DISCLAIMER: Birth stories are gross. Wonderful, miraculous, lovely, but gross, and mine is no exception. If you don't want to hear (read) it, click that cute little red x up in the right hand corner. Also, this is probably going to be long. But I wanted to write it all out so I can look back and remember it all in the future.
For some reason, this has been a hard post for me to write. Besides talking it over (and over and over) with Jeremy, I have not shared many of the intimate details of our birth story with a lot of you. I have been wanting to share it, since so many of you had been praying for our "little" miracle, and wanted you to be able to share in the miracle of his birth as well, but the words never came. I was never able to sit down and write out what took place that day, because that meant that I had to face some hard facts and emotions. And I realize that this was almost 8 months ago, but from day one of this pregnancy (and even before) I vowed to give God the glory for it all, and the birth story is no exception. So let's start from the beginning.
My due date had come but still no baby Judah. My doctor had thought that due to dilation when I was just 37 weeks, that our little guy would make his arrival before May 9th. But he did not. So on May 9th, we headed to the hospital for a non-stress test. Everything looked great, so they decided they would see me back in 4 days for another, and after that would start talking about our options. So we waited patiently through the weekend. I hoped so badly that Judah would make his arrival before Mothers day, May 12th. What more could a new mommy want?!?! But sadly, Judah did not make his appearance that day either. So Monday morning we got up, ate a light breakfast, and headed to the hospital again for another non-stress test, in which I was certain that there would be no difference, and just hoped that they would either induce me that week, or that Judah would come. But the results were different this time.
The results of the non-stress test showed that Judah had little divets in his heart beat, which basically meant that he was not functioning as well as he could in my belly anymore, and the placenta wasn't doing it's job well anymore, so they decided for the safety of Judah, I would be induced that day! We were so excited, and so caught off guard. In a sense we were ready, but also, we were so unprepared. We had left our "go-bags" at home and had nothing we would need. So while they transferred me to a room (It was room 13 and it was May 13th) and started the Pitocin, Jeremy left to go home, eat some lunch, and grab everything we needed. That's when it set in for me...we were having a baby!!
We called our parents, and Jeremy's work, and that was about it. We didn't really want the pressure of people hanging around the waiting room for hours, and we didn't want to have to rush meeting and loving on our little boy right after he was born, so that everyone else could come in and see him. We knew people wanted to see him too, so we decided that we would let everyone know that he had been born when we were ready for visitors. So around 11am, they started my Pitocin at 10cc's and my nurse would increase it by 2cc's every half hour, until I either started having regular contractions or until I reached 20cc's (where then the doctor has to approve any dosage above that). I wasn't having very consistent contractions at all. I would go from having them a minute or two apart, to 10 minutes apart. My contractions were just all over the board. Sometimes they were strong, sometimes they were mild. I wasn't sure how to gage it all. Around 3pm, they checked to see how dilated I was, and I was only at about 6cm. So I decided to go ahead and get an epidural since I was clearly going to be there for a while. By 5pm, I was maxed out with the amount of Pitocin that my nurse could give me, and I still was not having very strong or consistent contractions. So they got the doctor's approval, and continued to up my dosage. Around 6:45pm the urge to push came. Since I had the epidural, I wasn't feeling a whole lot, but somehow, my body still knew that it was time to go. Around this time, the nurses shift changed, and we met my nurse that would be with us through the evening. Her name was Amber. After talking with her, we found out that she was also a believer in Jesus Christ, and we felt very blessed to have her in there with us. So with all that being said, I began to push. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed...for the next 3 hours!
