Birth Story

Noah turned one a couple weeks ago. I can’t believe it has been a year. It’s true what they say about the days are long, but the year(s) are short! Naturally, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the last year, and especially on the absolute wild ride that was labor and giving birth. The day that my life changed forever, in ways that I never could have expected or understood. 

When I was pregnant, I read so, so many birth stories. (I highly, highly recommend the Positive Birth Company blog if you are pregnant!!) I think the scariest part of birth is the unknown. You can “plan” a birth, but there is no guarantee that it will go the way you want. There are truly so many variables! So I felt a lot of comfort from reading positive birth stories that illustrated so many different ways a birth could go, and still be empowering, beautiful, and positive.

So, although birth stories are incredibly personal, I feel compelled to share mine as a way to “give back.” I will say right off the bat, I did not have the birth I envisioned or hoped for. There were minor complications, some interventions, and honestly, a rough recovery. But overall, even though it was difficult and didn’t go according to plan, it was a positive experience, in large part thanks to the fantastic midwives, doctors, and nurses that took care of me. I felt so amazing and proud of myself afterwards. I still do! So, let’s get into it.

First, some background...

I read several books about birth when I was pregnant, and I had decided that I wanted an unmedicated water birth. To be very honest, the main reason for this was that I understood that an unmedicated birth (meaning no epidural) usually correlates with an easier postpartum recovery (basically, you are less likely to do as much “damage” when you can actually feel what you’re doing when you’re pushing). I figured I would rather have the painful birth if it meant an easier postpartum experience, although obviously that wasn’t a guarantee. I prepared by taking a birth prep course and practicing breathing techniques to manage contractions. I wanted to give it a try unmedicated, but since I had no concept of how painful labor would be or how well I would manage it, I was also open to changing the plan if it got to be too much.

The hospital that I had been assigned to has two options for where you can give birth: the fødegang, which is a typical hospital labor ward, and the fødeklinik, which is more like a “birth center” within the hospital. In the fødeklinik, births are only attended by midwives (no doctors, nurses, or anesthesiologists). The fødeklinik is basically for low-risk, uncomplicated births, where the mother wants as little intervention as possible. So naturally, that is where I wanted to be! I had discussed this in my prenatal midwife appointments, and my midwife had agreed that there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to give birth there, unless issues arose during labor. (The fødegang and fødeklinik are on the same floor, so they can always wheel you down the hall if you need to transfer.) I was honestly really excited! 

The start of labor

So, my due date, May 24, came and went. Every day I thought, “Today’s the day!” but alas, no labor. This was the longest week of my life. I was 40 weeks + 6 days when my water finally broke at home around 11 pm. And I was THRILLED!! We called the hospital right away. The midwife said that since I hadn’t started having contractions yet, I should try to get some sleep.

So I got ready for bed, but then I started having contractions around midnight. No way was I going to be able to sleep. So my husband and I watched Superstore on Netflix while I bounced on my yoga ball and started timing contractions on the Freya app. We had some leftover pizza from dinner around 2 am, figuring that we were in for a long night/day. Around 3:00, my contractions were starting to get pretty intense; I had to stop and focus on breathing every time (I was also using the Freya app to guide me through the contractions).

Around 4:00, we called the hospital again, because we were pretty sure I was in active labor based on the timing of my contractions and how intense they had become. The midwife told us that we could go ahead and come if we wanted to. So we packed up the car and went to the hospital.

By 4:45, we were in an exam room at the hospital. A midwife did a cervical exam, took my temperature, and then hooked me up to some machines to monitor my contractions and the baby’s heart rate. My contractions had slowed down a bit when we were in the car, and I had been worried that my labor would stall, but I needn’t have feared; they were back in full force now. I had to really focus on breathing through each one, but the midwife kept telling me how well I was doing, which was honestly nice to hear, although I wondered if she says that to all the laboring patients… 🙂 

We were in the exam room for about an hour, which felt like an eternity. It’s not like, a cozy room, and I was dying to get somewhere more comfortable, but I guess the midwife wanted to make sure I was in active labor before I was admitted. She agreed with my prenatal midwife (whose notes she could see in the system) that I should be able to deliver in the fødeklinik, and took us to our room there just before 6:00.

The Birth Clinic

In the fødeklinik, I got on the bed so I could get somewhat comfortable during contractions (lol). I had started to feel a lot of lower back pain from my contractions, so or a while it felt like the best position was on all fours with someone (my husband or our midwife) doing counterpressure on my lower back. I had heard about “back labor” before, and … yeah. It hurt. Our midwife also offered me laughing gas, which I gladly accepted. My husband would hold the mask up to my face every time I had a contraction so I could breathe through it. For me, the laughing gas really helped. (I follow Mommy Labor Nurse on Instagram, and I remember seeing a post where she had said, “Laughing gas doesn’t actually lessen the pain, but it makes you care less about the pain,” and I guess that is true!)

