Sunday April 28th 2013

It’s 6:19 am. I am 5 days away from my “estimated due date” of baby number 2. I hate saying baby number 2, because its like they are lesser then other children, but we dont know the sex and I’m not quite sure what else to say.

I’m sitting on my birth ball in the quiet of the morning as the sun starts to come in. I just finished walking around the school park a bunch of times. First few laps crying, next few laps in anger. Final lap in defeat. I feel like I’ve gone through the 5 stages of grief, without the acceptance part. Maybe thats what I have left to do.

I have been having prodromal labor for weeks. Start, get going, give me hope of having a VBAC, get close together and then all of a sudden stop. Dead stop. It started Tuesday April 16th. Contractions were 30 minutes apart all day, right from waking at 6 am. 8 pm at night they stopped, after getting our families and my Doula excited.

Fast forward 5 days later to Sunday April 21st. I woke up feeling different. Again the symptoms of labor, just as I had on the Tuesday. Felt even more like the “real thing”. I had an errand to run and when I got back to the house around 10:30 am I had a nice big contraction that made me call my mother. My husband was out of town for work. My father came and took my daughter and my mom stayed with me all day, helping me labor. I was a little gun shy to call it labor after the days before. We walked and walked and bounced and walked. The contractions got down to 15 minutes apart and we deemed it as baby time. We called my husband home from work, which was a long process of a 2 hour drive, 4 1/2 hour flight/delay and a cab ride home. For what? Nothing. All contractions stopped again.

Pure frustration, anger and dissapointment. My poor husband going through all that, again family and Doula on high alert and exhaustion from yet another day of laboring with no result.

Now I’m not much of a sit there and take it type person. Give me a problem and I will try and fix it. I started reading furiously about start and stop labor, rotating my posterior baby and seeking positive birth stories to fill my mind with. Daily chiropractor care, sleeping on my stomach with 500 pillows, raspberry leaf tea, rotation techniques and so on.

Friday April 26th. Woke up from a nap with the energy of someone who has drank 10 ups of coffee. This is after cleaning all morning and a very short nap. Contractions, but nothing too timeable or strong. They fade out a few hours later. Still making me feel, my wish could be a reality.

Saturday April 27th. I feel as if baby has really dropped. My stomach looks a lot lower, I feel the pressure in my pelvis and hips and I can barely walk. Through this I clean more, go grocery shopping with my husband and daughter and nap.

Here we go again. Contractions starting at 15 minutes apart this time. My thought process goes as this.
“Third time is charm!”
“Good sign they are closer together!”
“I’m sure baby has rotated and this is going to happen this time!”
We arrive at my brothers surprise birthday party. I feel them but continue on. Within a couple of hours they are pretty strong and bothering me enough that we need to leave. Of course everyone sees my face and I imagine is excited with the thought of baby coming. My parents are put on alert, but I wasn’t calling my Doula just yet this time. Don’t want to jinx it.

They are still strong, 15 minutes apart and radiating through my lower abdomen. After putting my daughter to bed I shortly went too. My body was exhausted and I figured I would get some sleep in before it got really intense.
12:30 am. I wake up to them every 15 minutes still, strong too. For an hour I contemplate getting up and calling people or bouncing or whatever. I decided to try and sleep a bit more.

4:00 am. Nothing. Nothing but tears at least. Toss and turn, in and out of bed. 5:00 am. Tears streaming down my face. I’m broken. I’m not meant to have my babies the way everyone else gets too.

I get up, get dressed and go outside for a walk. I walk around the school park a bunch of times. My thought process:

“Trust my body” they say. I trusted my body! I trusted I was having baby 3 times now. I trusted last night my body was telling me to go to sleep and rest for a tiring process of birthing my baby. “Your baby will come when they are ready” they say. Pretty sure my baby has been ready 3 times. It’s my broken body that wont let them come. What did I do/didnt do for this to happen? What is the purpose of this all? What lesson am I suppose to be learning? Is it so much to ask for?

As the days pass my hope fades. I realize EDD’s are just that. Estimated due dates. I could potentially go up to two weeks past my due date, bringing us to May 17th. My fear of course, with each day passing is the baby is getting bigger. The bigger the baby, the even more less likely I am able to have them naturally. I really wish to not be numbed, cut open and then have my baby carted off as I’m sewn back up while strapped to a table like a prisoner.

So here I sit, feeling sorry for myself, deciding whether or not to keep trying to make it work or go against every bone in my body and admit defeat. Accept I’m not meant to have a wonderfully inspiring VBAC birth story, as Ive read a million times.

All chance of positivity in my body is almost gone. I can’t even say to myself that I give up. Giving up makes it even seem like there might be a chance it would relax me enough to have this baby. I feel as if I’m in some strange limbo. Waiting for an inevitable c section in a couple weeks. In the meantime I want to crawl into a deep dark hole and not talk to anyone. Been known forever as the pregnant woman that cried labor.

I shall meet you on your elected surgical birth date my baby.