My sweet little William is almost three months old! I’m not sure how that’s possible because it truly feels like he was born yesterday.
His birth story has taken me a while to write because it was slightly traumatic and it’s taken me a while to process. I had relatively smooth births with both of my older boys, but William was a bit of a different story.
My pregnancy was rough from the very beginning. I had extreme prenatal depression, and the most awful nausea and food aversions that started at 7 weeks and didn’t go away until he was Earth-side. I was insanely uncomfortable (he had measured on the bigger side since the very beginning, and was very low for several weeks). At my 38 week appointment, my doctor could tell I was completely miserable and she asked if I wanted to be induced a week early. My answer: PLEASE.
I was so ready to have this baby, but at the same time I was a little nervous about them giving me pitocin to induce me. I had pitocin with Peter Joseph and it made my contractions and labor pains so intense, even with an epidural. I knew that would likely happen again, but I was so desperate to get him out of my body that I decided it was worth it.
My induction was scheduled for a Friday night at 9pm. I was group-B strep positive, so I had to have antibiotic drip for a good four hours before the induction started. I am allergic to amoxicillin, so they had to give me something different. I had a reaction to that antibiotic as well! I started to itch deep under my skin– it was the weirdest feeling ever and I could not scratch my skin hard enough to relieve the itch. So they had to give me ANOTHER antibiotic (and some Benadryl), which ended up working fine.
My doctor instructed the nurses to break my water first and hold off on the pitocin to see if that would be enough to induce labor. They broke my water around midnight, and at 8am when I woke up, I was having somewhat painful contractions. They checked my cervix and I was only at about 3 cm. That’s when we decided to start some pitocin, and also get an epidural.
LOOORRRDD did I forget how painful that numbing shot for the epidural was!!! Dear God. Please just prepare yourself for that to be really intense, but it’s relatively quick and definitely worth it for the pain relief!
After the pitocin started, things progressed FAST. Within just a couple of hours, my contractions were so intense that the epidural was doing basically nothing for me in terms of pain. I knew I had to be around 10 cm when the insane pressure and pain started. And by that I mean: it started to feel like he was coming out of my butt. That’s when you know it’s go time!
I cannot even explain the level of pain I was in at this point. I was gripping the rails of my bed so hard that my arms were sore the next day. My nurse and doctor came in, checked me, and said it was baby time!
With my other boys, I literally pushed like 5 times and they were out. It was so quick, so I was praying it would be the same with William. They put my legs up in the stirrups, I started pushing, and everything seemed to be going great! My doctor said she could see his head and that this would be quick. She encouraged me to keep going, and I did my best though the pain was almost unbearable.
Then she abruptly told me to stop pushing. I could feel that he was almost out because the pressure was killing me. I was extremely light-headed from holding my breath to push and felt like I was going to faint, so I closed my eyes for a minute. The next thing I knew, there was a swarm of nurses running into my room, and my doctor was giving them all different instructions that I didn’t really comprehend.
I opened my eyes, and there was a nurse standing on my bed, strattling me, facing my doctor. She was pulling my knees back toward my shoulders, and I started to panic. This was when I really realized something was wrong.
I started asking, “WHAT’S HAPPENING? WHAT’S HAPPENING?” and I wasn’t getting a response, which really scared me. In hindsight, the lack of response was just because everyone was so focused. Finally my doctor replied, “I can’t get him out,” which was when I looked for Peter and I realized he wasn’t in the room anymore.
Those next few minutes literally felt like hours. The realization that something was going wrong made the room instantly feel like it was spinning in slow motion, and so many horrible thoughts were running through my mind.
After what felt like an eternity of laying there in excruciating pain (both physical and emotional), I heard my doctor say that she got him out. She yelled, “sorry dad I am cutting the cord and I’ve gotta do it quick,” which is when I realized Peter had come back into the room. Apparently they had pulled him out of the room when they realized the baby was stuck and all the nurses swarmed in.
She quickly rushed him over to the bassinet under the lights, where a few NICU nurses were on standby to attend to him. I didn’t get that special moment where they lay your baby on your chest right when they are born. That moment was something I longed for every single day of my pregnancy. It’s such a magical feeling to finally hold your baby and look at your spouse, knowing your world just changed in such a huge way.
I quickly realized he wasn’t crying or making any noise. I found myself repeatedly asking, “is he okay?!” as tears streamed down my face. I will never forget looking over at Peter and seeing him dripping sweat with tears in his eyes. One of the nurses came to my side and told me that he was “stunned” and that he just needed some help starting to breathe. What I heard in my mind was: he isn’t breathing. My heart literally dropped into my stomach and I felt like I was going to throw up.
My doctor was working on delivering my placenta and I just laid there praying. I looked up a couple of times and all I could see was my sweet baby laying there, not moving, with the tiniest oxygen mask covering his face. In that moment, I thought I lost my baby.
Finally, I heard the nurses reassuring each other that he had in fact started breathing. They performed a few other checks on him, then brought him over to me for the first time. They warned me that his face was a little bruised, but not to worry. I was in complete shock, but was so insanely grateful to be holding my crying baby in my shaking arms.
I honestly don’t remember much right after that. I really think the shock made me black out a little bit. It was hard for me to really be in the moment with our new baby after the trauma that had happened getting him out. And I still felt so worried– would his traumatizing birth have lasting effects on him?
I started to calm down and my doctor explained what happened. It’s technically called “shoulder dystocia,” which is when one of the baby’s shoulders gets caught above the mother’s pubic bone. They had the nurses rush in to assist with suction and helping move my body to get him to turn, which ultimately ended up working without needing any additional intervention (such as an episiotomy). Being “stunned” basically just means they have a traumatic experience in the birth canal and don’t start breathing right away.
Luckily, William’s tiny little shoulder was completely fine, and there were no lasting effects on his brain from his crazy entry into the world! To Dr. May and the labor and delivery nurses at Riverside Methodist: I applaud you for your professionalism, and couldn’t be more thankful that I had you all by my side the day he was born. Forever grateful for each of you!
If anyone reading this has experienced any sort of trauma around child birth, my heart goes out to you in the most immense way. There’s a sense of grief that sets in when you don’t have the birth experience you had hoped for, and it’s okay to feel that and take the time to process that.
While this day was one of the happiest days of my life, it was also one of the scariest. It really was a life-altering experience and something that I think changed me forever. Having even a slight glimpse into what it would feel like to lose a baby is something so heavy it’s hard to even articulate or put into words. My heart and soul goes out to any mama that has had to experience that.
My advice to any future mamas reading this: don’t let it scare you! Child birth is such an incredible, happy, amazing experience! But it’s so important to remember that no matter what “birth plan” you have in mind for your family, it doesn’t always go the way you envision it. Babies sometimes have other plans, and there’s no way to control how they end up in our arms! Keep an open mind, and make sure you find a doctor you really trust.
