“crying with happiness is something I had heard about but never experienced until that moment…”

I was 24 when I was due with my first child. I was living in Canada and doing my MBA at the time. I had been so busy with studying and doing papers  exams, right up until the end of my pregnancy, that I hadn't had time to go for prenatal classes - I was super nervous about the delivery experience, as any first-time pregnant girl would be. My mom had flown down from Pakistan to be there with me 2 weeks prior to my due date so I was at least comforted to have her with me. 

My due date came and went without any development. I had a false alarm on April 15, where we rushed to the hospital, only to find out I was not ready yet. So I was sent back home. The next day we went again as I having random painful contractions. The doctor said that I was 3-4cm dilated and I had the choice of either walking around for an hour or so to get the pace of contractions up, or to take some morphine for the pain and go home and get a good nights rest. My mom knew I hadn't slept properly in 2 days from the pain, so chose the latter option for me. I went home, tried to sleep for a few hours but when I woke up the contractions were coming faster. And off to the hospital we were again. This time I was admitted. The nurses and staff were very kind and helpful. The baby was in an occiput-posterior position during my labour. Basically the baby's head was down, but the spine was facing my back, not tummy. I think this was the reason why I had been having more back pain that normal. In most cases the baby rotates spontaneously during the first stage of labour and delivery is uncomplicated. And that's what my doctor was hoping for. My nurse was trying to get me to change positions on the bed quite often in the hope that the baby would rotate. 

I wasn't sure if I wanted to get epidural or not. As the kind of person who has an aversion to taking medicine (i don't take Tylenol even if I have a splitting headache) I was a little apprehensive about the epidural, so told my nurses that I was trying to avoid it. One of them kindly told me that I should do whatever I was comfortable with, but if the pain got to me too much to handle, to let her know. Lo and behold, there came a point when the pain on the contractions was so much that I begged for the epidural myself. The anesthesiologist came and set me up with one. Soon it started working and the pain went numb. It was surreal. I had been in so much pain for about 2 days that when I couldn't feel it anymore, I started laughing out loud from the happiness. I was ready to shout out from the rooftops and declare epidural a miracle of the sciences, and ready to advocate it to every pregnant woman I see.  

Except I got happy too soon. They were monitoring the baby's heart rate continuously, and as it turned out with every contraction (which I couldn't feel anymore) the baby's heart rate was dropping. At first it was a little bit but then with each successive contraction his heart rate would go lower and lower before it would come back up, and the doctor said she wasn't comfortable with how low it was going. I was already 10cm dilated at the time and could have pushed. But was told not to. Instead, I was being told that I needed to have an emergency c-section. The baby was in fetal distress! The speed with which all this had happened was enough to scare me. My mom, husband and I started praying in earnest. They wheeled me off to the surgery room. Having asked for the epidural not too long ago actually worked in my favour because it was needed for the C-section surgery. I remember laying there, feeling the pressure of the incision that the doctor was giving me, as the team all worked to deliver a healthy baby through the C-section procedure.  My husband was beside me, and my mom was watching through the glass windows, as there was only one support person allowed in the room. Alhamdulillah at just past midnight, on April 18, I heard my baby's first beautiful cry as he came into the world. Crying with happiness is something I had heard about but never experienced until that moment. Till this date, I cannot describe another moment in time which compares to the one where I saw my son for the first time. 

We later found out that the umbilical cord was wrapped around him and that's why the poor guy wasn't happy inside. I was very grateful to all the doctors and nurses for taking the call to deliver him in a healthy fashion. I had endured the labour pains from before the delivery, as well as the C-section recovery from after the emergency surgery, but in the end it was absolutely and completely worth it to have a healthy baby in my arms.