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Birth Story: Trust Your Instincts

Corinne • Thu, Oct 12 • Wife. Xen's Momma. 👶🏿❤️😺. Chicagoland.

Okay, here we go.

On Monday, 10/09, I woke from a nap and realized I hadn't felt my baby girl move all during my sleep. I was due 10/13 so I'd been pretty nervous for the last few weeks. I decided to do some kick counts and ate some very sweet ice cream which she usually loves and gets to kicking within five minutes. However thirty minutes later there was nothing. So I made a PB&J; and ate that. Thirty minutes later, she finally started moving but they were very slight. For the last five months, this girl had been beating the inside of my uterus like a drum and now she was being quiet. 🤔 I didn't like it. My mom kept saying she's running out of room but that happened weeks ago and her changing her pattern at the last minute just didn't sit well with me.

So I called my doctor, who is also my big cousin, and though she said baby is still meeting her kick counts, if I'm not comfortable then I should go in. So I talk to my SIL who urged me to listen to my gut. At 7pm I called my in-laws and they decided they would come and get me. I sent texts to my husband, who works nights, and my parents who were in the middle of a bowling league game. Let me say I am a natural worrier, so my mom really thought nothing was wrong and I'd be sent home. That being said she and my father didn't come with me to the hospital but asked to be kept in the loop.

I get to the ER and am immediately checked in and whisked away to Labor and Delivery where I am told to change and hooked up to a monitor. I explain to the nurse what I'd been feeling and so I am monitored for about an hour. She returns and tells my in-laws and me that the baby isn't making movements that she likes and she has called my doctor. they agreed to monitor me for fifteen more minutes and if baby still isn't doing what she should they would keep me and start the process of induction. 😮

I was shocked and a bit nervous. I, like my mom, was expecting to be told that everything is fine and they'd send me home! So now my MIL is furiously texting the whole family including my mom and husband. Nurse returns after fifteen minutes and confirms that they are going to admit me and start a 12 hour round of cervidil to soften and dilate my cervix since I am less than 1cm. Thus begins my long night.

Hubby arrives shortly after midnight and we settle in. The cervidil is removed around 1030am at which point my doc pops in to check my cervix which has softened but not dilated. What to do? Start ANOTHER 12 hour round of cervidil! But first they let me eat, relax and shower. At 1pm Tuesday they insert another dose of cervidil below my cervix. I'd been having very mild crampy contractions this entire time and I was certain my baby wouldn't arrive until Wednesday. But she had other plans.

At 3pm my contractions were suddenly so bad that I was crying silent tears. They suggested I go on a walk but the nurses took forever to figure out the portable monitor and my contractions were only growing in intensity. So I laid back down and began moaning, groaning, crying and squeezing hands.

They checked me and realized I was a 4. I reluctantly agreed to an epidural which didn't even do anything but numb half of one side of my body and increase the pain on the other! At five o'clock I was a 7, but by 6:15 I was a 9 and begging every person in the room to let me push. My doctor showed up and instructed me how to push. It felt like an eternity but it was only 11 minutes worth of pushing and my baby girl tumbled into the world, already lifting her head and looking around the room as they lay her on my chest!

I can't believe she's mine--ours.

I shudder to think what could have happened if I'd stayed home. I never did get a possible explanation for her lack in movements but I'm glad I listened to my sister in law and trusted my Mommy Intuition.

The Epidural was hell, the contractions were a monster, I tore and got stitches, my tailbone is killing me, and they ended up giving me oxygen. This was the most traumatic experience I've ever been through. I want to cry just thinking about it.

But DAMN! Look at the payoff!