It may be the strangest sentence I’ve ever written: how horse medicine helped me during labor. But surely, stranger things have happened, and been written. And in hindsight, horses are a tonic in so many other ways - so why not also to get me through the most painful, daunting initiation of my life?

But first, some backstory: I had a rough pregnancy with my son. “Morning sickness” was more accurately all day sickness, and it didn’t just last for the first trimester. The nausea was all day. Every day. For nine months. Yeah. Nine whole months. Don’t get me wrong, it was probably the best thing I ever did, as my son is the best thing in my life. And that’s saying something. But the overwhelming nausea that kept me at home for the first three months was indeed, if nothing else, rough. In fact, I remember using the word “hell” to describe my experience during a childbirth preparation class held by the birth center over Zoom (sorry, not sorry). So I could only hope over the trying nine months that the struggle I went through would make childbirth at least the tiniest bit easier in comparison.

In the end, I found out that my hell-ish pregnancy was actually a picnic by the sea, albeit with gale force winds during high tide, compared to the pain that was childbirth. Oof.

The silver lining, though, was that while many first-time mama-to-be’s undergo labors that are thirty plus hours (yikes), mine was only 13 hours. Hallelujah for that mercy. Alhough, the catch to why my labor was so short, was that it was exceedingly more intense in the progression of my contractions from the time my labor started.

Labor Begins

Sometime after 11pm I woke up to my water breaking. From everything I’d read, the first stage of labor is often a prolonged, rather boring event. A far cry from the Hollywood movies that portray the screaming woman whose water just broke and is screaming “THE BABY IS COMING NOW!”

In fact, many women don’t even have their waters break in early labor. But of course, my early labor had to be the exception to everything that my team of health care providers and books on childbirth had prepped me for.

Some more backstory: it’s also common for first-timers to have their babies be born past their due date. For our purposes here, let’s just say that good things take time. And while I normally am one to patiently let things unfold at their own pace, at 42 weeks I was over it. I was eating all the foods and taking all the herbal formulas that my midwives and doula suggested to gently nudge birth along. Only in hindsight, I found out that some of the herbal formulas I’d been recommended to take are known to shorten early labor. And in my case, they significantly shortened early labor.

My drowsy husband and I were excitedly tracking the timing of my contractions from the time my water broke. Right from the start, our calculations told us they were six minutes apart. How could that be? What happened to seven minutes?! We exchanged confused, worried glances. And since the contractions were already bringing on a world of hurt so bad that I could barely get the words out to him to say, “call the doula”, that’s exactly what he did. Sometime around midnight our doula was notified as to what was happening, and she calmly responded like the seasoned pro she is: “Keep tracking them, and call me if they increase anytime soon.”

Two-ish hours later, anytime soon had arrived. My husband called our doula and announced to me that she was on her way. At the time, I was relieved in ways I couldn’t comprehend, as since Labor Land sunk it’s grip more deeply into me with each contraction which increased in intensity and frequency, I had hardly been able to speak comprehensible words, let alone keep any food or fluids down. Meanwhile, my partner was hurrying up and down the stairs checking on me on the second story and letting the dogs outside below, while making sure everything was packed and ready to go in our go-bag. One look at him, even in my otherworldly state and I knew he was in an alternate universe much the same. Though, luckily for him he wasn’t having his a** kicked by his own reproductive organs.

So long story short, by 4:30am-ish our doula had made the call that it was time to go to the birth center. That’s about five hours from when labor kicked off, mind you. And she was essentially saying, without the cinematic dramatic flair of a blockbuster film that “Baby was coming, now-ish.”

Only, disappointment is far too kind a word for what happened next: after an excruciating car ride that was only ten minutes from our home to the birth center (potholes and pregnant women in active labor don’t mix), we were sent home as I was just shy of 6 cm dilated. And as the birth center’s policy is that women cannot be admitted until they’re at that magic number, we had to turn around and head home.

By 6:30am-ish, after a somehow even more excruciating exercise in walking up and down the stairs and doing lunges to help labor along per my doula’s instructions, we high-tailed it back to the birth center. I’m not going home back home until my baby is outside of my body, I silently vowed as I cursed at every inch of uneven concrete on our drive to the birth center.

And then, the good news was: I was admitted and welcomed by my team of midwives to the birthing suite. The bad news, however: I now had to do the hardest part, which is arguably the hardest thing any person can do.

4-1-1, Baby’s Gonna Come

When your contractions are four minutes apart, the pain lasts for a full minute, and it continues for a full hour, that’s when they say you’re in the last stretch. Baby’s on the way! Albeit, on their own unpredictable timeframe. Each birth is truly a mystery in how uncontrollable baby’s arrival time is when you labor naturally. But then, how anyone could expect a laboring woman to keep track of time when they’re in the most primal state… now that’s the real mystery that may never be solved.

It was all I could do to control my breathing during each contraction, and trust that it would end. And the precious few minutes in reprieve were spent looking for ways to get through the next one.

My energy was waning as by this point it had been seven, going on eight hours in which I couldn’t keep down more than a sip of water. And food was out of the question, as it would be brought right back up since my nausea seemed to be throwing a grand finale before it was done with me. My husband and doula were insisting that I force down water with honey and lemon, but little did they know that my nausea could be far more demanding than them.

My labor plateaued as I paced around, frantic to find some peace. My body wanted movement and my mind wanted stillness. Or maybe it was the other way around? What was anything, anymore in Labor Land? I told the midwives that I wanted to try a bath because I’d heard that being in water could soothe the contractions. Lies, my body recoiled as I dipped my feet in the tub and forced myself to try to get comfortable. How could water make this worse?! I immediately regretted that decision with every fiber of my being, shoving aside my panic at the thought of how the thing I’d heard referred to as “the midwife’s epidural” (taking a bath) somehow actually amplified the pain in profound, new ways.

The silver lining of this crazy-making part was that as I am an introvert who has an easy time appearing calm under pressure (even when I most certainly am not), and thus my whole care team thought I was doing amazing. Nobody was as panicked as I was internally, which was a huge win as that would have only threatened to push me over the edge. Especially since at this stage, I was repeatedly screaming “I WANT A C-SECTION” inside my head.

I was very thankful that my internal dialogue wasn’t being projected as I most certainly did not want a C-Section (I’m a bit frightened at the thought of surgery), and I definitely didn’t want to have to be transferred to a hospital and be in a new environment around a new care team of strangers I didn’t know. The silver lining indeed, was that my outward appearance of calm gave me the space I needed to find my real calm center.

But where was that?