No one really prepared me for that. I knew you could labor for a long time, but I didn't know pushing could last that long. Yikes! Also, it was my doctor's birthday, and I felt bad as she was missing her birthday dinner, due to me, but there really was nothing more that I could do. Once things really got going, and Jeremy could see Judah's head, he started telling me all about his hair, which I grilled him about. I was comparing him to other babies that we knew, so that I could get an estimate of how much hair he was going to have. My doctor, nurse, and Jeremy kept saying, he's coming, I can see his head. But I quickly got tired of hearing that, and at one point sternly said "YOU KEEP SAYING THAT!" :) So to prove it to me, they used that handy-dandy mirror so I could watch the progress. I think that was all the motivation I needed. Once I actually saw his head crowning, and that little head with the perfect amount of hair, I gave a few more pushes, and just like that...our miracle baby was here! At 9:43pm, our baby boy was here!
His cry was perfect! As I struggled to catch my breath, and lean myself up (against the affects of the epidural) I saw him! The little boy that I had prayed for 4+years for. The little boy that I thought I would never, ever get the chance to call mine. The little boy that people, literally around the world, had been praying for, was here, and perfectly healthy. I was already crying by the time they had cleaned him off a little bit, and handed him to me (which, btw...felt like FOREVER, but really wasn't more than a few seconds). Holding him in my arms, everything was perfect. He was crying as he stared at me, I was crying as I stared at him, and Jeremy was crying as he watched all of our dreams come true. Everything was perfect! Amber kept asking me if I was ready for them to take him to get cleaned and weighed and everything else that they do, and I kept asking for just a few more minutes.
Finally, somehow, I let the nurses take him. I had a pretty bad tear, and so they stitched me up, pressed on my belly over and over (that just might be the worst part of child birth) and by the time that was done, they were handing Judah back to me. I was loving that time so much. Around 11:30pm everyone was out of the room, and I was loving on my little baby. We decided to go ahead and give my first try at nursing him. It went so smoothly. He latched right on, and everything seemed like it was going to go so well. Around that time, I asked Jeremy to go find Amber to ask her if I could please have something to drink now, as I had nothing by ice chips since 9am. Once Jeremy left the room, I started to feel a little queezy. Just as Amber was coming in, I told her I felt like I was going to be sick, and she handed me a bucket and took Judah just in time. All my ice chips had come up. I also felt a "gushing" sensation, that felt a lot like my water breaking all over again, and I told her. So she checked it out, and pressed on my belly over and over again and said that I had some pretty large blood clots, so she called for the house doctor, since my doctor had left by that time.
The doctor came in, and thought that I must have a tear internally, so she inserted some packing, to try to absorb the bleeding and gave me a shot in my leg to help my uterus contract back to it's normal size and took some blood work. I began to feel better immediately, and soon after that, Judah was back in my arms. I was cuddling him, and loving on him, when suddenly it hit again, I felt like I was going to be sick. I called for Amber, gave Judah to Jeremy and ended up getting sick and feeling that "gushing" sensation. This is when things really took a turn for the worse. All of packing had come out with a lot more extremely large blood clots. And when I say clots, I mean, they looked less like a blood clot, and more like a large intestine. At this point, Amber wasn't the happy, smiley lady anymore, and quickly shot into serious mode. She began pushing on my stomach over and over again, each time I was moaning in pain, and I had another shot thrust into my leg for my uterus to contract and more blood work drawn. Another nurse came in and took the pad that had been under me over to the scale to be weighed, due to the amount of blood I was loosing. Each time Amber would press on my belly, more and more clots were coming out. She called the doctor back in, and once again, she applied some packing inside.
Amber didn't leave my room after that. and I was no longer able to hold Judah. At this point, I had lost a lot of blood already and was shivering. They got me some extra blankets and I struggled to get warm. They decided to hook up some monitors to me. They were taking my pulse constantly and my blood pressure every 10 minutes. Eventually they picked up a trend. My blood pressure dropped, my heart started to race, and next thing ya know, I told Amber I was feeling sick again. Once again, I got sick, had the gushing feeling, the pressing on the belly, a shot in the leg, blood work from the arm. At this point everything gets blurry for me. I remember noticing everyone rushing into the room, and realizing that this wasn't normal. I knew things had gotten bad when I saw another nurse rush in, and wash her hands quickly as she said "Tell me what to do." I was convulsing from being so cold, I couldn't breathe, so they hooked me up to the breathing machine, and I had no strength to even raise my hand. I was struggling to keep my eyes open, but couldn't take my eyes off of Jeremy and Judah who were sitting in the corner.
