I was due on Saturday, 11 April 2026. I was sure I was going to wait until the baby could come out naturally. I believe that a natural birth was best if one was destined to have one. My gynaecologist assured me that the baby’s head was down and a natural birth was possible. She was also ready to induce me and deliver the baby as I was full-term. I only had to get myself admitted when I was ready.
Then came Saturday morning. Just to inform you, our Church is next to the hospital where I was to deliver. There was no sign of a delivery happening anytime soon, so I went to Church and attended an hour-long Mass. After we came home, our friends visited us and decided to book tickets for a morning show (only if I was okay with it). Dhurandhar 2 was showing at the nearby cinema.
We packed our hospital bag, took our files, and left for the movie on Sunday morning. My mom was wondering what I was up to. I assured her that she would get a call if we had to leave for the hospital mid-movie. We watched the four-hour movie, had lunch and got back home. I loved the movie. No pain, no discharge, no discomfort.
But I needed my afternoon nap, so I slept. While friends called to ask if we had a boy or a girl (remember, the due date was the day before), the husband told them that we were still at home.
Finally, I was admitted on Sunday night. Not because I had pains, but because many Indian obstetricians prefer to closely monitor or induce labour between 40 and 41 weeks, as local clinical observations suggest South Asian placentas may show signs of aging slightly earlier or babies may reach full maturity sooner. And I was 43!
So, there I was on the night of 12th April, in a pretty-looking private room that screamed pink, waiting for something to happen. But it seemed like my baby was very comfortable inside.
They induced me and gradually, in parts, my water broke. During the contractions, I felt a push in my right-side rib area. The labour pains usually happen around the abdominal organs, not the ribs. If I told anyone, I was afraid they would tell me that it was ‘part of the process’, so I kept mum and waited to dilate. This process started at 11 pm on Sunday and continued through Monday morning.
While I waited, they did a couple of ‘internal examinations’ where I was told there would be ‘little’ discomfort. Little, my foot! I don’t think anyone recalled how painful that is. And this is in the middle of the contractions. Of course, I had also taken the painful epidural injection, to add to my misery. After some time, I wasn’t sure which pain was more intense: the contractions around my bladder, the epidural in my back, or the internal examination in my vagina.
As I wasn’t dilating more than 4 cms since the previous night, they gave us the option to wait or have a caesarean section. The only thing I was dreading about having a baby was this: A caesarean section!
I did not want to be stubborn and cause harm to my baby. So, with tears in my eyes, I agreed to be cut open. In a few hours, it would be 24 hours since I was induced. Anyway, I was taken to the operation theatre (OT) only to hear that the local anesthesia wasn’t working on me. Instead of waiting until it did, for the first time in my life, I was administered general anesthesia.
The last thing I remembered was my whole body trembling with cold.
I woke up when I heard the husband call out to me. He said we had a healthy BOY! I smiled through my grogginess and closed my eyes again. It had been 3.5 hours and everyone was worried I’d go into a coma.
I was parched. I was given some water, my vitals were checked and soon we (baby and I) were ready to go to my room. My Gen Z daughter was waiting for me to deliver a week before my due date. This delay only made her restlessness turn into impatience. I saw her in the room (along with my son, mom, FIL, friends) with a big smile on her face. She looked at me and, with a big sigh of relief, said, “FINALLY”!
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Tuesday actually began with several things shoved into different parts of my body despite not having rested properly since I woke up after delivery. A catheter was already inside me to let the urine flow without having to visit the loo. Then they put a cannula, which is inserted into a vein to send medication directly into my bloodstream. My body was already in pain, and then this insertion just below my knuckles was just too much to handle. Couldn’t they have done this when I was unconscious? Painkiller tablets were given to me every now and then. Last came the suppository, to soften my stools so they would flow out easily. This was inserted just before mealtime. Imagine having something stuck up your behind just before having your grub!
Amid all this, my gynaecologist came to see me and explained what she witnessed inside my body. She said that though his head was down in the right place, the passenger (my baby) couldn’t come out through the passage properly because he was crooked and he was facing upward. This was called a sunny-side-up baby. I love my eggs sunny-side-up, but I didn’t know my baby could be sunny-side-up, too!
I told her about the chills in the wee hours of the morning, but she said it was probably the healing process.
That night the husband stayed with me. In all that discomfort and exhaustion, I was continuously breastfeeding and feeling breathless.
I found I couldn’t take a deep breath and therefore couldn’t sleep properly. I casually mentioned the breathless feeling to the nurse who came in the middle of the night to disturb me for something again.
