Bringing My Beautiful Baby into the World: My Birth Journey Unveiled

December 23rd, 2022 I had a weird feeling that something was just feeling off with my pregnancy. I have really bad back pain so it wasn’t a big deal to me to be feeling it after cooking dinner that night. I told my husband I was in a lot of pain but I also really wanted to stay up with him to watch Star Wars. After 10 minutes he said, “Let’s just go to bed we can watch this another day.”. It was probably 10:45 pm when we started to clean up. In bed by 11:10 pm. Of course, shortly after falling asleep, I had to go to the bathroom. I felt like I needed to bare down as if I’m on my period but it felt painful so I figured just another weird pregnancy pain. 

It was around 11:45 pm when I got back to bed and realized my stomach was tightening quite consistently.  I started timing them by looking at my Google Home hub. I realized they were about 6-7 minutes apart. The weird thing is iv gone through period pain that was way worse so I was unsure. Of course, pushing myself I felt like I should just triple-check and count again. When the next one was rising my water broke! 

It was just about midnight when I woke up my husband crying telling him my water broke. He asked if I was sure and didn’t pee myself. I kept telling him I know what it feels like to go pee and this wasn’t it. He panicked, warned his mother and she came into the room helping me get pants and a jacket on while my husband ran around the house trying to find my purse, the keys, and his wallet and phone. What else could make this night crazier? The headlight on our car went out that day. So we got into my mother in laws car and set out to the hospital. It was extremely foggy that I had to look at the map the whole time to warn my husband that a turn was coming. The usual 20-25 minute drive to the hospital was a 45-minute drive due to the fog being so bad. 

We get to the hospital around 1 am and go straight to ER. They were expecting me because I called when my husband was driving over there. once I got checked in within 5 minutes they have me going to the labor and delivery area. They wanted me to change and check if I have ruptured so they told me to cough, I gushed out more water so they had the doctor come in to see how far dilated I was.  He told me I’m dilated at a 6 so I can’t be transferred. 

The plan was to have the baby there and then the baby would be transferred to a level 3 NICU. If any problems occurred then he would be med-flighted to the NICU. During the time I was in active labor, I refused pain relief medicine. They really wanted me to hold off until 5 am as much as possible because that’s when the other NICU team would show up and be able to take care of him. 

I gave birth at 4:57 am. the baby was placed on me for less than one minute, then taken out of the room immediately. It wasn’t until almost 6 am that we got the opportunity to go see him. We were only with him for about 25 minutes. Most of the time I was having to sign off paperwork for them to register and transfer him. 

Once he was on the way to the other hospital it felt like forever. As always you undergo a 24-hour watch to make sure theirs no complications. 

During that time my husband went and saw the baby for a few hours then went and got me some necessities since I literally just had my phone, wallet, and pregnancy card.