April 11, 2018.

Proverbs 16:9 - “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.”

If you know much about me, you will know that I am a little bit of a pregnancy and birth fanatic. I have attended a few births and even caught a couple of tiny miracles myself. Needless to say, I had a bit of a plan even before I looked down and saw those two little blue lines. A plan that included a midwife, a birthing tub, soft music and the smell of essential oils in the air.

That is not how it went. And that’s okay.

My due date changed a few times. My baby is what I now know to be called a “Rainbow Baby”, meaning that this pregnancy was a perfect gift given to heartbroken parents. I miscarried my first child on Mother’s Day, 2017. All this to say that I am not sure when I conceived, so I was originally subjected to a few ultrasounds to determine just how pregnant I was. We settled on April 15th as the due date, and I was assured twice that the little one growing within was a baby girl. We named her Jane Danielle O’Neill and I promised myself I wasn’t going to deck her out in overwhelming Pepto pink and millennial floral. I wouldn’t be that Mom. Of course not.

As you may see coming, I broke that promise. In the end, almost everything I bought was heavily gendered, with flowery pinks and sunshine yellows. I was thrown a pink-themed baby shower and took home a truckload of beautiful, tasteful gifts lovingly picked out especially for our little Baby Jane. I was set for my sweet baby girl.

Pregnancy was fairly simple. I had the normal back issues and sleeping issues and my child tried to kick my guts to a pulp, but I made it through. I may have waddled some of the way.

At about the 7.5 month mark, I began developing itchy hands and feet. I complained but mentally just counted it as swelling and circulation issues. When it continued to get worse over the coming weeks, I ended up calling my midwife to mention it. She seemed alarmed and told me that the itching could be a sign of a potentially serious condition, and that I needed to get tested right away. I did, but unfortunately the bile salt tests took so long for the results to return that I had to continue getting tested pretty much every week. I should mention here that I hate needles.

After much testing, I was referred to an OBGYN in Mountain Home. By this time I was itchy pretty much all over, and as a result was getting very little sleep - even less than an 8 months pregnant woman usually gets. The doctor was really just supposed to be a backup, but I needed a formal diagnosis of Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy. ICP is a condition in which your body, due to the abundance of pregnancy hormones, fails to properly dispose of bile through your liver. This results in high bile acids or salts in your blood, causing itching and possibly adversely affecting baby.  ICP affects 1 to 2 pregnancies in 1,000 (according to americanpregnancy.org) and if not monitored properly can significantly increase the risk of fetal distress, preterm birth, and even stillbirth. That’s enough to talk me into going to see a male OBGYN in a town over an hour away from me, which was never even close to something I wanted. 

The doc ran me through (yet another) round of testing, and told me he would call me with the results. He was kind, quiet and no-nonsense, which put me a little more at ease with the idea of possibly having a male OBGYN I barely knew on my case.

He called me on Monday, April 9th. He told me he was officially diagnosing me with ICP, and that I needed to come to the hospital immediately to induce labor in order to manage the increasing risk of stillbirth. He told me I was under no obligation to take his advice, and that he was generally an advocate of homebirth as long as there was no risk to Mom or Baby. In his opinion, there was now a significant risk for my baby if I attempted to carry to term, and he would not recommend having the baby outside of a hospital in any case. I thanked him, and asked him if I decided to come in to be induced, could we schedule it for this week sometime? He told me if I decided to get induced, it needed to be in the next 12 hours.

Now, for all of my birth attendance, book reading and general confidence with the matters of birth and pregnancy, to be told that I was going to be in labor in the next 12 hours was a lot to process. I realized immediately how scared I was. I was scared not only of the actual experience of labor and delivery, but now there was so much more to frighten me. First and foremost in my mind were the many risks of delivery with ICP. I had to wrap my mind around birth in a hospital, my carefully written birth plan was rendered rather useless. Half of my birth bag, packed and ready to go in my car, was pretty much obsolete. There was so much more I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for. Monitors and needles, nurses and doctors touching and testing me, keeping my baby near me and worrying about vaccinations, medications and complications. So many things. I told the doctor thank you and hung up. Mentally, I was beginning to spiral.

I called my husband, and we of course agreed that there was nothing else to be done. We would leave work now, meet at the house, pack some clothes and go to the hospital. It was go time. I cried a lot of tears, concerned mainly for my baby. I knew next to nothing about induction. I knew next to nothing about my doctor or this hospital. For all my preparedness, I was now in the dark and moving along at a much higher rate of speed. By the time Benjamin arrived home I had packed most of what we needed for the trip.

It was one of those moments. Those moments where you leave your home and you have no idea when, if or who you will be when you return. I’ve had a few of those moments in my life. I looked at the tediously prepared bassinet, the dresser of baby clothes with a line of board books propped against a basket of tiny diapers. I ran my hand over the minky floral blanket and the stuffed elephant ready to meet my precious baby on her return home. I prayed then. I prayed for my baby, I prayed for my husband, and I prayed that God would fill me with a strength I knew I needed but could not summon alone.

