While this post is brought to you by WellStar North Fulton Hospital, all opinions are 100% my own.
Even after eight years I still remember how great my birthing experience was at WellStar North Fulton Hospital. I started blogging after the birth of JaMonkey, so I didn’t write about my pregnancy and experiences before her. In fact, I’ve never even told her birth story except to listening ears. I wish I could say the same for my youngest, but we already know how that worked out.
I was the epitome of a nervous new mom. After spending most of my days searching the internet for everything, there is to know about pregnancy and birth I started to plan my birth so that it would be just as I had planned.
It started when I got sick of feeling like I was part of a heard, shuffled around from station to station at my doctor’s office. I did something most women wouldn’t dream of doing at 36 weeks; I broke up with my OB/GYN and moved to a new practice. I based my decision on for the new practice on two things; the first was the team of midwives and the second was the hospital I would be giving birth. It was the best decision I ever made. Despite the practice and hospital being over 40 minutes away, I was willing to make the drive to have the experience I wanted.
I worked hard building a birth plan. It included a water birth, Hypnobirthing, and absolutely no needles. I’m quite scared of them and tend to pass out when I see or even talk about them. It was the type of panic that had no place while I was giving birth. I loved that my midwives and all of the hospital staff asked me about my birth plan and made sure they stuck with it.
WellStar North Fulton Hospital pledges to work with the patient and her healthcare provider to honor the birth plan the patient desires as long as the health of mom and baby allow.
I was in labor with JaMonkey for 24 hours (on the dot). Because we lived so far away, my midwives they told us to hang out near the hospital. I spent a lot of that time walking around in a park nearby, and when it got dark, we went to the hospital. I progressed very slowly while I was in labor because my water never broke. So North Fulton went ahead and checked me into my postpartum room so that I could labor in there without having to go home. During both of my pregnancies, I suffered from Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction, which causes intense pelvic pain and your hips separating early during pregnancy. So walking a lot was out of the question for me. I couldn’t handle the pain, so I took a lot of hot baths and showers and laid on my side.
It took so long for my labor to progress that my midwife finally suggested breaking my water. This was something I wanted to avoid but when you’re in labor that long and your midwife tells you that this will speed things up you do it. I’m so glad she did too because we discovered that there was now meconium in the water which can cause problems for the baby if they breathe it in. Unfortunately, it also ruled me out from having a water birth because it could cause infection. So I settled into my labor and delivery room while the staff dimmed the lights and got the nursery carts ready. When there is meconium, present extra hands are needed for suction and cleaning.
My midwife and the staff left us alone only popping in every so often to look at screens and checking my cervix. When you’ve been in labor for 24 hours, you tend to start nodding off in between contractions. My husband fell asleep next to me while I was in labor. I kept telling him to wake up and hold my hand. If I had to go through it, he had to stay awake for it! Once I hit transition, it starts to blur together, but I remember my midwife telling me that I wasn’t ready to push yet because I wasn’t cursing yet. It’s amazing how right she was. I screamed out a very unflattering word, and I heard her at the nurses’ station say, “Oh I think she may be ready!”
She brought one other staff member in to assist her in checking me. While the nurse checked the monitors, my midwife checked my cervix. I told her I needed to push, and she told me that she didn’t think I was ready, but if I wanted to, I could try. In one push her head came out. My midwife looked up at me with eyes the size of saucers. She told me to stop pushing, and I gave her my best “Excuse me? What did you just say” face. She informed me that she only had one glove on, and no one was ready. The nurse threw a glove on her and ran out into the hallway to yell for an infant team. People started rushing in and by that point, she was out. Everyone said I was Superwoman, and they couldn’t believe how fast my actual delivery was. I attribute this to how calm and relaxed I was during my labor. Hypnobirthing can do that to you; it is quite incredible. The room had this meditation mood in it with the lights dimmed and my music playing.
JaMonkey got to stay in the room with me the whole time unless she had a doctor’s visit, I used that time to shower. It was such an incredible experience that I made plans to give birth to Peanut at WellStar North Fulton Hospital again. I had hoped that I would finally get to experience a water birth, but when we discovered her heart condition by chance, we rushed to the closest hospital.
WellStar North Fulton has the best Labor and Delivery Center in Atlanta, hands down. I’ve been in all of them visiting friends, and you can’t even compare them. It has a calm, welcoming environment that women truly need during a time when your body takes over to do the work of bringing a life into this world. They get what modern moms need to create a sanctuary for a monumental moment in a woman’s life. If I were to have more children (which I’m not), I would make sure it was at WellStar North Fulton Hospital again.
