On June 19 2015, I let a teenager named Zak insert a needle the size of a dachshund into my spine. Okay, so he probably wasn’t an actual teenager, but he talked about Star Wars a lot and his skin was at least ten years nicer than mine.
And, come on. His name was Zak.
The last time we spoke, I had decided that I had been damned to an eternity of everlasting twin pregnancy (which is entirely medically possible, of course), but it turns out that even if they really don’t like you, they don’t let that happen. They induce you.
Now, to be clear, I am one of those moms who, to her own detriment, has The Business of Being Born-ed herself to death. An induction was not a part of my plan. I wanted everything to happen naturally. I’m not going to say that I’m a full blown hippie, but I’ve eaten a lot of free range chicken in my day, and I make my own hairspray. (It’s just vodka and sugar. Good for flyways—great for breakfast.) Like a lot of other well-intentioned millenials, I like the idea of things being natural: chickens, Aquanet, and—wait for it–birth. But people don’t do the old-school, med-free birth thing as often as they used to DO. Probably because having a baby feels a lot like being mauled by a BengaI Tiger. In the vagina.
Despite the fact that natural labor conjures up a long and slow death by jungle predator, I still didn’t want this induction thing they’d scheduled for me. I knew how those went. I’d heard the horror stories and watched the documentaries: first they pump you full of synthetic hormones, then you’re in incredible pain, then you get the epidural, then the baby is in distress, then you get a C-Section, and you don’t release the right amount of oxytocin and the baby doesn’t love you and ends up running a chop shop with a felon named “Bones.” The hospital is dismal, the staff is cold, and nobody laughs at your jokes.
I know…that was probably a little dramatic. Probably not the take home message. Probably just a bad trip off some wacky hormones. The good news is that I was wrong about everything. Check it out:
1) It Didn’t Hurt…That Badly.
“Make sure you have something to bite down on. Seriously.”
This is actual advice I received.
The contractions brought on by an induction are infamously strong, so I spent the evening before the big day searching for my old leather gnawing strap and shaking in my chubby pregnant boots. Turns out, it actually wasn’t too bad.
Okay so it wasn’t exactly a hot stone massage by the ocean, but those world-ending, tube-tying mega-contractions I’d been mentally preparing myself for just plain didn’t happen. I know! I was surprised too! Especially since I have the pain threshold of a baby field mouse.
I don’t know exactly what I expected, but I was not strapped to a giant medieval torture wheel, doused with baby juice, and left writhing in pain while a nurse in an executioners mask looked on, cackling maniacally along to the Deathcore Pandora station. I did get an epidural late in the game, on the advice of my doctor (more on why he recommended that later), but the whole thing was kind of gentle—much more so than my first go round with spontaneous labor. I watched some Anthony Bourdain, drank some Sprite, and then I had a couple of babies. (Okay so some stuff happened in between, but you get the gist). They started my Pitocin low and turned it up very gradually. So gradually in fact that after I’d watched Tony prance across half of Southeast Asia eating curry and being adorable, I kind of wanted them to turn it up higher.
2) I Had Support.
In my birth fantasy, my support person was a cerebral midwife named Tina who did breathing exercises with me and told me I was beautiful every time I had a contraction. I bid Tina a bittersweet, tearful goodbye when I found out I was having twins and would be delivering in a hospital with a veritable army of disenchanted doctors and nurses looking on.
It turns out, I didn’t need Tina because I had Lisa H. Who is Lisa H? What is Lisa H? Just the most glorious angel of an L&D nurse on God’s green-and-blue splotched earth. She is just the person who came into my room to help me pee every ten minutes, unhooking me from the tempermental monitors she had placed painstakingly moments before and re-setting them. Just the person who called my kiddos “Everly” and “Hudson” instead of Baby A and Baby B. Lisa H advocated for me. She shot the adult skateboarder who anesthetized me a dirty look when he started talking about minor league baseball in the middle of a contraction and enthusiastically declared, “We’re having these babies vaginally!” every time I started to doubt myself—which was often.
For some reason, I just assumed I’d be stuck with an assortment of clock-punching healthcare drones who’d be all like, “Twins, schmins—when’s my smoke break?!” Not the case. Not the case at all.
If you want your faith in humanity completely restored, spend a few hours with a nurse. How a person can care so deeply and show such compassion for complete strangers in backless robes, I’ll never understand. And y’all, I’m a pretty nice person.
Lisa H. — Know that everyday, I’m thanking you profusely and that I’m pretty sure the reason they don’t put your last name on your ID badge is so every patient you treat doesn’t Facebook friend you and harass you with kindness. But girlfriend—for the record, if you ever invited me to play Candy Crush, I’d be all over it.
3) I Delivered Vaginally.
