By the time we got to the hospital, I was already at 7 cm. My midwife thought we would be in and out of the hospital, going home with a healthy baby within a few hours.
The hours passed, and by 6 PM, my water had broken but I was still at 7 cm. At that point, I decided to get an epidural, and my midwife had to get the OB team involved because baby was showing signs of distress: his heart rate dropping and not recovering well with each contraction. I don’t want to get into the details of the labour and delivery; quite frankly it was traumatic for me and us.
By the time baby Beckett was born, at 2:52 AM on May 25, there were two OBs, one resident, two or three labour and delivery nurses, a full respiratory/resuscitation team, and my midwife (looking concerned) all crammed in the room. Beckett was breathing on his own, but he did not cry and was not moving much. I heard someone (maybe my midwife?) suggest skin to skin time with mom and baby and someone came and put Becket on my chest.
He was so beautiful, with chubby cheeks and the most precious little round lips, but something felt wrong.
My midwife kept coming and checking on Beckett, lifting his floppy arms with a worried look on her face. I remember panicking each time as the arm quickly flopped onto my chest without any resistance and without any response from Beckett. One of the more experienced OBs was wrapping up his work, said something along the lines of “I think he’s just shocked from the stressful delivery. He’ll be fine” and then left. A few minutes later, the others remaining in the room did not agree, and they called the NICU to do an assessment. The doctor from the NICU took a look at Beckett, said something about signs of “hypoxia” and “cooling for 72 hours”. Beckett was quickly taken away to the NICU with Keith following behind while I was getting stitched and cleaned up. I remember feeling numb, like none of this could actually be happening. How could everything have gone so well for over 9 months to have it all crumble in a matter of hours?
When you make it past the 36 week mark in pregnancy and everything seems healthy and normal, I don’t think your mind ever even considers the fact that your baby could end up in the NICU fighting for his life. That reality was incredibly difficult to acknowledge, let alone accept.
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