We tried for three months. My wife was reaching the end of her rope, emotionally (PPD is a horrifying thing). Formula that worked was a godsend.
This was our first child. We took the classes, even selected a hospital based on their success rate with natural childbirth. We had intended for no drugs, breastfeeding, all the ideals of caring for an infant...
The baby was a few days late. We went in for an ultrasound, as we had to do daily at that point. As the ultrasound completed, the nurse told us we'd have to stay. When the baby is getting ready to come out, it drinks the amniotic fluid, so there's much less of it. That should have coincided with the beginning of labor, but it didn't. We had to induce.
I went home to get our bags for the hospital stay. When I came back, they began to induce labor with pitosin. It was an agonizingly slow process, and it was failing. After 60+ hours of labor, with the back of the baby's head pushing against my wife's spine ("back labor") my wife chose an epidural for the pain.
It didn't work. At 72 hours of inducing, at maximum recommended doses of pitosin, the baby's heart rate was indicating distress, and dilation was still insufficient.
We had a C-section. Later, the baby couldn't nurse properly. We used formula.
We'd wanted to do what was natural, had planned to do it. If that had been all we had, we'd have lost both mother and child in childbirth. If, in another age, we'd not had the means to hire a wet nurse, we'd have lost the child even if it had been born properly.
I'm so glad that we were able to get all the care we needed.
