I am a FTM and had a 1/5 due date but on 12/22 at exactly 38 weeks I was laying in bed at 8:30am on a cozy Sunday expecting to spend the day nesting and cooking soup when I felt a little pressure, a little pop, and then warm fluid gushing into and soaking through my underwear and pajama pants. I called out for my husband and said, “I think my water just broke.” He was kinda shocked and in disbelief and I also wondered if I could be mistaken but I ran to the bathroom where I could see that more fluid was coming out and it was clear. I put on a diaper, texted my doulas, and called my OB. Everyone agreed that I should get cleaned up, eat some breakfast, and make our way to the hospital. I was not experiencing any contractions that I could truly feel. I wanted to make sure I had a good big breakfast so I told my husband to order me some pancakes and turkey bacon from the diner downstairs as I showered. I got dressed, ate, and we called a cab. We were so glad that our trip to the hospital was on a cold Sunday morning with little to no traffic. It took us a leisurely 20 minutes to arrive and we walked in by 11am. Still hadn’t felt any contractions but when I described all the fluid that had been leaking out of me all morning, we were automatically admitted without even a cervical check. It was definitely my waters that had ruptured. Once admitted, we learned that I was indeed having contractions that I wasn’t registering, and that I was 2cm dilated. I had a foley balloon put in and within an hour I was 4cm. Since my water had broken at 8:30, my doc wanted to speed things up with a low dose of pitocin which caused my first painful contraction that I screamed through but quickly learned that standing through them made them a lot more bearable. Still, by the time I was 5cm I got an epidural and was glad to be able to lay back down. By 5pm I was 6cm dilated and my contractions were 2 mins apart. After one long contraction, baby’s heart rate dropped way down and a swarm of people came in and I heard the words “prep the OR” but then the heart rate went back up. They said if it happened again, we’d have to get an emergency c-section. I was so freaked out that my own heart rate met up with the baby’s at around 150 and they told me I had to calm myself down so my doula helped me with some deep breathing and I managed to bring my own heart rate down and keep the baby’s up. By 6pm I was 7cm dilated and it seemed like everything was back on track and we had stopped pitocin to give the baby a break between those fast and intense contractions. Her heart seemed to like that, but it stalled my labor so that by 9pm I was still at 7cm and had suddenly spiked a fever. My doctor said she couldn’t leave baby in me with a possible infection, so we had a choice between starting pitocin again and seeing if we could speed up my labor and quickly get me to the pushing point, or we could do a c-section right then. It was a tough call, but we already had data that told us baby didn’t like the pitocin and by going that route we might end up in a really scary c-section situation anyway, with a dropping heart rate. So we opted to leave baby’s heart rate where it was, and have a non-emergency c-section. Even as a non-emergency, I shook the entire time but my husband was a rock and the surgery went perfectly. We heard her cry big screams as soon as she was out and the doctor yelled out, “oh my gosh a blonde baby!” I am brunette, husband is blonde. She scored a 9 on her APGAR, at both 1 and 5 minutes but because I’d had a fever she was only in my husband’s arms and next to my face on the operating table for a few minutes and then had to go to the NICU for six hours of observation while I recovered. My fever came right down. Husband ran back and forth between us, and I sent syringes of colostrum down with him a bunch of times so she could eat. She was born at 9:54pm on 12/22, the first night of Chanukah and the first night after winter solstice which is meaningful to us as Jews. She will always be our light in the darkness. By 5am on 12/23 she joined us in our private room (thank goodness we were able to get one) and we spent the day getting to know each other.

I am recovering well from surgery, she is 100% healthy, and we expect to bring her home on Christmas Day.

Her name is Violet Ann to honor the memories of my husband’s tenacious maternal grandmother Violet, and my beloved, hilarious aunt Ann.