Georgia Anne's Birth Story

A few weeks ago our baby girl turned one. One has been a hard birthday for me with all three girls, I get very emotional about the first year being over,. I think that this time it felt more significant, because everyone asks 😆 no, we aren’t going to try for a boy and no I won’t be pregnant again. We have adoption on our hearts, so I know we will add to our family at some point, but I won’t have another pregnancy, another birth story to share or a newborn to bring home from the hospital.

Georgia’s birth ended up being way more traumatic than we expected, and it took both Joe and I a long time, and the help of a counselor to process, and I am sharing this with his blessing, as the aftermath of it all was very painful for our marriage. I am forever grateful for the experience of prenatal care with a midwife (seriously life changing) and to have delivered with a midwife, but the birth story is not the one I would have chosen.

I wanted to share it here, a year later, for all those Mamas sitting with a tiny person, who they love dearly, but that the way they got here wasn’t what they expected. So grab a cup of coffee and read along!

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In the weeks and months leading up to Georgia’s birth I was battling feelings of fear.

I thought this fear was related to making it to the hospital on time, because of what happened with Ellie’s birth. I was drawn to scriptures claiming victory over fear, songs about letting go of fear, and prayers crying out to the Lord that I would know when it was time to go to the hospital and would make it on time. 

My midwife was an angel, and while the OB that I was seeing before I switched wanted to induce at 39 weeks (I fully understand why they wanted to do that, I’m not questioning their decision, but that’s not what I wanted as a patient) she knew my desire to go into labor without assistance and we had a plan for when I was going to come to the hospital.

As I neared the end of my pregnancy the comments and jokes “are you going to try to make it to the hospital?” stung more and more as I believed the lies that this was a failure on my part with Ellie and a responsibility I wasn’t capable of this time. I know the comments were in jest, but they stung so deeply and I’d smile and half laugh and walk away.                                 

I would wonder with every twinge and every pain if this was when I needed to pay attention and go. And I doubted myself and my ability to know. 

I was holding on to that fear at my 40 week appointment when my midwife asked if I wanted her to “help things along” and I adamantly said no, probably the only woman on the planet who didn’t want to go into labor when they were 40 weeks and it was 110 degrees outside. I had other reasons, like not wanting to be at Baptist on the Katrina anniversary, but it was mostly rooted in fear of how quickly things would happen once labor started. 

Almost another week went by and I was feeling good, we were getting into a new school routine and going to birthday parties, running errands, and soaking up time as a family of 4. 

Sunday, September 2nd I woke up feeling awful. I’d had a reaction to a steroid nose spray I’d used and I was in bed all day recovering. I felt so bad, I wasn’t even thinking of being pregnant or the baby coming, I only wanted to feel better. Around 8 that night I started to feel a little better which I thought was weird but I attributed it to the 24 hour medicine wearing off. I woke up to go to the bathroom around midnight and in my grogginess I noticed I’d started spotting.

I knew immediately that I would call the midwife because we’d had the plan that if ANYTHING happened I could call. Even if that meant going in falsely eleven times  I would go. She even told me to tell them I was coming, not to ask. 

The midwife I spoke with asked about my contractions, to which I lied 🙈, and said they were erratic, 5 minutes apart maybe, but in reality I wasn’t having any. I’d had some back pain and pelvic pain the past few days, but nothing contraction worthy. She asked if I wanted to come in and I paused and said yes, even though I could tell there was some hesitance in her voice. 

We called my uncle to come watch the girls and got to the hospital I think around 1:00 AM. We met the midwife in the breezeway to walk in the hospital and even she was skeptical that I was in labor. No pain, no contractions, coughing up a storm. I felt like I had to over explain Ellie’s birth to everyone I interacted with when checking in because it felt like no one believed me. 

They hooked me up to a monitor and did my vitals and in the back of my mind I felt like they were going to send us home. She asked us what the name was and we didn’t have one we agreed on. The whole time I don’t think i thought this was really it either.

The midwife came in and checked me and I was 7 centimeters.

