A word of introduction:
Why do I want to share this story? There is almost nothing about Samuel’s birth that went how I had thought it would go. Processing through this story has been challenging for me, but also surprisingly easy. There are so many narratives about birth in our culture. I recommend (and will continue to recommend) this article. I am working to claim this birth as our story and writing helps me to do that. I share it because I believe in the importance of sharing even birth stories that are labeled as negative or traumatic.
A quick word about our story - like most parents, we researched every decision and made what we felt was the absolute best decision for ourselves and for our baby. For us, that means we planned to have a home birth. Home births, particularly in the United States where emergency medical care is available when needed, are incredibly low risk. We had an exceptional story. However, we still believe home births are an excellent option for some families. Negative comments about this will be deleted. Thank you for being respectful of our decisions and our story.
Trigger warning - this is the story of a traumatic birth experience. We are all okay now, but if birth trauma is triggering to you, you may wish to avoid.
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| My first glimpses of you (here I am comparing a photo of your dad's hand with yours to your dad's hand with mine) |
Dear Samuel,
We left off with a cliffhanger didn’t we? When I was a little girl, I used to read Nancy Drew books. (Let’s be honest, I still read them!) I hated cliff hangers, so I would always stop in the middle of a chapter… or read the whole book in one night. But enough introduction. Let’s continue….
The man and the woman standing above me are my nurses. They ask me if I know what day it is. “March 2”, I say. “But I’m not sure what time it is, so maybe it’s March 3 now.” I then notice a clock - the minute hand moves to midnight, March 3. “Do you know where you are?” they ask. “No,” I respond, noticing that I am on my lying on my back for the first time in six months. I move my hands over my much smaller belly. “Wasn’t I pregnant?”
Caleb asks me if I remember, but I don’t. I am at a nearby hospital, one renown for high-risk pregnancies and extreme medical emergencies. Good thing it’s the closest one to our house.
I don’t remember the emergency transfer from our home to the hospital, riding in the back of Caleb’s car while he did 50 in a 35 during rush hour. I don’t remember that when we were getting ready to leave, my midwife held out her arms to help me out and I walked right past her, not even seeing her. I don’t remember them asking me to make decisions I was not capable of making. I don’t remember that Caleb, my partner and best friend, took over, making scary decisions for all of us. I don’t remember the episiotomy, the forceps, kicking doctors, biting my IV lines, or your shoulder getting stuck and them ripping it out.
“Did I have the baby?” I asked Caleb, that night in the ICU, slowly starting to realize what would take me months or maybe a lifetime to process. “Is the baby okay?”
“We don’t know,” Caleb responded gently, honestly. We held hands tightly, and in the short minutes after, I learned from him that we had you! At that moment, you were an 11 lb (5 kg) baby boy in the NICU who had suffered seizures shortly after birth. I learned of the flurry of medical tests administered to both of us after you was born when I appeared to be conscious, but continued to be non-verbal and non-responsive. And Caleb texted my mom, who was still in the waiting room and came flying in to see me before driving the 50 minutes home for the night, much more relieved than she could have hoped for.
“I love you,” Caleb and I whispered back in forth to each other all night. They were out of cots, so he slept on the floor next to my bed.
I’ve never been able to sleep on my back. But that night, that is exactly how I slept as I received electrolytes by IV and by stomach injection, had my catheter bag emptied frequently by one of my two nurses, and received a heavy duty course of antibiotics, just for good measure. The next morning, I realized how sore I was. My “under carriage” was very painful. It hurt my ab muscles to sneeze. (No one told me it was going to hurt to sneeze!)
Many things happened the next morning. In no particular order, a physical therapist came and helped me get out of bed and sitting up. (Major ouch.) The lactation team came and brought me a pump, and I started the first of many pumping sessions. A nurse came up from Labor and Delivery and brought me an ice pack. Sweet relief. All morning long, nurses and doctors came in to check on me. “Do you remember me?” they asked. My answer was always no. Several of the nurses wept when they came in. “I thought about you all night,” one said. “I was so worried that you weren’t going to be okay. I am so glad you are okay.”
A fairly blunt anesthesiologist who had helped repair my tear explained to me that they had a scale from 1-4. One is alive and normal. Four is dead. “Yesterday I gave you a three,” she said. Not knowing what else to say, I said, “So what would you give me today?” She looked me up and down. “Two.”
I met with the resident and two supervising OBs who delivered “Baby Boy”, your name at that point. I met with anesthesiologists and surgeons who had provided care for me. Through it all, a narrative began to take shape. No one knew why my baby was so big. I had tested negative for gestational diabetes, a common cause of big babies. False negatives are possible on the test, but neither baby nor I had any trouble maintaining stable blood sugar after birth. Most of my numbers were normal. It finally came down to one thing: sodium.
