My Positive Induction Birth Story

As the reality of actually having to give birth to my baby started to hit me in the third trimester, I was searching for all those positive birth stories out there on the internet.

Since I found out I was pregnant, I envisioned my birth story to be a certain way; all natural, unmedicated, unassisted, vaginal birth.

I was super reluctant to take any pain medication or get an epidural and not once did I even think about induction.

I made sure I did my part for all of my pregnancy to have the best outcome; working out consistently since week 1 for all 9 months up until 3 days before I gave birth.

I meditated and visualized my labor and delivery. I educated myself on all possible options and outcomes of what I wanted.

I stretched regularly and did many pelvic opening exercises every single day and ate healthy almost all the time.

My mindset going into labor and delivery was, “I trained for this”.

Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this whole process is that the Universe always has a plan for you and that life can be humbling in times you least expect.

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The part when everything started to change for me was when I found out I was GBS+ during my routine check up at 36 weeks.

This meant that if my water breaks early (which only happens to 15% of women) then they would put me on antibiotics and offer induction if my labor hasn’t begun yet to reduce the chance of infection to the baby.

Here I was thinking, 15% is pretty low and sure that wouldn’t happen to me…aaand of course it did!

I was 39+2 when my water broke at 3:00am. I was just about to go to the bathroom when a small gush of water came out.

I wasn’t quite sure if what I thought was happening was actually happening.

There wasn’t a lot of water so I decided to go back to bed. As I sat down on the edge of the bed, more water started coming out, again slowly.

Now I was sure something was happening.

I called my midwife and she told me to wait an hour to see if more water comes out and if it’s really my water breaking.

As I was waiting, I woke up my husband and we started to slowly pack our things and get ready for the hospital.

During that hour, more water started to come out and we decided to meet my midwife at the hospital.

When we got there at 5:00am, she did a swab check to confirm my water was broken and a cervical check that determined I was 1cm dilated.

They then gave me 2 options: (1) get on an antibiotic drip and start induction or (2) get the antibiotic drip for while and go home to see if labor would begin but I would have to come back within 3 hours to get more antibiotics.

I dabbled for about 30 minutes because I was indecisive, mainly because induction never crossed my mind so I wasn’t prepared.

I was also a bit scared of the snowball effect it would have, leading to more medical interventions and maybe even a C-section.

Originally, I was so resistant to a medicated birth but the idea of having to travel all the way back home for an hour or so, try to start labor on my own and then have to go all the way back to the hospital (30min drive there and back), park the car, waddle back upstairs and start this whole process again stressed me out even more.

So I decided to stay and induction started at 8:00am.

In the beginning, the contractions were manageable but I was still resistant because I had read about Pitocin and I knew in my mind what it could do.

When you have natural contractions caused by your own oxytocin, your brain knows to make endorphins.

Pitocin on the other hand, does not cross your blood brain barrier so those natural pain killers don’t get produced and your contractions are way more intense.

Because I KNEW this, it became somewhat psychosomatic and I believed it made my contractions even more painful.

After 4.5 hours of Pitocin, I’ve used all my alternative pain management tools at this point (affirmations, tens machine, hand comb, deep breathing, counter massage) and when they checked me again at 12:30pm, I was still 1cm.

I was so disheartened and the pain was getting unmanageable as they kept increasing the Pitocin dosage to force me to dilate but my body just wasn’t having it.

Feeling exhausted and defeated, I decided to get the epidural at 2pm. I took a nap until 4:30pm and when they checked me again, to everyone’s surprise and mine, I was at 9cm and 100% effaced!

Suddenly everything started to happen so quickly. They called my midwife to come back, a bunch of nurses were coming in and out to set up the room and within 30 minutes I felt a strong urge to push.

I pushed for about one hour and baby girl was welcomed into the world!

It was a feeling like no other and at that moment when she was born, I was also born into a mother as well.

I’m so grateful for the entire journey as a whole from finding out I was pregnant and the entire 9 months of growing a human from scratch to the transformative birth experience.

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Hindsight is always 20/20 and looking back, I’ve learned a few things.

One is that in this situation, even though I was very resistant to the epidural, it actually helped my situation a lot. Because I was able to nap, my body was finally able to rest after 4.5 hours of contractions.

That resting period allowed my cervix to dilate and baby to descend. Had I not taken the epidural, I probably would have been in labor for God knows how many more hours or even days.

I might have even given up out of exhaustion or deemed “failure to progress” by the medical staff and ended up with a C-section. So something that I saw as negative became a positive.

Two, is to always keep an open mind and to surrender to the process. Me resisting the Pitocin even though I had chosen that path knowing the consequences, only delayed my progress.

Since I had already made my decision, I should have let go and welcomed the outcome instead of fearing what might happen the whole time.

And three, prepare for everything by educating yourself on all scenarios even if it’s not what you want.

I only prepared for the outcomes that I wanted and when the unexpected hit me, I didn’t know what to do.

If you prepare for all situations, you won’t be stuck having to make a decision in the moment and under pressure.

You want to have done all your research beforehand and play out all scenarios in your mind so you’re ready to make the best decision based on the information you’ve gathered.

At the end of the day, keeping mama safe and bringing baby safely into the world, no matter which way you choose, is all that matters.

Every birth is unique and beautiful.

I’m very grateful for my birth story and very happy that it went the way that it did.

Giving birth is an experience like no other in the world and I would do it all over again a heartbeat.