When my husband and I knew we wanted to
start having kids, we prayed that God
would have me get pregnant very soon.
It was amazing to us that we got so
easily discouraged: after only one
month
when I did not get pregnant, we were
already feeling depressed. One day
during the next month, as I was
praying,
I asked God when our first child would
come and I felt that He said something
about Krissy Johnson’s birthday.
Krissy
Johnson was one of my best childhood
friends and, for some unknown reason, I
have always remembered her birthday –
June 4th. So I checked my calendar and
discovered that if I got pregnant that
month (our second month of trying), my
due date would, in fact, be June 4th.
I
was excited, thinking, ‘If this is God
speaking, it seems I’ll be pregnant
soon.’ When I later discovered that I
hadn’t gotten pregnant that month
either, I was a little confused and,
again, sad. But I knew I didn’t have
the corner of the market on knowing
God’s voice perfectly, so I chalked my
“vision” of June 4th as a due date up
to
my own wishful thinking.
The next month came along and my
husband
and I were thrilled to find out that I
was pregnant! My due date was July 1,
so we started hoping for a 4th of July
baby. My pregnancy went along well and
was especially exciting given the fact
that I spent most of it living in in a
third world country overseas. In late
April of 2002, we returned to live in
the U.S. and get ready for George’s
arrival. My husband's grandmother was
nearing the end of her life, so,
despite
me being close to the end of my 8th
month of pregnancy, we decided a road
trip to her home to see her one last
time was a good idea. Around this
time,
people kept commenting on how low I was
carrying and how much I looked like I
could give birth soon. Grandmother
even
commented that she thought George was
ready to be born and she was hoping he
would be born while we were with her so
we would have to stay longer and she
could meet George before she went to
heaven. This caused me to remind my
husband about the Krissy Johnson story
and we started to realize that we
really
wanted George to be born early also…we
just couldn’t wait to meet him! Also,
starting at about week 33 of my
pregnancy, I was getting TONS of
"innocuous" Braxton Hicks contractions,
so I started to think my time could be
coming soon. So we started praying
that
God would help George to develop
quickly
in case He saw it fit for him to be
born
early.
During the day on June 4th, my husband
and I joked with each other about it
being Krissy’s birthday and how it was
time for George to come now. My
husband
had been working on homework late at
night in the living room and I was
keeping him company. When he got up to
go to bed, I realized that I had fallen
asleep on the couch and got up to join
him in bed. It was about 11:40 pm. I
went into the bathroom and after
flushing the toilet and getting up to
walk to the bedroom, I realized I was
still “peeing.” I peeked around the
corner, into the bedroom where my
husband was and said, “Remember that
thing about Krissy Johnson’s birthday?”
He gave me a really funny look and
slowly said, “Yeah?” “Well, I think my
water just broke!” I responded. We
were
both stunned, but excited too. We
called the doctor’s office and they
told
us to go to the hospital as soon as we
could. We didn’t have any bags packed
or anything but we packed quickly and
took off.
By 1 am on Wednesday, June 5th, the
hospital staff confirmed that my water
had in fact broken and told me that I
needed to go into labor by 6 am or so
or
else they would induce my labor,
because
they were concerned about infection
with
my water having broken and George
getting ready to be born so early. I
did not want to be induced so my
husband
and I started walking the halls of the
labor and delivery section of the
hospital, trying to speed my labor
along. We got excited as we saw the
new
babies through the nursery window and I
started to feel my labor kick in. By
4:30 am I was laboring pretty regularly
and so inducing wasn’t necessary. I
was
transferred into a real labor room at
some point along the way here and,
throughout the course of the day, I met
nearly all the doctors in my doctor's
practice plus many nurses as well. The
nurse assigned to me for my labor was
just okay. She was not very personable
and kept trying to pressure me to take
pain medication. I preferred to “go
natural” and opt for bouncing on a
birthing ball, taking hot showers,
squeezing my husband's hand, etc. At
one point, I honestly thought I was
going to die and I said something to
that effect to my husband. I was
shaking and cold and I even threw up
the
spinach omelet thing I had eaten the
night before. This was at about 9 am.
I asked the nurse to check how dilated
I
was and she refused, saying she did not
want to risk me getting infected. So
she finally convinced me to get an
epidural, stating that I couldn’t be
further along than 4 cm. dilated. The
anesthesiologist came in very quickly
to
give me the epidural and immediately
after she did, my husband went down to
the car to get the rest of our stuff
and, unbelievably, now the nurse
decided
it was okay to check my dilation. She
exclaimed, “You’re at 10!” Then she
added, “That epidural must have really
helped to relax you!” Yeah, whatever…6
centimeters in two minutes! My husband
came back up to the nurse
saying, “You’d
better get ready fast, she’s ready to
start pushing!” So it was now closer
to
9:30 am.
My doctor was called to my room which
meant he had to abandon the podium
right
before he was to give a speech to a
bunch of students. I apologized for
messing up his speech, but he said it
was okay because he was very excited
about us and Georgie’s birth as well.
Pushing was comical as I had just
received the epidural, so I could not
feel anything “down there” in order to
push. I just did what I thought was
pushing and let the hospital staff
confirm whether I actually was or not.
They told me when each contraction came
and when I should try to push.
Everytime I tried to push, George’s
heart rate went down and he just
wouldn’t move past a certain point.
The
staff tried flipping me over to
different positions and having me let
the epidural wear off. Nothing worked
and it looked like George was in
danger.
Finally, at about 1:30 pm, a
specialist
was brought in. He assessed the
situation and told me I had a skinny
pelvis and that George was turned
sunnyside up. Therefore, the bigger
part of his head was trying to come out
of my pelvis that just wasn’t letting
it
get through. He said we could keep
trying but he really doubted anything
but a C-section would work at this
point. My doctor, my husband and I
prayed about it and then my doctor left
so my husband and I could pray about it
alone and we decided that the C-section
probably was our best, maybe only,
option.
Then things happened fast. My husband
was given scrubs to wear and I was
wheeled into an operating room. They
put a screen up beneath my head so I
couldn’t see what was going on in my
stomach area as they sliced away.
There
were at least 20 hospital staff in the
room where I had my C-section done. I
didn’t feel anxious at all, just
excited
that Georgie’s birth was finally going
to happen. At one point in the
procedure, the specialist doctor
apologized for putting pressure on some
of my organs as he “rearranged them a
little.” I told him his pressure
(which
I could barely feel) was nothing
compared to the kicking George had been
inflicting on me the past few
months.
Finally, at 2:08 pm, George came out
screaming and red and gooey. I cried
and cried, listening to his beautiful
voice and straining to see him over to
my left. Every so often I’d catch a
glimpse of his arm or foot, but it
seemed like forever before my husband
was allowed to bring him over to me,
all
bundled up now, to say “hi Mommy!” He
was absolutely beautiful and all three
of us were in love instantly (as if we
hadn’t been in love with George even
before he was born!). George had a bad
reading on his first glucose test
(which
we later found out was probably a
mistake), so he was put in NICU for a
couple of nights. It was hard to see
him there, hooked up to tubes and
probes, but he was, by far, the largest
baby in the NICU, and the nurses told
us
he would be fine soon.
I visited George every three hours to
feed him and marvel at his handsomeness
and my husband and I were very happy
when, on Friday afternoon, he got to
move in with us. We stayed one more
night in the hospital, with George
sleeping in his bassinet between our
two
beds, waking often in the night to feed
him. Then on Saturday, a very hot day,
we all got to go home.
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