By Shannon, Colorado USAWhen my husband and I knew we wanted to start having kids, we prayed that God would have me get pregnant very soon. It was amazing to us that we got so easily discouraged: after only one month when I did not get pregnant, we were already feeling depressed. One day during the next month, as I was praying, I asked God when our first child would come and I felt that He said something about Krissy Johnson’s birthday. Krissy Johnson was one of my best childhood friends and, for some unknown reason, I have always remembered her birthday – June 4th. So I checked my calendar and discovered that if I got pregnant that month (our second month of trying), my due date would, in fact, be June 4th. I was excited, thinking, ‘If this is God speaking, it seems I’ll be pregnant soon.’ When I later discovered that I hadn’t gotten pregnant that month either, I was a little confused and, again, sad. But I knew I didn’t have the corner of the market on knowing God’s voice perfectly, so I chalked my “vision” of June 4th as a due date up to my own wishful thinking.
PROM at 36 weeks + 1 days. Delivery at 36 weeks + 2 days.
Story added: 2008-06-19
The next month came along and my husband and I were thrilled to find out that I was pregnant! My due date was July 1, so we started hoping for a 4th of July baby. My pregnancy went along well and was especially exciting given the fact that I spent most of it living in in a third world country overseas. In late April of 2002, we returned to live in the U.S. and get ready for George’s arrival. My husband's grandmother was nearing the end of her life, so, despite me being close to the end of my 8th month of pregnancy, we decided a road trip to her home to see her one last time was a good idea. Around this time, people kept commenting on how low I was carrying and how much I looked like I could give birth soon. Grandmother even commented that she thought George was ready to be born and she was hoping he would be born while we were with her so we would have to stay longer and she could meet George before she went to heaven. This caused me to remind my husband about the Krissy Johnson story and we started to realize that we really wanted George to be born early also…we just couldn’t wait to meet him! Also, starting at about week 33 of my pregnancy, I was getting TONS of "innocuous" Braxton Hicks contractions, so I started to think my time could be coming soon. So we started praying that God would help George to develop quickly in case He saw it fit for him to be born early.
During the day on June 4th, my husband and I joked with each other about it being Krissy’s birthday and how it was time for George to come now. My husband had been working on homework late at night in the living room and I was keeping him company. When he got up to go to bed, I realized that I had fallen asleep on the couch and got up to join him in bed. It was about 11:40 pm. I went into the bathroom and after flushing the toilet and getting up to walk to the bedroom, I realized I was still “peeing.” I peeked around the corner, into the bedroom where my husband was and said, “Remember that thing about Krissy Johnson’s birthday?” He gave me a really funny look and slowly said, “Yeah?” “Well, I think my water just broke!” I responded. We were both stunned, but excited too. We called the doctor’s office and they told us to go to the hospital as soon as we could. We didn’t have any bags packed or anything but we packed quickly and took off.
By 1 am on Wednesday, June 5th, the hospital staff confirmed that my water had in fact broken and told me that I needed to go into labor by 6 am or so or else they would induce my labor, because they were concerned about infection with my water having broken and George getting ready to be born so early. I did not want to be induced so my husband and I started walking the halls of the labor and delivery section of the hospital, trying to speed my labor along. We got excited as we saw the new babies through the nursery window and I started to feel my labor kick in. By 4:30 am I was laboring pretty regularly and so inducing wasn’t necessary. I was transferred into a real labor room at some point along the way here and, throughout the course of the day, I met nearly all the doctors in my doctor's practice plus many nurses as well. The nurse assigned to me for my labor was just okay. She was not very personable and kept trying to pressure me to take pain medication. I preferred to “go natural” and opt for bouncing on a birthing ball, taking hot showers, squeezing my husband's hand, etc. At one point, I honestly thought I was going to die and I said something to that effect to my husband. I was shaking and cold and I even threw up the spinach omelet thing I had eaten the night before. This was at about 9 am. I asked the nurse to check how dilated I was and she refused, saying she did not want to risk me getting infected. So she finally convinced me to get an epidural, stating that I couldn’t be further along than 4 cm. dilated. The anesthesiologist came in very quickly to give me the epidural and immediately after she did, my husband went down to the car to get the rest of our stuff and, unbelievably, now the nurse decided it was okay to check my dilation. She exclaimed, “You’re at 10!” Then she added, “That epidural must have really helped to relax you!” Yeah, whatever…6 centimeters in two minutes! My husband came back up to the nurse saying, “You’d better get ready fast, she’s ready to start pushing!” So it was now closer to 9:30 am.
My doctor was called to my room which meant he had to abandon the podium right before he was to give a speech to a bunch of students. I apologized for messing up his speech, but he said it was okay because he was very excited about us and Georgie’s birth as well. Pushing was comical as I had just received the epidural, so I could not feel anything “down there” in order to push. I just did what I thought was pushing and let the hospital staff confirm whether I actually was or not. They told me when each contraction came and when I should try to push. Everytime I tried to push, George’s heart rate went down and he just wouldn’t move past a certain point. The staff tried flipping me over to different positions and having me let the epidural wear off. Nothing worked and it looked like George was in danger. Finally, at about 1:30 pm, a specialist was brought in. He assessed the situation and told me I had a skinny pelvis and that George was turned sunnyside up. Therefore, the bigger part of his head was trying to come out of my pelvis that just wasn’t letting it get through. He said we could keep trying but he really doubted anything but a C-section would work at this point. My doctor, my husband and I prayed about it and then my doctor left so my husband and I could pray about it alone and we decided that the C-section probably was our best, maybe only, option.
Then things happened fast. My husband was given scrubs to wear and I was wheeled into an operating room. They put a screen up beneath my head so I couldn’t see what was going on in my stomach area as they sliced away. There were at least 20 hospital staff in the room where I had my C-section done. I didn’t feel anxious at all, just excited that Georgie’s birth was finally going to happen. At one point in the procedure, the specialist doctor apologized for putting pressure on some of my organs as he “rearranged them a little.” I told him his pressure (which I could barely feel) was nothing compared to the kicking George had been inflicting on me the past few months.
Finally, at 2:08 pm, George came out screaming and red and gooey. I cried and cried, listening to his beautiful voice and straining to see him over to my left. Every so often I’d catch a glimpse of his arm or foot, but it seemed like forever before my husband was allowed to bring him over to me, all bundled up now, to say “hi Mommy!” He was absolutely beautiful and all three of us were in love instantly (as if we hadn’t been in love with George even before he was born!). George had a bad reading on his first glucose test (which we later found out was probably a mistake), so he was put in NICU for a couple of nights. It was hard to see him there, hooked up to tubes and probes, but he was, by far, the largest baby in the NICU, and the nurses told us he would be fine soon.
I visited George every three hours to feed him and marvel at his handsomeness and my husband and I were very happy when, on Friday afternoon, he got to move in with us. We stayed one more night in the hospital, with George sleeping in his bassinet between our two beds, waking often in the night to feed him. Then on Saturday, a very hot day, we all got to go home.