From Dream Pregnancy to Preterm Labor and Delivery Part 1

Because I wrote such a verbose post yesterday about my miscarriage, I figured I’d split this story into two posts to spare you from reading this in its entirety. I couldn’t let this day pass without making mention of the date’s significance to me. Two years ago today, I was supposed to have been due to give birth to Cakes. As you know from my use of supposed and previous posts, this is not her birthday.

My husband and I were married for seven years before getting pregnant. Even though I was only 25, people were starting to do we’d ever had kids. We told them we’d get pregnant after I graduated from college and the time was right. Like most other things in our life, we planned the details of this pregnancy out a year ahead of time. We have so many family and friends with December and January birthdays and only one friend with a February birthday. It seemed perfect; our baby would have the month to them self! Our plan was to get pregnant while on vacation in St. John and we succeeded.

I had an ideal pregnancy with no complications…to start. Not even morning sickness. I had one migraine and other than that it was pretty smooth sailing. I enjoyed being pregnant, it was the first time in my life I didn’t have to watch what I ate and could enjoy the food. A lot of it. I gained 30 pounds in 30 weeks and my OB warned me that I’d have more difficulty during labor and a harder time losing it after delivery if I didn’t slow down (for the record, I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight by six weeks post-partum – please don’t hate me).

I’ve always had bad cramping with periods and baths soothe me and take the edge off of the period cramps so I figured it’d help with childbirth too. The problem was my OB only delivered at the main campus of a hospital which did not have birthing tubs. I ignorantly opted to forego my doctor’s care (more on this in part 2) for the birthing tub and a midwife (I had just read Pushed and Baby Catcher and had decided less was more) that had privileges at the north hospital campus (same health care system, one at which I worked for at the time as well). I had one consultation with this doctor but never actually had an appointment.

At 30 weeks, I went to work and tried to do my kick counts the first thing as had become my routine. For some reason, Cakes wasn’t cooperating on this day and I decided to wait until later in the afternoon and try again. She was moving, just not the required 10 kicks in 2 hours (I could usually get my kick counts done in about 20 minutes). When I got home that night, I still wasn’t able to get my kick counts done and started to worry. I called my mom who’s been a nurse working in obstetrics with over 30 years experience. She gave me some tips on things to try (beating spoons together against my belly, drinking orange juice, laying on my left side, etc.) but nothing was working. We decided to head to the north hospital (where I assumed I should go since I was in transition between the two doctors). On the way there I remember looking at my insurance card and sighing about the $100 copay for an ER visit. I thought it was going to be such a waste when they told me everything was fine and sent me home. Only it wasn’t fine and they didn’t send me home…