We drove an hour and a half to Mountain Home, stopping once on the side of the road to pray together. My amazing midwife offered her birth house to us and we slept there for a few hours (or attempted to sleep). I must have slept a little because at 3am I started awake and realized I was having contractions. Nothing serious, nothing baby-moving, but the Lord had granted me such a mercy. Contractions now meant progress, and progress outside of the hospital means less medications to force progress inside the hospital. Praise the Lord.

By the time I was checked in to the Maternity Ward at Baxter Regional Medical Center, I was in early labor. I was hooked up to a few hundred monitors and left to myself. My husband and I chatted and watched TCM on the tiny television for about ten hours. Not much seemed to be happening, so the doctor decided to place a device that would gently force dilation. That seemed to really kick things into a higher gear. The contractions were closer now, and were actually rough enough to make me need to concentrate through each one.

Looking back, I am not sure at all how long each step took. My memories of this time are really in small windows, and the rest is just gone. I remember spending most of the first part laying on my side. When I realized that the doctor was getting a little impatient and wanted to put me on medication to speed things up, I told him that by the numbers I was in full blown labor, and just to give me a few more hours on my own. He agreed to giving me some more time after looking over the monitors and charts. I started squatting, walking and doing my best to move things along. They took the intrauterine device out and the contractions were at full speed and full force for what seemed then like an eternity, but what I estimate now to be around 6-7 hours.

In any event, I was in and out and up and down and doing my best to cope. As I mentioned before I really don’t remember much of my real labor timeline. I was told I had to resist the urge to push for so long - and if you haven’t tried to hold a baby inside of you that your body was trying to get out, I really am unable to explain the feeling. It was torturous. Everything in me wanted to move that baby down and out and the effort it took for me to control that was overwhelming to say the least. May the Lord be praised for the strength he gave me to endure that time. Without Him, I was hopeless.

*I want to pause here and explain that when I sat down to write this story, I was completely overwhelmed by the task. I was lost. Comparatively, bringing this baby into the world was a walk in the park to what you or someone you know has gone through. I know that without a doubt. In considering all of this, I decided that this story would be just that, a story. I don’t think I am ready to editorialize, if you will, or expound on my experience as it relates to my walk with Christ, or what labor and delivery meant to my spirit. I am still processing the lessons, the feelings, and the emotions that were present in that room with me. I may one day be able to articulate how this birth changed me, but right now I am completely and utterly without the words. Maybe that’s good, may the Lord be taking His time with me. I hope and pray and know that one day it will all be clear, and that day doesn’t have to be tomorrow or the next. Christ’s timing is perfect. End note.*
 

Eventually, I couldn’t control my body's strong will to get the baby out. And then someone came out of the fog and told me it was time to have this child. That person wasn’t my husband, but please believe me when I tell you I could have kissed them on the mouth. I was ready. So ready. In a dizzying rush of Transformer-like actions, the hospital bed became a pushing table, and as if by magic there were about twenty people around me, holding my arms, legs, knees, feet, hands. I was too exhausted to be annoyed. That’s the wonder of it though. I was so exhausted, I remember summoning all of my effort to swallow my spit. And yet, when the doctor said “Okay, push.”, I felt like that baby stayed still and I moved the world around it. Effortlessly. Pushing after not pushing is the easiest, most satisfying thing. At first the doctor tried to get me to wait, to push with contractions. Suddenly, more clearly than anything, I could hear a heart monitor. I knew what the doctor knew and wasn’t saying yet. This baby needed to be born now, because we were hearing alarming heart deceleration every time I pushed. He gently warned me soon after I noticed it - telling me that if I didn’t get the baby out on the very next push, he would have to use a vacuum.

I did what I was told, and a beautiful, chubby baby was placed on my belly. It was so still and so quiet and a million alarms started going off in my head. I frantically rubbed the baby's chest and stuck my finger down the throat while the doctor quickly detached and handed my silent child over to the nurses. I don’t remember much, but I am told I lost it a little watching them trying to get my baby to breathe. The doctor and my husband had to calm me down. In reality, it had to have been less than two minutes but time had stopped applying to that room and when I finally heard my baby cry, my brain switched back on. I knew that some babies get tired, I knew that some babies just need a few breaths, a little help. I knew all of this and yet when that baby who needs help is your baby it doesn’t seem to matter.

In any case, my baby was crying beautifully and I was breathing again. And then one of the nurses said:

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a girl?”

As you probably know, he was not a girl. He was James. James had come to make technology look foolish, and James wore a onesie with a tiny bow on it back from the hospital. James David O’Neill has been and is a gorgeous, easy, sweet child with his father’s eyes and round rubber-banded arms and legs. He fills my days with joy and the Lord is teaching me so much through this beautiful baby.

My prayer now and forever is that Ben and I are raising James for the Kingdom, as is our mission. The Lord’s Will is perfect and unaltered.

My baby boy is six months old, and I know this is only the first tiny step of this motherhood road, but I am so happy that the Lord has seen fit to bless me so immensely. May He help us and James to glorify Him more and more with each passing day.

"Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful. The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealth bountifully with thee." (Psalm 116: 5-7)

Thank you for reading my story.

Tracy