Home Birth Cesarean | My Birth Story

The Birth of Jude

I’ve shared this story to some of my closest friends, family, peers, and loved ones but I’ve yet to write it out for the world to read. I’ve shared bits and pieces over time but I’ve stopped myself from writing it all out for a lot of reasons. Some reasons were fair and others out of insecurity and not being ready. I wondered if anyone really cared after all this time now that I’d had the years of process and healing I needed? I wondered if it was right to share such a “not-positive” birth experience in a place I have intentionally filled with empowerment and hope for a better world for birthing mothers. I also wondered if it was fair for my Jude to have this wounded story written out at all.

But I’ve come (3 years later) to the place of “now is the time” it’s time for me, for Jude, for mothers who feel traumatized, for mothers who just feel slighted in their births, for mothers who care about me, for mothers who want to understand birth outside of the “perfect picture” we might see described all over social media and for so many others.

The birth of Jude starts in it’s dreaming and planning stage. Jude was an unexpected but long-awaited surprise. We had been “trying” or “open” to having a baby for more than a year maybe 2 with no success or signs. I was diagnosed with PCOS in my teens so I’d been told fertility could likely be an issue when the time came so I mostly left my heart out of the waiting period. While we were trying I honestly never let my mind go to “when I get pregnant" so the day I found out, I was literally in shock. I felt scared, unprepared, and emotional as if I had never let the thought of motherhood cross my mind. After a few weeks maybe months, I finally came around to the idea. I had been working in birth for years at this point so the excitement easily built from all the powerful birthing stories I saw and the birth teams I worked alongside. I was ready to plan the perfect birth even though I felt incredibly ill-equipped to be the perfect mom. In some ways, I felt the perfect birth may be the catalyst for making me the best mom. Looking back I know how familiar that feeling can be for so many and why it led to so much disappointment when it also came crashing down around me.

The perfect plan included a home birth in our little bungalow, surrounded by laughter and mother energy from my doula, midwife, and photographer. I wanted to be surrounded by mothers who have walked this journey before me and who believed in my ability to birth with the same power. I wanted the intimacy of my partner, the comfort of my home, and the birthing tub to all be the first things I experienced as a mother. I was not afraid of the pain or length of labor, I felt strong and capable all throughout the planning and dreaming of this day. But the planning I suppose is not the hard part to write, it’s the actual birth so let me skip ahead…

I greeted 38 weeks like any other day. I felt ready for baby but had a feeling they would take their time. We didn’t know the gender so I remember thinking it was actually a girl at this point though I had for most of my pregnancy known it was a boy. I was still working and capturing photo shoots at this point and felt pretty energized to continue though definitely slowing down. After a session one day I came home with a bad headache and raised blood pressure, nothing scary but it put my first-time mom's anxiety on full blast. I spoke with my midwife and we agreed a protein test should be done to see if I was getting early signs of preeclampsia. Later that week I got the protein test done just to have it return inconclusive due to me not doing the test properly. But we decided that I would retake the test and schedule a follow-up ultrasound for 39 weeks because the BP had stayed moderately high and my headaches were occasional. Looking back now I think a lot of this was due to anxiety, coffee, and not eating often throughout the day but it’s hard to know what things to worry over and which things to release as a first-time, pregnant mom. Because while I had a lot of experience witnessing births, I was a complete novice when it came to witnessing and experiencing pregnancy on an intimate level within my body. These small things could have also just been signals of baby needing more support.

The first day of my 39 weeks began with some banana bread and Chris and I felt only a little anxious. I remember us waiting in the ultrasound waiting room with a lot of positivity. I woke up feeling energized and my BP had lowered into a normal range, it set us up to feel like this ultrasound truly was just to “check on things.” Unfortunately soon after the scan began we could feel the tension in the sonographer’s energy change. She had been the same one to do our 20-week scan and wasn’t a particularly chatty person but she was staying dead silent during our scan. After she finished I do remember her saying she needed to bring an OB in to consult with us because the baby was very small. We knew the baby was small from palpation and would be likely from my family history of small babies but the way she said it made us a lot more worried. When the OB (who we didn’t know at all) came in. It was a lot of fast talking, “baby is below the 1%” “baby should have been induced weeks ago” “we have no choice but to rush you to an induction right now” “your placenta looks like a 44-week-old, dying one” “baby could die” “baby may be doing well now but with their size that could all change at any moment”

It was traumatizing. overwhelming.

