My Birth Story

I’ve been reading all of these wonderful, empowering birth stories and felt extremely compelled to share mine. It was a very long, difficult, unexpected road.

On January 10th, 2018 I had a routine checkup and final ultrasound with my doctor. I was 36w 5 days at that point, and had been experiencing the worst migraines, and swelling I’ve ever had. My feet were 3x normal size, as were my legs, arms, hands, and face. Not to mention, I was having crippling migraines, sporty vision, and dizziness.

Upon further observation, doctors noticed high levels of protein in my urine, and my blood pressure was abnormally high for me (160/98, compared to 110/60).

So, my doctor made the executive decision to send me over to the hospital for observation and potential induction. Shortly after arriving to the hospital, my migraine got progressively worse, wasn’t going away with medication, and I began having minor contractions. They began me on an IV of magnesium citrate to attempt to combat the blood pressure and migraine. After 6 hours of unsuccessful luck, they induced me.

The process began with 4 rounds of internal medicine every 4 hours( something stating with c), the first round dilating me to 1cm, the others stalling me at 2cm.

So here we are 16 hours in, minor contractions, splitting headache, and no progress. They decided to put a foley ball inside my cervix in order to dilate me to 5cm so they could break my water. At 3am on Jan 12, they put the ball in. It was the worst thing ever. My husband called it a medieval torture device. 😂

Around 7 am that morning it fell out, indicating I was 5cm. So, they came in to break my water. At this point I had done all of this Unmedicated, but I had hit my breaking point and asked for an epidural. That was administered around 11pm that when I was 7cm dilated. Unfortunately for me, the baby was face down and pushing so much pressure into my rectum that the epidural didn’t work.

So there I am, 35 hours into this, peanut in between my legs, screaming and shaking violently. I continued to feel the need to push and continuously told the nurse. The would check me and disclose I wasn’t quite there yet.

Finally around 2:45 I was 10cm and ready to meet my babygirl. I pushed for 45 min, and she made her glorious entrance into the world, completely destroying my moms shoes, snd my midwifes shoes.

They placed her into my chest, and it was a glorious moment, one I had so eagerly been waiting on. But I knew something was wrong.

My midwife started to panic and began calling nurses and doctors into the room, and I continued to feel a steady pour of fluids out of me, once I passed the afterbirth. Not only his, but I began to lose oxygen and couldn’t breathe. I was screaming for someone to grab the baby because I knew I was going to pass out . My husband jumped up, ripped off his shirt, and put the baby on his chest in the chair beside of me.

Everything from there on out is really a blur. Nurses were coming in and out asking me for my power of attorney, signing blood transfusion paperwork, and everything else. I had a huge oxygen mask on my face, and began feeling extremely queasy l, light headed, and not myself.

Turns out, I never stopped bleeding. In a couese of 10 min I lost 2000mL of blood because my uterus didn’t close back up, snd my doctors couldn’t get it to stop. My blood pressure, which had spiked for the entire day, drastically dropped. They administered medicine, stitching, and blood in order to help me recover. After about 35 mins of continuously losing blood, it finally slowed. By that time I had lost nearly 3500mL of blood.

Thankfully once they stopped the bleeding, everything began to go uphill. Once I could breathe again, they removed the mask and let me hold my baby girl.

This is the miraculous thing you guys: After an hour of skin to skin contact with my sweet baby, my blood pressure normalized. My migraine subsided, and my vitals normalized. Skin to skin not only helped her, but it completely stabilized me. She saved my life, because if my vitals had continued like they were I could’ve seized, but thanks to my sweet girl, everything normalized.

She was born 3 weeks early exactly, and today was her original due date. I am so lucky that God was watching over the both of us, so lucky my husband is so supportive and loving, and so lucky for the amazing staff that was there that day.

I can thankfully say my sweet Amelia Reign and I are doing just fine and recovering well.