Um, come again? She even laughed and was surprised. They admitted me and we walked down to the glorious birthing center on the 4th floor. I moved in and put my drinks in the fridge, got my oils out, my snacks on the counter. This was going to be my space for next day.

I’d have my baby in this serene room in the tub and have this beautiful, redemptive, uneventful birth story. We’d labor, deliver, and recover in this room and by morning we have our sweet baby girl. 

I had a terrible cough/congestion still so they encouraged me to take a shower. I still wasn’t contracting. I took a shower, played workshop music, prayed again to let go of this fear. I tried laying down to rest, but couldn’t really fall asleep. I walked around hoping to help labor progress, applied oils, breathed deeply. I would have a contraction here or there, but nothing super painful, and nothing consistent. 

The midwife checked me twice between 1:30 AM and 7:30 AM and said that I was 8-9 centimeters. Progressing but slowly and we decided to wait and see. 

At 7:30 another midwife came on shift and encouraged me to try some different positions during contractions to help my pelvis open up. Over an hour I probably had 6 contractions, which is not active labor, or not labor for someone who is 9 centimeters. The midwife assured me that they weren’t trying to rush me, and that we didn’t have a timeline, but to consider that it was unusual that I was so dilated and it had been 7 hours since I’d been admitted. She suggested breaking my water to help things along and explained the different outcomes, but that she thought what would happen is that this would jumpstart active labor and that we would have a baby soon. 

I was hesitant because a resident erroneously broke my water (my dr apologized and said they shouldn’t have done it when he got there) with Mary Frances but I was 1 cm and that was my first. This time I was 9 cm and it was my third. I had a peace about it and she broke my water. 

I immediately saw that it was full of meconium and my heart sank. “We have to go upstairs don’t we?” I asked. If you have any complications at all you have to move back up to labor and delivery on the 6th floor so they have the equipment and medicines and in this case, the NICU nurses on call. I was devastated because in one moment, the birth I’d planned out in my head wasn’t going to happen. Even though when they asked me, do you have birth plan, I said “no” but I really did. I stood up, started packing my bags up.

Goodbye to the room with the double bed, refrigerator, calm atmosphere. Goodbye to the birth I’d imagined.

They asked me if I wanted a wheelchair and I said no, I’d walk. We walked up to the 6th floor and as I remember walking down that hallway it was a blur. Fighting back tears, I remember blurry smiling faces and a doctor saying hello to me. I was so angry. Angry that I had to be on that floor, angry that it didn’t work out the way I wanted. Angry at anyone who was on that floor because I didn’t want to be there. 

I walked in my room and a new nurse and nursing student dressed in white was standing in the corner, did not introduce herself. I was pacing around the room, not contracting, trying not to cry. I didn’t even want to get into the tub, because I wasn’t contracting, but I didn’t know what else to do. I sat in the tub like a toddler holding my knees, wishing I’d just signed up for a scheduled induction to get this over with.

The midwife came in and asked how I was feeling and by this point it was over 30 minutes since they’d broken my water and I’d had one contraction. 

When we were chatting, I started contracting. She told me to get on my hands and knees to make them more productive. From the time of that contraction to the time Georgia was born it was less than 30 minutes. The contractions were immediately excruciating and on top of each other. I didn’t even think I could make it out of the tub to the bed to deliver her.

My angel saint of a midwife helped me change my conscious language from “I can’t” to “I can and I will”. I knew that the baby was coming fast and I got out of the tub and onto the bed. 

The pain was unbearable and I felt so weak. I felt like my arms were going to give out and that I didn’t physically have the strength to push her out. But two pushes later she came out.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but as she was in the birth canal they were trying to find her heartbeat and couldn’t. When she came out I couldn’t see her because of the position I was in, but I knew I didn’t hear her. I asked if she was ok and they said yes, and if she was crying and they said yes, but she wasn’t. 

Joe said that the cord was wrapped so tightly around her neck and that she was blue. They got the cord off of her neck and she cried I guess? But I don’t remember ever hearing that first strong cry. They had me turn over and lay down and I got to hold her, but quickly things went wrong. 

