I've made it to my last semester of nursing school! I can't believe it's almost over. I'm excited and terrified. My last rotation is in maternal/obstetrics and pediatrics. The program starts with the "hardest" situations first (med/surg, neuro, operating room, orthopedics, telemetry, etc) and finishes up with the "easy" stuff--healthy moms and babies. As part of our preparation for class we were asked to interview our mothers and write a paper about our birth. I thought it would be fun to post mine here. Enjoy!
My family is very consistent with traditions. We play the same games during holiday celebrations, we eat traditional foods to recognize special milestones and we have our birth story told to us by our mother, every year on our birth date.
It never fails that on the morning of my birthday, I will get a phone call from my mother for the annual retelling of my birth story. My mother has always told us she wants us to know how we came into this world and has kept this tradition strong for all four of her children. When we were much younger she would show us pages from her journal where she had documented her fears and joys related to being a new mother and all about her pregnancy. I always looked forward to seeing the journals and hearing my mom read about life before I was born. Even now, more than thirty years later, my mother has never missed a birthday retelling. Though I’ve heard the story many times, I still enjoy listening to what my mom went through and identifying with her the same anxiety and elation that I also experienced during the birth of my own children.
My mother was twenty-one years old when she and my father decided to start their family. They had been married for four years. It didn’t take long for my mother to conceive and she remembers being very excited at the prospect of motherhood. Her expected due date was March 27th, 1980.
The morning of February 12th, my mom awakened to use the restroom and while returning to bed felt a “dribble down her leg.” She woke up my dad who wasn’t convinced it was anything to worry about and explained to my mom that she probably just wet herself and then promptly rolled over to go back to sleep. My mom knew something wasn’t right and being so far from her due date she was worried enough to call the medical center to let them know. After a few nervous misdials she was able to get the hospital on the line and they told her to come right in.
My dad still wasn’t convinced my mom would be delivering so far from her due date and teased during the forty-five minute drive to the medical center that the trip was just a “practice run.”
Upon arriving to the Naval Regional Medical Center in Long Beach, California, it was confirmed that my mother’s bag of water had ruptured and that she was already 4cm dilated. My mom was scared and my dad was excited that labor was actually happening—they were going to be parents.
My mother was not offered any pain medication as her chart listed her birth plan as “natural/un-medicated.” Later, she would admit to not even knowing what an epidural was and that she had heard of the term “saddle block” but that was only given to a woman having a cesarean section. My mother recalls the intense pain and that she cried and swore through most of active labor. Through the whole process my father remained at the bedside. The facility protocol for a father who wanted to witness the birth was that the dad was assigned an assistant who stood behind him as a precaution to catch him if he fainted.
Right before moving to the delivery room, the obstetrician ordered a quick ultrasound to check for fetal placement. It was discovered at this time there were TWO BABIES inside. My mother had no clue she had been carrying TWINS. The chief of obstetrics was called at this point. There was lots of scurrying around as the delivery room was changed into an operating room and prepared for the delivery of two premature infants. At the time, my father was an active sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. Although medical benefits were available, prenatal care was very basic usually consisting of a few short questions for the mother, a monthly urine screening and a bottle of prenatal vitamins. Because this was my mother’s first pregnancy, she had no idea that she was feeling two babies move inside of her.
At 10:38AM I was born via vaginal delivery weighing four pounds and thirteen ounces. I cried right away and did not require additional resuscitation. My APGARS were 8/9. After my delivery my mom’s contractions stopped and she was told her next baby would probably be delivered by cesarean section. My mom was shocked. Everything was happening very fast. One of the delivery nurses then explained that sometimes external massage of the uterus can stimulate contractions. She showed my dad how to massage my mom’s belly and soon her contractions started up again. Twenty-two minutes later at 11:00AM, my identical twin sister, Sarah Ann, was delivered. She was quite small weighing only four pounds, four ounces and needed some supplemental oxygen after delivery.
My mother was taken to the post partum unit where she was told by her nurse that she should expect one, if not both, of her babies to die since the facility was not equipped with a neonatal unit. My mom was terrified but determined to care for both her babies and spent most of her recovery in the nursery with my sister and me. I was discharged from the nursery when I reached five pounds at nine days old. My sister was discharged after sixteen days in the nursery.
Even today I am amazed when I hear what my mom went through to deliver my sister and me safely. It’s also strange to imagine a pregnancy with very little in the way of medical intervention. I’ve had the opportunity to deliver three healthy children and with all three pregnancies I was followed by an obstetrician, a physician’s assistant, a nurse practitioner and a neonatal specialist. I was subjected to multiple ultrasound studies, lab tests, questionnaires and assessments. It seemed like every month of my pregnancy was charted and documented. In comparison to the very limited care my mother received, its obvious protocols are much different today. It’s also interesting to me that pain management was not a goal in my mother’s labor plan. She was never asked about her pain goal or offered analgesics of any kind. Today, epidurals are routinely administered and it’s assumed that most women in labor will request to have some sort of pain control method. In fact, it’s become more and more uncommon to have a drug-free labor and delivery.
I often think how frightening it must have been for my mother to not only be pregnant for the first time, but in labor for the first time, and knowing she’s six weeks before her due date—but also to discover only moments before delivery that she was having two babies instead of one. I’m so proud of my mother and the strength and courage she maintained through such an intense ordeal. I believe it speaks volumes to what we as women are capable of and our natural instinct to adapt during traumatic circumstances. Although I have my personal birth story memorized, the account never loses its power to amaze me.
