From Conception to Delivery: A Candid Exploration of Pregnancy and the Unforgettable Experience of Childbirth
From Conception to Delivery: A Candid Exploration of Pregnancy and the Unforgettable Experience of Childbirth
The Journey of Parenthood Part 1
"I don’t know how I can do this again."
In the course of my journey as a mother, I've met many first-time mothers and veteran mothers who have uttered these very words. In fact, I too find myself echoing these statements.
How can I have more children if this is what I have to go through?
The journey of pregnancy can be both fascinating and daunting. I find the beginning to be the most bizarre. It starts with peeing on a stick because you are way past your period date and the sick feelings you’ve been having are definitely not food poisoning. After that, you wait anxiously for the presence of one or two lines that will unleash a whirlwind of emotions and alter the course of your life, forever.
Here's where it gets really fun.
First, I would like you to imagine having an amazing night out on the town drinking with friends.
You've had a few drinks to the point where you're not going to remember most of the night when you wake up. Upon waking up in the morning, you feel nauseous and have this overwhelming urge to throw up. It’s one of those hangovers that last the entire day and the smell of food triggers your gag reflex and makes you throw up instantly. The only thing you can do is nibble on some crackers and sleep it off.
Now imagine that feeling every day for 3 months.
That’s morning sickness.
I experienced it every morning without fail, for 3 months straight.
It happened so often it became a routine for me.
I would wake up nauseous, proceed to run to the toilet, throw up, and then continue with my day. My day would begin by feeling nauseous, followed by a trip to the bathroom, an upchuck, and then the day would continue.
Putting it in writing makes it sound so insignificant, almost diminishing the profound impact of enduring relentless morning sickness, then having to carry on as if nothing ever happened.
In addition to this lovely new morning routine, I also experience intense fatigue and dizziness. There were days I could barely bring myself to get out of bed because I was so dizzy. Only when the sudden urge to throw up hit me could I stumble to the bathroom just as the burning sensation entered my throat.
The First Trimester Starts.
I was lucky that I had two amazing doctors who listened to me and took all my concerns very seriously. However, if you bring up nausea and vomiting as I did, you’re usually met with,
“Oh, that’s very common and usually goes away after the first trimester. However, if you’re unable to keep any food down give me a call.”
Notice the word usually and keep food down in that response.
For some women, nausea and vomiting don’t go away after the first trimester. Some women experience this feeling well into their third trimester and only stop after they have given birth. I know women who could barely eat their whole pregnancy because they were so sick. When they could eat, it was a chocolate sundae and that was their meal for the entire week.
Don’t believe me?
Go ask a couple of women who were pregnant what their nausea was like. I can guarantee you will meet someone who experienced nausea and vomiting well into their second and third trimesters. Or they will tell you about a friend who experienced it. It’s a lot more common than you think.
Now, take into account that all this throwing up means your stomach acid is coating your teeth.
When stomach acid coats the teeth, it wears down that all-important and protective layer, enamel. Enamel protects your teeth against decay, cavities, and sensitive teeth. If you’re throwing up all the time, think about the effect that has on a pregnant woman’s teeth and what that means for her future dental health.
Additionally, even if a pregnant woman doesn’t have morning sickness, pregnant women are more susceptible to cavities because of the increase in hormone production and the body’s focus on growing a baby.
Well, the bad part is you can’t get your enamel health back. Once you’ve lost it, it’s gone.
The good part is you can create a routine now that strengthens the enamel you already have. I linked a website above talking about what stomach acid does to the teeth that give some helpful tips on how to take care of your teeth and build strong enamel.
Then comes the second-trimester exhaustion.
It’s a feeling of never being satisfied with sleep, no matter how many hours the smartwatch says you slept.
It’s sleeping for 8 hours and taking a 2-hour nap and still being unable to function. That old saying, “Sleep now because once the baby is here you’ll never sleep again” is both irritating and frustrating when sleep is meaningless because you are never satisfied. Especially when the bigger you get the more uncomfortable you become and the quality of sleep you get significantly decreases over time.
Also, how about we just stop saying that to pregnant women. Everyone knows you won’t sleep when the baby comes. Not only is the comment rude, but it’s also just plain unhelpful.
Do you know what is helpful?
“Here’s a dinner for you so you can sleep more.”
“Let me come do laundry or the dishes so you can rest.”
“Here, have a seat. I have this lovely new lotion that when you smell it, it’s completely relaxing and calming. Let me give you a foot massage to help give you some relief.”
