Samuel August Lindsey: A Birth Story

***Disclaimer: this is a slightly traumatic birth story and could be triggering to some*** 

I guess I will start this birth story with April 2nd, the day after Easter. My cousins had come up to visit and give me a haircut. I was just sitting on my hospital bed talking to them when my water broke. We knew that I was at a very high risk for this happening because all of the bleeding weakens the amniotic sac. When I realized what had happened I told my nurse and they moved me over to labor and delivery.

They gave me another round of steroids for his lungs and magnesium for his brain. The doctors told me that most women go into labor within 48 hrs of their water breaking, and that 95% will go into labor within one week. They did an ultrasound and found that baby was head down, which meant I would be able to labor normally and wouldn’t have to have an automatic C-section. They told me after the water breaks, it is very hard for baby to switch positions, so he would most likely stay head down. They watched me overnight in labor and delivery to see if I was having any contractions, and I wasn’t. They sent me back to my antepartum room the next morning. 

5 days later, Saturday April 7th, I started having contractions 3-7 minutes apart, lasting for about a minute. They were only slightly uncomfortable, but they were very consistent. They continued all night, all day Sungday, and all Sunday night. They were still mild enough that I was able to sleep most of the night, but by Monday morning they seemed to pick up a bit. It was hard for me to tell if they were actually getting more painful, or if my tolerance for them was just waning after dealing with them for so long. 

They weren’t wanting to do a lot of checks for dilation since my chance for infection was already high with my water broken. So unless my contractions started to get longer and more intense, they weren’t really treating it as labor. They even ran some tests to make sure it wasn’t a kidney stone or something else causing the contractions. 

Monday night I slept very fitfully. They gave me some Benadryl and Tylenol before bed and that made it so I could sleep from about 1030-2. Then my contractions randomly stopped for 2 hours around 530 am, so I was able to get a couple more hours of sleep before the they woke me up again at 730. 

And so it continued all day long. I would have a contraction every 4-5 minutes at this point, lasting at least 1 minute, and they were definitely getting more painful. I told Ben I felt like I needed some support and asked if he could leave work to come be with me at the hospital. He came over and we convinced them to check me around 4 pm. They said I was not dilated at all. This was hard to hear. 

Obviously, I wanted the baby to stay in as long as possible, but at the same time, I was really struggling mentally with not knowing how long I was going to have to deal with these contractions. It was to the point that I had to be listening to my hypnobabies tracks, using a tens unit on my back to help me cope, and Ben was giving me counter pressure. It was such a different labor pattern than with my other births and I just thought maybe my body had to work harder to make it happen so early since I normally go overdue. 

Finally, around 6 pm I broke down. The pain was so bad, so deep in my hips, that it felt the same to me as when I was dilated to a 10 with Charlie. I told my nurse that I didn’t understand how I could be in so much pain and not be dilating. I told her I needed an epidural or a shot of morphine or something, so she paged the doctor. 

Based on my pain level, the doctor decided she wanted to check me again. This was at 6:35 pm. This time she said I was 4 cm dilated, but wanted to know when my last ultrasound was, because she thought she felt baby’s butt. I told her it was last week, he was head down, and there was no way he could have turned without water in there. She rolled in an ultrasound machine and confirmed that, somehow, he had flipped breech. She started yelling out the hall for nurses to come help and a bunch ran in the room. The doctor told the nurses we needed to get my bed to L&D so that they could try to get one more bolus of magnesium in before doing a csection. 

I won’t lie, I lost it. I have always been terrified of surgery and I had thought I was totally in the clear with him being stuck head down without water. I started bawling and asking if they could just turn him and she told me he was too small to do a version. I was absolutely hysterical and also still experiencing very intense contractions. The next thing I knew they were running my bed through the hallways to L&D.

We get to L&D, they get some monitors on me, and start hooking up some magnesium. However, at this point I’m making some pretty weird, deep, guttural noises that I know are typical of women about to birth a baby. I look at the doctor and tell her I’m feeling a lot of pressure and that I might need to push. She checks me again and says, “Never mind, no time for mag! We need to get to the OR now!” She slams her hand on the emergency button and suddenly the room floods with people. The OR was probably 10 feet from the room that I was in, and when the nurses stopped the bed to grab something the doctor said, “No, leave it, we need to get in there NOW.” 

Next thing I know they are moving me onto the operating table and telling me they have to put me out completely because they don’t have time for anything else. They also wouldn’t be able to have Ben back there because it was too much of an emergency. Apparently, when she checked me again, I was completely dilated and one of Sam’s feet was already out. He was in a jackknifed position and they said his little legs were already bruised from it when they got him out. He was born at 7:04 pm (less than 30 minutes after she said I was dilated to a 4). 

Everything went black for me. Then the next thing I know, I am waking up, shaking, and telling everyone that I’m freezing and my incision hurts. They start wrapping me up in blankets and trying to figure out how to get my pain under control. 

They told Ben that I would probably be incoherent, confused, and wouldn’t really remember anything. Instead, I was totally coherent, remembered everything, and immediately started asking about the baby, and whether or not I had needed another blood transfusion while I was under. 

My mom and Bonnie had gotten there while I was in surgery, so Ben and Bonnie went to go look at him first. However, Ben had been sick all week and thought he could just wear a mask, but they wouldn’t let him. So Bonnie was actually the first person to see him and take pictures to show us. 

Once they got my pain under control, they wheeled my bed into the NICU so that I could see him on my way to postpartum. They told me he was doing really well, and I got to hold his little hand and talk to him. 

So far it has been a very disjointed experience. I wasn’t awake while giving birth to my baby, and now he is in the NICU being cared for by other people. It doesn’t really feel like I had him or that he is mine yet. It was pretty traumatic, and I feel like Ben and I will be processing it all for some time. However, it is a relief to just know that he is here and safe. Life is still going to be far from normal for us, but I’m excited to recover, get some strength back, sleep in my own bed, see more of my older boys, and watch this little one grow.