I remember responding by saying, “well I’d like to go home and discuss the scan with my trusted midwife. Could you send copies to me or her so we can review them ourselves?” But he said that wasn’t an option. He said we could call our midwife but we weren’t going to be leaving the hospital that day. This moment for me was a source of a lot of trauma, I felt trapped, coerced, and left with no options, and all in a matter of seconds. I didn’t trust this person and did not feel supported, seen, or cared for, only rushed and frightened. Could I have fought harder to go home and collect my thoughts? Was I coerced by all the scary numbers and terms? We did call my midwife at this point but she basically said, “they’ve written ‘stillbirth’ all over your paperwork, there isn’t really anything else you can do”

All my power and consent were sucked from the room.

Baby wasn’t well and THAT was all that mattered. Nothing else. Not even me getting to make an informed choice, not my mind getting to just catch up to the realization, and not ME the mother at all.

We were escorted up to the L&D ward where you could feel the buzz of “home birth transfer mom” in the air. Thankfully they were very kind to find us a very supportive nurse who later became a good friend. She had a heart for natural/unmedicated birth and wanted us to have as easy of a transition as we could. I remember her going straight to the whiteboard to write down anything we could for a “birth plan.” Things like “very slow induction” “allow a birth photographer in the OR if it came down to it” “no male care providers” “eating during labor” etc.

We literally had nothing with us. I was in a wire bra and white blouse, dressed up for the lunch date we had planned for after the scan. I was not dressed for a full week in the hospital. I hadn’t eaten much and felt immediately uncomfortable with the hospital gown being shoved into my arms. They kept telling Chris to go home and fetch things but we both felt very attached at this point and couldn’t be separated. Thankfully we called my amazing doula at some point in the chaos and she arrived within an hour or so of us settling on to the ward. When she came into the room I began weeping. I know I cried prior to this with Chris, inside, and probably with the nurse but when my doula arrived I remember letting it all release.

I felt the stretching of approaching motherhood and yet still felt like the person I was before I was pregnant. I questioned “why” I would go through all this for a baby I didn’t even really know. I had been disconnected from my intuition and the baby growing inside me. Everything I had felt and known about my pregnancy was put into question leaving me to doubt myself and my power completely.

At some point, Chris did go to collect things from our house. A mish-mash of comforts and some food. While I just sat on the bed strapped with monitors. The urgency that had forced us from the scanning room to the L&D floor had fallen away. It was 3 maybe 5 hours before any OB came in to talk about a plan. Hours I could have really used by returning home to process, prepare, and consent to what lay ahead.

When the OB team did come in their plan was an immediate cesarean.

Now that we had hours showing baby was doing well on the monitors and we were settled in a hospital where they could handle most emergencies if they arose, I was not ready to concede to this plan so quickly. I asked about induction as a secondary option. [Something to note here as well, I was less than 1/2 cm dilated at this point and hadn’t even had Braxton Hicks or any cervical change. My body was not prepared for birth anytime soon. So induction wasn’t a great option either but obviously emergency trumped logic at this point]

They weren’t super keen on induction but “allowed” it if I started with an induction test [basically where they start Pitocin very low to see how baby handles the labor] and if I consented to a walking epidural (walking being my own request) [ Basically a spinal catheter with no medicine flowing so I could still walk around but they could administer drugs if things became suddenly urgent for baby and I was rushed to the OR. intending to avoid general anesthesia] Then if I passed the “test” for induction we could start with a non-hormonal foley bulb overnight which is pretty typical. I agreed to their terms mostly because I thought it was my only option for a vaginal birth, which became my only “birth plan.”

