My clinical due date was set for May 8, 2021, the Saturday before Mother's Day.
Naturally, this is the date I planned for and told my work's HR and the FMLA specialists
as well as my own boss and all of my friends.
By 30 weeks pregnant, which was around the end of February,
my belly was beginning to get very large.
In comparison to photos of it from my first pregnancy around 30 weeks,
I was actually a little bigger there
(But a little thinner and more taut in my butt and thighs this time).
This time, as I ventured further into my third trimester,
I began to experience a lot more pain.
By the end of most days,
whether I had spent them sitting at my desk at work
or running errands and taking my two-and-a-half-year-old to the park,
My lower back hurt and my pelvis and hips would lock up
also causing pain
so that in the evening, it was hard to find a comfortable position
to sit in or to sleep in.
This pain would be unnerving at the end of the day,
but I would get a decent amount of sleep and
the next morning would be a fresh start.
And then we came to the week of Easter.
Easter was the first weekend in April this year.
From about March 25 until a few days after Easter,
I had a horrible bronchial cough.
It started from oak pollen but turned into bronchitis.
I would cough so hard, I would nearly throw up.
I wonder sometimes if it caused the baby to drop early.
By the week leading up to Easter, the pain in my back
and hips grew even more persistent.
After Easter, there were a few nights that I
could hardly sleep because of the sharp back pain.
At work, I could not stay comfortable at my desk.
On Friday, April 9, I called my OB-GYN and asked if
this escalating pain was a reason to worry.
They said it was not unless my water broke.
On Saturday, April 10, I was officially 36 weeks pregnant.
I wondered how I would endure the pain for another month.
I was planning to call a holistic clinic that I go to in Jacksonville
and try to schedule an acupuncture appointment in the coming week.
On Sunday, April 11, after church, I spent a few hours making food for the week.
I also did some laundry and cleaning.
This is actually a routine I carried out on many Sundays.
This particular Sunday, I was trying to do it quickly because
there was a church function for moms happening at 5:30,
something that only occurred once a month,
and I knew I wouldn't have the evening to finish my chores.
I also took note of the fact that the pain in my back returned earlier
than it usually did on an active day.
By the time I arrived at the moms event at church,
I was in pain whether I was walking around or sitting down.
It made me need to go to the bathroom often.
Sitting in a metal fold-out chair only worsened the discomfort.
Propping my feet on another chair would normally correct it,
but not on this particular evening.
My friends at the event noticed my discomfort,
and made suggestions such as "take a warm bath later"
or "go to bed early and get some good sleep tonight."
No one suggested I had any real cause for concern.
The event ended at 7:30, and by 8:00 I was back home getting ready for bed.
I apologized to my husband for leaving him to put our toddler to bed,
because I needed to lie down for the pain.
I got into my bed with a heat pad on my back and found
an odd but somehow mildly helpful position with my pregnancy pillow
wrapped around my body,
and watched some Youtube on my phone to try
and take my mind off of my discomfort.
At 9:45, just a little over two hours after the church event had ended,
I decided I couldn't fall asleep unless I used the bathroom one more time.
After using the bathroom,
while still sitting on the porcelain throne,
I felt something strange inside my body.
There was some sort of snap- an audible pop- that echoed through my torso area
and sort of vibrated everything.
I thought the baby had maybe kicked too hard and dislocated something.
I could feel him squirming around.
That was when I realized that immediately after the strange "pop"
came a rush of pain in my pelvis.
I thought I was just having some severe intestinal distress,
but then I realized the pain was coming in waves
causing a clenching in my lower abdominal muscles.
I began to panic.
Then I felt some fluid come out.
It was not me going to the bathroom.
The fluid was what I had been warned about-
a light pink color, indicative of water breaking.
I called frantically for my husband, as I stood up,
cleaned up and put my clothes back on.
"I think my water broke, but it's too early!" I shouted.
In my head I had imagined this birth experience being just like my first-
I would be 40 weeks and I would have an induction date.
I would casually waltz into the hospital's labor and delivery ward
and calmly slip into a gown and prepare to have the IV put in,
then I would wait as things progressed slowly through the day,
have my water broken for me,
and have an epidural before I could really feel any true pain.
I would wear makeup and have my hair styled a little bit.
I would look poised and calm, because this was not my first rodeo.
But it was not to be.
After I realized that my water had broken, and was continuing
to trickle out of me with each excruciating contraction,
There was a frantic scramble...
A throwing on of bra and leggings that I had sitting on top
of a pile of clean clothes,
yet leaving my pajama shirt on.
There was no time for hair or makeup.
A hasty scramble played out to wake our toddler,
throw some things haphazardly in his bag,
and shuffle out the door panting through the pain.
