Try A Little Tenderness
My son Rami Enrique was born on October 6th, 2023, and for the past two and a half months, he has been the much needed light of my life.
I had a difficult time getting him here. I was one of those people who thought there would be no complications in labor and everything would go according to my preferences. After all, I had a pretty smooth pregnancy and no reason to think that anything should go awry.
At 40 weeks pregnant, I was exhausted, anxious, but excited to get him here; to experience the magic of an unmedicated labor as I had planned out with my husband Noah and doula. I pictured myself laboring at home as much as possible and enjoying all the back rubs and verbal affirmations from my husband while anticipating our baby’s arrival together.
Starting from week 38 I was on the lookout for any labor cues that never came. I was eating hella dates, drinking raspberry red leaf tea, had 2 membrane sweeps, bouncing on my exercise ball, and anything else I could think of to try and get little dude going. It wasn’t until my due date, October 2nd, that I had a suspicion of something happening.
One thing nobody really talks about in the last days of pregnancy is incontinence. The baby is putting so much pressure on your bladder that sometimes you lose a little control lol! The week of Rami’s birth, I kept having the feeling of having peed myself a little, which was really frustrating since I had already been constantly going to the bathroom and emptying my bladder as much as possible. I would stand up and a little more liquid would come out even after I felt I was completely done. After a couple of days, I started to suspect that this wasn’t urine, so I called my maternity clinic on Wednesday night, October 4th, and they suggested that I go get checked out at my birth center just in case my water was ruptured.
Another thing nobody really talks about is water breaking. It’s not always like in the movies where there’s a big gush coming out of a pregnant person. That *can* be the case, but it can also trickle out slowly where you might not even know it’s broken, which is very scary and confusing, especially in my case!
Right when I hung up the phone with my maternity clinic, Noah and I drove to the birth center with our hospital bags, not thinking we would be there very long. We got checked into triage and waited for a nurse to come check my cervix to see how dilated I was and confirm if my water was ruptured or not. I got checked, and the nurse let us know my water was indeed ruptured and that I would have to be induced since I was now at high risk for infection. I was both relieved and scared because it meant the baby was for sure on his way, but scared because I knew this was it and I was about to give birth and wasn’t sure how it would go with this new risk. After waiting literally all night, we finally got into a labor room around 10am on Thursday morning, October 5th.
After being set up in our labor room, the nurses let me know that I would be induced via a pill called misoprostol to ripen my cervix and get labor started. The drug is taken in two doses: half a dose at first and then 4 hours later a second dose is taken. After I took the first dose, there wasn’t much progress in terms of labor and then I was administered the second dose.
That second dose really did it for me. Almost immediately I started experiencing labor pains. It was like going from 0 to 100. All of a sudden my lower back started hurting more than any menstrual cramps I had ever experienced, and felt like I was being stabbed in my lower back. Since I was planning on having Rami without pain medication, I endured the pain for hours. I was doing all my breathing exercises, letting out low guttural screams, switching from being on all fours to planks because that was the only position that felt the least painful. I would get hot and then get the shakes, and then take off all of my clothes except my underwear while Noah and doula did everything they could to comfort me. I felt like an animal left out to die. I asked the nurse for a heating pad, which was no better than a slightly warmer-than-room-temperature sheet. Then I tried a hot shower, which only provided temporary relief, and then made me nauseous. When I got out of the shower, I started throwing up while my doula and Noah would switch off holding the bags for me. I can never look at those little green bags again without being triggered (#iykyk). After the vomiting subsided, I decided to scale up the pain treatment to nitrous oxide, which again only provided temporary relief. I was still switching off from all fours to planks with the mask in my hand, inhaling the deepest breath I could, then screaming as loud as I could into the mask since I knew it would muffle the sound.
That was the tipping point for me. I thought to myself and also screamed, how much more of this can I take? The pain humbled me to throw my “plans” out the window and make this experience as easy as possible, so I asked for an epidural.
Snapshots of the first few days of motherhood
My entire pregnancy I told myself I really wanted to try and experience an unmedicated labor and have a vaginal birth, but in the moment dealing with the kind of pain that felt like I was dying, I was ready for some relief. I had been working so hard for hours that it was time to give myself a break. My baby was going to come out either way, so I figured I didn’t need to let my pride make things harder for me than they had to be. With the epidural, I was also administered morphine and fentanyl since epidurals take some time to kick in. That part was amazing; it was like resting on a cloud after having just been beaten up.
