I never have written down Leah's birth story, and 18 years after it happened seems as good of a time as any to relive the memories that made me a mother.
I wish I had kept the same level of records for my pregnancy with Leah as I did with the other kids - but in short I will say that my pregnancy with Leah was quite normal. It was just all brand new to me. I started out the pregnancy absolutely delighted at the adventure we were embarking on but quickly became nauseous and tired, and I could not quite believe just how nauseous and tired I was every single day. I worked full-time and throughout my pregnancy I snacked, napped, and dreamed constantly about the little life growing inside me. I worked at a desk job and I ate for two and I gained the pounds to prove it. I didn't really understand that I could - and should - be perfectly active throughout my pregnancy in the same way that I was with my other pregnancies, but I had to learn that lesson somehow. By the time my due date arrived, I had gained close to 70 pounds. I just didn't really know what was normal pregnancy weight gain, or what my body was capable of doing. Everything was new to us!
I worked full-time up until December 29, 2006. I had been to all of my scheduled appointments and everything, by my recollection 18 years later, was progressing nicely. Leah was measuring small but not too small, and we just had to wait until she was ready to make her appearance! My due date was January 5, 2007, but on that Friday I only worked until lunchtime. When it was time for my lunch break I told my boss that something felt different and I was going to go home for the afternoon. I don't remember if I was feeling cramps, but I know I wasn't experiencing the "gentle balling up" of the stomach that contractions are often described as. I was feeling pulsing and pressure and cramping and what I knew later were, indeed, contractions. More than anything, I just felt done with being so heavy with child. At this point there was a full-grown baby inside my belly and I was ready for her to come out!
We were living in our two-bedroom Crescent Arms apartment in Provo at the time, and Jason would have been in between semesters at BYU. He was home when I got home, and that afternoon I took a nap, I took a bath, and we watched some episodes of Friends. I really must not have been feeling anything too exciting, because we decided to go out to eat at Sizzler (why? Why Sizzler? We've never been back since). I do remember walking over to the salad bar in the restaurant and thinking, "I'm having contractions! No one in this restaurant knows that I'm going to have a baby soon!" Said contractions must not have been very strong or close together, because after dinner we went over to the mall to walk a few laps (remember it was December 29th! It was snowy and icy and cold out!). We called my parents and Grammy Q while we were slowly walking around, to let them know that it seemed that our baby girl was going to be arriving soon.
Even in my first pregnancy, I didn't want to do the walk of shame, where you excitedly drive to the hospital at the first signs of labor and they tell you that you're not as far along as you think you are, so go home and labor some more before coming back. So I think we must have gone home after the mall walk, because I remember Jason giving me a blessing in our apartment before we headed over to the hospital. I don't think it was at that same time, but at some time in the days leading up to delivery I told Jason in no uncertain terms that if he had to choose between staying with me and being with our baby girl, he needed to be with her. "I'm an adult, and I'll be fine, but she's a brand-new baby and she can't be all alone in the world. You have to stay with her." I felt so strongly that he needed to hear me say that.
When we got to the hospital we were admitted right away. It was all so exciting! We had no idea what to expect beyond what we had read in What to Expect When You're Expecting, and of course we had skipped over the scary parts of the book, like what do expect when things don't go as planned during labor and delivery. Surely we didn't need to know any of that!
We got set up in our room and I promptly ordered an epidural. Like Grandma Cathy always said, "Don't be a hero, take the drugs!" I wasn't really interested in or prepared for a natural birth, and these contractions were starting to get annoyingly painful. I welcomed the anesthesiologist into the room and enjoyed enthusiastically pressing the little clicker button that administered the epidural meds to myself liberally throughout the evening. I don't recall that we did anything much to pass the time in the hospital room once the epidural was in place beyond giggling and lovingly encouraging each other for the HUGE adventure we were embarking on. I think Jason and I both fell asleep around midnight to the sounds of beeping heart monitors and a steady supply of epidural meds working their magic on my massive and swollen body.
This picture was taken around midnight. This tired unsuspecting soon to be mama clearly had no idea what was about to happen.
Around 2:30 AM, a nurse came into the room, woke me up, checked everything out, and informed me that I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing.
"Push what?" I asked her groggily. I had no feeling below the top of my belly at all. How was I supposed to push anything when I couldn't even feel the lower half of my body? This was going to be interesting but according to the nurse, it was time to push. I can still remember the feeling of having half a body. I coulnd't feel my feet, my legs, or anything else below my armpits. I really had no idea how I was going to push a baby out of a body that I couldn't feel at all, let alone control. The no-nonsense nurse told me to try a practice push (what?!) and then said, "Oh, you're going to have to do better than that." I think around this point I realized that this was not going to go at all like the tidy and quick births I'd seen in the movies. There was some serious work to do, and suddenly I understood the word labor.
My OB, who also happened to be a member of the stake presidency in our BYU married student stake, had checked in earlier in the evening only to decide that there was no reason for him to come over to the hospital just yet, so he was not in the building when my body was ready to start pushing. But he suddenly appeared in the midst of my pathetic pushing (I was trying, really I was, but I had no idea if it was doing anything at all) and was there to coach me through each push and contraction. I really needed the epidural to wear off so that I could feel more of what was happening, but that wasn't happening fast enough.
The baby's heart rate was the top concern for everyone in the room - it was loud and clear and as long as it stayed steady I could keep pushing and trying to have a natural delivery. But with one huge push her heart rate plummeted and a huge gush of bright red blood soaked the table. And just like that everything changed. I wasn't pushing anymore, I was preparing for an emergency C-section.