The epidural catheter looking back was a huge mistake. It was uncomfortable, I didn’t want the numbing medicine so it was just an uncomfortable needle and threaded line taped to my body that prevented me from using any water in my labor. Even though water was the only place I wanted to be.

Baby handled Pitocin well after several hours so we were able to stop the drip and insert the foley bulb at this point. [They wouldn’t let me take the epidural out though so I was stuck confined to land from there on out] During all of this time my birth photographers had arrived as well. My dear friend and normal back-up came first in case I was rushed to the OR. She thankfully stayed a while to talk and share and make my transition a little more bearable. I remember moving from one emotion to the next; from sad, to sarcastic, into laughing, then breaking down. My second birth photographer who was traveling from Virginia also arrived and moved throughout the space very respectfully. I could feel how bad everyone felt for me. They knew I had all these plans and dreams that were being torn apart. It was incredibly supportive and overwhelming all at the same time.

I went to sleep that night not really in labor but with some hope that tomorrow things might ramp up.

The next morning we spoke with friends on facetime and updated people about our circumstances. We even had a couple of visitors. I think Chris had connected with almost everyone the day before (he is a very verbal and outward processor) but it was the first time really I was connecting with the outside world about it. That morning I still had the foley bulb in but was starting to feel the contractions as the balloon pulled on my cervix dilating me from nothing to about 4cm. When it fell out I went back to feeling no labor at all. Soon they were ready to start hormonal Pitocin slowly. Most of this second day was a blur. For most of this day I was not progressing or feeling the effects of Pitocin much at all. It really wasn’t until the evening that things started to feel intense. It’s hard to recall exactly but at some point, everything seemed to move a bit faster and interventions became more pressurized. I became the poster child for the “cascade of interventions” you often hear about in induction or hospital births.

When I still had not dilated more than 4cm by 7pm-ish they decided to break my water. I knew it was a dumb decision because baby was not engaged in my pelvis at this point but I think we were all hopeful it could still help. When it didn’t help at all, things became a lot more worrisome for baby. He no longer had the cushion of waters during the induced labor and was starting to struggle. They then decided to insert both an internal fetal monitor [a small screw into babies head] and an internal monitor for me [not sure where that attaches inside but it’s up my vagina]. They also brought in this odd system that to this day I can’t remember what it is called and when I’ve shared or described it with others, they’ve never heard of it. But basically, it was one tube pushing water into me and one tube immediately suctioning it out so I wasn’t constantly wetting the bed. (if you know what this is called please reach out)

All of this made me understandably pretty bedbound at this point. So many wires and tubes shoved up my vagina. I was able to basically be on the bed or stand leaning on the edge of my bed to sway or sit on the birth ball. Around this time the Pitocin began to get a little out of control. I was having very unnatural back-to-back contractions without a lot of rest or pauses in between. As painful as it was, they did give us all a false sense of “progress.” So we persevered. After a while, though they slowed it back down to give me some relief and sleep. I lay down really exhausted from these two incredibly long days.

I awoke not long after though to a fever and possible infection from all the interventions. I may have even had it before I fell asleep but I’m not sure. Baby started to struggle on the monitor once again so they insisted on flipping from side to side to try and get his heart rate normalized. I got to wear the fancy oxygen mask. And things calmed for a moment.

But only just a moment because the OB who I had been working with all through the night came in to do a check at this point. They had been watching the monitors and started to see decels in baby. [temporary drops in heart rate that become worrisome when they don’t bounce back after a contraction] She checked my cervix and I had in all of this time only progressed to 4.5cm. She offered me to try another round of Pitocin or to start prepping for my cesarean. I actually liked this Dr. and felt she did try her best to support my induction but at the same time, I think she also moved things faster than I had wanted. Maybe it was out of routine or again the worry that baby at any point would just be too unwell so we couldn’t be inducing for 4 days straight. Who knows but at that point it felt like we really didn’t have any other options. We had come to the end of the line with the inducing process and one more round was very unlikely to get me to 10cm and would only put baby in more distress.

