Suddenly I hear the heart rate on the monitor drop. Oh my god, what is happening? The nurses rush in and have me flip onto my hands and knees. I see the surprise in their eyes when I can actually manage it by myself considering I have had an epidural. They’re all speaking amongst each other using terms I find completely foreign. I’m not sure if that’s because all I can focus on is the pace of the heart monitor’s beep or if they’re actually using a different language, but I do know I heard “emergency c-section”.
This term doesn’t worry me due to the potentially dangerous situation it puts me in, but because of the clearly dire situation my unborn child is in.
Wait, I think the heart rate is leveling back out. It is. The nurses say it is too. Thank God.
I manage to return to my back, slowly, as not to disrupt the heart beat again. The nurses feel comfortable leaving me and assure me nothing will progress until tomorrow. Try to get some rest, they say.
I lie there, trying to sleep, but the pain and obsession over that heart monitor make it nearly impossible.
I finally start to doze off from the unrelenting exhaustion when I realize the intermittent pains are becoming less intermittent. My mom recognizes the situation and rushes for the nurse. When they return I know it’s time.
After just 15 minutes of pushing, at 10:57 p.m. I hear your cry and I hear you, my sweet angel, are a girl. The pain is instantly gone.
As you’re placed on my chest I can’t help but be overwhelmed with the kind of joy only a mother holding her newborn child could ever possibly experience. Our connection is instant. You look straight up at me and I can see my love for you is returned tenfold.
I have never felt so whole, so important, so at peace, so proud or so loved in my entire life.
I finally manage to peel my eyes off of you and see your daddy, your grandma, and the words 19 inches, 5 pounds, 5 ounces on the incubator at the foot of my bed.
A miracle.
On July 25, 2012 my daughter, Siena Brynn, was born.
Over a year of countless miscarriages, obstacles, and disappointments finally brought us our blessing. A positive pregnancy test on my husband’s birthday. And, it actually stuck.
She came three weeks early, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. Exuding sweetness, a calm demeanor, and perfectly healthy everything.
At around 7 a.m. I woke to my broken water and struggled through contractions and complications with my epidural as the day progressed. After 12 hours of a lack of fluid in her environment she began getting twisted up in her umbilical cord. Causing petrifying periodic drops in her heart rate.
I’ve battled Rheumatoid Arthritis for nearly my entire adult life. And, complications RA causes ensued acceptance that birthing my own child was not going to ever happen for me.
Siena and I beat the odds together. I hope our story gives women everywhere hope. Because, miracles really do come true.
P.S.
My late father was born in 1955 and I was a daddy’s girl. Because of our bond, I know he would not have missed the most important day of my life for anything, not even heaven. And when I looked up at the incubator in front of me and saw her length and weight. I knew, he helped make it all happen and I’ve rarely experienced such magical moments in my life.
So, thanks Dad. Because I noticed and, because, I appreciate you.