A nurse gave me a liquid medicine that immediately made me throw up every single crumb of food and liquid in my stomach (goodbye, Sizzler Malibu chicken!), another nurse unplugged me from everything tying me down to the room and they wheeled me, mostly naked, starting to panic, and feeling like I was being ripped in two, out of the delivery room and down the hall to the OR. Someone threw scrubs at Jason and for a brief moment he stood in that delivery room alone, his two best girls taken away from him.
By the time he got into the OR I was screaming out in pain and with my arms wrapped around the leg of the anesthesiologist because the pain meds hadn't taken before I was cut open. It was a matter of seconds and she was out. "I can feel that!" is the last thing I remember saying. This was a literal nightmare. I didn't see Jason in there and I passed out before I saw my baby girl. Jason says my eyes were open, and I looked at her before I passed out, but I have no recollection of seeing him or hearing her cry, of getting stitched up or of leaving the OR.
The next thing I recalled was waking up alone in a dark room, no husband, no baby, and no one to explain what had happened. I started crying, and I was shaking uncontrollably (I know now that that that is normal after delivery - you've lost your little baby heater and your body has to adjust!). A nurse came in to tell me everything was just fine and that I needed to calm down before I could see anyone, but I was an absolute mess. It was the middle of the night, the room was dark, and I was alone. I had no idea where my little family was or what had just happened.
After a bit (a minute? An hour?) Jason came into the dark room and told me that Leah was here, and she was perfect. He told me that he remembered what I had told him before I went into labor and he never left her side. He said that I needed to stop crying so that they could bring her into me, and eventually I did. But I was devastated. Nothing about this delivery was what I had expected. At all!
Our first pictures together were taken just before 7 AM. I have no idea what all happened between 3:14 and 7 AM, but I think my body needed to check out of the physical trauma for a bit, and I'm sure they gave me some drugs to help with that. In this picture, I am swollen from pregnancy, puffy from crying so much, and in shock that I, not only was now officially a mother, labor and deliver didn't happen the way I thought it would! AND my stomach was cut in half, which was incredibly painful. I now had an unexpected surgery to recover from on top of healing from 9 months of preganncy, nearly an hour of pushing, figuring out nursing, and learning how to function on a newborn's sleep schedule. It was all really hard and really wonderful. But oh my goodness look at that beautiful little bundle of sweetness with her ruby red lips and head full of hair. Nothing nelse mattered but this sweet baby Leah in my arms.
The next morning my OB stopped in and told us that he hadn't been able to go back to sleep after checking in with the hospital earlier the night before, and he felt prompted to head back over. He was there right when we needed him to deliver Leah via emergency C-section. The cause of the emergency was placenta abruption, where the placenta seperates from the uterus prematurely. It deprives the baby of oxygen and causes heavy bleeding in the mother, and is far, far more serious when it happens before labor. It was a blessing and a miracle that we were already in the hospital in active labor when it happened.
Our rather insenstive pediatric doctor for the day informed us that "Mothers and babies around the world still die from this every day." We were so very blessed to be in the best possible place amidst this worst case scenario. Leah was born perfectly healthy, and I was going to be fine too. I just needed to adjust my expectations of what counts as a successful delivery, and of my postpartum recovery.
I became a mother at 3:14 AM on Saturday, December 30, 2006. I really felt like a mother sometime in the next day or two when Jason, who was happily rocking the comfy scrubs and enjoying the light dad duties of calling family and taking pictures, informed me that he was going to go grab a hamburger from the hospital cafeteria. I could not comprehend what he was saying. He was able to walk out of that room, with no helpless newborn baby in his arms, no surgical stitches, no hospital bed triangle pull up bar to assist him because his abs were shot, no peri bottle or assistance in the shower, no post-pregnancy bleeding, no leaking or cracked nipples, no mesh underwear or diaper-sized pads, no assistance required to go to the bathroom?! Nothing! He was just going to WALK out of the room. Just him and his hamburger. My brain could not compute. And that is when I really and truly felt the weight of motherhood settle over me. Of course, I didn't want a hamburger, all I wanted was to stay connected to the perfect little bundle of heavenly wonder in my arms. Hamburgers be darned! I was a mother!
And our sweet baby Leah was absolutely perfect. We stayed in the hospital for four days, and everything changed. We celebrated the arrival of our new baby girl and of the new year in the hospital. A sweet nurse put a New Year's bear in Leah bassinet, and we still have it today. We sat together and watched the world going by outside and marvelled that we were parents. This little baby was ours to take home! And we were floored when they discharged us from the hospital and just let us get in the car and take this human baby home. Like we knew what we were doing! It was completely crazy.
Leah's arrival taught me quickly that nothing about motherhood can be expected, other than it will be a hard, wild ride. And nothing can be taken for granted. A dear friend of ours had a similar birth story that ended with a total hystorectamy and two days in a coma, only to wake up and find out that she couldn't have more children. I learned quickly that it does not matter one bit how a baby arrives in the world, it matters that they are healthly and safe. I learned quickly that I was going to do everything in my power to have different experiences with my subsequent births (and I did!).
I learned that the entirety of being a parent means having faith and trusting that everything will work out exactly the way it is supposed to (and of the importance of doing the work for optimal outcomes). We have been so incredbly blessed to experience the love that I believe only parents can experience. Despite the trauma that came with Leah's birth, becoming a mother has elevated my life to a higher level, and it was worth every scary step of the journey.