I started bleeding faster than they could control and in the moment I didn’t understand how bad it was, I just knew it was horrifically painful. It wasn’t until the next day that the midwife came and visited me and discussed my hemorrhage that I realized how serious it was. 

It was like a scene from ER.

Because I didn’t have an IV line in, they had to rush to put one in and 4 tries and multiple spots later. Shots in my leg, questions about medicine I was allergic to and the pain, oh the pain. They had to pull and tug and manually scrape and it was horrific. Different than the pain of birth because you don’t know when it will end. 

I was holding the baby, but squeezing her because it hurt so bad that joe took her away. All I wanted to do was to hold my baby and again for the second time I couldn’t. I was in shock after Ellie was born and really didn’t hold her until we got to the hospital after she was born at home.

The doctor on call came in and it took over 30 minutes to make the bleeding stop. Time was a mystery in that room and all I know is that she was born at 10:06 and it wasn’t until past 12 that they were “done” with me. 

There were discussions of a transfusion being needed but they would wait to see what my levels were. They didn’t let me get up, or get clean. I was able to hold Georgia after about 45 minutes, but it all feels like a blur. 

The birth was so traumatic for Joe to watch, and it wasn’t until we processed it in counseling weeks later that I really understood that. In a span of 30 minutes he thought that both his baby and is wife were not going to be ok.

During our time in the hospital after she was born I felt alone and scared.

I felt like I had to keep it together, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to emotionally meet Joe, so I went into robot mode, and he was emotionally completely removed. I knew I couldn’t talk about how I was feeling and neither could he, so we didn’t talk. 

The sweet moments in the hospital I’d envisioned like we’d had after Mary Frances and Ellie were born didn’t happen and I didn’t realize in those moments that I’d lost something I didn’t realize how deeply I wanted it.

My pregnancy had been so different than the first two, so healthy, so empowering.

I’d enjoyed being pregnant and my body didn’t revolt like it had before. I wasn’t unbearably uncomfortable and had so much hope and pride in how I’d taken care of myself. This pregnancy was different, and this birth, would be the birth I’d wanted so badly. 

But it wasn’t.

After we got home I struggled with postpartum depression and anxiety in ways I didn’t expect.

A feeling of malaise overshadowed my days accompanied with intense anxiety and fear. I would replay her birth in my mind, and would also go to the place of “What if Georgias birth had been Ellie’s birth, we’d both might have died.”

I loved this sweet little baby so deeply, to my core, yet she felt like a stranger.

Even reading through this story I wrote out shortly after she was born is painful. I wrote “ I don’t have many sweet memories, just memories of trudging through and that makes me so sad.”

A lot of the pain for me from the birth was less about the trauma of what happened, and more about the feeling alone.

For Mary Frances’ birth we had gone through Bradley classes, which are partner coached childbirth classes, and Joe was with me every step of the way during her labor. With Ellie’s it was an in the moment, intense situation, but he played the most active role, and at the hospital we were together processing it all.

With Georgia, I remember feeling alone. Alone as I walked around that night wondering when the contractions would get intense, alone as I pushed her out, alone as they hurt me and stitched me up, alone at night in the mother baby room, alone during the day in the mother baby room. Alone in the car riding to the doctors appointment after she was born and alone as they did her bloodwork and I sat there crying, alone as I nursed in our room.

The story didn’t end there, and I got help in many ways. We had an angel of a counselor that had us both write out our versions of the story and process them together in sessions with her. These were incredibly helpful, and as we processed the trauma of what happened, and mourned the loss of what didn’t happen, we healed.

I know that the Lord helped me push through those scars to his promises when it felt like a sad, confusing road.

Looking back at pictures on my phone of those weeks after she was born I’m thankful that I captured so much joy. There was so much in the pain and I’m so grateful to have these sweet memories to look back on.

So if you didn’t have your perfect birth, or an easy birth, or the birth you thought you’d have or wanted, I’ve been there too. Three times actually, ha!, and you are not alone. There’s nothing you could or should have done differently. Go snuggle that baby, give yourself a whole lot of grace, and take those pictures when the moments feel sweet, you’ll want them to look back on later.