The birth story

Bad sign: Laying spread-eagle on the hospital bed not two minutes post-partum, I was bleeding and alone. My husband, the doctor and the medical staff had rushed from delivery to attend to my un-breathing baby.

7:30 a.m.: Avalanche of Amniotic Fluid
1 centimeter

I felt like a celebrity when we walked into the hospital. Nurses already knew who we were and my phone rang like the homecoming queen on a Friday night. Pain was moderate, excitement was high, but of parenting in general, fear was severe.

8:45 a.m.: Bring on the Pain
1.5 centimeters
Contractions didn’t hurt but my tummy did. Time for a light breakfast.

Noon: Hustle your Bustle
1.5 centimeters
If baby doesn’t deliver within 24 hours of a mother’s water breaking, the baby risks infection and possibly death. Nurses gave me pitocin to amp up the labor process.
I remember laying on my gurney thinking: something isn’t right. I’ve never witnessed a real birth, but from what I learned in parenting class, baby usually lingers on mama’s chest until all photos are snapped. Why is my baby not here?
6:37 p.m.: Took the referral: got an epidural
4 centimeters
My philosophy on medicine is not to meddle with Mother Nature. If you need a procedure, treatment, etc., do it, but if a a child can gain immunity from Chicken Pox through the vaccine or the disease itself, I guess I choose the scratchy, red bumps. Despite our scientific efforts, I don’t believe we’ll ever duplicate our creator.
That philosophy stayed with me in the delivery room... pretty much. My birth plan was to abstain from drugs, if I could. I’m no hero, in fact, I’m pretty much a sissy. In baby class, we learned 90 percent of mothers get epidurals and that the medicine has relatively no effect on baby.
I’m no medical expert, but if my legs act like drunken sailors, something tells me my baby is somehow, at least a little, drugged too.
At 3 centimeters, my doctor told me to consider pain meds. Ok, you don’t hurt so bad now, she said, but you’ll be like this for AT LEAST eight more hours. And then, THEN, you have to push.
Good point, Doc.
An hour later, my legs felt like jello and so did my mind. I rested while the nurses looked at my charts, WHOA that’s a big contraction, she said. Great, I thought to myself. Wake me up when its time to push :)

The student nurse walked in: he’ll be OK, she said. The nurse walked in: He’ll be OK, she said. My husband walked in, his face as pale as Pampers, he’ll be OK, he said.

11:45 p.m.: The Big Show
Nurses made me push before my doctor arrived. Many women take two hours to get baby out. All that Hollywood delivery drama about one big push and it’s over... TOTALLY untrue.
Nerves were high about the first push. But it wasn’t the pushing that worried me as much as just becoming a parent in general gave me the shakes.
So, the nurse said. Are you ready?
I don’t know if it was the nerves or the pushing itself, but I puked.
That’s pretty gross and well, TMI, but it turns out, many women “puke their babies out” the nurse said. I only tell you that because had I known, I may not have been so embarrassed. As if puking should embarrass a gal wearing no pants in a room with almost every nursing student at Jamestown College.

Midnight: The Beat of Two Hearts
Still not out, baby’s heartbeat dropped as mine raced. The nurses flipped my drunken legs from one side to the other and I grasped the gurney bed bars like I was drowning. Nurses move the mothers whose babies' heartbeat drops because maybe she or the baby is putting pressure on the umbilical cord. Typically, that relives the pressure and baby’s heartbeat can return.
It wasn’t working.
For 20 minutes they rolled me back and forth, draping cold wash clothes on my head, turning on the fan, removing my socks and popping Tylenol as I’d sprung a fever. Sucking air through an oxygen mask, I breathed as hard as I could, hoping the purified air would purify whatever ailed my baby.
Get the paperwork ready for a c-section, one of the nurses said.
My husband turned white and sat down. Do whatever they tell you to, I told myself.
When baby’s heartbeat recovered, so did the pushing. I pushed for two hours, but it felt like with every inch I gained, I lost a foot waiting for the next contraction.

At 5 a.m., a woman with a stork carrying a teddy bear embroidered on her vest entered my hospital room. She didn’t turn on the lights, but she asked me to sign a lot of papers. I’m from the NICU in Bismarck, she said.

1:30: Baby’s blue
Doctor invoked the vacuum as I couldn’t push baby out fast enough. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t protest either. Vacuums bruise babies heads and risk more than that. But in my drugged state, I trusted her judgment.
With the vacuum on, doctor pulled baby at 1:41 a.m. Open your eyes, Katie, doctor said as I watched baby’s head, shoulders and back leave the womb and enter real life. She laid him on my chest, blue and gasping for air. I didn’t know that wasn’t normal.
Nurses gave him my oxygen mask and when that didn't work, wrapped him in a towel and left the room.
That’s not how it’s supposed to happen.
Moms are supposed to hold baby while grandmas take pictures and dads cut the umbilical cord. In a healthy birth, baby doesn’t hit the road.
The nurses and my husband took baby to the nursery where my in-laws were waiting. Watching through the windows, nurses drew the curtains and asked my husband to leave.
The doctor delivered my placenta, but baby wasn’t back. She told me I needed sutures, but wouldn’t finish until baby was OK.
Bleeding and half-dressed with legs unworking, I lay alone in the hospital room.
My husband returned with the doctor and a face that pleaded: don't panic. “He’ll be OK,” they collectively said between words like “collapsed lung” and “pneumothorax.”
My doctor called the aid of what sounded like every physician in Jamestown, at 2 a.m., and recommended we send baby to the neonatal intensive care unit. He’s stable, she said, but may need a tube in his chest. If he does, no one here is qualified to do it. In fact, I don’t even know if Jamestown has one that tiny, she said.
Since baby was stable, a team from Bismarck flew in a few hours later. The doctor told us to sleep, which of course, barely happened. Before the Bismarck team left, the medics stopped by my room so baby and I could say goodbye.
Don’t cry, I said to myself. And I didn’t. Not until three days later.
You behave for these nurses, I said to my son, whose face I couldn’t see but whose little hand I could touch. Most babies grasp any finger grazing theirs. Exhausted and stressed, mine didn’t.
Mommy will see you soon, I said.
My husband, his father and stepfather drove to Bismarck while I recovered. Unable to sleep, I took a bath, some pain medication and waited while the clocked ticked.
By 4 p.m., the doctor said I could leave. That was the second scariest delivery of my career, she said.
For five days, my husband and I along with family and friends, stayed in Bismarck, while baby received treatment at the hospital’s NICU. We counted the mornings and evenings and rejoiced as baby met various milestones like no more spaceman-like oxygen hood, latching on to breast feed despite cords and and an IV tower and the biggest relief of all, taking him home without doctors expecting anymore complications.
***
I can’t say I ever want an experience like this again, but despite its downfalls, breathtaking births have their benefits. The greatest of which is the gift of recognizing the small things... the first time he opened his eyes and how he almost never did; getting to hold him **finally** after two days of not; and most importantly, not taking for granted this new life in our lives.
Given the circumstances, we are very fortunate.
Adversity builds strength and forges bonds the way no other life experience can. I’m thankful for the opportunity to recognize the preciousness of someone who wakes me up at night just to poop on my pajamas. Too easily, the struggles of parenthood get in the way of its joys. I can’t say I’ve mastered the art of enjoying everything about motherhood, but for me and my family, we are grateful.

Special thanks to the medical professionals from Jamestown Hospital, MedCenter One in Jamestown and Bismarck and all the others of whom I may never know.