When I first wrote my birth story, it was all in the context of miracles. And there truly were beautiful parts. Not the least of which is a beautiful boy no one in our family could imagine every living without. But when I would see people in labor on a show, or hear about someone being pregnant, I would find myself having a panic attack. It wasn’t until I started talking about all of the trauma as trauma that the panic attacks around pregnancy and birth stopped. I have come to firmly believe we have to let ourselves acknowledge that hard things are hard. That beauty and pain can, and almost always do, exist together. And that letting hard things be hard does not take away any of the beauty.
It is dangerous to think that only perfect things can be beautiful and good. Or that hard parts of relationships make them have any less love.
So to honor that idea, this is the rest of my birth story.
My third child was unexpected. Our lives had moved far beyond the baby stage, and we had started making plans for what time in an empty next would look like. Our little family was in a very comfortable place, we knew each others rhythms and passions, and life was easy.
We had struggled with infertility before having our other two sons, both are miracles of modern medicine. We had never had to worry about birth control because pregnancy wasn’t even a possibility for me. Until–like most women–I had a fertility spike as I approached 40. (Doctors really need to tell women about this. It is infuriating that they don’t.) And suddenly, I found myself very sick and very tired and my breasts were in constant pain. I was convinced I had cancer.
But a fleeting though made me wonder if… and a second pink line confirmed… I was pregnant.
This news was received joyfully by my tender-hearted husband. I was heartbroken and terrified. I wasn’t ready to lose myself and all my dreams to the never-ending needs of a newborn. I didn’t want to have to go back to potty-training, and worrying about abusive elementary school teachers, and solid food, and never sleeping. I had done all of that, and loved it. But I also knew how hard it was, and I did not want to go back.
As I sobbed in my husband’s arms, he comforted me with his excitement. And over time my heart softened and I began to love the possibilities growing in my belly.
But pregnancy is hard in many ways. In the best of times, it is worrying that every choice you make with your body is doing damage to the future baby. Some people have beautiful and easy pregnancies. And some people go through life with a happy optimism that everything will work out in the end.
I am not those people.
On top of my normal anxiety about what I may be causing to happen to the tiny body I was developing inside of me, I was worried about holding a grudge, and not bonding with my baby. Not only because of the surprise, but because I knew how hard the postpartum depression I had experienced with my second son had been. And I knew, as always happens, that the baby would take my attention and time away from my older sons. I had hated that when my second son was born I had felt so distant from my first.
My oldest was excited about a baby, but reasonably worried about how it was going to change his life. We had to move him out of his room that was close to the rest of us, and down to the basement to make room for a nursery, and I felt like what I was worried about was already starting.
My second son was furious. Furious about his life getting upended, furious about unexpected change that felt so overwhelming. It took him a long time to come to terms with having another brother. And it broke my heart for him. I totally understood.
And I was 39. The potential for birth defects and miscarriage was huge. As was the risk of complications for me in carrying the pregnancy. The worry was a rock I carried in my chest that only grew as the pregnancy progressed and got more complicated.
I was too old to be having a baby, a geriatric pregnancy they call it, and I was so tired. Our summers had always been filled with adventures, and our home had always been filled with family and friends. I tried so hard to keep up the usual pace, but that summer of pregnancy, I was more tired than I was alive. But I kept pushing myself determined not to let anyone down, not to make life smaller for my older boys.
And then my old body decided it didn’t know what to do with the Relaxin, the pregnancy hormone that relaxes your tendons so your body can shift all of your bones out of place to make room for the growing baby. So, it overdid it. My hips shifted so far it became excruciatingly painful to walk or sit in most positions. I was in pain all day every day, and it was almost impossible to do any of the things I needed to in order to take care of my family.
By the time the baby shifted further up into my abdomen, under my ribs instead, relieving some of that pressure, I had all new problems to worry about.
My heart began palpitating frequently, and I developed a pregnancy form of POTS, making me dizzy if I was standing still. After rounds of test the cardiologist’s only solution was, hopefully this all stops after you have had the baby.
And then I failed my 1 and hour and 4 hour sugar tests. I had gestational diabetes. I read everything I could and changed everything about my diet. I never slept more than 8 hours to make sure I was eating frequently enough to avoid drops and spikes, and for a while I was able to control my numbers with diet changes. Walking was less painful, but my exhaustion had grown, and increasing exercise was not going to happen. At the end of my pregnancy, I was giving myself insulin shots and going in for twice weekly stress tests on top of normal appointments.
Meanwhile, summer had turned to snowy Utah winter. Ice on the ground was terrifying. I had fallen once on the stairs at my house, and was afraid of another fall. But even slightly slipping was excruciatingly painful. I could mostly walk, but carefully, and the slipping feeling on ice felt like it was tearing me in half at the hips. Winters here are dark, and hard. This one was dark and hard, too.
And then it was time to deliver the baby. With anxiety and and excitement we headed out to the hospital, me carrying an anxious prayer in my heart that I would love the baby when he came. My sweet sisters were with my older kids as we drove away in the dark of a winter morning.
