Welcome to Thursday Birth Day! My hope is that this series will help to encourage women who
may be expecting their first baby or their second/third/fourth/etc.
These posts will provide some real life experiences that we can all
appreciate and maybe even learn from. I also hope for this to be a
place where women who have gone through birth can have a place to share
their beautiful stories.
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Baby Aria's Birth Story
The pregnancy and birth of my
daughter did not go as I had always envisioned it. When I went to my obstetrician for my first
visit and he confirmed that I was pregnant I told him that I knew it was going
to be a girl, that there would be complications, and that I would end up having
a c-section. The doctor tried to
reassure me that things looked great and there wasn’t any implication that
there would be complications or a need for a c-section.
Around 20 weeks I was sent by my
obstetrician to the perinatologist for some testing. Up until this point my pregnancy was
seemingly normal with no complications so I was not quite sure why there was a
need for any further testing. While we
were doing the ultrasound at the perinatologists office we found out that my
original gut feeling was right on two accounts, our baby was a girl and there
would be complications going forward because they found holes in her heart and
discovered that I had placenta previa.
After that I started having
appointments on an almost weekly basis with various types of doctors (a
pediatric cardiologist, geneticist, perinatologist, and my obstetrician) to
monitor the baby and me. As it started
to get closer the doctors asked if I would be comfortable delivering her up at
Children’s Hospital due to the complications.
I decided against delivering up at Children’s Hospital and instead opted
to deliver closer to home to be closer to my family and friends.
We scheduled my c-section two
weeks prior to her due date because she began to stop growing and her health
was declining in the womb. The doctors
warned me that my baby might need to have heart surgery shortly after her birth
but I just knew that everything would be fine once she was born.
I made a post on facebook about
heading up to the hospital to have my c-section, which all of my friends took
as an invitation to come along with me.
I had an entourage of 18 family and friends there with me. My c-section
ended up being pushed back due to an emergency c-section that needed to happen
ahead of me. After I got the news that I
would have to wait even longer to have my baby my mother told me that she
needed to go into work because she hadn’t taken the day off. I was devastated. My mother was supposed to be there with me
for the birth of my daughter and now she was rushing out the door.
I finally was taken back to the
operating room to have my baby. Aria was
born on March 2, 2011 and weighed 5 pounds and 13 ounces; her APGAR
scores were perfect, she latched on right away, and most importantly the holes
in her heart closed.
Although this birth wasn’t the
birth I had envisioned (home birth, no interventions, etc.) what is important
is that Aria is a bright and healthy girl and she made it into this world
safely.