It would have been really easy for them to just do the bloody C-Section already. We were in the OR. (That’s where most of we lucky twin mamas have to deliver in case things get dramatic.) The surgeon was there. The instruments were cleaned and counted. Hell, I’m sure SOMEBODY had a golf game to get to, but they never, ever gave up on me—even when things got tough. And by tough, I mean my doctor had to shove his giant man forearms up my cha-cha and reposition one of my children manually.
Yup. Giant. F******. Forearms.
Every time I get a cramp, I wonder if he left his Apple Watch or a fingernail or something up there.
I really, really wanted a vaginal birth. Since I’d already had a child (and my box is already a sad, sad crumbling ruin of it’s glorious former self), I knew I could do it. I even knew I could do it twice in the span of an hour. But I didn’t expect that my doctor would really be on board for that kind of obstetrical circus. But he was.
Even though Baby B was transverse. Then posterior. Then riding my coccyx like a mother-loving seesaw.
He never gave up. Nobody did.
After an hour of strategizing, pushing, and—as it turns out—some pulling on the doc’s end of things, I gave birth to two screaming kiddos in front of a dozen strangers who (instead of questioning me) cheered me on like I was Wayne Newton singing Danke Schoen on at the Tropicana. They all looked as exhausted as I did when it was over. Contrary to the popular crunchy prenatal lore I subscribe to, not all obstetricians are scalpel-wielding megalomaniacs trying to hijack your birth plan, and not all hospitals are sterile fortresses of doom.
4) We Bonded. Immediately.
Come on, people! They numb your pelvis, not your soul!
The internet has a lot to say about epidurals, and not much of it is good—especially in the holistic corners of cyberspace in which I hang out. It has even fewer kind words for Pitocin—the synthetic form of oxytocin they use to get your labor going. I know this because as soon as my doctor began talking to me about inducing labor, I succumbed to a catatonic Google coma from which I didn’t emerge until I was fully certain that fake birth hormones and a needle in my spine would prevent me from bonding with my babies—and turn me into a monster. I had unearthed heaps of information about how inductions, epidurals, and other interventions could jeopardize the maternal-infant relationship, and I resigned myself to the fact that the magical explosion of twinlove I’d been dreaming of might not happen when I saw the little nuggets.
Well guess what internets? You was wrong.
Because nothing could have broken the inescapable joy of that moment, when I had TWO healthy, wailing babies laying on my chest. It was love, tempered by nothing else. Friends, I don’t know if you’ve had kids or whether you just read mom blogs when Buzzfeed is down and the “Spirit Animal” quiz keeps telling you you’re a crow when you KNOW you’re a bear, but the moment when you meet your child(ren), is like nothing else. (Am I right?!) The ecstasy in your heart miraculously quiets your tired, screaming body. You’re simultaneously relieved of the worries of the past nine months and struck with the worries of the next hundred years, and you know that you’ll never again feel that you lack purpose in this world. Nothing can pollute the moment you become a parent. It’s gravity in its truest form. I don’t care if you deliver quadruplets med-free or if a giant, clumsy stork flies through your bedroom window in the dead of night and drops a crying moses basket on your bed.
How I got to that wonderful moment—exhausted but euphoric—watching my children blinking their eyes for the first time as they nursed (and nursed very well, I might add), felt inconsequential. Sure, I didn’t want to be induced—especially after weeks of worry and research; but, once they arrived, it just didn’t matter at all.
5) I’m Not Disappointed.
And I don’t feel “robbed” of an experience. Nothing was stolen from me. I was given a healthy son and daughter. I’m not ashamed that I got an epidural or that I’ll never use all of that hypnobirthing junk I learned on YouTube.
Theoretically, I wouldn’t have even been ashamed that I pooped on the table when I was pushing in front of a throng of horrified doctors. Purely theoretical, I swear;) I’m proud that I carried two babies over 38 weeks. I’m proud that I was able control the snarling Type-A beast within and do the best thing for my kids instead of what was written on my birth plan.
I was anticipating some major postpartum birth-shame, but it never came. I love telling people my birth story; about 11-year old Zak, the student anesthetist; the blue hospital slushies that darling Lisa H. brought me; and how giant old baby Hudson busted my tailbone on the way out. I did good—real good—and I have two fabulous babies to show for it.
My labor was nothing like I expected it would be. There was no sensational midnight breaking of the waters, no exhilarating mini van handling en route to the hospital, no crowning in the birthing pool, clutching Imaginary Tina’s hand .(Did I mention she’s a Wiccan?) I wanted a natural birth; and, to be honest, when this whole thing started off, I had very few feelings of harmony with Mother Nature at all. (Obviously, that’s her fault. She forgot to send me into labor spontaneously like we’d talked about). Somehow though, while I was busy wading through some murky moments of bitterness and frustration, the labor I never wanted became the one I had always dreamed of.
Twintroducing Everly and Hudson:
