nimrod with food out of the room. Whimperingly ask the nurse, again, for another pain shot, alas not enough time has passed since the first one to get a second.
12:30~ Bark at husband to go get me demerol “It’s a hospital dammit, go find some!” although he could have come back with heroin or crack and I’d have been equally grateful. He motivates the nurses to finally check me again, they decide it’s time to try and put a scalp monitor on baby, since I’m still being so flip-floppy and insisting I need to push.
12:45~ Nurse comes moseying in, announcing I’ll be checked and a monitor attached and then she’ll use the lovely syringe with the glorious golden elixir in it. Whisper to Mom, begging her to sneak the syringe off the tray and plunge it anywhere into me because the nurse simply isn’t moving efficiently enough, Mom pats my knee.
Nurse 1 reads the paper strip curling out of the monitor machine, repeating that I’m miles away from delivery while Nurse 2 gets ready to shove the wand thing up and find the baby with it, Nurse 2 swallows a shriek and asks me to please breathe steadily for a moment while she locates a doctor, announcing my son has a full head of dark hair.
That was the moment I’d have went “Ha! Told you I had to push!” were speech a real possibility. The bitch took the syringe away when she left, too.
My doc had been monitoring the action by phone, since the nurses kept telling him it’d be hours yet, there was no way he could get there in time. Some intern was rustled up and pushed into the room looking quite nervous.
I’d discussed episiotomies with my doc, but Dr.Student guy was busy reading the chart and watching the nurses fly around trying to get everything ready and the window of opportunity for an episiotomy was quickly disappearing. I meant to say that, politely and all, these people didn’t come to work today to hear me scream like a banshee after all, but all that came out was “CUT ME!!”
Well, that got everyone’s attention, big sitcom worthy double-take from everyone in the room, along with a horrified gasp from my mother and a censurous look. Didn’t understand why alerting the doc to episiotomy-time was such a big deal, exactly, but pretty much not caring anyway. (Turns out, everyone in the room thought I’d screamed “F*** ME” instead. Dolts.)
At 12:55 the doc guy finally walks over to me, I scream and push baby’s head out, sighing in wondrous relief as a rush of amniotic fluid came with him, soothing all the little rips and tears he’d just created. They get all busy checking him out and wiping things, then tell me to push again. Huh, I’m not having a contraction yet, I sorta need one to push on, or against, or with, or something. They get pretty insistent I need to push, poor baby hanging all halfway out, but that neck’s feeling a helluva lot smaller than the head just did, so really I’m all fine resting up for a moment, and if it’s all that important why don’t they just pull, anyway? Before I could even finish the thought, another contraction hit and I delivered the rest of him into the doc guy’s waiting hands. Taa daa 9 lbs, 22 in. of healthy and hairy baby boy.
At least it was mercifully short, and my real doc came running into the room just in time to do the stitching.
Were I to be doing it again, I’d turn the epidural down as well, those work great for some but scare the bejesus outta me. Just having something to help blunt the edges was my hope, didn’t get quite as much as I’d hoped for but then didn’t expect to be induced either. I’d be pushier this time, knowing more now than I did then, I sorta felt like the nurses who work with the labor/delivery stuff everyday were more of an authority on what was happening in my body than I was. They explained later that the monitor they were reading and basing their time predictions on had mis-read the contractions when the reading disky things got slipped further up my abdomen as I squirmed around. So watch for that happening, should you use the same types of monitoring disky things, and don’t worry about being a ‘good’ patient, scream your head off until someone listens!
Congratulations Mom, thanks for the opportunity to remember my story, and I look forward to hearing how well it went for you soon! 
Yeah, I got pinned down in bed with one of those stupid monitors too. It told them the baby’s heart rate was too slow, so they did an internal monitor which meant, no you can’t even stand up for a minute. His heart rate was never slow, he was in no distress, their monitors were messed up. Screw that. No monitors this time. If you want to measure a heartbeat, get a stethoscope and a watch. Count. There’s your heartrate.
Ooh, I’m gonna be much more firm this time. They ain’t pushin’ around an 18 year old girl this time!
Remember ladies - you have the right to refuse ANY medical procedure in a hospital! Any! If they wrap that monitor around your belly without your consent, you can charge them with assault. (Not that I want to make nurses’ lives more difficult, but if it’s a choice between giving you an easy day at work and me a healthy delivery, guess whose day is gonna suck?)
They can tell you whatever they want about Demerol, but I’ve had it for other things (not labor related), and it definitely made me nauseous! Now, I always tell the ER folks I’m alergic to it (although I understand it’s not a true alergic reaction) and they give me morphine.
I took Bradley classes for my first and second kids, and they were good. They do lean a little heavily toward “There’s almost never a good medical necessity for a C-section”, IMHO. In fact, after I had my first one by C-section, I called my Bradley instructor and told her how it had gone, and she deemed my C-section “necessary”, as if I needed her validation. Still, I was happy enough with it that I took a refresher course for my second baby, still hoping I could deliver one vaginally.