At 7:00, there was a shift change and we got a new midwife, who was also working with a midwife student (I had no issue with this). She told me I could go ahead and get in the bathtub if I wanted, which I happily did. During the last month or two of my pregnancy, ALL I wanted was to get in a body of water. We don’t have a bathtub at our apartment, and all of the public pools and spas in Copenhagen had been closed due to Covid, so getting in this bathtub felt AMAZING. And it was even better because, to my surprise, I was still able to use the laughing gas IN the bathtub! So, while I was definitely still experiencing a lot of lower back pain from my contractions, I was doing pretty well.

I spent most of the next 2 hours or so in the tub, although it really didn’t feel like that long! By about 8:45, I was starting to feel a lot of pressure and a bit of the urge to push, but the lower back pain had also become pretty excruciating. I was starting to feel like I couldn’t do it anymore. My midwife offered me sterile water injections, which I had never heard of before. The way that it works is that they inject sterile water into several points around your lower back, and it temporarily relieves the pain locally. I immediately accepted this. I admit, I was actually shocked at how badly the injections hurt, but they did their job. (Someone on TikTok explained to me that the pain from the injections basically tricks your brain; it thinks “omg pain! I need to do something!” And then it realizes it’s only water, so it relaxes. Which is pretty clever, no??) My lower back felt so much better afterwards and the relief lasted about an hour.

There is a stage of labor called “transition,” which is when you are almost fully dilated, and things start to get really intense (as if they weren’t already). This is when a lot of women have that feeling of “I can’t do this anymore.” I had read about transition, and I realized that this was probably what was happening to me. My midwife did, too, and she encouraged me to keep breathing through my contractions because there was a good chance that my baby would be there soon! I could feel him starting to move down, which was a WILD feeling and honestly so, so incredible. Despite the pain, that is what I remember most from this part of labor: being able to feel my baby getting closer to the outside! It was truly so empowering and amazing. I felt like a total badass for what I was about to do. But I was also really, really struggling with the pain. 

After a while, my midwife suggested that I move to the bed so she could check my dilation and we could try some different positions to encourage baby to move down more, and I agreed. It turned out that I was about 9.5 cm dilated – seriously so close. But I was struggling to manage the pain, so my midwife offered me more sterile water injections. I accepted, but at this point I also said, “If it’s going to be much longer, then I want an epidural.” She agreed, but told me she thought it wouldn’t be much longer, and suggested I get back in the tub. 

By now it was about 10:00 am. The whole time that I had been in the fødeklinik, our midwife and the midwife student had periodically checked our baby’s heartbeat with a doppler. They checked again, and this time our midwife told us that his heart rate was dropping a little bit. She was very calm, and told us it was nothing to worry about, but she did want to be able to monitor him better, so we needed to move to the fødegang (labor ward). 

Of course, it was worrying to hear that his heart rate was dropping, but I did feel assured by our midwife that it was okay as long as he was being monitored. So honestly, my overwhelming emotion on hearing this was relief, because moving to the fødegang meant I could get an epidural!!! (To be clear, I could have requested this anytime, but I had been pushing myself to keep going without it. So I was relieved that the decision to move was out of my hands.) So they helped me onto a stretcher and wheeled me down the hall to the fødegang at 10:30.

The Labor Ward

As soon as we arrived in our new room in the fødegang, we were joined by several doctors and nurses. In the fødeklinik, it had only been the 4 of us (me, my husband, the midwife, and midwife student). This part of the day is a blur (I think I had given up on managing the pain, honestly, and was just trying to dissociate while I waited to get the epidural), but I think about 4 or 5 more people came in. A very kind obstetrician explained that she was going to take a blood sample from my baby’s head so they could test his oxygen levels. She also did a cervical check and found that I was fully dilated. Meanwhile, someone hooked me up to machines to monitor my contractions and my baby’s heartbeat. 

The obstetrician and my midwife confirmed that baby was doing fine, and they called the anesthesiologist, but told me that since I was fully dilated, they wanted me to try pushing before getting the epidural. Most people get epidurals much earlier in labor, so it made sense that they wouldn’t want to administer one when the baby was basically out anyway, and I was all for doing anything that might get our little guy out.