Every birth story is different. Traumatic and beautiful in their own ways. My experience giving birth twice had been completely different from each other. I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting in to.
I thought.
The orders were written wrong and the dose of Pitocin they started me on was too low to do anything for many hours. When they finally called my doctor and turned it up, it was time for an epidural. I had had an epidural before, with my oldest, and a spinal with my second–and neither had given me any problems.
This time the epidural caused my blood pressure to drop fast and far. Repeatedly. I was given several shots of epinephrin, and even passed out once. The nurse didn’t want to keep the blood pressure cuff on or stay in the room, so I would have to send Omar running after her as I crashed out. Nobody warned me that there would be side effects from so much epinephrin later.
Once they turned the Pitocin up I progressed rapidly, as I had warned them I would. I was fully dilated and having contractions hard and fast, and my baby began to show signs of distress. The doctor wasn’t there yet, and the nurse didn’t want to bother the doctor, since it was “afternoon already and we might as well let her finish her clinical day.” So she just turned the Pitocin down to slow down my labor for a couple of hours.
Through all my stress tests, finding a heartbeat with a fetal monitor had been challenging, and today was no different. They finally got sick of trying to reposition the monitor, and decided to screw one into his easily accessible head. By the time the doctor was on her way, the monitor had fallen out. Since they were about to start letting me push, they decided to leave it out.
I had him out in 3 pushes, one contraction. All nine pounds of him. And my baby who had not had a monitor on him for a while now, was blue due to the cord being wrapped around his neck 3 times. They quickly unwrapped him, and handed him to a sobbing me as he started to breath. I was flooded with emotions, relief, anger, fear, gratitude, and so much love.
Because I had gestational diabetes, there was one more hurdle he had to cross before we would know if he needed to be in the NICU, a blood test. Because I knew he would need that test when the pediatric nurse asked moments later if it was okay to take him, I said yes. But instead of a blood test, she took him to the scale and cleaned him and did all the other new born test, then wrapped him up and handed him to his dad. I still don’t know if they ever did a sugar test on him. I was still being worked on, and was in shock, but I was frustrated and furious.
When I finally got Benjamin back to try nursing him, this same nurse, without asking, grabbed my breasts to shove them violently in his moth while condescendingly lecturing me about how my breasts were made for nursing. I had solely breastfed two babies previously, and had reread everything I could find in preparation for this moment, but was not given a moment of peace with my new baby or a second to figure it out. I felt violated and offended.
When everyone finally finished working on me, and we were left with a new nurse, it was time to move to the recovery rooms. Which in this hospital meant dangerously heaving my still paralyzed weak body into a wheelchair for the ride, and then into the bed in a different wing of the hospital. They had forgotten to turn in the dinner order, and it was apparently too late for me to be given any food at that hospital until morning. Which was not a big deal, my sweet husband went and got food when my sisters arrived, but was just one more thing in a line of too many things.
That night in the hospital we were interrupted every hour and half with someone coming into our room. I was not able to sleep at all. At some point two strong nurses came in to haul me into the bathroom because I still couldn’t walk. Benjamin had trouble breathing and had to have his lungs vacuumed out at some point in the night. But morning finally came. And with a phlebotomist insisted I needed a blood draw. They had put a port in my hand, just in case, but she didn’t know how to use the port and wanted to poke my arm. I have her two tries, and kicked her out of the room. When her supervisor came in to take blood from the existing port, she told me the blood test was for something that was supposed to happen before delivery, but they forgot and still had to do it because it was on the orders.
We left as soon as we could.
That night there was an earthquake.
I had already been having symptoms of extreme anxiety from the epi shots, but the earthquake sent me over the edge. For several days I would have bouts of shaking and sobbing that were completely out of my control. I knew it was crazy, and I couldn’t stop.
Two nights later, the nursery lit up with flashing red and blue lights as police cars descended on our neighborhood and then set off on a foot search for a suspect whose footprints could be clearly seen on our front sidewalk in the fresh snow.
And then there was another earthquake.
For a year, my son did not sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, and needed me constantly. It is a year of fog. I was not available for my older kids or my husband, I wasn’t available for myself.
This was all especially difficult, because I felt very alone. We had only been in Utah for a short time when I got pregnant, and I did not have the support system I would have had before moving. When Benjamin was born, I had my family to share the excitement with, but no one else. What would have been a shared community experience became a solo one. And it was a difference I was not prepared for.
A lot has happened since my little one was born. The covid shut down was close to his first birthday. Our family left the LDS church, and set out on an even more solo adventure. As I come out of the fog of exhaustion, and postpartum depression and anxiety, I can see how deep into it I was. And I am sad about the time I lost with my other sons and sad about the connections I couldn’t maintain with other people that I love.
My body has recovered in some ways, but is forever changed in other very annoying ways. I did not know about prolapse, but am having lots of fun with all three versions of that these days. And the diabetes is forever.
I am still struggling to figure out what new normal looks like. I have realized it doesn’t have to be the way it was with my first two sons. I am not the same or at the same point in my life. And that is okay.
And for all the hardness, it was 1000% worth it for the beauty and love that this particular surprise has brought to our family.
