My son’s birth story was almost completely normal. My pregnancy certainly was normal. I worked steady throughout the pregnancy. Of course I had normal pregnancy “symptoms”. There was never any doubt that I could be pregnant. I was lucky and virtually no morning sickness. I did suffer from severe fatigue and some fairly heavy heartburn. I gave up a few foods and took naps during my lunch hour.
As the pregnancy, progressed I did get really bad carpel tunnel syndrome. Both my hands went numb. I had to be careful to make sure I was on home row because I couldn’t feel those handy bumps on my keyboard. I was able to hire a temp to train at work for my eventual maternity leave and started to slow myself down in preparation of things to come.
I remember it was a Monday. I was so tired and achy I just slept in that day. Work called and I decided that I was not going in that day. I started to feel some heavy back pain and I fell asleep watching The Sting on TV. I was in the hospital by that night.
The labor was long. It seemed foggy then and it seems even foggier now. There is little they can do for back labor. I had two failed epidurals. In short, I was failure to progress. They had difficult monitoring my contractions. After trying to push and doctor whose favorite statement was “just 2 more” followed by “just 2 more”, I was getting a C-section.
The C-section went normally except for one major problem My spinal bloc was too high. They had to intubate. I just remember a doctor pleading with me to keep squeezing his hand and me replying, “I am”. A mask fell over my face and I woke up in a recovery room. The nurse looked down and said, “we didn’t expect you to be awake so soon” I was finally wheeled into my room and presented with my wonderful baby boy. He was a healthy and average 7 lbs 8 oz.
The first year was dominated by breast feeding. Its not so easy. I was not one of those mothers who took to it easily. I am not one of those mothers who remember it fondly. I got through it. I cried about it, I worried about it, I even saw a few specialist. I made it through one year a little more. E (lets just call my son E for all intensive purposes) lost interest in breast feeding once solids increased.
Nothing unusual. E met all his milestones. He wasn’t a very chatty child, but he did babble a bit. He walked before he was one. He pulled up very early. By one year, I was actually starting to relax just a bit. In the beginging, things were almost completely normal.