Learning to Advocate
Being your own advocate is HARD!
As a person, a woman, and a Black woman, I know it’s not an easy task to stick up for yourself. I know when you’re in an unfamiliar position it can feel like questions breed uncertainty. But often, the absence of questions leads to the absence of options and that leaves you vulnerable. By my second pregnancy I was a certified doula and I had a really hard time advocating for myself. I am still learning to be an advocate for myself and others - it’s a constant practice - and I have lots of opportunities .
I liked my OB and chose a single practitioner practice because I wanted to know who was going to be in the room when my baby entered the world. There were things that I didn’t love about the practice and the attitude toward low intervention birth was that “its too hard”. But it was better than the practice that I switched from where all my labs disappeared.
The Induction
What I didn’t expect to get was to be diagnosed with mild preeclampsia. My blood pressure readings were mostly normal but climbed around week 22 and again around week 35. During my 37 week ultrasound, an abruption was discovered, so I stayed until Isaiah was born. During the induction I opted for an epidural - my blood pressure was climbing - from labor and being induced. Getting and epidural normally drops your blood pressure some. It dropped my blood pressure so low that I lost consciousness. Once I really came to and everyone left - I asked that everything be turned off - the pitocin and epidural. I needed a chance to regroup for a bit and about three hours later, after some uncomfortable but needed rest, we restarted pitocin.
The induction was long and at a point I was worried that I wasn’t going to be given enough time to deliver vaginally. Likely a stress flashback from my first induction; I was told by a nurse that it’d been too long since my water broke and I’d likely have a cesarean. (Even though Lucas was born almost exactly 12 hours after my water broke.) Once that fear was removed, I progressed really quickly! So quickly that Tom almost missed the delivery while checking in on Lucas. On the phone, I was breathing pretty well through contractions but he could tell that it wasn’t easy. I think Isaiah was born about 30 minutes after he arrived. (By the way, it feels foreign to even write about how he could leave the hospital to see our oldest and come back!)
Postpartum
During postpartum, Isaiah had jaundice and was losing weight. I was told that he could go back to the hospital for light therapy but we would not be able to spend the night. I couldn’t imagine leaving him there if I didn’t absolutely have to do so. We opted for bilirubin tests every other day until his levels stabilized. For just over a week, it was hard and exhausting to haul a newborn and (once my sister left) a toddler back and forth to the doctor. It was sad seeing him pricked but I didn’t want to do anything more drastic, unnecessarily. I talked about my choice to only breastfeed in the beginning in my last blog, this gives more reason behind that
I know these aren’t choices that everyone would have made but they are options I knew I had. I knew that after a major unexpected event during labor, I needed a break. And I didn’t want to leave Isaiah at the hospital without us, even for light therapy. Especially being that he was gaining weight slowly and we needed all the skin-to-skin we could get. I asked a lot of questions and went with the best options for me and my family. Those conversations about formula feeding and light therapy were not always comfortable. Sometimes being your own advocate means making a popular choice and sometimes it means making an unpopular one. As long as you make the right one for your family, then you’re doing it right.