The Birth Story of Bear Joseph

My birth story is different than I’d imagined… It’s not anything that I had planned for and not the exact one I wanted to write, but it’s my story.

Birth is unpredictable. 

It’s natural, but never the exact same for any two women or any two babies. 

Here are some words I wrote during that first week after giving birth. I have since changed some of the words around to reflect it being past tense.   

“For once I don’t have the words to describe my experience over the last couple of days. 

We welcomed our sweet baby boy Bear Joseph (yes, you read that right!) on Thursday, October 26th at 12:27 p.m. 

Bear arrived 6 days before his due date—he just couldn’t wait to be with us and wanted Halloween to be his very first holiday. I was convinced he’d be fashionably late, but here we are with our sweet October baby.

My birth felt like nothing went as planned, but I committed to having a birth without fear and to go with the flow and adapt to whatever we needed to make it a positive experience. 

Many of you know how much I prepared and planned for a completely natural birth—from my prenatal care with a group of midwives to the delivery day including no interventions, meaning only natural pain relief (no medications) and a vaginal birth. 

I prepared for MONTHS using many different resources and classes long before we even conceived (and up until labor and delivery day) so I could make this happen and yet it still didn’t. 

Sometimes life is funny that way. 

After my waters broke in the early morning (which typically only happens to roughly 9% of women before labor begins), I had a long and grueling early labor that began hours later and then continued for even more. 

We had been checked into the hospital immediately because I required antibiotics for GBS (a naturally occurring and harmless bacteria present in about 25% of women that does not affect the woman, but can be passed on to the baby and cause detrimental effects if not treated). Due to needing these antibiotics every 4 hours intravenously, I felt I’d already lost one of my first birth preferences which was to labor at home as long as possible before heading into the hospital. 

I used numerous coping tools, all except laboring in a birthing tub which I was told wasn’t recommended until “active labor,” and I was still in early labor but feeling all the wild sensations. They say that once your waters break you lose that cushion of amniotic fluid to dull the pain. So it was intense from the beginning for me. 

My labor was long and drawn out because when I was admitted, my cervix was still completely closed even though my waters had broken. Over those first few hours I barely dilated but my body worked hard to thin my cervix out to 100% which felt so painful. 

I am a reserved person and yet my very-close-together contractions had me suffering for hours as I yelled and moaned and tried every single coping tool I’d learned and practiced. I tried deep breathing, meditations, affirmations, distractions in several different forms, movement, rest, everything. 

At 10:00 p.m. after laboring for 10 hours or so I requested an epidural. 

I was in agony and I didn’t want my entire birth experience to be in pain and misery—all for the sake of a romanticized, more natural birth. 

The epidural worked quickly and effectively and was like a huge switch for both my mind and my body. I rested for hours after this, slept a little, and was able to relax enough to dilate to 9cm in just a short amount of time when I got checked really early the next morning. 

I couldn’t believe the monitors said I was having strong contractions—I felt nothing at this point!

I know my body would not have progressed this quickly had I been so tense and miserable, shaking in pain, without any epidural at all. 

You see, many women get the shakes when they have the rush of hormones going through their body during the natural birth process. I was one of them. Even though I had warned my husband this could happen, he hated seeing me in pain and I think we both fed off each other’s worry from my shaking uncontrollably and pain during contractions. This all disappeared once I received the epidural, thankfully!

After waiting a few more short hours, my body needed an extra push to the finish line. From my midwife’s recommendation, I then accepted that I’d benefit from a small dose of pitocin at this point to get my cervix from a 9 to a 10 and ready to deliver our baby vaginally, which is the way I desperately wanted. 

The small dose of pitocin worked effectively and my wonderful nurse Rebekkah worked with me for 45 minutes, if not longer, “practice pushing” to get a head start before the midwife and her student would come in to deliver our baby. It was productive, hard work and it felt really good to be able to do this on my own… I truly feel my body would have been too exhausted had I not opted for that epidural in labor. 

The delivery went very smoothly and happened exactly as it needed. I was able to finally work WITH my body to bring our sweet baby into the world. It felt so empowering to be able to do this and to turn a less-than-ideal birth into a positive experience. His head and body came out all in one long push and was immediately placed on my stomach for skin-to skin and nursing. 

He had strong lungs from the second he came out, crying and wanting his mama for comfort. Bear was perfect and we all three felt connected immediately.

Although it wasn’t a perfect experience, I’ve been processing everything for days and have decided I’m still proud of myself.

Here are a few things I’m proud of myself for: I still advocated for myself and our baby and had many of my preferences followed. We stopped to weigh pros and cons along the way with each educated decision we made. I even denied some unnecessary interventions that were recommended when medical staff made recommendations I knew were not best for baby and I. 

I was able to actually enjoy myself once I got the epidural. It changed my mindset drastically. For that I am beyond thankful—that was the silver lining. When I was in pain, because of the sterile, unfamiliar hospital environment and the first nurse being inattentive to my needs, I felt that entire first part of my labor without pain medication was traumatic for me. This created resentment and anxiety in me. But despite this, I brought our perfectly healthy baby boy into this world safely and effectively after an arduously long labor process. I am still really proud of my body and my mind for carrying us through.” 

And here we are today. Bear is everything we have ever dreamed of. AJ and I both feel like we’ve known him so long already and are just gushing over him 24/7. 

Those first couple of weeks, if he was awake and we were awake, he was in our arms. 

I still can’t get over his blissful scent. We’ve had such a rocky learning experience with breastfeeding together, but I’m thankful to give him antibodies, probiotics, and more through my breastmilk each day. Every feeding session we are bonding and doing better. It is such hard work, but hard doesn’t mean bad—no, not at all.

He is the best thing to ever happen to us and really completes us. 

He looks so much like AJ right now, with just a couple of my facial features–but so far we think he’s going to have a personality more like me. Baby Bear has my big eyes and smile and I absolutely love it. He gives the best cuddles in the world and makes me so proud to be his mom. 

We were thrilled to be spend 6+ weeks together as a family during the holiday season before AJ headed back to work. He has taken his father role so seriously and has helped me in anything I ask or need as I’m still emotionally recovering from the birth process and juggling the role of being a breastfeeding mom weeks later. 

Our little family just feels so complete.