How I Met My Son

After enduring an awful pregnancy with complication after complication, labor and delivery visits piled one on top of the other, and more close calls than I care to recount, we were finally admitted to antepartum for hospital bed rest.

It was a beautiful, hot, and stormy Friday morning when I hobbled into the triage bay one last time. Every thing was wrong. I was puking, my head was screaming, everything hurt. I just wanted some relief from the pain, but what I received instead was a hospital stay that ended with my son being forced into the world before he was ready.

The plan initially was to wait it out in the hospital til 37 weeks and then deliver via induction, but I never made it past 36 weeks. Monday morning arrived and with it the announcement that I was being induced. I've been induced before , but no one told me what this induction would be like, no one prepared me for the road ahead.

It was some time after noon when I made it to my delivery and labor room. When I get there, I learn that I will have to labor flat on my back. Immediately the tears begin falling, my fear nearly strangles my breath as I try to ask to speak to the doctor about what they are planning. I have to be on magnesium sulfate, the Dr tells me. And that means a catheter and monitors continuously and a very LONG labor process. I make peace with the medication and bargain for not getting a catheter until I cannot walk to the bathroom on my own. l watch as they slam my body full of poison, at least it feels like poison. My face is on fire. The cyatek, which isn't approved by the FDA for use in hospitals for laboring women (but is used for laboring animals), goes three rounds before they decide to move on to the next phase. Sometime around midnight they start me on pitocin. I don't progress as planned. They don't ultrasound as planned. Tuesday afternoon, almost exactly 24 hours later, my water breaks. Another unplanned occurrence.

We are reeling as the Dr checks me and discovers my son's foot lodged in my cervix. Not only is he not head down, but with my water now not in tact, they won't even try to turn him. My failed labor induction becomes an emergency c-section. As I lay there waiting for the Dr to confirm there is no other option, I am frozen with fear. There are no words for how I felt lying there, lights blaring as people rush around me, asking who they can call, if I am alone, where my husband is and when he will arrive. Someone comes in to shave and prep me, a most horrendous experience. The catheter goes in. The phone rings. I answer. A friend is on her way until my spouse can arrive.

I am wheeled back to the OR, alone, with my friend standing in the hallway. My husband is still not at the hospital. I am shaking, half naked, completely a wreck, on an operating table in a cold, sterile room with people all around me. The spinal tap goes in, and my body, nearly lifeless, is positioned on a table. My legs still feel as if they are bent though they assure me they are straight. I feel exposed. though I am draped.

Finally, I see my husband entering the room, his gown, cap, shoe covers, gloves, all there. He is sterile too. The realization that my baby will be born in this cold, unfeeling room, with lights blaring on my open body is too much. I focus on trying to breathe. On feeling my husbands hand through the glove, on the sound of his voice and the glimmer in his eyes. I don't know if they are tears or joy. I only know that he is with me now, and he is speaking. I listen as the blades begin. I talk through the whole procedure. That's what they call it. A surgery. I talk. I talk about how I cant wait to meet the baby, about how much I love my spouse, about how weird everything feels. I talk until I hear my baby, a tiny weak cry, ushered from his lungs, and then I know.

He is not ready. Before that moment there is still some hope that he will be perfect and healthy and ready to meet the world, but that wimpy cry shatters the light in the room. I feel darkness all around. Everything is silent. The Doctors have stopped speaking, though they continue working, the team assembled around my son, out of my line of sight, works hard to rouse him. His dad is called over. He cuts the cord. The baby is swaddled and passed to dad, who brings him over to my head, where I can glimpse his sleeping form. He is not rosy, but rather some pale shade of pinkish blue. I'm told his foot is bruised ad swollen. My heart aches for him. He will go to the nursery. Dad goes with him.

They stitch me up. I go to recovery. I am given ice chips. They check me. I am okay. I go back to my delivery room. I have to endure another 12 hours of magnesium. Around 3am I am placed in a recover y room. I have compression socks as I cannot walk yet. I have not seen my baby. I cry and ask for him. They cannot give him to me. He is not able to come out of the nursery. He is not able to stay warm. he is not eating well. I cannot nurse him yet. I have to be able to walk and do things first.

Morning comes. I eat. I keep it down. I am forced to stand and walk. I walk to the nursery. I sit, and cry, beside my son, and I hold his tiny fingers. I massage his black and blue foot. I talk to him through my tears. I cannot take him out of the warmer. He is having breathing trouble. They watch him. Some time the next day, I can hold him. Finally. I am pumping for him, but it is not much. Just a little for now. It's something I can do when so much else is out of my control .

He makes progress and finally he is released to our room, but the next day, he is sent to NICU . We follow. Seeing him there in the isolette with all the wires is torture. But they assure me when he is warm, they will help us hold him, care for him, love him. And we do.

Five days later, Wednesday, a week after his birth and one day, we are home. It is still no easy thing, as he still struggles, and I still fight fear, but my son is here. He is lying next to me, sleeping. His five pound body barely makes a dent in my mattress. But my heart brims with joy and sadness.

Joy for his life and for his beauty, sadness for all the shattered expectations. Perhaps it hurts more because we likely will never have another, or because some day, this story will be part of his life, part of the history of how he came to be, and I somehow wish I could change it for him. I wish I could make it more beautiful, more like him, my peaceful frog prince, but I cannot. I can only take comfort knowing, that out of something rather unlovely, a beautiful child thrives. I met my son in fear, embraced my son in hope, and will raise him in love.

*** And then the following day I went back and added the positives I could think of...***

ONE... my husband was a GREAT support during my c-section. He talked to me through the whole thing.And I remember looking in his eyes after asking the Dr if I was going to die.. and knowing that it was going to be okay. His voice was all I needed to hear. I wouldnt have made it through it without him there....

TWO... my doula was GREAT with heloping me cope with the pitocin and magnesium. She rubbed my feet, massaged my back, brought me cool cloths for my face, and reminded me to change positions. She helped me to the bathroom, and probably saw more of me than anyone ever needed to, but still was so sweet and reassuring even in my terrified state.

THREE... my friend Tesa was lots of fun, which was a good distraction. We all talked and laughed through most of the induction attempt. She reminded me that birth is supposed to be lighthearted, which is just how i HAD hoped it would be... and even though it didnt turn out to be tht way, I was able to enjoy most of my induction and stay relatively peaceful even though I felt terrible and scared beyond belief....

FOUR... seeing my son... I cried. He was beautiful, even if he wasnt the perfect color. He made faces at me, and I think I even saw his eyes one second before they took him away. I stroked his cheek, and hoped it was enough love to get him to fight ... and it was...

FIVE... God provided the right person for each of my shocks during the process.

Vanessa called me just moments after I was told I was having an emergency c-section and she came to the hospital to sit with me while my husband arrived. I was a wreck-- she'll tell you. She had been through a c-section with the twins, and was able to tell me it wasn't all terrible.

Dawn showed up in the middle of my finding out Silas was being admitted to NICU. We had been prepping for discharge the following day. She had been through a NICU experience, and helped me make sense of my world at that moment.

So thankful for God's hand on us... in all these ways... It still hurts to remember it all, but the good part is that my son is beautiful, mostly healthy, and growing. Maybe it wasn't how I planned it. Maybe it wasn't even how God intended it, but He worked it all out for good. Through every obstacle we faced, we have overcome.