My body, my baby, and my mind were not ready to give birth. Every process was trying to force something incredibly unnatural out of us. Looking back I think so many things could have been done differently but the final conclusion was simply that we were not ready for birth to happen. The body, mind, and baby really must find some type of alignment for a vaginal birth, [medicated and unmedicated] it can’t be forced even by all the technology in the world outside of surgery.

So we consented to a c-section.

I would love to say at this point we had a c-section and all was great but sadly the birth trauma just ramps up at this point so trigger warning if you have anxiety about cesarean birth.

After we consented to the cesarean the anesthesiologist came back in. She was the same one who had placed my walking epidural the prior day just back on a second shift. Of course, there was no emergency for this cesarean at least not a rush so they didn’t want to use the damn epidural catheter I had been forced to keep in place. Instead, they removed it and prepped me for a spinal tap [direct needle into the spine for a one-time numbing. pretty typical for cesarean birth] The Ob I had been working with all night long was also leaving at this point since it was 7am and it was shift change. I was getting a new nurse as well but thankfully she was one I had the day before and already connected with. The new Dr. or really just a surgeon from my experience came in to introduce himself before the surgery. He was sort of the worst. The epitome of why I was resistant to male care providers up until this point. He barely made eye contact with me or Chris, when we were both drained and very depressed at the position we were in, and before leaving gave my photographer a whole chat about what he knows concerning camera equipment and quality lenses, etc. a chat that was longer than the one he had to prep us for the surgery I was about to have and right there in the room. It put a horrible taste in our mouths but everyone assured me he was a really great surgeon and exactly who you’d want handling your cesarean surgery/scar for a future VBAC. We did discuss all the gentle things we wanted in the OR but the long list of caveats like “well if the baby is not doing well, we will have to skip X.” were repeated enough times to let us know we probably wouldn’t get that gentle cesarean birth.

I was wheeled off to the OR. They allowed me to choose between my doula and photographer as my second support person so thankfully my doula took the camera in to grab a few photos. She was also approved to accompany me into the OR from the beginning which is rare but was so appreciated because I was so anxious and emotional at this point. I felt despondent really, not angry but not connected to anything that was happening around me. The thing about a cesarean OR that they rarely tell you is that it is fast-paced and they pretty much ignore you. It feels like people are spinning around you doing little jobs here and there preparing to cut you open but you no longer matter that much. It felt mechanical when they did address me, “get on the table here” “lean this way” and “arms out” just short commands to follow.

They then placed my spinal tap. A lot more rushed and sterile in the OR than when they do an epidural but the same vulnerable leaning-over position. Then the anesthesiologist stands above your head so you can’t really see them but they can talk down to you randomly. I also had a student with the Dr. helping and doing most of the talking to me. They waited maybe a minute or so to let the numbing take effect and then took a small sharp object and pressed it on my belly and said

“Can you feel this?” I said “yes”

They asked if it was sharp or just pressure. I said “sharp”

They tilted the bed slightly and asked again while poking my belly with the sharp object.

“Can you feel this?” I said “yes”

“pressure or sharp?” and my reply “sharp”

They repeated this one more time with the same results, I could still feel it and it was still sharp. But guess what? that OR was still moving at the speed of light. Me still feeling things was not slowing anything down. At first, I didn’t really know what was happening they sort of just backed away from my head and maybe crossed their fingers that the numbing would fill my entire lower half before they started to cut, who knows? I remember Chris coming into focus where they had been standing now sitting beside my head. He was really all I could see as they started the surgery.

I could feel it.

Together Chris and I started doing our labor breathing techniques to move through the pain I was feeling. I was screaming out loud and inside. We felt a little clueless knowing in the back of our heads I shouldn’t be feeling this much pain but also expected to trust the Drs who were all packed in the tiny room. I was crying from the pain. It was isolated to a quarter of my lower abdomen and can only be described as ripping, pulling, and cutting. I guess the other three-quarters were numbed so I couldn’t connect my brain and the feeling with what was happening. With the anesthesiologist standing out of my view the only thing I could see was the surgeons over the drape, smiling, chatting, ignoring my humanity. Thankfully cesarean births are pretty fast. They got the baby out in a matter of minutes.