With the first one, my water broke and I started to contract, so I waddled off to the hospital. A few hours later, I got an epidural and then slept all night. The next morning the Doc checked me and said to the nurse “She’s an 8. Call me when sh’es 10 and we’ll push.” When the nurse left, she told me that when I got to 10, she’s let me hang there for a while before calling the Doc. When the nurse did call the Doc, I pushed 8 times and out she came. It was a real no-brainer, especially for a first time.
The second one is one of those horror stories you probably don’t want to hear right now, except to say he’s 6 and fine.
Lamaze fan here. First child (now 30+) no meds. None. I’d describe the whole process as a lot of hard work.
I started having contractions in the evening during a football game on t.v. Hubby wanted to know what I was writing down. “Contractions,” I said, “They seem to be about every 15 minutes or so.” This continued through both the football game and a basketball game. And Johnny Carson. Ah, nothing’s happening tonight. Let’s go to bed. Water breaks. Oh, I guess it is. A five and a half pound baby girl was born about 6 a.m.
Second child (now 25+) started in the mid-afternoon. I was given some sort of meds around 10 or 11 p.m. to increase contractions. No pain-killers or sedatives. Harder work, contractions were more intense. At one point I did mention that it hurt some. Another baby girl, about 7 pounds, just before midnight.
I think the most important thing to remember is that you are completely comfortable most of the time. After all, until the end, a contraction is shorter than the time between contractions. Tensing up makes pain worse. Which causes tension. If you can use whatever techniques are available to reduce tension, this decreases the need for drugs. These techniques are also useful for relaxing in other potentially stressful situations (the dentist, for example).
Obviously a lot of factors contribute. I was told by one nurse that my long and (then) skinny frame helped, since my bones were stong but flexible. Also I exercised and took the Lamaze training very seriously. In addition, neither baby was especially large, both were in normal presentation mode, and there were no other complications. If there is ever a YMMV time, labor & delivery is it.
Afterwards, in both cases, I was tired but exhilarated. I could not sleep the entire day after my first delivery, I was so pumped up and happy. When I finally did sleep it was truly intense. In both cases, I recall being very hungry afterward. Having had no drugs at all, I was able to enjoy a nice meal right away. The other nice part of a drug-free delivery is that I was able to recognize the baby next time I saw her, and I was able to get up and walk around as soon as I wanted to.
I had both my boys completely natural. I thought it was a great experience.
They were both pretty quick and easy deliveries, about 3 hours of intense labor. My first boy weighed 8 lbs 2 ozs. Second weighed 7 lbs. 7 ozs. I don’t think it’s unusual for a woman to not want an epidural or any medication, I think that’s how we were meant to go about things.
I’m super happy for you guys!
Did I have a natural childbirth…hell no, I wore makeup…
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
#1. Contractions started at Midnight. Had our son at 1pm. Had an epidural about 5am or so.
Highly recommend it even though I wasn’t really feeling I needed one at that moment I didn’t think the pain was bad at all, but the nurses were looking at the contraction monitor thingie and going, “ooooooh, you have a high tolerance for pain.” “Look what I married!” I countered during a contraction.
I also commented through many contractions about several doctors/RN’s/PA shoes. Look, just because I am in pain does not mean I cannot be a shoe whore.
Nurses said that I better grab the Anestician (sp) while I could because he was hard to find in a pinch. Kinda like the Ice Cream Man. Only on your block for a short duration. So, in it went and I have a little bump back there still. Which helped the second time around.
The only real pain I had that was above the epidural was my son’s head banging away on my physiotic (sp?) . It lit that thing right up like a Christmas Tree light down to my toes and the final five pushes until the shoulders squeezed through.
It was not nearly as bad as I thought and the pain ended instantly when out our son squirted and became a Tax Deduction.
**#2 **Water broke in afternoon. Waddled to the hospital after a nice final dinner at Denny’s ( Hooo, I was treated out in style, I tell you.) No contractions. Fell asleep at midnightish. Woke up about 3 hotter than hell, decided to partake in a nice hot shower that I wanted to the previous time but could not. Very hard back labor set in quickly and I was shaking so bad that I barely made it to the bed again. I was dialated to something bigger Hell, if I know. I had the worst seat in the house. , but still within the boundaries of an epidural.
My husband woke to find me getting my epidural in my back. ( I would have had him sleep through it all until the final minutes.) I highly recommend using a mirror to see the baby arrive. It is a total rush knowing that you and you alone are bringing this creature into the world. You won’t even notice your flabbius Maximus at all, I swear. You 'll be too preoccupied.
No pain whatsoever until the final three pushes. ( And I felt really silly pushing until then because I just had tingling going on down there, no pain at all.)
Out she popped about 8am looking like a greek baby born to lilly white parents. So much so the nurse that was with us the entire time asked if my lilly white husband was greek. HAH! (Our daughter now resembles me in a lilly white fashion.)
Whilst our daughter was bundled over to the isolette for the nurses to flip her around like a pancake and wrap her up like a burrito, and my husband taking a bajillion pictures, I was left with my feet in the thingies like yesterday’s newspaper. With my doctor between my legs we were talking not about something as glorious and wonderful and Birth and Babies, but Death, funerals and Stuff Like That. My doctor had to shake her head to realize she was really involved in the convo and apologized and Mr. Ujest just grins at her stating that I manage to turn every convo into DeathTalk. Heh.
