After our first 2 were born, things were great! We moved into a new apartment when the baby was 2 months old & settled into a great routine! The kids were so much fun! This is the point where I began to ask the question. You know… Are we done? We went on vacation that summer. Our oldest was almost 2. Baby girl would be 1 in the fall. I remember all of a sudden knowing we weren’t done. Michael & I had been praying a lot. We had been talking about it a lot. At the start of our vacation, we went to a weekend worship/prayer conference in Nashville with my family. One afternoon we just knew. We were supposed to have another baby!
By the end of October, we found out we were pregnant. I was ecstatic! This baby was God’s idea & it just felt perfect. However, I had just weaned our 1 year old & prior to that had been pregnant or nursing for 2 years with no break. My body was very tired & depleted of nutrients. So, my pregnancy wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It wasn’t perfect like I had hoped.
Our insurance also changed, and we had to switch doctors. I was devastated. I felt like we LOVED our doctor & he had taken care of us so well… whether I knew it or not, he had not. So, by accident, we found a doctor. She was great! I didn’t ask any of the right questions, but I felt at peace about both she & her partner. Looking back, this was a perfect twist of fate. This is the woman who would go on to encourage me that I should be a birth educator or a doula. I have nothing, but the utmost respect for her!
Around late November, I began having pre-term labor symptoms. We were struggling financially and I felt like I was under SO MUCH stress. I wasn’t eating well, and certainly was not hydrated well enough. After much discussion and prayer, my parents offered to have us move in with them for a few months to catch up on things & start saving up for a house. Michael was working on a promotion at the time as well, so there was a whole lot going on! In January, we moved in with them. It was crazy & hectic, but being around my family was what I needed. Soon after moving in though, my back began to spasm on a regular basis, and I started struggling with Sciatica. It felt like one thing after another during those first 20 weeks. We found out baby was a boy though, and that all was well at our 20-week ultrasound. The kids were so excited. We began to look for yet another AWESOME E name.
Just as my body began to settle down though, stress began to build among our family. My brother had just graduated high school & was trying to figure out what he was going to do/where he was going to go. My grandparents had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s & Dementia, so my parents were taking frequent trips to Kansas to care for them. My other brother was going through an incredibly hard time as well. Michael had been promoted, and the news came that he would be going out of town a week after my due date. His new position was very long hours and he was practically on call 24-7. The atmosphere in the home was certainly not calm, or peaceful. The other kids handled it well, but baby & I seemed to take on a lot of the stress. It wasn’t evident, of course, until later.
By 37 weeks, we were ready to meet our little guy & considering we lived in a house with my family, we didn’t have much preparation to do. We had everything we needed! Baby was due June 19, but at 38 ½ weeks I started having consistent contractions. I had never gone into labor on my own. I brought Michael home from work, we went to the hospital, and as soon as they hooked up those monitors… everything stopped. I had start/stop contractions for the entire weekend. Finally on Monday morning I requested to be induced. I was exhausted (or so I thought- looking back I should have just sucked it up).
At 8am on June 12 we went into the hospital. Because I had been dilated to 1cm for about 2 weeks, they skipped the Cervadyl that my body responded so well to, and went straight to the Pitocin that my body didn’t really like. Well, by noon, I was having those same back-to-back contractions like last time, and was at 4cm. It was getting very intense! The nurse insisted that giving me more Pitocin would possibly help my water break… so we increased it. Now it was unbearable.
By 12:30 I was begging for the epidural! They had to break my water first though. The problem was… baby wasn’t ready for that. He still needed some time. At 1:00 my water was broken, the epidural was given, and at 2:30 I was still only 4 cm and baby’s heart rate was dropping. We tried backing off the Pit. It didn’t work. The cord was around his neck & there wasn’t enough amniotic fluid in there to loosen it and allow him to descend. Fortunately the nurses had just switched over before this & I was given the MOST amazing nurse, Cori. She called my doctor and they decided we should try Saline Amnioinfusion. Basically they were going to shoot sterile water into my uterus to help loosen the cord so baby could descend. They did this at 3:30. Apparently it worked, because by 3:50 I was fully dilated and about to push. If it hadn’t worked, they were already prepping the OR for a Cesarean. My momma was in the hall, and overheard the nursing staff talking about OR prep... she was pacing the halls & praying. I had to push a little longer with this little guy- all in all it was about 20 minutes. Our second son was born at 4:16 pm… he was mad, yelling, and telling us his story. He peed on Nurse Cori. Then, she put him on my chest, and he calmed right down.
His life was forever changed by this birth experience and so was mine. I learned how scary a birth could be when mom and baby just aren’t ready. He has anxiety and a myriad of other issues that he was pre-disposed to, due to his traumatic birth. Following this birth, I began a slow, spiraling road of Post Partum Depression, even though I didn’t know it at the time. I became a different person, very disconnected with my sweet boy. However, God had a big plan! We needed this baby. He needed us! We would learn so much from him & this birth changed the very course of my life from here on out.
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