Birth Story-8 October 2021

 I feel terrible about not doing updates during this pregnancy. The exhaustion of working several part-time jobs and hanging out with my two sweet girls really took a toll on me over the past nine months.

This baby's due date was much anticipated. Her due date was 5 October. My father booked a flight to come out and visit us on 4 October. A couple of our friends were on-call before he arrived. The Saturday before my due date, I had contractions for a few hours in the late afternoon. Because with my two previous babies, I did not have a single contraction before active labor, we wondered if this baby was going to show up three days early. Those contractions fizzled out before we headed to bed.

Fast forward a few days and my father arrived. My two girls quickly fell in love with him again and had so much energy when he was around, showing off tricks and being silly. My husband and I felt relieved when he arrived and felt ready for this baby to show up. My due date came and went without any sign of the baby. I went on lots of walks, ate spicy food, did squats holding my toddler, and watched funny shows. The baby seemed very content with where she was.

On Thursday 7 October, I had my 40 week appointment. The ultrasound was with an OB instead of my midwife. I found out less than a week before my due date that my midwife was going to be on vacation the week of my due date. We were disappointed to hear that, but because we had hired a doula through the hospital, we still felt confident that the birth would be incredible. I had only met this particular OB once- 10 minutes before my last baby was born and he walked into the delivery room at 2:00 in the morning. Because I knew there was a 50% chance that he would be the one delivering the baby, I was pleasantly surprised that he was more personable than when I last met him.

When he learned that the last ultrasound I had received was 20 weeks prior, he had me head over to the hospital to do an ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid levels and monitor the baby for thirty minutes to make sure everything was still fine. As I left the office to drive the five minutes to the hospital, I made my next OB appointment, but I told the girl at the checkout desk, "I adore you, but I hope it's a long time before I see you again."

I was happy to be assigned to a nurse in the hospital that I had met several times. She is a midwife-in-training and had performed several of my checkups. After hanging out in the hospital for ninety minutes and getting a green light, I was sent on my way.

The next morning was Friday 8 October. Our family traditionally does their grocery shopping on Fridays so as soon as our favorite grocery store opened, we packed the girls in the car and headed to the store. While we went to our two stores, I had a few decent contractions, but thought nothing of it. When we got home, we started doing our regular activities. The groceries were put away, the girls started playing with their dad and grandpa, and I mopped the floor.

I put my toddler down for a nap around noon and then realized that the few contractions I had earlier in the day were continuing. I started timing contractions at around 12:15. The contractions were not regular, ranging in time from 4 to 8 minutes, but within just a few, I was surprised at the intensity. I told my husband I thought today was the day, but with the time between contractions and the inconsistency, I thought we had several hours before we would leave.

I started thinking about the potential of having a baby that day and decided to be extra prepared and make the soup we were planning on having for dinner. That way, if we had to leave early, my father and the girls would have a meal they could warm up. After peeling the outer skin off an onion and cutting it in half, I had to stop. Even with the length between contractions, the intensity was starting to pick up. I mentioned this to my husband and he announced, "We're going now." I was a little surprised. I had only been in active labor for around 30 minutes, but he looked serious and concerned. When we told our plan to my father, he was surprised. I had made him aware that we thought it was the day, but he also thought we would be leaving around dinnertime. I gathered the last few things that I needed to bring to the hospital, left my oldest playing a game with my father, and headed out the door around 1:25

The drive to the hospital usually takes just over an hour. Within 15-20 minutes, we could tell that because it was Friday afternoon, our drive was going to be longer than normal because of extra traffic. During the entire drive, I stayed as relaxed as possible, listening to birthing affirmations. The contractions quickly became every three minutes, lasting 45-75 seconds. My husband was a calm driver, not showing any of his agitation over the stop and go traffic. I could tell that he was glancing at my timer whenever we were at a stoplight or it was safe for him to do so.