I tried pushing in a couple different positions, guided by my midwife and OB, but baby wasn’t coming out yet. The anesthesiologist was busy; they called him multiple times but it still took an hour before he arrived. Eventually though, he did arrive, and administered the epidural quickly at 12:00. And ohhhh, sweet relief. 

My midwife suggested that I have some snacks, rest, and take a nap if I could, and then we would keep trying in a bit. She and the midwife student left for a bit to have lunch (this is the only time they left during my entire labor), and I managed to somewhat sleep through my contractions for an hour. With the epidural, the contractions weren’t painful, but I could still feel some pressure from each one. I also had some Oreos, which, for some reason, were the only snack I wanted out of the ones I had packed. 

After my nap & snack, it was time to try again, and I was feeling refreshed and energized. Pushing felt different, though – really, I couldn’t feel what I was doing, which was strange after being able to feel so clearly what was happening in my body when I had been in the fødeklinik. I had felt that “urge to push” but it was more like my body was just doing it naturally; I wasn’t consciously doing anything. Now, I had to be coached on how to push effectively (it was a “walking epidural,” meaning I wasn’t fully numbed, but I guess it was still pretty effective). My midwife helped me into several different positions on and around the bed to push while she monitored my contractions. Unfortunately, my contractions weren’t nearly as strong as they had been earlier (this might have been due to the epidural). After a while, she suggested starting a pitocin drip to try to make my contractions stronger again, which I accepted.

The pitocin seemed to do its job, and my contractions started picking up again. However, after more pushing, it was clear that Noah still wasn’t really progressing. Around 14:30, my midwife said that if Noah wasn’t out by 15:00, she would recommend using the vacuum to get him out (although it was up to me, and I could decline). There were a couple reasons for this: 1) There was going to be a shift change at 15:00. I could, of course, continue to labor with another midwife, but it would have been nice to deliver with the same midwife we’d been with all day. 2) We had tried pretty much everything else to get baby out. By now they had a good idea that Noah was probably not in an ideal position (dystocia), and if everything we’d tried so far hadn’t worked, it was unlikely that he would come out without some kind of assistance. And 3) Since my water had broken, there was a risk of infection to the baby if he wasn’t born somewhat soon (although he still would have been fine for a few more hours, at least). 

By now, my unmedicated, low-intervention birth plan had clearly gone out the window, and I was tired. I had been fully dilated for 4 or 5 hours at this point, and I thought I would have been done, with a baby in my arms, hours ago. So even though the vacuum was, um, not the delivery method I hoped for, I jumped on the suggestion pretty quickly. I just wanted baby out!!

In the end, the pitocin didn’t have a strong enough effect to get him out. Our midwife said that with every push, he was coming down a bit, but then going right back up. Basically, there just wasn’t any progress being made. So around 3:15 pm, I consented to using the vacuum to pull him out. Once again, there was a whole medical team in the room, just like when we had first arrived in the fødegang, and everything started to feel really urgent and intense. Like, this was happening. And it really happened so quickly after that. A doctor applied the vacuum and pulled him out as I pushed. In just a few minutes, he was finally out!! It turned out that he had his hand up by his head, which made him get “stuck” in the birth canal. 

The midwife put him on my chest for skin-to-skin right away. It was the craziest, most surreal moment. I’m sure I was sobbing, not from pain, but just overwhelmed with emotions. My husband and I just marveled at him for a while, and everything that happened after that is a bit blurry. The medical team cleared out, after many “congratulations,” and a new midwife came in to deliver my placenta about 20 minutes later (which was also crazy to see. It’s massive and looks like a mix between a giant slab of meat and a jellyfish.) 

Because of the vacuum extraction, Noah had some bruising around his head, and it was even more cone-shaped than the average newborn, but he looked more normal within a couple of days! I ended up with a 3rd degree tear (that’s a bad one, haha) and needed stitches. The doctor told me she could stitch me in the delivery room, or take me to the OR if I wanted more anesthetic. I opted to stay in the delivery room and it was totally fine.

We stayed in the delivery room for a while, doing skin-to-skin and staring at Noah (how crazy to finally see him after we’d had his name picked out for months!!!). A midwife brought in some bread, butter, and cheese for us, which I devoured. Since I had been Rh-negative (more about that in my “Pregnant in Denmark” posts), I also got my final shot for that in the delivery room (which was not nearly as painful as the one I got at 28 weeks pregnant!).