Feel free to add anything or come up with something other than unsolicited and extremely unhelpful advice.
Now the more common side effect of pregnancy, the bump is definitely a cuter, more fun side of pregnancy, what lies behind the bump is a little more sinister.
A very common side effect of the bump is diastasis recti.
A diastasis recti is a term used to describe the separation of the abdominal muscles during pregnancy. It’s generally painless but it is a significant contributor to the belly bulge that occurs after pregnancy and childbirth in women. If diastasis recti are not taken care of safely and properly, it can cause poor core stabilization, back pain, pain with sex, and pelvic floor dysfunction. I elaborate on this in my other post, Postpartum: The Little Known Fourth Trimester.
More severely, it can cause an umbilical hernia. A friend of mine actually experienced this. Due to the size of the baby she was carrying, her belly ripped on the inside, resulting in a hernia. If she was to get pregnant again, she would have to deal with the pain of the hernia and is at risk for her abdominal wall tearing open.
For high-risk pregnancies, women can develop what is known as gestational diabetes even if they have never had diabetes in their life. The doctor tests you between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy, by giving you this sugary drink that’s really unenjoyable to drink. You’re not allowed to eat anything before it either, which is quite difficult if you’re pregnant and aren’t suffering from prolonged nausea/vomiting. If a pregnant woman has gestational diabetes, the baby is at risk of
Being born large (more than 9 lbs)
Being born early
Potentially developing type 2 diabetes later in life
Just another thing to add to the list of anxieties as childbirth quickly approaches.
Another even more serious side effect that can occur is preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is characterized by high blood pressure and sometimes damage to the kidneys in the pregnant woman.
It can lead to serious and sometimes fatal complications such as:
Preterm birth
Growth restriction of the baby
Placental abruption (which is when the placenta separates from the inner wall of the uterus before delivery)
Seizures in both the mother and the baby
Organ damage
And other serious complications/life-threatening symptoms for both mom and baby
What many people don’t know or understand is, pregnancy can actually be very dangerous. There can be life-threatening situations for both the mom and the baby and they can occur at any time during pregnancy and especially during childbirth.
Unfortunately, preeclampsia is not as uncommon as you might think. I had a coworker and a cousin who both had preeclampsia. My coworker never elaborated on what happened to her and perhaps I never asked the right questions, but I knew her pregnancy and childbirth were incredibly traumatizing because she refused to have any more children because of what happened.
With my cousins, she had to be hospitalized she was so sick, her kidneys started to shut down and they immediately sent her into labor because her body was shutting down from the strain of pregnancy.
Even though these facts had been stated by these women themselves, they still had to ward off questions like,
“Well, when are you having another?”
“You can’t just have one! Your baby needs a friend to play with!”
Again minimizing the trauma women must experience in order to birth children.
Moreover, these are just some of the complications that can occur. I have a friend who had surgery to remove a fibroid and the doctors won’t ever let her give birth naturally because there’s a chance for uterine rupture during childbirth. This is also a side effect of having a C-section, but I elaborate on that further in the childbirth section below.
The Third Trimester
Towards the end of the second trimester and into the third, Braxton Hick's contractions start.
These are “fake” contractions that stimulate the body to prepare for labor. They are a tightening of the abdomen muscles and can be painful and irregular. However, once these Braxton hicks contractions become increasingly painful and more regular, this signals labor is about to begin.
During the third trimester, a pregnant woman needs to be aware of her body and the changes that have occurred. Many serious side effects can occur during this time, one of which is developing severe blood clots from lack of movement. Pregnant women are more susceptible to blood clots because their blood clots easily lessen the blood loss during childbirth. Also, the large amount of pressure on the pregnant woman's pelvis and legs from the growing baby increases the risk of blood clots.
Some other more common side effects include:
Backaches that feel like you hurt yourself during a workout but never go away,
Peeing all the time because of the pressure from the baby
Hemorrhoids which develop from of having a baby sit on your pelvis day and night
Sleeping during this time is incredibly difficult. Pregnant women can only sleep on the right or left side because sleeping on the back cuts off oxygen flow to the baby. So if you tend to sleep on your back or your stomach, you’re out of luck for the next 9 to 13 weeks.
If you made it this far and though it doesn’t sound too bad, well, I haven’t even started to talk about the actual labor part.
An exploration into the unforgettable experience of childbirth.
It is not a good unforgettable experience either.
The fact that childbirth can even happen is incredible.