The closer we got, the more convinced I was that this baby was ready to arrive. Because I had no distractions and was staying quiet and calm, I could feel her slowly moving lower. I was thankful as we pulled off the highway, but I started getting worried. With ten minutes left in our drive, I turned to my husband and told him I was feeling pressure. To his credit, he did not change his demeanor at all, but he started panicking. Neither of us wanted a car baby.

As the hospital came into sight, we both felt relief. Our hospital has a free valet service option. My husband turned to me and asked if we should use the service. Looking at the four cars in line, I quickly shook my head. He quickly found a parking spot and he jumped out of the car, grabbing my bag as I slowly maneuvered my way from my seat. Standing up felt so much nicer than sitting, but I started feeling anxious about getting into labor and delivery. It was around 2:40.

We made it into the hospital and walked past the information desk. "Do you know where you're going?" I was grateful I had visited just the day before so I nodded my head as I tried to ignore everyone. "Wait! You need to grab some surgical masks." Frustrated, my husband grabbed several and accepted a wheelchair on my behalf. After clutching their desk during a contraction, someone from the information desk rushed us to the elevators. We cut in front of someone waiting for an elevator and made it up to the fourth floor. Our group approached the doors to labor and deliver, the assistant scanned a card to made the doors open, and my husband took over pushing, bringing me just inside the doors.

"Stop."

I jumped out of the wheelchair, turned around, and grabbed onto the back of the wheelchair for support. I was done. I knew I would not make it any farther. My husband waved frantically to several nurses sitting at their station. In a non-hurried manner, one came over and tried to coax me back into the wheelchair.

"She's coming."

"You can't have your baby here." Around this time, I heard more activity around me.

Another contraction and I looked down, feeling the baby crowning. "The baby is in my pants!"

Very quickly, a bed appeared behind me and arms gently but forcefully pulled me back onto it. A nurse pulled my pants down. There was a gush of fluid and the rest of her body emerged along with crying (from the baby) and relief (from me) at 2:44 pm. (I am pretty positive she started being born in her amniotic sack.) They placed her on my chest as they pushed me into the same triage room I had been assigned to the day before. The nurses started working and checking on both of us. They helped me with my shirt so I could do skin to skin and threw a sheet over the two of us. Within minutes of the baby being born, my husband texted my father to tell him she had arrived. He was shocked by the speed.

After ten minutes, an OB from my clinic made it to the hospital and with a loud booming voice, inquired as she approached, "Where's that troublemaker?" I had not seen this doctor in almost two years, but she was the OB we used for the first half of my second daughter's pregnancy. She was very personable and I enjoyed chatting with her during my appointments. She told me she was going to help deliver the placenta, but after pulling the sheet back, told me I had done that on my own as well.

We were moved to a room later where they cleaned me up, stitched me up (I tore less than with my previous two), and eventually measured the baby. 8 pounds 7.4 ounces and 21.5 inches long. The exact same size as baby number 2.

Because the birth happened so quickly, we did things out of order. I had to sign a paper stating that I was okay with my husband being present during the birth. I wanted to turn to him and exclaim, "What!? I didn't want you with me during the birth!" I had a COVID test. They asked several questions. The doctor made sure I ordered a dinner and eventually things quieted down.

Later, a woman who worked with the billing department wandered into my room and asked if I was the one who had her baby in the doorway. Word was getting around! She told me that her office was on the opposite side of the floor as the labor and delivery unit. Everyone became very interested in what was going on when they heard a nurse shouting for a warming unit.

I had the same nurse that day as well as the next day. When she returned to my room, she told me that my story was the talk of the department. The main nurse who delivered the baby loved sharing her favorite parts of the story.

We stayed in the hospital for less than 30 hours. I was happy to leave the next day even though they wanted to keep us due to jaundice.

A few weeks later, the main scheduler at my OB office called to schedule my 6 week appointment. She asked me who delivered the baby. After I hesitated and then mentioned the name of the OB who showed up after the birth, I said, "Technically, none of the doctors delivered the baby." "Oh yeah! You are the one who delivered your baby in the hallway! I remember reading about that." I was slightly perplexed. Did I make the office newsletter? I am curious to see what my midwife says when I see her in a couple weeks.