They lifted the baby up to the now clear drape and I remember only hearing Chris saying, “It’s Jude. It’s a boy!” We were happy and excited amidst it all. Jude was very quickly taken out of sight though in a flurry. My doula encouraged Chris to go over to Jude while she stayed with me. It was at this moment that she whispered, “now that you’ve met Jude it’s time to get some more drugs you shouldn’t be in this type of pain.” She was the only one to say anything to us. All in an instant they injected my arm with some sort of drug that can only be compared to a hallucinogenic. While I started feeling like I was riding some LSD high [not that I have much experience but what I imagine LSD to be like] they brought Jude over for a very quick look before taking him to the NICU but I honestly don’t remember that at all and I think it was about 30 seconds. We were told that if the baby was mostly well we could do skin-to-skin and have some first moments together in the OR but that never happened. Chris went with the NICU team and I stayed in the OR. I recall asking the room to take the drugs with me and thanking their large floaty heads for their service. It was trippy and I felt out of control of my body and mind as they sewed my abdominal cavity back up.

I came-to an hour or a couple of hours later. The NICU was insisting I express some colostrum so they could get Jude started on feeding. Chris and my photographer came to see me just to rush back down to deliver the two syringes of colostrum I could manage. My parents had also arrived during all the chaos and were waiting in my room. It wasn’t until an hour or 2 after this maybe that they let me truly meet Jude. They rolled me down in my bed to the NICU and placed him on my chest. It was an emotional moment, joyfully complex. I missed him with every part of my body while realizing I was basically just meeting him for the first time.

Jude was tiny. Weighing in at 4.15lbs at 39 weeks and 3 days though in the OR they told Chris 5.2lbs so who knows where the discrepancy was, he may have lost weight in the hours or days that followed because we were under the impression he weighed 5.2 up until day 2 in the NICU when a nurse wrote 4.15lbs on a small colorful sign they pinned to his bassinet. Either way, a small baby for his gestational age.

With small and large babies there are early concerns for glucose levels so they immediately worried about hypoglycemia and injected him with a round of fast-acting glucose. He also had a few minutes of breathing struggles in the OR which supposedly was the reason for no skin-to-skin and an early sign of this hypoglycemia. When they use this fast-paced glucose though they then have to monitor baby for 24-48 hours in the NICU to watch as they level out or if it’s long-term hypoglycemia. This is how we got designated to the NICU. Otherwise, Jude was just small for gestational age and potentially IUGR but the treatment and observations were similar to any newborn baby in a hospital. Perhaps more vigilant though due to his size as if small things could escalate quickly and more dangerously if I was the only one watching over him full time.

I had such an instant connection and feeling of motherhood once he was placed on my chest. My fear, fight/flight/fawn response, and overwhelm all evaporated in those moments. Literally smelling his head was like a shot of oxytocin I needed to remind me to tap back into my instincts. I held him skin to skin for what felt like way too short a time before being wheeled back to my room.

Jude being in the NICU at first felt validating of our birth choices. He was in need of extra care and he was tiny. But after the first day, it seemed clear he was also healthy and overall fine. It was a very emotional battle inside me. I spent my first nights postpartum alone pumping and trying to get escorts to wheel me down to the NICU as often as I could. I remember the first night (Jude came around 7:30am) waking up at 4 am full of hormonal crazy demanding someone take me down to the NICU. Everyone kept saying, “oh you’re lucky, you’ll get to sleep after that long birth.” but I was not having that bull shit. My mama bear instincts were ferocious and in full force the second he was out of my body and not in my arms. It was like my brain finally came-to after all the disconnection of the birth. My instincts were raging and I felt our lives were at risk being in the hospital. I’m surprised my incision didn’t reopen because I was walking through the intense pain down to the NICU pushing the wheelchair unassisted by the second day. I was very consumed by our breastfeeding journey as well which you can read here. But most of all I was counting down the seconds to go home with my baby.

