I was "complete." The nurse said, "the baby is coming." And then something spooked me and my cervix closed up to 6 centimeters. I think that it might have been the gear that they rolled in at that moment. There was so much stuff for a little baby not in distress that it could have filled the back of a pick-up truck. In Ina May's, Guide to Childbirth book she talks a lot about how women are so sensitive during childbirth that something as small as an unhappy thought can stop her labor.
When I heard six centimeters after being told that the baby was coming, I thought that I'd have to redo the hours of labor that it took me to get from 6 to 10 centimeters. In fact, according to Ina May, a woman can quickly dialated back to 10 centimeters in very little time if the cause of her distress is eliminated. I confirmed this with Hokhmah K. Gandley, a San Francisco family nurse practitioner and nurse midwife.
If I had known that I could quickly dialate back to 10 centimeters, I think that I would have had the courage to continue without an epidural. Instead, I got the epidural and the whole domino affect of interventions that follows. I ended up with a non-emergency Cesarean section at around midnight. In a postpartum appointment, I asked if there was anything else that could have been done to avoid the surgery. My health care professional said that I could have pushed longer but it was midnight and everyone wanted to go home.
Read my other post about birth here.