No Drugs for 14 Hours—Bring on the Epidural

Christine, the labor nurse from natural childbirth heaven, was very supportive of the effort I was making to forego using medication, and immediately gave me the cheat sheet on how to handle the challenge before me.

“Relax your shoulders, breathe into the pain, bring it all downward and out.” We swayed and danced together, she pushed on my lower back with the strength of three husbands (and taught my husband how to emulate her), she instructed me on opening my hips on the birthing ball, and, through it all, believed that I could do it. But it was David who finally suggested my salvation: the large delivery-room shower. Once under the numbing cascade of warm water, I thought, “This is it! I will just labor here until the end.”

But after an hour, it was time for me to get an IV of stress-dose steroids. I had been on steroids for the last three months of my pregnancy, and there was a chance my body had grown lazy about producing them. If it didn’t produce enough to get me through labor, I ran the risk of seizure or death, so they were pumping me full of them to make sure I, you know, stayed alive. I was out of the water for 45 minutes and, in that time, my body flipped the overdrive switch on the contraction machine. By the time I was unhooked and released back to the shower, hot water was no longer my poor man’s anesthesia. I was in the shit.

I’m proud of the 14 hours of labor that I managed without drugs. Given the rocket-like speed and intensity of my contractions, I’m impressed that I was able to last until 7 p.m. before “consulting” the doctor about an epidural. But when the shower ceased to bring any relief, an ugly truth set in: I was going to have to bear this pain through many more hours of cervical dilation and then I was going to have to push a baby out of me. I did not see how that could be done without pain medication. Even now, months after the experience (which is already losing intensity in my mind) I don’t see how anyone does that. I am in awe of them. But I am not one of them. That was very clear as I eagerly listened to the anesthesiologist explaining his trade. I knew the choice I would make but went through the charade of debating it, and then, with some trepidation, bent my head forward, rounded my back like a cat and let him thread a catheter of pain relief into my spinal column.

Next week: The labor stall, the threat of C-section, and the night from hell

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