We have a baby!

Sitting here on my couch with the movie White Boy Rick playing in the background. My husband is to my right and our baby is asleep in her travel sleeper next to him.

Our baby. Wow. We have a baby!

It was just 2 months ago that I was debilitated by hyperemesis and now I sit here feeling so incredibly unstoppable and it is all thanks to our baby, Teagan Ripley Margie-Elvire Maull.

The Day of her birth

On January 22, 2020, I woke up with so much energy given I had bad dreams the night before. My dreams were all about Teagan and they were not the best. But I did not want to put too much into it and instead went about my day. But the dreams continued to nag at me.

Jermaine and I had errands to run ranging from heading to his job to going to Holy Cross Hospital to get bloodwork before my scheduled cesarean. Before anyone asks, it was scheduled because baby girl was still in a frank breech position at 39 weeks. Given that I had been pretty much on bed rest my entire pregnancy, I chose to dress up and put makeup on in order to snap a few stylish bump pics while out and about. Little did I know what would happen less than 4 hours after snapping these pics.

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Our last prenatal appointment at my OB-GYN left Jermaine and I a little nervous. Baby’s heart rate was a lot slower than usual and the sonographer mentioned the fluid was low. Our providers did not seem alarmed but then again they never seemed alarmed about anything. But that is for a later blog post about advocating for yourself.

Regardless of how they felt, our respective “guts” did not feel right and we devised a little plan.

Our baby birth story

Our prenatal appointment was on Monday. I started having my bad dreams Monday night into Tuesday evening but Jermaine was disturbed since we left the office. He is rarely if EVER the worrier in the relationship so It was a dark cloud following us but we did not want to be stressed out for no reason.

But instinct never lies.

After getting my blood work, we decided to head up to Labor and Delivery triage just because we were pretty concerned about the fluid. We did not want to lie but since both of us felt something was “off”, getting checked out was imperative.

I was physically feeling well but mentally kept thinking about our baby’s health. They checked me in, hooked me up to monitors, and then the fun began.

Teagan’s heart rate had many moments of inactivity. The first person to check her fluid stated she was around the 8 mark and 5-20 is considered enough. We were going to be sent home. Looking over at Jermaine, he was not convinced. Typically his head is buried game playing on his phone but this hospital visit had his eyes glued to the monitors.

Another 30 minutes passed by and another provider notified us they wanted a second ultrasound. The machine was wheeled into our room and she began the search for fluid. We knew something was wrong because of the silence. I was asking questions and not getting responses.

Finally, the resident stated “I am going to call your doctor with my recommendations” which instantly prompted my response “Well, what are those recommendations”. Met again with silence.

Three minutes later we were met with an apology over incorrectly reading the first ultrasound. Five minutes later a group of health care officials came into our room to tell us they were prepping the OR and I would be having our baby that evening. With both our phones near dead (his 17% and mine 12%), we called my mom, sister, and in-laws. Not even 15 minutes later, I was in the OR with my back to the anesthesiologist getting my spinal block.

That spinal block worked oh-so-fast and within 2 minutes my sternum down was numb and Jermaine was brought in to be my support person while they cut me open to bring our baby into the world.

Our baby. Our baby needed mommy and daddy to trust their instincts and advocate for her. Thankfully we did.

The Cesarean

Overall the actual c-section process was super easy to me. It was the mental turmoil that had me troubled. I did not like knowing I had legs but unable to move them. I am constantly tensing and moving my legs and the fact that I could not affected my mind so much. As far as physical pain, there was some very minor pressure and I only felt actual pulling when they were getting her head out. The smell of flesh burning was more traumatic to me than anything else.

5 minutes later I was holding our baby and looking at her swollen face and thinking “She’s not very cute”. Lol.

Yeah, that was my first thought.

Sue me.

The longest part of the cesarean was after she was out. I could hear her little whimpers yet was stuck on a table being stitched up. That took forever. My impatience was growing and I was again counting from 100 down just to keep from being “stir crazy”.

After about 35 minutes, I was put back together and we headed to the recovery room where I breastfed for the first time. There is NO feeling like it. She latched on immediately and stayed on for nearly 40 minutes. Cloud 9. I loved every minute of it.

Nearly two weeks later and I’m still loving every minute of it. It is crazy that I started this journey not excited and am currently on it all smiles every day because of her.

Yes, we had our baby and I don’t regret a single thing. I am so proud of Jermaine and I for trusting ourselves and for heading to triage. I do not want to think of what the other side may have been because we did not allow that to happen.

Biggest piece of advice for pregnant moms, trust your instinct. If it feels off, go with that. Your baby depends on you to be the voice. Health care professionals are just human and do not know everything. Trust yourself and that little voice!

On another note…..

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p.s. genes are strong! You never know what your baby will look like. I never in a million years thought our baby would look JUST like my paternal side. The resemblance is uncanny. Over here staring for any “me” in her minus her facial expressions lol.