The Missing Epidural

by Sarah Kanwischer
(San Rafael, CA)

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was planning on having an epidural.

I won't lie, natural child birth seemed scary and cruel. Why not take the help if you can get it?

Well, I learned the hard way that help is not always around the corner. I went into labor on Valentine's Day at around 11:00pm. I labored at home for several hours because my labor started very slow. I thought I was severally constipated at first until my mucus plugged started to come out.

I called the hospital when my contractions were very close apart but I wasn't in agony yet. Let's call it, very very uncomfortable. They ended up sending me "home", which ended up being my in-laws house, because I wasn't dilating.

About 7 or 8 horrific hours later, I went back to the hospital. My husband at the time was driving and we were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic miles from the hospital. It seemed that death was around the corner because no human could possibly live through this much pain.

When we finally arrived at the hospital, I had only dilated a centimeter! This couldn't be happening.

Of course nature ended running it's course and about a day and half later, Jasmine was born.

The epidural man never came, due to the fact that I couldn't dilate on my own but that cruel, scary event happened all on its own. Little Jasmine weighed in at 8 pounds 1 ounce and was beautiful. I had done it all on my own, no drugs.

I will tell you one thing, as I am 25 weeks pregnant again, I think I'm going to try and meet this mystery epidural man this time around.