David's Pregnancy and Birth Story

You know how every parent warns new parents to not blink because then their children will grow? Well I blinked and now David is three and I don’t know how to feel about it. I feel so proud of the boy he is becoming, but I also miss the days he was a baby and slept all of the time, haha. To celebrate him turning three, I figured I would do a post about his birth story just to walk down memory lane and to give you all an insight about how I became a mom. This is something I’ve been wanting to write about so I figured doing it on David’s birthday (and James’ later on) would be perfect.

Let’s go to the very beginning with a little background story. Jonathan and I always wanted children. We wanted a lot at first, but after I tell you this story, you’ll see why we don’t want as many as we thought. We had names picked out and the order in which we would have them. We definitely wanted to be parents, but we decided to wait a couple of years to start. One, we just got married and wanted to have time to grow our marriage and friendship. Two, Jonathan had just joined the Coast Guard and was gone a lot during our first two years of marriage. Then he went to school for a while before we settled up in Seattle on shore duty. Pretty soon after we moved to Seattle we decided to start trying. I’m not going to lie, I thought it would be easy for us to get pregnant. And while it was (it only took a couple of months), it didn’t happen right away like I wanted it to. And man, I was so upset with every negative test I took. I honestly thought it wasn’t going to happen, which I recognize as very dramatic after only a couple of times of trying, but I have always wanted kids so the fact that I wasn’t getting pregnant right away was breaking my heart. After a couple of breakdowns about it, Jonathan confronted me and asked me if I was idolizing our unconceived child and not relying on God. Ouch, big ouch. Obviously I didn’t want to admit that. I mean, did I really want a child just so I could fix everything wrong that I had experienced as a child? The answer I came to was yes. I wanted a child for some of the wrong reasons and I had to face that and reconcile with God in my heart. It took a lot of prayer to change my heart to a place where I had the best reasons to have a child. Not long after that, we ended up getting pregnant.

When I became pregnant, we were so overjoyed! It was around Christmas time and it felt so magical. I was on such a high and I had so many plans rolling around in my head. That was until the New Years came and I became very sick. I couldn’t eat or drink and I was throwing up multiple times a day without relief. Until it happened, I honestly thought I wouldn’t experience morning sickness at all. Neither my mom nor my grandma had it so I thought I had it in the bag and would only experience maybe some mild nausea. That was definitely not the case. It became so bad that I started throwing up blood and I ended up going to the hospital. I had to have two IV bags and was diagnosed with hyperemisis graviderum (HG). I had it throughout my entire pregnancy and I needed to take medication for it. If I missed one day I would be so sick the entire next day and it was awful to be honest. Not the pregnancy I had expected, but I dealt with it.

Once the HG was controlled with medication, everything else seemed fine. I was able to do normal activity, but a couple of weeks before David’s due date I started swelling. At first, I thought it was the summer heat and just regular pregnancy swelling. But then I started getting migraine-like headaches that wouldn’t go away with medication. Now thank goodness I was informed about preeclampsia before because I recognized the signs. I called our hospital and they told me to get my blood pressure checked. It ended up not being super high, but high enough that when I called the hospital back they told me to come in. After we arrived, I was checked into triage and we waited for what seemed like forever to hear anything back after the tests that they had performed. Finally the OB walked in and told me we were going to have a baby that day. I actually laughed and thought she was joking, but she was serious and I felt so nervous. I had obviously been preparing to have a baby for the entire pregnancy, but I was not prepared for a sudden birth. I’ll state here that I did not have an emergency C-section, but I did have to be induced, and my fear came from not being able to go into labor naturally and having those few hours to mentally prepare myself.

Once I was situated in the birthing room they started the Pitocin to induce labor and magnesium to prevent any seizures and told me I couldn’t eat anything or drink more than 3 ounces of water every hour. I also couldn’t take my medication for my sickness so I threw up a couple of times in the process. I remember asking the nurse how long it would take to go into labor and how long will I be pushing and she told me what to expect which made me grow a little weary. I had to have labs done every couple of hours to monitor the preeclampsia. After a couple of hours on the Pitocin, my contractions weren’t progressing and I wasn’t dialating much so they kept upping my dosage every hour or so to further along the process. A long few hours had passed and nothing was happening. Finally the OB came in early in the morning and told me we needed to break my water manually. She used what looked like a crochet hook and broke it. I instantly went from 2cm to 6cm dilated. After that the contractions came in real strong. I’ll add here that I did an unmedicated natural birth. I’m not saying I’m a superhero for that or that everybody should do it. I did it for personal reasons and I’ll be honest, I am really proud of myself for doing that. It was something I had wanted from the beginning and I am glad I was able to stick with that throughout this process. After a couple of hours of laboring, I wasn’t comfortable at all. The nurse and I decided that I could get into a nice warm bath to labor in. I will say it sucked walking to the bathtub (I’ve found out with James’s birth that I do not like moving when I’m in labor), but once I was in, I felt less pressure on my back which was great. But only after an hour in the tub I felt the big urge to push. I told Jonathan to get the nurse. She hadn’t checked on my dilation for a few hours, so as quickly as we could, I got back on the bed and she checked me. I was 10cm and David was crowning. “Uhm what?” was my exact thought. She remained calm which was great, but there was obviously some hustle going on around me. They were not prepared in the room for me to deliver. I felt another big push. I can’t explain it, but it felt like my body took over and just decided to have a mind of its own. I remember them telling me that the OB was in an emergency C-section and they were trying to page someone to come. Finally, three minutes before David was born a midwife came running in. She was so sweet and introduced herself to me and then a few pushes later, she caught David. He was so small, only 6lbs and 10oz, but he was crying so hard, haha. Jonathan and I were in love and in shock. We honestly just did that. I honestly just birthed a human being and my mind was swirling. Nothing that beautiful had ever happened to me before. Here was living proof that God is miraculous and so loving.

Soon after delivery I was weaned off of the magnesium and felt so much better. We had a rocky start with breastfeeding, but I’m proud to say that I successfully breastfed David until he was a year old. His personality has just bloomed over the last three years as well as his smile as you can see down below!

Now, he is a thriving three year old. He has big ambitions as well as a sassy attitude to match. If you asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, he will list off everything he is interested in or something that’s on his mind right at that moment. But I have no doubt that he can accomplish anything he sets his mind to. He also has a big heart and loves on James so much - to the point where James will start crying, haha. He’s really into making friends and has a huge imagination when it comes to playing. David has been such a joy to watch grow. The way he learns things and picks up on little ideas from random places amazes me. I would say my favorite thing I love that he does is saying, “Mama, I just want to hug you!” And he will give me a big hug and sneak in a kiss as well.

Happy birthday to the boy who made me a mama - you hold a very special place in my heart and you will always be my little bear.