My suitcase was packed, but it wound up being left behind.
My husband drove as fast as he safely could,
yet still hurried through yellow lights.
The dark, empty Sunday night roads were a blur
whooshing past as I made panicked phone calls.
My boss needed to know that there was absolutely no way
I would be in at 8 the next morning,
or probably at all for several weeks.
My mom and dad, three hours away, couldn't do anything
about my pain but they could ease my fear.
Wild thoughts raced through my head as my heart raced.
The baby was still moving around inside of me,
but was he in danger?
could the hospital stop what was happening,
putting it off for another month?
Would I need to go on bed rest?
Was I about to have a NICU baby,
and have to take up temporary residence at
the special hospital in downtown jacksonville?
My husband pulled up to the emergency room entrance,
and rushed in with me. I had called them ahead,
asking what to do, and they said come right away.
A nurse greeted me and told me to sit in a wheelchair.
They took me to the second floor,
and I said I needed to go to the bathroom rather desperately.
They let me use one in a vacant room.
I struggled to leave that bathroom because fluid was coming out
faster and faster.
The contractions made me think that I had to go number two.
They helped me get out of that bathroom and into the room
I would stay in to deliver the baby.
I was crying out in pain as they wheeled me around the hallway.
I wasn't screaming bloody murder,
but I couldn't just be quiet either.
These contractions seemed to be every ten seconds.
I think a nurse said that they were every two minutes.
My husband didn't arrive in my room until probably
fifteen minutes later, after my friend came
to get our toddler from him down in the ER.
Luckily, he had only missed me hollering.
My heart was racing, I was frantic and sweaty.
I was begging for someone to get me out of my pain.
They kept saying they would as soon as they could.
They kept saying "you got this" and "you're so brave"
No, I didn't and I really wasn't.
I was six centimeters dilated.
It was clear now they were going to deliver the baby and soon,
but I still didn't know if he would be okay.
This was the final hour of April 11,
and he wasn't due until May 8.
By 11:30, my epidural was coursing through my lower extremities
and my heart rate returned to normal and I could breathe steadily again.
I was able to make a few small jokes, per my usual way of being.
They turned off the lights and left us alone for awhile,
with a monitor loudly broadcasting the baby's heartbeat.
My husband and I tried to joke around and look at funny memes on his phone.
I was instructed to call them when "it felt like it was time to push".
I can't really describe that exactly,
but it is true what they say... you do feel kind of like you need to go number two.
Just after midnight, it did begin to feel like my body was trying to push.
A test run revealed that now I was fully dilated and trying to push
did move the baby down the canal.
When my first son was born, the doctor said I pushed for 45 minutes,
but it only felt like five minutes.
I had lost all sense of time.
I just remember many, many very hearty pushes.
His head was huge.
It took some effort.
This time, I only pushed for a few minutes.
Maybe there were five or six pushes,
and there he was.
His head was much smaller,
he was tiny,
but his sharp little cries pierced the room right away.
I didn't even have a moment to worry that he was alright.
The on-call doctor and the nurse laid him,
still wet and sticky, on my chest.
He was tiny, much tinier than his older brother had been,
but perfect.
With my firstborn, it took 11 hours from
the moment the nurses inserted the IV full of pitocin around 7:00 am
to the moment he entered the world, at 6:19 pm.
For this baby, my water broke at 9:45 pm,
and the final push brought him out of my womb
at 12:41am- just three short hours later.
I am someone who could never stay up all night,
or even until 3am, on purpose.
If I wanted to stay up late for the sake of fun,
I would grow exhausted by 11pm.
But the sheer adrenaline of the whole situation
was still working its way out of my veins
hours after the baby was placed on my chest.
My husband, always a night owl,
went back home to grab the forgotten suitcase at 3 am,
and I laid with my eyes closed listening to the sounds
of the hospital all around me
but never really slept.
I never had any dreams that night.
I frequently opened my eyes to glance at the swaddled baby
in his clear plastic hospital bassinet.
I was still halfway in shock at how this all went down.
This was a month too soon,
but amazingly,
he had weighed in at six pounds, 10 ounces,
How heavy would he have been if he was born in May?
The nurses called him "late preterm", since full term is 37 weeks.
He was by far not a preemie, yet he wasn't quite fully "ripe" yet.
His skull had a strange line across it where it had not
fully finished fusing.
Parts of his body were covered in soft, whitish "fur".
But his lungs were strong,
as made apparent by his shrill cries,
and he was healthy.
God had His hand on my newborn son
and the whole situation.
There was no NICU stay,
nor any steroids or other treatments
besides what comes standard with all births.
We even departed the hospital sooner than the first time,
after only 40 hours instead of nearly 60.
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