I didn’t ever dream of being a mom. I thought I’d probably get married, but even that I wasn’t really sure about. Not because I didn’t want to, but I just didn’t imagine a future that held those things for me.
When my husband and I had been dating for weeks, maybe months, he asked me how many kids I wanted to have, and I told him honestly that I had no idea. Later, as an early married couple, we talked about kids and somehow we got into a conversation about epidurals and natural childbirth. He is generally someone who knows what he wants and thinks is best - and I remember him making clear that he thought a natural birth was the best way to do it. I got my panties in a twist and said, “Well that’s cute but I’m the one who’s going to have to give birth, so I’m going to decide how to do it, thank you.” It felt like so much pressure, for something I didn’t know a lot about.
After we’d been married three years, we decided to wait to have kids for a little while longer. I was transitioning out of a job and looking for a new one, and my husband had just graduated with his nursing degree and was stressed out as a brand new nurse. We wanted to get settled in this new phase of life and then consider having a kid a little later. Well - joke’s on us. We made that decision in July and then in October my period was five days late. It took me a whole day to even consider that I might be pregnant. I ran through every other possibility in my head, and asked my sister, who suggested I go get myself a pregnancy test. I didn’t even know where to buy one! Sure enough - a few seconds after peeing on that stick, I learned I was pregnant with our first.
After I got over the initial shock, or maybe to help with the shock, I started researching. I think I was on Pinterest reading about being four or five weeks pregnant. It was helpful to wrap my mind around all the things that my body had already done all on its own to get this baby started. It was news to me, but not news to my body, and somehow that felt better.
My husband was working at our local hospital, and our insurance was structured so that it was cheapest to deliver there. My doctor delivered at that hospital and I didn’t want to really shop around, so we just decided to go with that option. I’d heard good things from other local moms about their experience and figured it should be fine. It never occurred to me to give birth outside a hospital. I did know people who had given birth at home (quite a few, actually, if I think about the statistical probabilities!) but it didn’t seem like an option for me.
Right after we were married, we joined a Sunday school class full of married couples who were already on their first or second kid. Over the years, I got to know them and their birth stories. It seemed to me that the more someone knew about birth, the more they wanted to do it naturally. I thought that was really interesting! I generally want to know as much about a thing as I can. As a part of wrapping my head around this new pregnant status, I dove in to learning about birth. We decided to do a Bradley Method class (after talking at length about it with a friend who’d seemed knowledgeable and had two successful natural births.)
There was one hang-up that I had with planning for a natural birth. A few years earlier, I’d read a friend’s birth story. She’d planned and hoped and dreamed for her natural birth, and then ended up needing to be induced. Basically, everything had gone “wrong” (although her baby was born healthy and vaginally) and she was wrecked because of it. She had to go to counseling and was traumatized. I took this seriously and learned that setting an expectation of a successful birth could lead to significant disappointment. So I tried not to get my hopes up too much.
So with that, I dove in head first! I started listening to birth podcasts and reading lots of books. I asked all my friends who had given birth naturally to share their birth stories with me. I learned about midwives and doulas and the stages of labor and what to eat or not eat. I really didn’t like my experience with my doctor. I would wait for thirty minutes (or an hour) and see her for five minutes. She was curt and I could just tell that I wasn’t interesting to her. I liked the nurse practitioner better - she was spunky and friendly and warm. When I asked about natural birth, I think I got the “well there’s not a trophy for doing it naturally” comment.
The things that became important to me as time went on were: do NOT get induced and do NOT have a c-section. Induction would lead to a c-section. So we hoped and prayed that the baby would come as late as she wanted but before my doc’s clock ran out. In our Bradley class, we learned that we needed to try and stay home as long as possible and then show up at the hospital very well established in labor. We lived three minutes from the hospital, so that seemed totally doable. My expectation was that I’d go to 41 weeks and go into labor naturally.