September 28, 2021. I was late. “I’m definitely not pregnant”, I tell myself as I rip open a test. It never happens on the first try. Positive. This cannot be right. I head over to the Target and get three more tests. Positive. Positive. Positive. Ellie Mae and Hank now think I’m insane because I’m sitting there crying and hugging them. Brit’s at work and I wanted to tell him in person, so instead I drove over to the cemetery because Pop-pop would definitely want to hear this. The rest of the day was agonizing. That night, laying in bed, I plop a test on Brit’s chest. Then three more. “I don’t want to look but if there are this many I feel like it can’t be negative.” He was right. The next 4 months go by perfectly. We start the new year in a bliss knowing that everything is going well – we have a beautiful, healthy, baby boy on the way. February comes around and I start to feel under the weather. I told myself it was just a cold, but that cold then had me bed ridden for 2 days. Finally, I said I would test for Covid. Positive. I’m crying again but this time it’s not happy tears. This time I’m scared. The doctor tells me that I should start taking baby aspirin every night to try and prevent blood clots, which are common when it comes to Covid. The next couple months are scary, but I try not to think about it. We have a baby shower, we get the nursery ready, we take a birth class, and I take my baby aspirin every night.
April 21, 2022. Brit and I went to the doctor so I could get an ultrasound at 34 weeks because of Covid. My doctor wanted to do an extra growth scan to make sure the baby was still on track. He was, and he was ready to come out because no matter how hard the ultrasound tech tried, she couldn’t get him to move his head away from my pelvis. This should have been my second warning. My first warning should have been the sporadic contractions I had been having since the day before, but wrote off as back pain. I’m not in labor. We got home and Brit went to work. I, still dealing with the “back pain” because I’m not in labor, decided to try a yoga class, but it didn’t help. I took a shower, but it didn’t help. I walked to the grocery store thinking movement had to make it stop. Guess what? It didn’t. I made dinner that afternoon just trying to get my mind off the now pretty constant pain I was feeling. Back pain. Not labor pains. Brit got home and we were sitting on the couch after we ate, he told me he had to go to Home Depot. Great, maybe that will help. I went to the bathroom before we left because obviously I have to pee all the time. Blood. I’m sitting there stunned trying to keep it together knowing I won’t. Brit walks by and I say “Something’s wrong..” I started crying, sobbing actually. “I’m not supposed to be bleeding, it’s too early.” I get out through the sobs. Brit is trying to console me but he’s equally as concerned because it’s all over his face. I call the doctor’s office and got the on-call nurse. She tells me to stand by because she was going to have the on-call doctor give me a call back. We spent a couple agonizing minutes in the bathroom before my phone started ringing. “How much blood?” “Enough to concern me.” “Just come into the hospital and we can check you out.” and we hang up. We put the dogs in their kennels and tell them we will be right back because I’m not in labor. We don’t bring the almost packed bags and we definitely don’t leave with the mindset that the next time we are at home we would have a baby. On the way to the hospital I’m on edge, crying, trying to ease my mind, I’m not in labor. I confuse Brit when the words, “Damn I forgot to get gas.” Come out of my mouth. We get to the hospital and thanks to me and our birth class we know where to park. Into the ER we go because the main lobby is closed at this point of the night. We tell the receptionist we need to get to labor and delivery. She said she would have someone come out and walk us there. They offer me a wheelchair but I don’t take it because I’m not in labor. Wheelchairs are for women who are about to have a baby and I still have 6 weeks. The walk feels like years, the nurse asks me “is this your first?” “Yes.” “Are you excited?” “I’m not in labor, I’m just here for a checkup” (at 7:30 at night), she was silent after that. We went through the huge doors marked labor and delivery and were taken to a room. The nurse is nice but she’s asking me questions that make me think we’re going to be here for a while, but we’re not because I’m not in labor. I’m filling out papers, answering questions, and damn my back hurts like a bitch. She hands me a gown and socks and tells me they are going to check me out. I get my gown on and get in bed, the nurse puts on a heartbeat monitor for the baby and a contraction monitor for me. I’m not having contractions though, just back pain, more consistent back pain. She tells me there are no contractions (I know) but she’s going to move the monitor because it might not be picking them up. The monitor gets moved and I hear “Oh wow, you’re having a big one right now.” It’s just back pain. Then the moment of truth, here comes my doctor to give me a cervical check and an ultrasound. I don’t know how long it took because all I remember is her