Everyone knows how important it is to stay hydrated. Those who have taken a birth class know that they will suggest to you that you take a sip of water between each contraction to make sure you don’t get dehydrated. This is particularly important if you are hoping to have an intervention free birth. I followed this advice and then some. I found that contractions made me thirsty, so I chugged water between each one. Because I was at home, I also drank coconut water, and an electrolyte drink at one point.
Unknown to everyone at the time, my sweet (big) baby’s head dropped down, and when this happened, his head pinched my urethra shut. I continued to take in fluid, but was unable to eliminate any of it (hence the shadowy memories of people telling me to pee, me trying to pee, and nothing coming out.) Scans taken after he was born showed my bladder and kidneys as extremely distended. I was catheterized after he was born, and they drained 4 liters of urine in an hour. If you’re not handy with the metric system (and I recommend you get handy with it) picture two two-liter bottles of soda. In an hour. Over the next few hours, four additional liters were drained.
A quick word about sodium levels in the blood - Normal sodium levels range between 130-145 milliequivalents per liter. When our baby had seizures after he was born, they learned that his sodium levels were 116. Mine were 114. “114 is critically low.” explained the anesthesiologist. “And we believe the levels had risen by that time.”
She continued, “We couldn’t figure out why you were acting the way you were acting, because you hadn’t received any medication except the light anesthesia we gave you to repair your tear. But people don’t act that way from that anesthesia. None of your other numbers explained it - but a sodium level of 114 absolutely does.”
Another doctor shared, “I am so glad your midwife made the decision to bring you in when she did. I truly believe that that saved your life.”
I signed off for the doctors to publish a case study on my, no, our experience. As the dust began to settle from the day before, I began to recover from my shock and I began itching to see you. Because you were in the NICU and I was in the ICU, neither of us was cleared to change floors. I started asking every doctor and nurse who came in when I would get to see you. I had waited for so many months already! To know that you were so nearby but that I couldn’t see you was so hard! My parents, Caleb’s parents and siblings came to visit and went down to see you, bringing me back photos which I cherished and tried to wrap my mind around. The only thing was that even in these photos, I couldn’t really see you.
Oh wait - I think I forgot to mention something. Because your seizures happened within six hours of birth, and because when they happened, no one knew the cause or the severity, the strictest protocol was followed. You were put in what is vaguely referred to as “cooling therapy” but is more accurately described as therapeutic hypothermia. You were put on high levels of morphine to keep you relaxed and to prevent you from shivering and warming yourself up. The morphine depressed your ability to breathe, so you were also put on a tiny C-PAP machine. Then your body temperature was dropped to around 92 degrees for three days. I will forever be grateful that the first thing Caleb did when I was carted off to surgery was to go in and do skin to skin with you. It brought me so much comfort to know that you knew your dad’s warm embrace before you had seizures and before you were made very cold. The photos I mentioned above were photos of a very big baby that was covered with wires, tubes, and machines.
“He has my eyes, your toes, and my hands,” was one of the first things your dad said to me about you. (All accurate, even today.) At one point during the morning, a nurse told me that my ICU status had been lifted. This meant that I was cleared to be transferred off the floor, but had to wait for a bed to open up on the maternity floor. Finally, around 2:45pm, I was wheeled down the hall, down the elevator, and to your NICU room. Nurses smiled at me, “Are you Mom?” they all asked eagerly. “You look great! We’re so glad you’re here!” It felt like a safe and happy place. I was so eager. “Yes!” I thought to myself. “I am Mom! I am going to see my baby!”
The tech who was wheeling me stopped at the door of the room. It was dark, to keep you from being too stimulated (and therefore warming yourself up). I had barely been able to walk or stand, but I suddenly found strength. Nothing was going to stop me now. I sanitized my hands at the door, picked up my catheter bag and slowly walked into the mostly quiet room, the only noise being the puff of the C-PAP machine.
It was a moment that was nothing like I expected. All pregnancy long, I had yearned for the moment right after delivery when the baby is placed on Mama’s chest. I was waiting and hoping that moment was going to help my mind connect all the kicks and wiggles and hiccups I’d been feeling to the actual infant in my arms. I was waiting for the midwife, Caleb, or maybe even myself to swoop the baby up in an arc from delivery to my chest, moving the baby across a symbolic bridge spanning the foggy underwater world of “in utero” to the clear sharpness of newborn. The loss of that particular moment haunts me.
And yet, all of that was forgotten or placed aside as I stepped up to your isolette. “Can I talk to him?” I whispered to the nurse. “Of course!” she said.
So good ellen & what. a. whirlwind.
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