Personal Birthing Experiences

The birthing experience I chose to share is that of my first born child. I was 29 years old and extremely excited! I had always wanted to be a mom. Because I had a very complicated pregnancy, I was followed closely by a group of specialists in addition to my own obsetrician. The result of a routine blood test early in my pregnancy indicated that it was a possibility that our child may be born with a genetic defect such as Down's Syndrome or other chromosome related abnormality. My husband and I chose to follow up with amniocentesis so that if there was a problem, we could have the best doctors on hand to care for our newborn child. The results of the further testing indicated that the probability of an abnormality was very low. We rocked on through the pregnancy with a few more complictions like gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. I was monitored closely by the doctors and my husband! A few days before my actual due date of November 11, 1995 my doctor ordered one final ultrasound to check the weight of the baby. It was in this ultrasound that a tumor growing inside my precious unborn daughter was evident. The tumor seemed to be on her ovary but the doctors could not tell if it was connected to her kidneys or gall bladder because of the position she was in. The decision was to do a C-section the following day!! WOW! Was I in shock. I really never thought about a C-section. My thoughts of birth were always of breathing and concentrating on my body and my baby. My husband and I had gone to Lamaze classes and I had made the personal decision not to have any drugs administered to me in labor. This news came as a shock and I had not much time to prepare myself. I had exactly 18 hours until the time I was scheduled to be there for surgery and I still had some last minute prepping to do for the arrival!!
     My husband took me to the hospital an hour away at 4 a.m. the next morning ,November 8,1995. Everything went as scheduled. The only glitch was finding scrubs large enough to fit my football player sized husband in! They had to get real cloth scrubs from a doctor's personal closet in the hospital to fit Scott! The doctor waited patiently for him to get in the delivery room...As soon as Scott arrived by my side, the doctor began describing each move he made to us....the "small bikini cut" turned out to be much larger than I expected but that is another blog post!! :) A few minutes later I heard the cries of my precious 9lb. 8oz. baby girl!! She was perfect in every way to this mommy! She was not born with any genetic defect and the tumor they saw was an ovarion cyst that was a response to my strong hormones during pregnancy. We followed up diligently with specialists and the cyst dissapated in its own by the time she was 2 months old. I recovered nicely and went on to have another precious child 4 years later via C-section.
     On Tuesday, Karsen McCall Kreps will be 16 years old. I will never forget how she entered this world on that cold, sunny November morning. She is beautiful, smart, funny and everything a mother would want her daughter to be. The birth was not what I was expecting but life is like that sometimes. Many people asked me if I felt cheated out of a "real" birthing experience....I just laugh and say that surgery is very real. I experienced much discomfort after the surgery but it was worth every ounce of pain. I never felt any less of a woman or a mom because of the way she was delivered. I am thankful that medical advances allow us to catch potential traumatic situations before they happen and thankful for the care we recieved throughout my difficult pregnancy!

I read about birthing experiences in several other countries. The one that was interesting to me was the experiences of the mothers in Taiwan. The experiences are similar to that of American women but the women from Taiwan are encouraged to stay in the hospital for up to 10 days or so! The Taiwanese women also have 6-8 weeks that are paid from their jobs to recouperate and heal from their birthing experience. The research I read said that Taiwan values their pregnant women and the status of the woman changes when she becomes pregnant. She becomes very important and the family caters to all of her needs especially nutrition and health needs. They pamper pregnant women and new mothers. I like that idea!! It is hard to be a new mom both physically and emotionally for some women. I like the fact that a government recognizes that! USA take note!!