For “normal” births at this hospital, most families are discharged after 4-6 hours, but because we had minor complications, the medical staff wanted us to stay overnight in the maternity ward. We were actually happy to stay because we had so many questions, and it was nice being able to call a nurse over whenever we needed help with something. We also got lucky, because normally, the rooms in the maternity ward are shared (2 beds for 2 patients), but we got a room to ourselves, so my husband got his own bed. We were discharged around 10 pm the next night, and by then, we were so ready to take our little guy home. 

Recovery & reflections

Overall, it was very much not the birth I “planned” or hoped for, but in the end I still felt like it was a pretty positive experience. I loved my midwife (the one who was with us for the majority of my labor and delivery, although truly all of the midwives, doctors, and nurses I interacted with were lovely). She had been so kind and supportive and encouraging the whole time, and I did feel like all of the decisions we made regarding interventions were the right decisions for me (and Noah) in the moment. I never felt like decisions were being made FOR me; I fully consented to everything. I did not regret the epidural, because I knew that I could not manage the pain without it any longer. I did not regret the pitocin or even the vacuum, because the prolonged pushing phase was exhausting, and I would not have wanted my labor to last any longer than it did.

Even though I didn’t have any regrets, it did take some time to process my birth experience, because everything had taken such a turn, and pretty quickly. The physical recovery was also very difficult. The first couple of weeks postpartum are difficult for most people, but I felt like it was harder for me than anyone else I knew. I was mostly couch-ridden for the first two weeks because I was in so much pain and discomfort, and I felt resentful about that. Part of the reason why I wanted to have an unmedicated birth in the first place was because I hoped that it would make postpartum easier, so part of me was angry that the exact opposite had happened. It honestly felt very unfair. Postpartum hormones definitely did not help my emotions at this stage, but fortunately, it was temporary. I was feeling much better, physically and emotionally, by about a month postpartum.

My memory of the day was pretty blurry at times, so I loved that I was able to read through the notes that my midwife and the other medical staff had made on Minsundhedsplatform.com (although it was, of course, in Danish and had a lot of medical terms and abbreviations that I didn’t understand). Right after Noah was born, our midwife had given us her email address and said that we could feel free to reach out to her if we wanted to discuss anything about the birth, even if it was much later. (It seems that this is not the norm, based on what I’ve heard from other moms who have given birth here, but everyone who gives birth in the Capital Region is offered an “efterfødselssamtale,” or “after birth conversation,” with a midwife if they want to discuss their birth. It is probably not the midwife who attended their labor, but one who is specially trained for these conversations). I ended up reaching out to her about a month after Noah was born because I did feel like I wanted to ask some questions about how and why everything had happened. I had started to feel a little like I had “missed out” on the unmedicated birth that I had hoped for, and wondered if maybe I could have done anything differently. 

I did have a chance to meet up with my midwife at the hospital, and she walked me through all of the notes from the day and answered all of my questions. She was so kind and patient, just like I remembered from labor. And she really reassured me that I hadn’t done anything “wrong;” we had pretty much tried everything to get Noah “unstuck” and she believed it was very unlikely that he could have come out unassisted. She mentioned that the only thing she could think of that we hadn’t tried was rebozo, but since I had tried pushing in so many different positions without any luck, she didn’t think it was a huge missed opportunity that we didn’t try rebozo. (This is, of course, just one professional’s opinion and maybe others would disagree, but it was definitely what I needed to hear to feel a sense of closure about the birth.) I would highly, highly recommend having an efterfødselssamtale for anyone who is struggling to process their birth afterwards. I came out of that conversation feeling so much better.

So there it is – I definitely had a difficult labor and birth, and I don’t think anyone goes into it hoping for a vacuum assist, myself obviously included. But when I look back on the day now, a year later, I feel only positive feelings about it. I was, and still am, so incredibly proud of myself. Going into labor, I felt like it was okay if things didn’t go according to “plan,” but my main fear was that my wishes would not be respected (this is something I had heard about more in the US, but I had also heard from some foreigners here that they really felt like they needed to advocate for themselves in Denmark). And on the contrary, I felt respected, supported, and cared for the entire time. My midwife did everything she could to make sure that, even when labor was very difficult, I was comfortable and okay with everything that we were doing. I was proud of myself for getting through all of early labor, active labor, and transition without an epidural, and grateful that I got to experience so much of labor with minimal intervention, as I hoped. Like really, I did amazing!!! And I was proud of myself for being flexible and going with the flow when my original plan wasn’t working for me anymore. 

The recovery was hard, but it was a short season, which is now so easily overshadowed by all of the joy that having Noah has brought to our lives this year. It goes without saying that I would do it again, and again, and again.

Phewwww, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!! I hope someone out there will appreciate this story as much as I appreciated reading others’. 🙂