I'm Pregnant and I Feel Guilty

 I never thought the day would come that I am nearly eleven weeks pregnant with a natural pregnancy and it's viable. And I feel guilty about it.

In early February, I approached my husband late one night.
"My period's late."
"How late?"
"Like a week..."
"What are you thinking?"
"I don't know."

I did know. I had done copious amounts of research when my period was more than a day or two late. Can periods be late for reasons other than pregnancy? Can you skip periods when you traditionally have had a pretty regular cycle? Can breastfeeding make you skip a period? That last question was where I hit the jackpot. It turns out that lactating women can have a skipped period. It's normal. I still was anxious. This never happened after my first daughter.

"What do you want to do?"

After talking for a while, I determined that I would not take a pregnancy test unless I skipped a second period. I do not like home pregnancy tests. I have had more false positives on pregnancy tests than actual positives or negatives. After my first miscarriage, the OB center I was at (and then quickly left after they poorly handled the beginning of our infertility) requested I do weekly blood work to check my hcg levels. Once we realized that each blood draw cost over $80, I stopped. The OB clinic was not amused.
"Is there anything else I can do that will not cost $80 a week?"
"Well...I guess you could take a home pregnancy test once a week and then once it comes back as negative, you can do a blood draw a couple weeks later."
I chose that option. Week after week for over a month, I dutifully took the home pregnancy test, cringing when I saw the digital screen light up with "YES." What a liar.

I kept to my decision of not taking a pregnancy test until 12 February. I felt a little off all day. By 13 February, I was noticeably nauseous most of the day unless I was munching on the Aldi brand of extra toasty cheese crackers. By that evening, I knew what I had to do.
We needed to make a CVS run because our sweet baby was teething and she could expel liquid baby medicine from her mouth with high entertainment value for the person not giving her the medicine. We bought her chewable medicine and while we were there, I determinedly walked a couple aisles over to grab a pregnancy test.

That evening between putting the baby to bed and tutoring a sweet boy who lives in China, I took the test. My husband was reading bedtime stories to our three-year-old and I solemnly walked out and stared at him. At a break between books, he looked up. "Well?" I showed him the test. "It's negative?" I shook my head.

A positive pregnancy test for a naturally conceived child has only ever meant one thing to me. A miscarriage. Seeing a positive test brought out so many emotions. I was not excited. I was sad and anxious. I did not want to have a miscarriage again. How would we time the miscarriage? Having a miscarriage when you are childless is one thing, but having a miscarriage when you have two sweet girls who love to cuddle up with you and be with you all the time is another.

That evening, my husband and I started talking about the logistics. "I think it would be best if the miscarriage could happen on a Friday so I have the weekend for all the heavy bleeding. If I could time it, I would want it to start around dinnertime. I think with miscarriage #1, I bled the most heavily for around four or five hours." In a factual manner, we talked through how we wanted it all to happen. It never occurred to us that we would have a little miracle arriving later. 

I picked the worst week to have to schedule an OB appointment. First, there was a huge winter storm to tear through our area and many states. The OB office was closed for most of Monday and all of Tuesday. Second, neither my phone nor my husband's phone worked for the next two weeks due to ice on the cell phone tower. If the OB office tried to leave me a message, I never received one and every time I tried calling from my computer, I never got through to a human. Third, when I was able to connect with someone, they sent in labs for a blood draw and scheduled an OB history appointment for me. In my mind, this made no sense. I didn't need to give anyone an OB history because this pregnancy would not progress. I was told that during the OB history appointment, I would schedule an ultrasound.

The two blood draws went off without a hitch and we discovered that my hcg level was not decreasing like I dreaded.