All of a sudden the calm came over me. As nurses rushed around me, and I could hear them talking their medical lingo, and as I struggled to breathe and while I felt worse than I have ever felt in my life, I just stared at Jeremy holding our baby boy. I remember thinking that I was so thankful that at least Judah was healthy. No matter what happened to me, Judah was okay. I remember thinking that if I don't make it... and that's when it hit me. I might not make it. This might be my last moments here on earth. I realized that I had prepared Jeremy with a few things in the weeks leading up to Judah's birth with things that he would need to know, should things go wrong. He knew how to feed Judah with formula, he knew how to change a diaper, and where to find all of Judah's belongings. He could raise Judah. Watching him hold Judah and care for him, I knew he was capable of being a single father. I knew that he would raise him to love Jesus. I knew he would let Judah know that I loved him more than anything. And that even if I died, those two hours with him were worth it. Jeremy had put Judah down in his bassinet, and came over to my bed. I looked up at Jeremy, told him that I was glad it was me and not Judah. Then with tears in my eyes, I told Jeremy that I loved him and to tell Judah that I loved him. Then I looked over at Judah in his bassinet, and with that I closed my eyes.
I don't know that I ever lost consciousness. But I do know that I became unresponsive. Once again, I got sick, the gushing, the shot in the leg, the blood work, the pushing on the belly (Which btw...was bruised with finger marks by now) the drop in blood pressure and the spike in heart rate. At one point, my blood pressure had dropped to about 60/30 while my heart rate was 160. The nurses asking me to raise my hips so they could get the pad out from under me so they could weigh the amount of blood I lost. But this time, I couldn't. I could hear them, but I couldn't respond. They ended up rolling me over. My whole bed sheets needed to be changed, and they practically had a lifeless body to move around on the bed to do it. I remember hearing Amber tell me that I was going to feel a pinch in my other hand cause she was going to start another IV for some medications and for the blood transfusion. I never felt that pinch, but I know she started the IV. I heard another nurse call for Amber as she was pushing on my stomach, and she said "The clotting isn't stopping, we need a doctor." As Amber called for the doctor, she said "I need the doctor....no, I mean like now!" The doctor ran into the room, and (pardon the gross visual) reached inside. I had my hands resting on my stomach due to the pain, and I felt the doctors hands push against mine from the inside, then say "We got it."
My heart continued to race, my blood pressure continued to drop, and I was having a hard time breathing, but I was finally feeling better. Once I gained a little bit more strength, Amber explained to me that there was what was called a retained placenta. Meaning, there was a piece of the placenta about the size of a dime, that was wreaking havoc on my body. She explained that I should start feeling better, but that I still had lost too much blood and they were going to do blood work to figure out how much I would need for a transfusion and also informed me that they were going to keep the epidural flowing through the night for my comfort.
Around 4 am, I was finally well enough to get some water for the first time. After being able to drink for the first time, I finally was able to get a little sleep. I woke up around 6:30 and was still so weak. I so desperately wanted to hold Judah, but was too weak to do so. I cried so much in the following days. Seeing my baby need to be fed, and changed, but not having the strength to care for him was torture. Around this time, the nurses changed shifts. It was so tough to see Amber go. I really do feel like I owe the fact that I am still here today to her. But she informed me that due to my condition, we would not be allowed to have visitors outside of immediate family, and also that I would have nurse whose sole responsibility for her shift would be me. Once the blood work came back, they informed me that I lost about 50% of my blood (2 liters). They presented me with two options. One, get a blood transfusion, which of coarse, included the risk of contracting a disease, or two, be on Iron supplements 3 times a day for at least 3 months before I even began to feel better. Believe it or not, it was a tough decision, but looking at Judah, and thinking about not being able to care for him for 3 months was devastating, so I opted for the transfusion. They stopped the epidural before administering the transfusion so that I would be able to get up and around later that day hopefully. After the first unit of blood got into my system, I felt a little bit better.
