I Fought So Hard to Give Birth on the Toilet, but My Doctor Refused to Let Me

Of all the possible scenarios I'd gone over in my head, how my birth story ended up playing out was pretty much the opposite of what I expected. You see, I wanted to give birth on the toilet . . . adamantly. Good thing my nurses and doctor wouldn't let me.

My bathroom birth story started when I went into the hospital for a scheduled induction. Once my doctor started my Pitocin drip and broke my water, my labor began, fast and furious. I went from four centimeters to 10 in less than half an hour. At that point, I was making what my nurse later described as "devil sounds." Suddenly, I felt pressure down in my rear end like never before. I begged the nurse to help me make it to the bathroom because I had to go NOW. She told me it only felt like I had to use the bathroom because the baby's head was bearing down on my rectum. Still, I was convinced I had to get to a toilet ASAP.

Even as my nurse tried to stop me, I was dragging my IV across the hospital room floor, making a beeline for the bathroom. "I can't let you have your baby on the toilet, honey," she told me. Her words barely registered. My body had taken over and all I wanted to do was go.

Just as I was sitting down on the toilet, my doctor burst into the room, ready to deliver my son. I heard the nurse explain that I was insistent on going to the bathroom, and he quickly informed me that the toilet was the wrong place to deliver my baby. "I'm not coming in there," he said, sternly. I didn't care. I had decided it was going to happen here with or without him. And no one, not even my desperate husband, who was perched helplessly in the doorway, could persuade me otherwise, as contractions ripped through my body and dulled any ounce of logic I had left in my head.

That's when another nurse arrived, and along with my labor and delivery nurse, the two of them literally picked me up off the toilet and carried me to the bed. "You can go to the bathroom here if you need to," one of them told me, while I screamed and protested that I had to get back to the toilet.

As soon as the nurses laid me down on the bed, my husband excitedly informed me he could see our baby's head. Our son was born mere moments later. Seriously, I could have given birth on the toilet had my nurses not manhandled me out of the bathroom. I mean, thank god for them, and for my doctor who had stood his ground and refused to let me have my way. Dear Lord, I can't even imagine having to inform my son one day that mommy had him on a potty.

Later, once I was holding my beautiful baby in my arms and the room had cleared out, I asked my husband if he thought I was the first woman to ever insist on birthing her baby in the bathroom. Whether he was just humoring me I don't know, but he said, "No way." "Those nurses have seen everything," he told me, adding that I wasn't the first mama to feel insane pressure on her bottom and think she had to poop when it was really the baby about to come out.

Here's hoping he's right and someone out there can relate to my not-so-cute birth story. And um, a sincere apology to my nurses and to my doctor for being such a pain in the butt (pun intended)!