A Tale of Two Pre-Term Births
By Julie Ann Cook
Every Child is Different
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| Tiny hand |
In July of 2006, I was seven months pregnant with my second
child. My first pregnancy, labor, and
delivery had been a book-perfect experience.
No surprises, save for my short-for-first-pregnancy labor. But even that wasn’t totally unexpected since
my mom had been similarly quick with labor and delivery of me and my three
siblings.
This second pregnancy seemed to be going just as well. It was a bit more challenging, though,
because of the simple fact that I was busy chasing a two-year-old in addition
to working part time outside the home. I had become accustomed to the dull,
tight, ache of Braxton-Hicks contractions, but had thought little of it besides
it being a reminder to drink more water and take a break.
One morning, though, that wasn’t enough. After an hour of drinking water, resting, and
trying to “walk it off,” I still just
didn’t feel right. So I called my
OBGYN. The office said they would
squeeze me in for a 9:30 appointment. My husband took me to the doctor, and
after vitals, etc., I was seen by the doctor at 9:50.
Not the Plan
At 10:15 a.m., I was
being rushed to Labor and Delivery.
I was 34 ½ weeks along, making my delivery “near term,”
which is still pre-term, just a less frightening word for it. The doctor had
found me to be six-centimeters dilated when he told me, “You’re having this
baby today.” My heart fell into my
stomach. The wind was knocked out of me.
This was not the plan.
I kept thinking. This isn’t supposed to
happen. It’s too soon!
I don’t remember much of the labor. I remember crying. I remember being told how I should be
breathing. I remember yelling at the
nurse who tried to tell me how to breathe as I was busy feeling broken over the
fact that my body was making my baby come too soon. My emotional tension made the pain worse than
I had expected or remembered—of course, with my first delivery, I had opted for
an epidural, but there was no time for such this time. The only thing holding
my baby in was my un-ruptured bag of water.
I had no idea what this early delivery meant for my baby. I
expected time in the NICU, but what did that mean? Would there be permanent problems? Would my baby be OK? Why was this happening? Did I do something
wrong?
At 10:51 a.m., my second child, a son, was delivered. I
missed it amid all the chaos inside my own head.
I held him for the briefest of moments, between tears,
marveling at his little sounds… until someone—a NICU nurse?—informed me that he
was making those sounds because he was having trouble breathing. And my heart broke as they scooped him up and
attended to him in his warming bed before rushing him to the Special Care
Nursery.
That night was the most emotionally challenging of my life
up to that day. Alone at the hospital, I found my way to the nursery for a late
night visiting session. I was the only
parent there at 2am. With the exception
of the beeps and buzz of monitors and incubators and lights, it was quiet as I
sat beside my tiny boy’s warming bed and simply touched him, feeling the
softness of his skin and peach-fuzz hair. I was emotionally exhausted, but trying
to sleep, I discovered, was useless.
That night, one of the nurses suggested I take a baby
blanket back to bed with me to sleep with it, to let it take on my scent. I could swaddle him in it the next day.
Rollercoaster Days
The next two weeks were full of ups and downs, small
victories and apparent setbacks. Our
little boy, though generally healthy, suffered from what the nurses affectionately
called “Wimpy White Male Syndrome.”
Basically, Caucasian males are more likely to have weak lungs than many
other preterm babies. So our little guy
began his time in the post-womb world on a ventilator. His sucking reflex had
not yet fully developed either, so he was on a feeding tube in his early days.
Our source of greatest frustration and emotional exhaustion
was that no one would tell us directly what needed to happen in order for us to
bring our baby home. Rather than tell us
the whole checklist, we were only told one goal at a time, which was painful
when we felt we were led to believe that the next hurdle was the final
one. The goals our little guy needed to
meet were, in no particular order:
- Meet and maintain (or surpass) birth weight of 5
lbs 4 oz.
- Regulate his own body temperature without the
help of a warming bed or incubator.
- Be able to breathe independent of any machines,
keeping his oxygen levels reasonable.
- Be able to breastfeed and take a bottle (since
he was prescribed a supplemental high-calorie formula to help him “bulk up.”)
- Pass his “car seat test”—sit in an infant
carrier car seat for a full hour without going into distress.
