Cohen’s Birth Story

This is a little bit long, but here’ the story!

As many of you know, Cohen’s original due date was supposed to be March 11th.  About 3 weeks ago, I started to have some problems with elevated blood pressure, which eventually lead to my doctor making the decision that we needed to go ahead and induce labor a couple of weeks early.  On Monday, February 22 I was 37 weeks, 5 days pregnant and we were told to check into Labor and Delivery at 11:00 pm to induce.  Curtis, mom, and I carefully drove to the hospital through the snow to meet our little guy.  I was nervous and unsure of what to expect, but also really excited.  When we got there I was already dilated to 3.5 cm and I was about 60% effaced and contracting (mildly) every 2-3 minutes.

After 3 tries they finally got my IV started and started me on Pitocin.  They were monitoring my blood pressure every 15 minutes, and it was staying elevated (around 150s/90s).  It also got worse every time I got out of bed to go to the bathroom.  The contractions became more regular and somewhat stronger, but not too painful, and the entire process was very slow.  The blood pressure was the primary concern, but we were attempting to avoid having to be on Magnesium, because of the side effects for both me and the baby.  At around 7:00 in the morning I was dilated to 5 cm and was about 80% effaced.  I was no longer allowed to get out of bed because my blood pressure would shoot up, so the nurse encouraged me to go ahead and get my epidural even though I was not having too much pain with the contractions so that they could go ahead and put in my catheter and break my water.

When I was getting the epidural, my blood pressure got high enough that the 10 or so people in the room got a little bit alarmed and very quickly made the decision to start me on Magnesium to prevent me from having a seizure.  The epidural itself wasn’t too bad, but the combination of all of that medication so quickly and the high bp made me super nauseated.  The next several hours are a little bit blurry for me because the Magnesium made me incredibly drowsy and out of it.  I think I may have slept a little bit, and my doctor came in and broke my water to help move things along.  She had to go to her office to see patients, so she introduced me to another doctor who would handle my delivery if she did not make it back in time.  He was an older man with white hair and he’s probably delivered more babies than every other doctor in the hospital combined so I felt pretty comfortable with him, and to be honest I didn’t really care at that point who delivered me.

At around 1:00 they checked me and told me that we were going to be able to start pushing.  They quickly transformed the room and there were more people there than had been there before.  They were still closely watching my blood pressure and I think that there were more people in the room than there normally would have been because they were so concerned with how high it was.  To be honest, I was fairly out of it, but I knew that I did not feel good or “normal.”  I ended up pushing for an hour and 20 minutes and I’m not sure what to say except that I definitely felt it.  There was SO much pressure and at the end it was really painful.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like without the epidural, but it was painful enough with it.  There were moments during the pushing when I didn’t think that I could push any more.  I cried and prayed and and threw up and had a couple of moments that bordered on panic.  My blood pressure skyrocketed and they gave me something in my IV to try to get in down quickly and made me wear an oxygen mask.  Later one of the nurses told my mom that they would have C-sectioned with the BP so high except that the baby was so far down.  Every time I thought that I couldn’t do it anymore, though, that good ol’ standby Bible verse, Philippians 4:13 popped into my head reminding me that I could do all things through Christ who gives me strength.   Finally, the doctor came in and after a few more pushes I felt the biggest sense of relief (both emotionally and physically) that I’ve ever felt as Cohen was finally born.  The doctor was very business like, and it turned out that Cohen’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck once, his foot twice, and had a complete “true” knot in it 3 inches from the placenta.  I remember thinking that it was a little bit weird that the doctor didn’t even ask Curtis if he wanted to cut the cord, but obviously there were more important things to deal with!  Fortunately (thankfully!) Cohen David was perfect.  He weighed 7 lbs, 5 oz and was 19.5 inches long.

Curtis and mom were able to be with Cohen as they gave him his first bath and shots and tended to him, and it was wonderful because they kept him in the room to do all of that.  Curtis went back and forth between Cohen and me, and it took quited awhile for the doctor to sew me up.  My blood pressure was still very high, so they gave me more medication to get it to come down.  I was also running a fever, so they were concerned about getting that to go down as well.  The combination of the medications, the blood pressure, and the fever had me pretty out of it, so I don’t remember too much about the couple of hours right after his birth.  I do remember telling Curtis that this was a “whole different kind of love” and feeling SO relieved that Cohen was okay and that the whole ordeal of delivery was over.  I also thought that he was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen!

We spent that night (Tuesday) in the Maternal Fetal ICU because I had to stay on the Magnesium for another 24 hours after delivery.  By the next day I felt much better, my fever broke, and I was able to be unhooked from all of the tubes and drugs, and Wednesday afternoon they moved us up to the Postpartum floor.  Finally on Thursday afternoon we were able to go home.

My blood pressure is still high (not to a dangerous level), but they said that it may take several weeks for it to stabilize again.  Most importantly, Cohen is doing great.  He is so beautiful and I’m overwhelmed by the miracle that he is every single day.  It really is an entirely different kind of love than I’ve ever experienced, and it makes me love both my husband and my God more and more.  The whole birth experience was not what I thought it would be and it was not what I wanted it to be.  It was scary and long and hard, but it was also absolutely worth it.  I would go through it all over again to have this precious baby in my arms.