On January 23, 2012, my entire life changed. At approximately 3:00AM I began having sharp cramps in my sleep. Oh no. I thought that maybe I just had to use the bathroom and that my precious baby girl was just resting on my uterus. So I got up and went to the restroom. I laid back down. The pains did not stop. I knew that my water had not broke and that my mucus plug had not come down so I was not understanding what was going on. I laid in the bed and looked at my phone to time how far apart these pains were. They were five minutes apart! Too close for comfort. I woke my grandfather up and told him that I was hurting, he instructed me to call my god mother. So I called her told her what was going on and she said she was going to put on some clothes that I needed to go to the hospital. I got off the phone with her, got in the shower, put on some clothes, and began to pack my hospital bag. My baby's hospital bag had been packed for weeks now. I paced the floor waiting on her to pull up outside and never ceased hurting. When she arrived I grabbed my things and headed out the door. When I got in the car she asked how I was feeling I told her I was hungry and scared. I told her that the day before I had called in to work because of the pains I was experiencing but I thought I just needed some rest. I begged her to stop at Burger King to get me some breakfast, she refused.
When we finally made it to the hospital, twenty minutes away, they rushed me into a delivery room. I was only one centimeter dilated but as I had calculated, my contractions were constant and five minutes apart. They gave me Pitocin to induce my labor and another medication to make me sleep through my pains. I was still hungry, so they brought ice :(. By this time it was about 10AM. I slept until 11:30 and when I woke up I had now dilated to 5cm almost 6. They said I was still in a safe zone to administer the Epidural. I received the injection and after that the pain stopped instantly. Best drug ever! The rest was history, I kept dilating and before I knew it I was delivering a beautiful baby girl 6 lbs. 9 oz. 191/2 inches long at 1:56 PM.
Childbirth around the World
An interesting fact learned while completing this assignment was the increasing rate of the C-Section in very cultures. The dramatic increases are in China where the rate in 1991 was 5%,by 2001 20%, and 2008 40% (Berger 2015). Those are alarming numbers being that C-Sections are more risky during child birth than natural labor.
Berger, K. (2015). The developing person through childhood (Seventh ed.). New York, NY: Worth.
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