Both times, we were the ‘fun’ room.
Good Luck, Ginger! Remember, it is a pain that will end.
I’ve never given birth, but my sisters have had 10 babies between them. None of them had an epidural or pain meds and insist its hard work but not that bad. One sister was overdue, so she decided to shovel the snow from the driveway to put herself into labour. Sure enough, by 11:00 PM she went to the hospital, had the baby around 1:00 AM, sat up chatting with the doc all night and left the hospital at 7:00 AM with the baby insisting she was fine and there was nothing they could do for her that she couldn’t do for herself at home. She was home before her other child was awake - he didn’t even know she was gone. The baby weighed 11 lbs.
My mother had the 7 of us in 6 years. She too insists that labour and delivery are no big deal. She always gets indignant when she sees the traditional screaming “get this thing out of me!” deliveries on TV - she says it’s nothign like that. I think they must’ve been born to give birth. It seems to me that only hearing the horror stories is awfully hard on moms-to-be. Thay have to give it a chance and know that it can be a postive experience.
StG
Amen. The Birth Story (or whatever it is called) that is on A&E just drives me batty. They find the worst example of womenhood and motherhood to give birth. Everyone of them seem to be drama queens.
My labor & delivery story. Now if there are any Dopers who knew me when, you will be able to identify me.
I was Dumpster diving with my friend - 38 weeks along. No problem. Had worked as an art model all day and had the night off from the movie theater. My friend and I “moonlighted” by Dumpster diving and trash picking, then having a garage sale on the weekends and selling the stuff. The good old days. I was driving the “getaway” car. My next scheduled work was in the morning, and I was looking forward to the week off I was supposed to get before my due date.
About 9 pm - me: “Dude, I think I have gas - uughhhh.” (No farts come out.)
he: “Oh, okay.”
9:10 pm - me: “I think I have gas again, cramps or something. Maybe we should go to Denny’s after this Dumpster”
he: “Sounds good to me.”
9:20 - me: “Uuggghhhh” (grasping belly)
he: “Did you know you are having “gas” cramps every ten minutes on the nose? Are you sure you aren’t in labor?”
me: “Hahahahaha! My due date isn’t for two weeks!”
9:30 - me: “Geez dude, I think I’d better go home and get on the toilet!”
I slept from 10 pm until 3 am, when I woke up with 45-second contractions 5 minutes apart. My daughter was born 6 1/2 hours later, vaginally (6 pushes) with no drug nor anaesthesia interventions. The worst parts were the things they had to do for her because she was having so much trouble - heart rate slowing during contractions, lack of blood O2, etc. The internal monitor and scalp sample instruments literally made me cry.
I always say that the worst pain I felt was when the nurses tried repeatedly - and failed repeatedly - to put an IV in my left arm. I practically ran out of the hospital right then and there. (They finally had to call in some poor guy from the lab) But it really wasn’t the worst - that was the last five minutes of labor. And peeing after an episiotomy was no fun, but not anything like the last five minutes.
Oh, I hate the entire cinematic depiction of birth. Including T.V. Jeez. Women go from perfectly fine to complete agony within one minute, followed about 10 minutes later with a strapping (and perfectly clean) “newborn.”
Either the movies or my MIL had managed to convince my husband that birth was sheer and utterly excruciating pain. Before our first, he said there was no way he was going to be present during the delivery. “I’ll just be standing around with you suffering and there will be nothing I can do about it.”
At that time, Lamaze was relatively new. The standard procedure was for the parents-to-be to attend the classes together, and then the father could be in the delivery room. Without Lamaze training, you were most likely going to get the anaesthesia. I was very concerned with the possible effect of drugs on the baby.
So in desperation I pulled the ultimate guilt trip. "Honey, if you don’t come to the Lamaze classes, I will have to have drugs during labor. Which may hurt the baby. So if you don’t want to help me out with this, that’s just fine, you do what you want, but if anything – anything at all – is wrong, then it will be entirely your fault, and I will lose all respect for you as a human being. "
He came to the Lamaze classes. He was present at the birth. I was not in horrible agony, and I later heard him tell another prosepective father (he didn’t know I was within earshot) that it was a wonderful and not to be missed experience.
Incidentally, when my MIL found that he had been with me the whole time, her response was, “Even when you were screaming?” She found it very hard to believe that I never had the slightest inclination to do so.
Three words of advice I would give to any pregnant woman: Get The Epidural. After 12 hours of induced labor with no pain meds (my water had broken) I remembered that old saying that they don’t give out prizes to the women who suffered the most during labor. I was completely disappointed at not receiving at least a gold star or something (not to mention that the docs decided it would be necessary to perform a C-section after that 12 hours), so for baby #2 I chose a pre-set date for a C-section.
Good luck, GingerOfTheNorth! As you know from already having one child, the labor process is a piece of cake compared to the rearing process!
I’d tell you but I don’t want to scare you. Let me just say this: After two days of labor, you’d WANT the epidural.