looking at the nurse and whispering, “She’s 4 centimeters.” Fuck. She walks to the side of the bed in between Brit and I. “Well, you’re 4 centimeters dilated. You’re having a baby.” “Today?” “Today or tomorrow.” “So I have to sleep here?” “Yes.” “I told my dogs I would be right back. I have to call my mom so she can go get them because they are going to be so scared.” Also, I’m not in labor. Meanwhile Brit looks like he just saw a ghost, he paced the room for about 2 hours after that. We called our parents and my sister to let them know it wasn’t back pain. We have to get the nurse on the phone to corroborate our story and let them know this is not a false alarm. The next few hours were weird, Brit had to unhook my monitors and walk me to the bathroom every time I had to pee, talk about love. We were trying to joke around but how can you when you have NICU doctors coming in to tell you that as soon as your baby is born he is going to get whisked away, you might be able to hold him when he’s born before we bring him to the NICU but we’ll have to see. She tells us that she’s not worried because 34 weeks is long enough and she sees it all the time. The one thing about a NICU baby is their lungs need time to form, so I had to get 2 shots, spaced 12 hours apart…in my ass. First shot was at 9pm, so I knew I had to make it to 9am which shouldn’t be a problem since I’m not in labor. Brit tries but fails to fall asleep on the super comfy couch they have in the room for him. About 1am I’ve had enough. I ask for my epidural because this is when I’ve finally accepted that this was happening and I wasn’t going to stop it, I am in labor. All I have to say about epidurals is that they are magic because once I had it I didn’t feel a damn thing, back pain who? It did however make me super nauseous. So instead of feeding me ice chips, Brit had to keep holding my hair back while I puked into doggy bags.
April 22, 2022. Morning is met with a popsicle for breakfast, which I swiftly puke up. My mom got there just in time for the second shot in my ass, phew. After the shot they tell me they are going to try and let me dilate more on my own instead of breaking my water. We sit around for a couple more hours then it happens, one of the doctors comes in for a cervical exam, “Fully dilated. Give me the hook.” “I’m sorry, the what?” My question is met with a gush of warm water. He says it could be any time now so naturally I start to freak out because I definitely don’t want to push out a baby. Too late. I’m told that I’ll know when it’s time to push, and boy was she right about that. Once it was time it was like a NASCAR pitstop in the room: the bed transformed, the nurses brought in a bunch of NICU things, no less than 10 nurses were running about preparing and scrubbing in. Then it happens, it’s time to push. I get a crash course in breathing – I didn’t know I needed. “Deep breath in, hold for 10 seconds while you bear down, breathe out.” I can do that. The doctor comes in and tells me at my next contraction I’ll push. It wasn’t what I expected, it was tiring, don’t get me wrong but it wasn’t like the movies. I wasn’t in pain. I didn’t scream. I was watching “Crikey It’s The Irwin’s”. The doctor would ask me each time if I wanted to do an extra push and every time I said yes because I just wanted to see what my baby would look like. Also I really wanted a sandwich. In between pushes it’s like I have a room full of my own cheerleaders because everyone is hyping me up telling me how great I’m doing. Brit’s holding a leg and has decided to watch the whole thing which is super impressive. At 12:58pm, a baby. Everyone says they hear the baby cry and it’s the best sound ever, but I can honestly say I didn’t. There was so much happening in that moment I really don’t remember a thing. I did get to hold him before they whisked him away. It was surreal, super exciting, but also terrifying. I got my sandwich after that.
April 22, 2022 – May 4, 2022. Nothing can prepare you to visit your baby while they are covered in cords with monitors all around. He was regulating his temperature and he was breathing on his own. It was just eating without a tube he needed to work on. I told myself to take it easy because a lot of people have it way worse than us. We should feel lucky. I know now that trauma is trauma and I allowed myself to make room for it, let myself be upset by it. For 2 weeks we had to leave our baby at the hospital each night. For 2 weeks we sat in the NICU rocking chairs holding our baby, making sure not to get too far away from his monitors. For 2 weeks I cried because I was supposed to keep him safe, if only for another 6 weeks.
My placenta was the culprit. Bitch. Placental abruption they tell me. There was a clot that made it start breaking away from the uterine wall so my body put me into labor. There are some theories about why it happened, but I won’t be sharing. And if you think you have a theory keep it to yourself because no offense but I truly don’t care to hear it. I’m just telling my story as it happened in a very vulnerable way.
I also quickly want to shout out the Bryn Mawr Hospital Labor and delivery, maternity, and NICU nurses for being the best of the best.
xoxo,nikki
ForTheMoms 