Birth Story Baby #6

He was highly anticipated, deeply loved, and a promise that life was going to move on!

I found out I was pregnant with baby #6, 1 day before our stillborn child’s 1-year heavenly birthday, but I had felt sick for about 2 weeks.

McKinnon

It was the last of the four names my husband and I had picked out for our boys when we first got married.  What happened to the other three?  We used them!

McKinzie is our first child and son, McKinley is our second, and McLeod our precious boy born to heaven at 16 weeks gestation was our 7th pregnancy.  I can’t remember why we picked the last two names, but the first two are family names.  Our Mc-clan was growing again, after 8 years of girl babies!

The Delivery

I had felt off with him for a couple days, had higher blood pressures at the ultrasounds and perfect pressures everywhere else, and one morning I could hear my blood pressure in my ears just walking across the living room of our apartment.  I called my OB and she asked me to come in and be checked.

I spent the whole day in Labor and Delivery with just a couple high pressures, and my OB came after her office hours to talk to me.  She wanted to send me home, and then see me the following day, I insisted that I did not feel good and wanted to stay.  She told me she could monitor me one night.  She listened, and I am so grateful!

 

198/99….Pre-Eclampsia!

My pressure went up in the night and stayed there.  At morning rounds her words to me were, ” Do you want to have a baby today?”  My answer, ” YES!”  He would be born in the Palindrome Week of August 2018, his birthday is the same forward and backward.

I was exactly 35 weeks.  I was eligible for a VBA2C, and it was my dream, but I had a feeling that my blood pressure would go up, as I had already been high overnight, and I wanted us both safe.  I was giving my last chance at a VBAC to him, to keep us both safe.  I would find out later that it was one of the best decisions I could have ever made.

My Cesarean Section was scheduled at 4:30 pm.  At 4:00pm, they were checking on him with the doppler and couldn’t find a heartbeat.  This bereaved mom panicked, I would say a little but it was a lot!  So, they pulled out the ultrasound and went to find him.  He had turned transverse, sideways.  This is the first reason I am glad I listened to that still small voice telling me to accept that VBAC was not going to be my story this time, or ever again.

We went to surgery!  Me, baby on the inside, my husband and my twin sister.  She was there to support my husband and to potentially follow our son anywhere they needed to take him if he was not developed enough.

They set me up and brought in my doctor, who performed a version to turn him from breech to head down (I had to tell her he was transverse during the surgical time-out because her medical student failed to do so…do not be afraid to tell your doctor any new news, it could be VERY important).  Then, it began.

I hear, “Oh, there’s a nuchal cord.”  I knew this meant he had a cord wrapped but my husband did not.  Reason #2 I am very thankful for my Cesarean, the nurse told my sister afterward that his cord was wrapped so tight that they could not get it off without clamping and cutting it.  Mom-tuition is a thing!

The NICU team was there, and his oxygen would not go higher than 60%, so he was whisked away to the NICU along with my sister.  I was put back together, and taken to my room.  I did not get to see my son for three hours, but my husband went to him while I was in recovery.

He would go on to spend 12 days in the NICU.

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