A healthy baby and an operating room full of love

On Sept. 9, Avery Jack Knox-Broyles was born at 8:13 a.m., less than three hours after we arrived at St. David’s South. 

I was fully awake and aware of my surroundings: The radio station playing Hall and Oates, the fact that there were far more women in the room than men (Ian and the anesthesiologist were the only two there), the beautiful reddish white pixelized squares on the overhead light above me, the tiny white oval pattern on the blue sheet that separated my head and shoulders from the crazy procedure happening on my abdomen, the exact details of which I’m still not sure I want to know.

But the most interesting part of it all is that even though the C-section definitely carried the emotional and physical effects of major surgery, I left that sterile, cold (brr! it must have been 60 degrees in there) operating room feeling more love and care than I did after so many miserable hours of laboring at the birthing center.

 It hit me when I was in the recovery room, waiting for them to bring Avery to me so I could nurse him for the first time. Denny, the sweet smiling anesthesiologist, was there, asking me how I felt and if I was still nauseated from the medication that had made me throw up during the surgery but after Avery was born. “How are you feeling?” was a question he’d gently asked me dozens of times during the past hour, but now that the drugs he’d given to make me as comfortable as possible had done their job, it was time for him to leave. “Will I see you again?” I asked him. “No, my job here is done.” I’d only met the man an hour before, but his bedside manner was so kind and supportive that I started to cry as I thanked him for his help. “You were such a comforting presence in there,” I said as he left. My lovely nurse Annabelle was there by my side and she noticed the tears streaming faster down my face. The hormones were definitely pumping, but I was acutely aware of what was really making me cry. 

 This was just such a different experience than before, I told her. There were so many people there tending to my needs. Even though I was in an operating room in the hospital, totally drugged up and “detached” from Avery leaving my body, every single person’s attention was focused on the health and well-being of me and my newborn son. Yes, they were, with the exception of my OB, complete strangers using a totally artificial method of delivering him, but they were doing it with such compassion that I could feel the love despite the drugs that were making me wonky.


I hadn’t felt that kind of affection and care at the birthing center. The midwives made me feel like a burden whose body just wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. Labor made me totally delirious and incapable of making decisions. Even with my mom and Ian by my side and despite months of birthing classes and prenatal care with the midwives, I felt totally alone and helpless. The midwives couldn’t get enough hot water to fill the tub and limited the number of towels I could use in the birthing room. They had a limited repertoire of medications, herbs and tools to help ease the wrenching pains I was experiencing and acted totally clueless when they’d run out of tricks up their sleeve. Who knows how long they would have let me labor in that strip center; my mom and Ian were the ones who finally took control of the situation and said, “You know what, this isn’t working. She needs to go to the hospital.”

The massive ego of the birthing center director, who kept popping in and out of the birthing room on a whim and whose precious success rate would go down if I ended up in the hospital, seemed paramount to my needs as a patient. In fact, I felt like I was treated more like a wishy washy customer whose demands were greater than what she’d paid for than a patient whose life — and the life of the child she was trying to birth — were at risk.

I’d felt an enormous sense of relief that I would finally be taken care of when I entered the hospital as an emergency case the last time, and I felt that same relief last week when they brought my squawking new little baby to my face so I could kiss him and whisper sweet “I love yous.”

Like Julian, he was born on a Thursday, but unlike Julian, I didn’t go into it with preconceived judgments about labor and delivery.

When I was pregnant with Jules, I was so firmly in the natural childbirth camp that I could spew a nasty diatribe about the national C-section rate and how horrible pitocin, epidurals and those pesky obstetricians were for what should be a powerful, intuitive, almost tribal experience. Luckily for me, I was able to psychologically accept that I had become what I was against without any feelings of guilt or failure. Going through such a treacherous labor made things very clear to me: A healthy baby and mother are the only things that matter, and how you get there is of little importance. 

Just like with breastfeeding or any other aspect of parenthood, judgment shouldn’t be part of that equation. Every body is different. Every baby is different. Every family is different. Every midwife is different. Every doctor is different. (I wish everyone could have as wonderful an OB-GYN as I do — her name is Dr. Belt, she’s with ARC and she’s hands-down the best physician I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.)

It's been a week since we came home from the hospital with Avery, and we're all adjusting quite well to this new normal. Julian is starting to get more comfortable with physically interacting with this fragile new life form. Ian's collarbone has healed enough that he can hold and cradle his sweet tiny son. I'm slowly starting to get around better. I don't have to take as many pain killers, but the oh-so-familiar shoulder pain that comes with nursing and holding a newborn has returned. Thank the breast goddesses, I have more breastmilk than Avery knows what to do with. He's only had two fussy nights, but other than that, he's only waking up a few times for quiet nursing sessions. 

I'm starting to get a little stir crazy and can't wait until I'm fully able to leave the house. (I can't drive until at least Thursday, which is a day after my mom leaves.) But maternity leave rocks. I'll be blogging once a week on Relish Austin, and I've got some fun Feminist Kitchen posts rolling around in my head.