My Second Birth Story This Month

Three years ago my youngest (and last) baby was born. Oh, how the time flies. Thirteen days ago, I shared the birth story of my oldest son (here in case you missed it) and now it's time to share the story of my second (and to reiterate, LAST) son's birth story.

Shortly after my older son turned two, I decided that it was the perfect time for him to have a baby sister or brother, so in January of 2006, my now ex husband and I started trying. Since I got pregnant with my oldest on the first try, I assumed that would happen the next time. WRONG. It took 11 (LONG) months to get pregnant...which, if you're doing your math correctly = November. I personally know women who go through years of fertility struggles and my 11 months pales in comparison to their stories, so please don't take offense to it.

The thing was, my ex and I weren't getting along so well anymore and he was working his ass off to support us (even though I worked full time at that point, but he made some bad financial decisions, which is another story for another day). Just mustering up the desire to "try" was hard enough, but to go through 11 months was sort of torture, especially since I had a feeling he'd leave me after I had another baby (another post on another day).

So my OB-GYN had given me a prescription for Clomid (sp?) and I was supposed to take it with my period in November, but that never happened. I thought I was getting sick (as in a cold), but it turns out I was pregnant, so I ripped up the prescription and celebrated! Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was "OMG, I got pregnant in November with my first baby and please, oh please, don't let this one be born on my oldest's birthday". That literally haunted me everyday while I was pregnant.

The pregnancy wasn't as delightful as the first time around for me. I had TERRIBLE heartburn and ended up on Zantac for most of the pregnancy. My first time around I would have sucked up the pain, but it was different the second time. Plus I was exhausted, which was in large part due to the insanely long hours that I worked at my job. I'm talking a 14 or so hour day every Friday. Every week. It was so hard, but I worked up until about 8 weeks before I was due. I'd decided to be a SAHM at that point and because I wasn't feeling so hot, I left work early. And can I just tell you how relieved I was on 08/03 that the baby decided not to come out that day. I was sick over it all day that day.

Shortly before that, I ended up on "light duty" because of high blood pressure. I ended up having to see my OB several times a week because of it and then on a Thursday, 08/16, my blood pressure was so high, my doc sent me straight over to the hospital to be induced. The thing was, my OB was leaving for vacation that Saturday and I figured he just wanted to make sure he was there for the delivery so he'd get paid. That theory was pretty much comfirmed for me when I got to the hospital and my BP was just fine...so I figured he had rigged the BP monitor in the office to have an excuse to send me over. That was FINE with me, because I was done at that point and just wanted to have him out.

A little while later, I am in the hopsital, he broke my water, gave me whatever he gave me to induce me and I was on my way. Except an hour or two into it, I would have a contraction and the baby would stop breathing, so I had to have an emergency C-section. I was so scared going into it. I mean, it was the scaredest I had ever been about anything. Ever. But the baby needed to come out and fast. I had only been in there a few minutes, when I asked my ex if I'd been cut yet and he was like "ya, your guts are out all over your stomach". Reassuring.

The C-section itself wasn't bad. What I hated the most was that I didn't get to hold my baby for about three hours after I had him. Nothing. Once he was out, they had to put me back together, which they ended up doing wrong because they ended up taking me apart a second time and then had to re-put me back together. Anyways, I then fell asleep for a while and it took everything I had to wake myself up so I could see my baby. But once I was up, whatever they gave me during the surgery made me barf every time I moved for the rest of that night. All over myself. That was fun, especially since I couldn't shower yet.

The next day, I was up and about. I didn't take pain meds and forced myself to get up and walk around. I just wanted to be back to normal. But maybe I over did it. I came home on a Saturday (yes, only 3 nights in the hospital) and the following Saturday, my incision re-opened in 4 small-ish spots and I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, which was the most embarrasing thing in my entire life. It was made worse because I had to go alone since my ex had to stay home with the kids until someone could come stay with them. Lucky for me, I knew one of the nurses who worked in the ER and I was seen fairly quickly.

I ended up having a visiting nurse come to my house every day for 13 weeks, but during that time none of them healed. I ended up having a procedure done in the OB's office where he scraped the skin from inside the wounds that wasn't healing out and stitched the "new" skin together and once that healed, I was fine. Thank god.

It was a crazy ride and a few weeks after my incision ordeal was healed, I had my tubes tied and never looked back. Then a few weeks after that, my husband did leave, like I knew he would, but I did just fine without him.

I know that was a long post, but a lot happened during the pregnancy and delivery....and there were so many details I didn't even get into here, but it was all totally worth it. My little guy is absolutley perfect and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.