Biologically speaking, if you were to examine and study the female anatomy of the body, a human baby should not be able to come out. It doesn't seem possible that a 7lb+ baby could fit through. Somehow, the female body adapts to growing this little person by adjusting the woman’s pelvis, expanding the uterus to expand the abdomen, expanding the cervix, and utilizing contractions to push the baby out.
Contractions begin the labor process.
I'm not sure how to describe it but medical professionals describe it as a tightening of the abdominal muscles and a feeling similar to menstrual cramps. Except that it feels nothing like menstrual cramps and tightening doesn't even begin to describe how it feels.
It's a pain the likes of which I have never experienced before. The feeling is indescribable and not in a good way. The pain starts in the abdomen and extends downs into the pelvis as labor progresses. There's no relief from it until the baby is born. You can’t help but scream and cry out because there’s nothing else to do. It’s not a pain someone can keep to themselves.
Women do this for hours, sometimes days. During this time, doctors and nurses are continuously reaching inside the pregnant woman to check and see how dilated her cervix is, which is extremely painful.
Before any medical interventions begin, the hospital offers painkillers. The first of which is analgesics and anesthetics.
Analgesics are opioids that are a simple shot into the IV and affect the entire body. They help to reduce pain by calming the body down. The first shot worked for me for about 20 minutes. I asked for another one and it didn’t work, which is normally what happens. So the second option becomes available, the anesthetic, more commonly known as the epidural.
Now, most people know that an epidural is a pain reliever commonly used during childbirth to relieve pain. What most people don’t know is that if placed wrong into a woman’s back the needle could potentially sever the spinal cord and make her paralyzed for life. It also carries many risks for both the mother and the baby. If you can get past that, an epidural offers the kind of relief analgesics could never offer.
However, I’ve also heard stories from women talking about how their epidural didn’t work on one side of their body so they could still feel pain on the other side. Others told me that they couldn’t feel when they needed to push the baby out, so they ended up needing a C-section. So it’s just a lose-lose situation all around.
If contractions begin lasting for hours and it doesn’t seem like the baby is going to come out anytime soon and the woman’s cervix isn’t dilated enough, medical interventions begin.
One intervention to help induce labor is to break the water or amniotic sac. Essentially, a doctor takes a small hook, reaches up inside the woman, and cuts the amniotic sac that contains the baby. Then all the water comes out and it feels like you’re peeing yourself.
Yes, it is as painful and uncomfortable as it sounds.
Then there are more serious medical interventions that a doctor could decide to take during labor.
At the base of the pyramid, we have the forceps or a vacuum to pull the baby out. These are generally used if the woman’s birthing canal or hips are too small, and they need some extra help getting the baby out.
Unfortunately, these medical interventions come with a host of issues but most importantly, they inflict a large amount of tearing on the woman, and most likely require an episiotomy in order to be successful (at being able to stick them up the woman’s vagina that is).
An episiotomy is when a doctor takes scissors and makes a cut at the opening of the vagina during childbirth. They generally make three incisions, two at the top and one at the bottom to create a man-made tearing of the vagina. If the doctor cuts too far one way or the other, it can have lasting consequences if done incorrectly. Common side effects include incontinence, chronic pain, and muscular tissue damage.
Think about it: if a doctor cuts too far above, they can puncture the urinary tract. If they cut too far down below, well, you can literally tear open your butthole. That actually happened to a woman I know. She was in so much pain and had so many issues, when she finally found a doctor who listened to her, she had to be completely reconstructed down there because her episiotomy and forceps birth tore her body apart.
Another serious medical intervention is a C-section.
Even though c-sections are performed at a large rate in this country, the healing process is vastly more difficult and the procedure is much more dangerous since it is a surgery.
There is compelling research being released that shows a link between c-sections and significant long-term effects on the female body, such as secondary infertility and increasing the risk of needing a hysterectomy. There is also the risk of uterine rupture, should a woman ever want to give birth vaginally.
The cut from the c-section carries a large price tag on the health and well-being of the woman and any future children she might want to have. While there is a movement away from using episiotomy as a medical intervention, c-sections, breaking the amniotic sac, forceps, and vacuum are still commonly used as a way to speed up childbirth.
I hope this article helped to bring more understanding to what women experience to bring a baby into the world. Moms, feel free to share your pregnancy and birth stories in the comments. There are many things I did not cover in my post that happen during pregnancy and childbirth.
Let’s show the world what real-life wonder women look like.
Throughout this article, you may have noticed some of the words/phrases in the post were highlighted in blue. I linked some websites for you onto these words/phrases as a starting point if you would like to do more research on the subject.
Until next time,
Anne’s Musings