My Birth Plan that Didn’t go according to Plan

Since the beginning of my pregnancy, I’ve been confused on my birth plan. There was a part of me that wanted an epidural since I received one with both of my older boys and there was another part of me that wanted to know what it felt like to deliver without any pain medication, completely natural. I had a great doctor for the first half of my pregnancy but when she left the office I was left with a horrible doctor with no type of bedside manner. After a couple of appointments, this doctor irritated me for the last time so I switched to a different office and got a midwife.

My midwife was amazing and I was starting to feel optimistic about the second half of my pregnancy. That was about the time when Covid 19 started to affect my appointments and I would only be able to see my midwife once a month up until I was 37 weeks.

Okay so skip to two Friday’s ago, when I finally got to see my midwife. To her surprise, not mine…I was 3cm dilated and 80% effaced. I was already at a point where I could feel my sons head when I walked or sat down. He was super low! My midwife and I discussed my birth plan and there I decided to not have an epidural.

Around 5pm, that day, I started having “Braxton Hicks”. They weren’t super consistent so I didn’t consider them to be real contractions. I even left the house to get food and have a solo car concert in the mist of it all.

Once it hit midnight, I got to the point where I was like “these are real contractions!”. By 1:30am, I could barely walk. I was totally in denial about being in labor that whole day and now ish was about to get real. Thank God, I started packing that week so Christian just had to finish putting a few things in our bags.

The car ride was absolute torture. I really thought I was going to have my baby in the car. I couldn’t stop screaming. The pain and pressure from his head was too much for me and being in a moving car only made things worse. I mean at this point my contractions were about 7 minutes apart. I had lost my mucus plug and was literally in full blown labor.

Once we arrived at hospital, Chris wheeled me to check in. At some point, they asked me if I wanted an epidural and I was like “please!”. I was completely over the idea of not having one. I wanted the drugs! But the anesthesiologist was with other patients at the time so the wait time was unknown. I was pissed.

Then my water broke.

Krew was coming. We had no time to get to an actual laboring room. They started to prepare me for delivery in the emergency room. I cursed, screamed and at times kicked before I had to hold my legs, calm down and push. I pushed 4-6 good pushes and then he was here!

At 2:53am, Krew entered our world. He was 6 pounds, 5 ounces, 21inches long. The feeling I had when he was placed on me after all of the chaos was indescribable.

So like many other moms, my labor didn’t go as planned. I didn’t get to use my cool peanut ball, midwife, labor exercises that we practiced or a tub. Just good ol’ hands holding legs.

The fact that women can be in so much pain and still pull it together to push out their baby is something powerful. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it but when they told me I needed to push, I knew I needed to do what I needed to do to get Krew here safely. Something in your head switches and it’s just not about you anymore.

Im thankful I had the encouragement from Christian and the nursing staff . It really helped me focus and bring Krew into this world safely. At the end of the day, it was all worth it.

What kind of birth plan did you or your partner have? Did everything go according to your plan or was it completely different once it was time?