In addition to his goals, my husband and I were required to
take and pass an infant CPR test, something beneficial to any adult dealing
with infants.
All the while, I expressed my breast milk, the one small
thing I could consistently do in my role as “mommy.” Overall, though, I felt
helpless and in the dark because I did not know what questions to ask.
We were fortunate that we lived close enough to the hospital
that we could visit for multiple feedings each day, but with a toddler at home
(who was not allowed to visit his baby brother), that was a challenge
still. We rarely visited together. Every free minute seemed to be spent at the
hospital or in the car to or from.
Homecoming
Finally, the day arrived, as a surprise actually, when we
brought our little “Bean” home. We
hadn’t realized until that morning that he would be discharged that day. How good it was to have our whole family
together under one roof!
A Scare
Two and a half years later, I was pregnant yet again. This time, with “high risk” on my chart due
to my previous early delivery.* I took the recommendation to get weekly progesterone
injections starting at 16 weeks.
(Studies suggest that progesterone injections can help reduce the risk
of preterm labor in some women who have previously had a spontaneous preterm
delivery.) So every week, I would offer my upper thigh as sacrifice to a
stinging shot in hopes that my third child, another boy (we had found out ahead
of time with this one) would be safely delivered in mid-August.
With five-year old and almost three-year-old active little
boys, it was not a stress-free pregnancy. But we were determined to do what we
could to keep our little guy gestating. I was terrified when, in mid-May, at 26
weeks, I had a bout of false labor that wouldn’t go away. I spent the better
part of that day in the hospital as they worked to stop contractions. Fortunately, they were successful, and my
littlest boy was still safe inside me.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Another July rolled around, with all its heat and humidity.
Aside from my May scare, the pregnancy had been relatively uneventful, though
full of Braxton-Hicks contractions. My
doctor had been keeping an eye on my cervix, and did not seem too concerned.
But our third son was just as eager as the second, and again
at 34 ½ weeks I found myself in active labor.
…But Completely Different
This time, though, was my best birth experience to
date.
Though our little one was early, I
had a good idea what to expect. We had
done this before. And as an added bonus,
I had arrived at the hospital early enough to get my requested epidural. (I don’t have anything to prove—besides, I’d
already proven that I could labor
naturally and established that I preferred not to. I’m a wuss.)
Comfortably
numbed and emotionally calm, I was able to focus my energy and attention in the
moment. I was even able to control my
breathing for the most part. Of my three
live births, this was the one for
which I felt most present.
After about 5 hours of labor in the hospital, our third son
was born. He too had underdeveloped
lungs and needed some extra care in the hospital, but this time, I knew the
main obstacles he would need to overcome before he could come home. And I knew what questions to ask. I was familiar with the nursery’s hours and
workings, and I was more comfortable with dealing with a tiny baby than I was
the first time around. I relished every
moment of kangaroo care. And I spent
more time making memories with my little boy than worrying about making plans.
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| 3 Healthy Boys! |
Lessons Learned
If there is one thing I’ve learned from these experiences,
it is simply to do what you can and give the rest to God. It feels like a
lifetime ago, and a blink of an eye, but these memories are just that. In the end, these preemies are just as much
the active little boys that my full-term firstborn is; sometimes even more so. I find little use in hovering over my
children: I did everything “right” and yet I still couldn’t protect them from
coming early… which to me simply says there are some things beyond our
control.
Helpful resources
Julie Ann Cook is a happily married, joyfully outnumbered mother of four boys, one who was stillborn at 20 weeks. Between assisting in living room railroad construction and addressing concerns of who would win in a fight between Megatron and Iron Man, Julie is an author, artist, and webmaster. Julie's writing has appeared in various publications including Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets, moonShine review, MaMaZina.com and The Wolf. She is the author of Love Like Weeds, a book-length poetry collection to be released by Main Street Rag later this year. Julie blogs at Digging Cheese out of Carpet in her *ahem* spare time. Check out Julie's Facebook page for more!
Cancer is all around us. We'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't been touched by cancer. At least in the United States, where we're surrounded by carcinogens daily. We're either breathing in toxic substances, consuming them, or rubbing them into our skin with carcinogen-packed products deemed "safe" by the FDA. It's beyond frustrating. 