The day came for the OB history appointment and because our phones were still not working, I drove to a nearby building in town and did the 45-minute long appointment there. The nurse was very sweet, but when she realized this was not an IVF pregnancy like my two daughters, she became very excited for me. "You must be so happy! Did you take more than one pregnancy test? Well, congratulations! You and your husband must be so thrilled." I did not want to tell the nurse that, no, we were not excited, because we did not want to get excited about a pregnancy that we were positive would end in heartache. At the end of the appointment, she told me about the next step. "We really only schedule ultrasounds at ten weeks unless it's high risk." This is my sixth pregnancy. I have two children. Both my children were conceived via IVF. How was this not a worrisome pregnancy? I felt sick with frustration at the end of the phone call. I didn't even bother to write down the date and time that was scheduled for me because I was determined that I would either start to miscarry sooner than that or we could find a different clinic that would do the ultrasound sooner.

No such luck. My husband called a clinic in town and discovered that in our area of the world, ultrasounds are rarely done before ten weeks.

The feelings of frustration melted away within a day or two and I focused on getting through the next two weeks until the ultrasound. The biggest challenge, as we expected, was the closer we got to the ultrasound, the more we talked about the pregnancy as though it were going to result in a live birth. I started thinking about October in a positive light, whereas before the OB history appointment, I refused to look up what a potential estimated due date might be. I began thinking of the baby I was carrying as a boy.

The evening before the ultrasound, we told my daughter. Her original emotion seemed indifferent. We emphasized that we didn't know if the baby would be healthy and if he/she would be able to be born and live with our family.

The day of the ultrasound, we drove the 75 minutes to the clinic. (Road work now means that the drive will be an hour and fifteen minutes. We still feel committed to going to the hospital and working with the midwife and her staff.) My husband decided to make it a family outing with the idea that if I did receive bad news, I probably would struggle driving the distance home by myself.

He dropped me off at the imaging center and he took the girls to Costco to wait out the ultrasound and OB appointment. I was taken back my the ultrasound technician within a few minutes of arriving. I was more than a little glad for the mask I was wearing because I am sure I looked terrified. The tech had the imaging wand on my abdomen within a minute of me getting into position and I glued my eyes to the screen. Almost immediately I felt a wave of relief. I saw a small figure and more importantly, I saw the tremor of a heartbeat. I was strangely very collected as she went through the motions of a ten week ultrasound. Having been to enough ultrasounds with my first two, I was able to correctly identify that I had a sub chorionic hemorrhage even though nothing was said to me. (I was hoping I only got those with IVF pregnancies.) The measurements of our little one gave a slightly later due date which did not surprise me. My estimated due date was given to me based off a 28-day cycle and mine are normally 31 days long. The tech asked me a few times if I was feeling okay. I was speechless the entire time she measured everything. When the scan was complete, she took me through the secret hallways to get to the OB clinic. I passed the nurse that works with my midwife and felt at home. She gave me a very surprised look. "Oh, hi!"

Several minutes later when she called my name in the waiting room, we were able to chat. "You just had a baby! A girl, right? Did you do IVF again so soon? A natural pregnancy!? Congratulations!" When the midwife came in, we had a very similar conversation. After I told her our reproductive endocrinologist had given us a 0% chance of getting pregnant naturally, my midwife told me that she had gotten pregnant with her tubes tied. We also connected when I told her that I provide child care for a friend. She ran a daycare before she went back to school to be a midwife. I really hope she is the one to deliver this baby this time.

We chatted a bit more, I learned that I get to do genetic testing at my next appointment, and I left. My husband happened to be pulling into the parking lot again as I got dressed, so our timing was perfect. I was able to show my three-year-old the ultrasound pics and after scrutinizing them for a few minutes, announced that only two of them looked like a baby.

We make one stop on the way home and I asked her how she felt about the baby. Her eyes got misty as she told me, "I'm just so happy that the baby is healthy!" We were all feeling a similar emotion to hers.

I guess I'm having a baby at the beginning of October!

And I feel guilty. We have five beautiful embryos in storage waiting to join our family. We have a duty to those embryos. I also feel bad because we are supposed to be infertile. I am currently supporting two friends (and maybe a third soon) who are doing rounds of IUI. I dread telling them that I got lucky. Why was I so blessed when others suffer?

We obviously need this baby in our lives this year.