My daughter's birth story

Every birth story is a special one for the moms who carried their children and brought them into the world.  It’s hard to forget the day you went from wondering what the baby looked like to falling hopelessly in love with the sheer perfection of those chubby little cheeks and wrinkly little feet. 
My daughter’s birth story starts way back at 20 weeks when I was diagnosed with obstetric cholestasis.  From that day on, every week was filled with either blood work, an ultrasound and a meeting with a specialist or an appointment with my OB for results.  This continued for the next 20 weeks and it was made very clear that I would be induced at 38 weeks since anything later significantly increased the risks associated with my condition.  So we scheduled an induction date for March 30.

Turns out that was a good day for deliveries because the hospital was full and there was no room for me but to come in and get checked out.  To say that the doctor on duty that night was lacking in bedside manners was an understatement.  He told me he didn’t understand why my doctor had scheduled an induction, that there was nothing wrong with me and he would write in my file that I should be scheduled for an induction in 8 or 9 days.

Livid is a pretty good word to describe what my husband and I were feeling.  Since it was 9:00pm there wasn’t much I could do but I was determined to call my doctor first thing in the morning.  Thankfully I didn’t have to make the call because the hospital called at 8:00am to say that I could come in for my induction.  Elation is now what I was feeling!

Once settled into the hospital, the nerves of soon becoming a mom were starting to settle in.  Thankfully I had a lot of time to sit around and think about it.  My body was nowhere near ready to let the little one out.  So began a very long and uncomfortable process to getting to 10 cm.  In an unrelated note, I am positive that whoever came up with the various steps of induction was a man.  No woman would let another woman endure Brillo pad-like devices and balloons.  Labour is rough enough without all those extras.

I spent a lot of time roaming the halls because my pre-natal instructor told us that walking helped the labour process. After two days with no results I decided she was a liar.  Finally after the Brillo pad and balloon, the doctors decided I had progressed enough to break my water.  No sweeter words have ever been spoken!  Or so it seemed at the time.  Things progressed quickly (relatively speaking) and 12 hours later I was ready to push.  But just as every other step in the process, things weren’t going as planned so the doctor spoke the three words my husband was most terrified of hearing; Get the vacuum.  For someone who gets queasy in hospitals, he had done a wonderful job at hiding his uneasiness but once those words were out of her mouth, for a split second there was no hiding how he felt.  There was no time to worry about it though and before we could say “Pardon me?” the neo-natal team of 20 had materialized in my room.  Two minutes later, at 4:19pm on April 2, my daughter was born.  A perfectly healthy and beautiful baby.