A few hours later, I saw a nurse suddenly have a panicked look on her face. She was moving really quickly and checking the monitors that were keeping track of the baby’s heartbeat. All of a sudden, a swarm of nurses ran into my room causing me to have a panic attack, and started flipping me around and feeling my stomach, telling me that they couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat in their sweetest but most un-chill tone of voice. In my head I was like what the fuck do you mean you can’t find the baby’s heartbeat? By the time I wanted to ask what exactly was going on, it was over and they were able to find Rami’s heartbeat again.
After that scare, a doctor came in and let me know that the baby wasn’t responding well to the induction medication, and that I still wasn’t making progress as far as dilation goes. I was stuck at 5cm, and had been laboring for 10 hours. I remember her saying, I know what I’m about to say isn’t a popular option in this room, but I think you should consider having a c-section. It’s completely your choice but wanted to give you my recommendation. Since the baby wasn’t responding well to the medication and I wasn’t dilating, there was an increasing risk of complications for the baby and for having an emergency delivery. She let us know that while it wasn’t quite an emergency yet, the longer I waited to decide what to do the closer I was to having a chaotic emergency c-section. Having just had a flood of nurses scare me, I did not want to have my baby in that kind of energy. I really did not want to have a c-section, and since it wasn’t an emergency, I wanted to give my body a chance to make progress on its own. The doctor said ok, but if I have to come back and you still haven’t progressed, we’re going to have to make a decision.
I was worried that a c-section was being forced on me, but after consulting with my doula and Noah, they both reassured me that actively making the decision to go ahead and have the c-section was the safest option for me and the baby, and that the doctor wasn’t full of shit trying to get me in and out of the labor room. I had been laboring for nearly 12 hours without any progress, stuck at 5 cm dilated, and was already at risk of infection for the baby since my water had ruptured days before. Chances were that my body was not going to make the necessary progress in the hours to come. When the doctor came back into my room an hour later, I told her I wanted to have the c-section.
It felt good to have the decision made, even though it wasn’t how I wanted my son’s birth to go. The doctor gathered her team in my room, explained how the procedure would go, and started to prep me for the operating room.
It was early Friday morning and the energy in the operating room was surprisingly calm, and the anesthesiologist even asked me what kind of music I wanted to play.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Noah was dealing with food poisoning while I was getting prepped for surgery. I was in the operating room asking where he was, and the nurses told me he would be there shortly. I was so scared that he wouldn’t be there for the birth, but luckily he made it right on time.
I remember telling the anesthesiologist that I liked the music he was playing, which was a playlist of oldies like The Beatles, Mary Wells, and Otis Redding, right up my alley. The surgery went by fast and smoothly, and next thing I know, Noah and I are looking at each other in disbelief hearing a baby’s cry. I’m pretty sure Rami was born to the song “Try A Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding.
Immediately after Rami’s birth, Noah threw up behind me while a nurse helped soothe him. He ran to the bathroom, and then seconds later I held my son for the first time and cried tears of joy.
After a nurse came and took Rami away to finish cleaning him up, another nurse came to me and said in his most gentle voice, the baby is having some trouble breathing on his own so we’re going to take him to the NICU ok? Again, I’m like what do you mean he’s having trouble breathing on his own? How severe is it? Is he ok or should I be scared? It was later explained to me that since my water had ruptured early, he had swallowed some amniotic fluid and needed help getting it out, so they had him on oxygen and antibiotics in the NICU.
As soon as I was able to, I went and saw him again in his little NICU bed. He was so tiny and beautiful, and it felt like a miracle looking at him. He endured so much, he seemed as tired as I was but I loved that we did it together. I learned to breastfeed him with the help of some amazing lactation consultants, and would wake up every 4 hours to go down to the NICU to feed and bond with him. It was beautiful doing skin to skin with him, and he comforted me as much as I was comforting him. He made amazing progress every time we visited him, and we were finally able to have him in our room by Sunday afternoon.
Although the journey to bring Rami earthside wasn’t easy, he immediately showed me how strong and resilient he is, and helped me see how strong and resilient I am as his mother. He is truly my little sonshine, and even though his birth didn’t go exactly as I hoped, he is worth every second of the experience.
