Plane crash brings back memories of delivery

By Lisa Pemberton | For The Olympian • Published February 01, 2009

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In the days following the crash of Flight 1549 — the US Airways jet that landed on the Hudson River earlier this month — some of the survivors talked about the afterlife of a near-death experience.

Sleepless nights. A constant mental replay of those scary moments that took place before they were rescued. Not realizing at the time, but figuring out later, that they came about as close as it gets to dying.

Their interviews reminded me of my first weeks — make that months — of parenthood.

You see, after welcoming our beautiful baby girl into the world, all hell basically broke loose in the delivery room.

The day began as a typical "We're getting induced, and having a baby" type of day, with a stack of gloom-and-doom medical care waivers and how-will-you-pay-us insurance forms. I remember thinking, "Yeah, right, who dies during childbirth in the year 2000?" And, "Um, honey, are you sure this hospital is covered under our insurance?"

Next, it was time to whisper my weight to a nurse, don a hospital gown, and take some Cytotec, a medication that I later learned was FDA approved for treating ulcers, but had a side-effect of causing labor. Then, arm-in-arm, my husband and I began walking up and down the halls of the maternity ward.

By noon, the doctor said I was laughing way too much to be making progress, so he hooked me up a Pitocin IV drip. About 4 p.m., he decided to move things along by breaking my water.

Our daughter was born at 9:13 p.m. I must say, the "birth plan" that we had put together in our six-week natural childbirth class had pretty much been scrapped with the Pitocin drip, internal fetal scalp monitor, and nurses' unwillingness to let me hop into the birthing Jacuzzi because of the IV and various cords and machines.

The only thing that went as planned was the "natural" part. I was proud to have turned down multiple opportunities for an epidural. (I even had one old school nurse say, "Now, you don't have to be a hero, young lady. People get them all the time.")

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