If you’ve had a NICU baby then you may have a similar feeling. It’s an internal battle of following your instincts and releasing control to the nurses. I could look around the room and see all these babies in great need. But when I looked at Jude I knew he just needed me and we needed to be home. After his 24-48 hour observation, he was doing well. They started to see signs of jaundice [easily treated with the light] and his blood thicken [which they actively blamed on delayed cord clamping even though he did not receive delayed cord clamping it was only requested] They were trying daily to get blood draws from him from his hands, arms, and feet. By the end of the second day, they told us they would have to do a saline infusion if his blood didn’t thin to a certain number. That following morning his blood had thinned to that certain number naturally but the Resident said another 24-48 hours of observation would be needed. At that point, I was ready to set something on fire. They had already moved Jude from a specialized NICU bassinet to just a typical newborn bed but in the NICU. They knew he was fine and I did too. I was also due for discharge on that 3rd day. But the Midwives who were rounding on me and nurses said I could stay for the 4th day/night in hopes that Jude would be released to me and could be observed an additional night. I was not having it. I told them I would like to be discharged ASAP and would return as a visitor to the NICU. I was sick of being observed and never coming down from the fight adrenaline that was now pulsing through my veins.

They didn’t like this but I think they could sense my high stress and trauma from being there. That day we went down to the NICU to let them know our plan and it was the first time an actual attending Dr. was on the floor. She looked over Jude and pretty much said he was ready to be discharged too and that we could skip the 24-48 hour observation the residents had mentioned that morning. We were so relieved, dancing on clouds happy, we went back upstairs to the Maternity floor to start packing for the earliest release we could get. This was sometime in the early afternoon (hospital time is weird though so it’s hard to recall) But we were going down every 2 hours at minimum to try and nurse or give Jude donor breastmilk so I know we returned to the NICU about 2 hours later. At this point, it was only the nurses around and we asked them what we needed to do in order to start preparing Jude for discharge. The nurse looked at us like we were crazy, like that would never be approved, and that we had at least 1-2 days more. I was furious. I started to cry so intensely, I could feel my body shaking. Chris tried to calm me but there was nothing that could soothe the very hormonal rage and sadness I was experiencing. I was in full trauma response from the last few days and could not regulate myself.

When we left the NICU, I legit stormed onto the maternity ward ready to grab my stuff and walk out of the building. I feel so bad for my poor nurse who supported me with just confusion on her face. I told her what the NICU had said, how they were lying and just stringing us along. What we didn’t know was that the NICU nurse was actually the one who hadn’t gotten the memo. She had spoken with such authority but actually had none and hadn’t seen that Jude was already in the discharge process along with me. Within the hour as I was raging in my room thankfully my nurse came in to clarify. I guess she waited to recheck and get the final information before sending my crazy self into another rollercoaster of emotion. She confirmed that we were all set for discharge at around 10pm, me from the maternity floor and Jude from the NICU. That was a very crazy night. I felt like I was waiting to steal my baby back. When we got in the car I had the impulse to say, “just drive and don’t look back.”

When we got home the world settled. I wasn’t healed by any means and I would have years of therapy and processing to endure but I was home and felt safe for the first time in 7-8 days. Jude who really hadn’t nursed once in the hospital nursed within 24 hours of us being safe at home on our old orange couch.

I wish I had some big overarching and amazing reflections to conclude this story with. But all I’ll say are a few of the important lessons I learned in my transformation into motherhood and in the 3 years of healing work I’ve gone through to write this out.

I learned to listen to my intuition and instincts.

I learned that I am incredibly strong and could go to some extreme feelings to protect my child.

I learned that I am not strong enough to heal on my own though, and that I needed support both from friends and professionals.

I learned I am a really good mom.

I learned that birth education and preparation doesn’t completely protect you from birth trauma.

I learned that as a birth worker I am better after my hard experience not worse.

I learned that the journey into parenthood is crazy hard sometimes but it’s also just the first door you open and so many other highs and lows follow.

I learned that Jude in every way was worth it but a “healthy baby” is not all that matters. It’s far more complex than that.

Birth Team:

Loving Hands Doula Care

Christi Stafford Photo (photo credit for all birth images)

Raleigh Birth Photography