My nurse, who by the way, wore something similar to a candy striper, was an older woman. While she was kind, she was not very gentle. Both of my hands had IV's in them, and my arms had become a pin cushion for blood work that felt like it was being taken every hour. As she started my second unit of the transfusion, she said that it would be best for my healing if I could begin to get up and move around and so she wanted me to sit in a chair. My parents were there visiting by that time, and Jeremy and my parents and the nurse all helped me out of the bed and into the chair.
Like I said, I cried a lot over the next few days. But while I sat there in that chair, everything hurting, someone, yet again came in to draw blood. I typically have a rough time getting my blood drawn. I have been told that I have "baby veins" and often they have to dig around to find my vein. But by this time, my arms were so bruised from getting my blood drawn so many times that it when they tried this time, they burst my vein and told me they were going to go get someone else to do it. I burst into tears as I sat there, so uncomfortably in that chair, just wanting to be back in the bed, and wanting to hold and care for my baby. Finally someone came in, quickly drew my blood as was gone. At this time, my candy striper of a nurse came back into the room. She told me that Judah needed to eat and that since I couldn't hold him on my own, that she was going to give him a little supplement. Once again the tears started flowing. I hated that I couldn't feed him. That's what mothers are supposed to do. Then to top it off, she took Judah from his bassinet, and fed him herself. I was kind of hoping that at least Jeremy or my mom could do it. So finally, with Jeremy seeing my misery, he asked if I could get back into bed. After everyone had told my nurse that I had been out of bed for a while, and some humoring conversation memories, she finally agreed to let me back in bed. My doctor came in around this time, and decided to give me some medication to allow me to get some rest. Until I fell asleep, all the doctors, and nurses left the room and Jeremy laid Judah on my chest. That brought so much healing. Being able to hold him close for the first time, was exactly what my heart needed.
The next morning we were supposed to be released, but due to everything, they were holding me for one more night for monitoring. I felt like a brand new person. I was able to take a shower, we were able to have visitors. I felt like a normal woman who had just given birth. Besides all the bruises on my legs, arms and stomach. I was finally off all IV's, and was able to give nursing Judah another try. But unfortunately, due to the loss of blood, and the blood transfusion, I wasn't able to do so. Judah became dehydrated and hadn't gone to the bathroom for quite sometime. So the following day, we had to make the decision to switch him to formula. Again, lots of tears were shed. But once he started on formula, he went to the bathroom and we were able to go home!!
The next few weeks were hard as I had the baby blues (although I was sooo in love with Judah!) and then I was in and our of the hospital with Gall Bladder issues, which I had removed just 3 weeks after I had Judah. And then of coarse the recovery process. It wasn't until I was about 12 weeks post partum that I finally felt 100% again. But looking back. It was so worth it. The Lord taught me so much in that time. Everyone always talks about how you should have a birth plan, but be flexible. My birth story was not at all how I would have planned it or chosen it to be. But I can honestly say that I have a new outlook on life now. I appreciate the little things. I look at Judah, and almost daily thank the Lord for allowing me one more day to be his mom. As I watch him grow, I realize there is so much I would have missed out on, from his first smile, to rolling over, to eating solids, to now starting to crawl. I am thankful that I have lived to see these mile stones. I look at Jeremy and am so thankful for all he is to our family. And all that he did in those tough first few weeks. He carried a lot of the weight with caring for Judah and around the house those first few weeks and continues to be such an amazing husband and father. So yes, while I can say I wouldn't have chosen that to be our birth story, I am so very thankful for it!