The husband woke up and realized multiple doctors came visiting (FYI: each visit cost us). They asked me questions and performed a few scans on me. There was one huge portable scan machine that would’ve cost us a bomb.
I was taken to another room to rest as my oxygen level was low. But was I allowed to rest? Multiple tests were performed on me, from scans to blood tests to ECG to Dopplers. I had to be pricked for blood multiple times because of other tests. The last time the nurse came ‘to take blood again because there was a clot in one of the tests,’ I lost it. And when they said they were going to do a Doppler, I asked to call the husband. We spoke and then he stopped all the pricks, needles and scans. He asked them to allow me to rest. All the tests stopped and I was allowed to rest for a while while the baby was on infant formula.
I felt like a prisoner all day as I was ‘under observation’. I had to be in bed while I was being watched. I was urinating in the adult diaper I was wearing.
So, apparently, due to the general anesthesia, I had water in the lungs due to a condition called MVP (Mitral valve prolapse), where the valves of the heart are not closed as tightly as they should. This ‘leaky heart’ situation is a birth defect and is generally known only in certain situations (like after being administered general anesthesia). If it’s known, one should inform the doctor about this condition before anesthesia is given. Well, before this, I didn’t know; neither did my mother.
I was given a Lasix to flush out the water in my lungs. I had to drink less than 1.5 liters of water per day while I was on this medication. Someone held a bedpan under me when Mother Nature called. After a few hours, I insisted on urinating in the loo because the bed was just getting too smelly with the amount of urine flowing out of me. Every time I walked to the loo, I had the two nurses holding me, requesting me to slow down or there was a chance I’d faint. What? I was in some pain, yes, not in a coma!
I was already tired of the food. I was living on decent idli with chutney, watery kichdi, thick and soggy set dosa and watermelon juice. The only lifesaver was the cut fruits! I wanted to go home.
I was on oxygen due to my low heart rate but the mask was making me cough. Apparently, I was also supposed to cough out the phlegm from my system. After a caesarean section, I preferred not to cough and told them to remove the mask. I was okay with the phlegm inside me!
I wasn’t able to sleep comfortably due to the cannula, wires attached and constant disturbance by the nurses. But I tried to rest as much as I could. To turn to my right side, I had to first lift and turn my hips, then slowly my tummy, and then my chest and shoulders. I had to shift my body in 5 steps and would barely get all the parts to one side when a nurse would come with the baby to be fed with the other breast. Or I would just get comfortable when a nurse would come to check my blood pressure, for which I had to turn and lie on my back. Frustration was pushing my limits!
Oh! Did I tell you they put a cannula in my other hand, too, because some medication wasn’t getting in from the first cannula? So, I had pain from two cannulas, the caesarean section stitches and painful blood thinner injections.
Well, that night, all the doctors finally gave me the green signal to be discharged from the hospital. I was either suddenly in tip-top shape or they were fed up with us removing and stopping everything. Either way, I was relieved to finally be home on Thursday night with my new baby in tow!
I did not realize it with all the pain, but I hadn’t brushed my teeth for 4 days. I was given a bath, so I was fine, but I just let myself be in whatever condition I was because I knew it was temporary. I was only looking forward to being with my kids and sleeping on my pillow with no cannulas and tubes inside me. My 13-year-old daughter put up ‘Baby is Home’ and ‘Welcome Home Mamma and Baby’, and it felt so good to be back!
I’m not trying to scare anybody. I just wanted to talk about my experience of childbirth, unfiltered, because there are some truths no one talks about.
While this was the first time I went through such an eventful week, I still recall how that first caesarean section felt 13 years ago. How I remembered my grandmother who had 8 kids. How I remembered my friend who had 2 caesarean sections in a span of 2 years. How I wondered why people have more than 1 child. Yet, later I still chose to give birth again and again. Yes, some women may be scared of childbirth due to the pain it may sometimes cause, but those cute eyes surpass all that. Those little toes are something I would like to click every single day! And those tiny fingers around your finger just make you forget all that trauma! After all, without rain, there can be no rainbow, right?
Today, 4 months later, I feel like a young girl again, though it becomes tiring when the little person is on me most of the time. Otherwise, I can jump, dance, and do everything as I could before delivery.
I used to be one of those girls who never thought I’d have kids. But God had other plans for me. Now, I’m braver, wiser and a proud mother of THREE!
This blog post is part of ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla in collaboration with Ratna Prabha.
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