So, it’s interesting having, at this stage of my life, witnessed many births, knowing friends and family that have had babies, and realizing that my own birth story definitely does not match the ones I’ve seen in my own personal life with my own friends.

I was 19 throughout the vast majority of my pregnancy. So I was a teenager. I was young. I know that being young, we’re dumb, we’re broke. Nobody thinks that we know what we want to do.

I wanted a vaginal birth. I wanted to work with a midwife or a doula. I didn’t want the hospital, sterile, non-family-loving environment. You know, I might only ever get one shot at this.

So I went into it with these thoughts of how I wanted my birth experience to be, and it was exactly the opposite of that.

As I mentioned, I was young. I was broke. I was a Medicaid patient. You know, I had to depend on the services offered to help get me through this stage of my life and make sure that my son was healthy and thriving.

I never missed an appointment. I made sure, you know, trying to be mom of the year before he ever came out.

It’s interesting because, working with my doctors, I was just constantly told these appeasing things: everything’s fine, everything’s normal, everything’s uncomfortable at this point.

My stretch marks had stretched to the point they could no longer stretch. I mean, I was bleeding. I could touch them. I could see the blood. It was very painful.

And it just didn’t — like, none of this feels normal anymore, right?

Well, the doctor just kept saying, “It’s normal. It’s normal.” Your body doesn’t know what to do yet. It’s its first time. We’re just gonna wait.

So my due date was July 5. Finally, finally, by the grace of God, they said, “Yes, you can be induced on the 11th.”

So almost an entire week after my due date, it was time. I’m crazy uncomfortable. I’m constantly made to feel as if I’m just thinking of silly things, right? My ideas are silly.

We get there, and they start running the Pitocin, but they start running it far too quickly. The process — they induce me at a rate that was just not even remotely OK.

So my contractions start. The Pitocin was running 100 miles an hour when it shouldn’t have been.

So 12 hours into my labor, 12 hours into my contractions, my baby goes into distress because of decisions the hospital made. Not decisions I made, but the hospital made.

At this point, they say, “Hey, we’re going to take you back into a C-section.”

Remember, I just want a normal, natural vaginal birth. Give me the options I have to make that happen before we immediately go have a huge abdominal surgery.

I’m a single mom. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home after you’ve cut my body open, and I didn’t plan for this. I don’t have anybody to do this with me.

So they say, “Well, the only other option we have is to try an epidural first. That might ease the stress enough that your baby comes out of distress, and we’re able to continue.”

An amazing anesthesiologist comes in. If there’s a hero of the story, it’s this man.

He comes in. He manages to give me an epidural mid-contraction. Lord knows it was never going to not be a mid-contraction.

And when he’s finished, he rolls me onto my side to get comfortable and to let the medication do its thing.

Turns out all I needed was to roll onto that side to kick this off because ten minutes…

The funniest part of the whole thing was when they went and weighed him and came back to me with an apology.

And I was told, “This is the largest baby we have ever delivered.”

My doctor — I’m sure the hospital — and I was told, had we had any idea that the baby would actually be this big, we would have required you to have a C-section anyway.

So here I come in with my 19-year-old’s birth plan, all of these amazing hopes and dreams for a midwife. The hospital was the one that only ever had any right to make the decisions for me, and that really it was just a ruse for me to feel like I had some sort of control in the situation.

At almost 40 years old, the problem is that the 19-year-old me didn’t know how to advocate for myself and didn’t have anyone to advocate for me.