Jonah’s Birth Story

My last post announced my pregnancy, in which I laughed and laughed in joy at the positive pregnancy test, and like the faithful blogger I am, I’m back 9 months later with the birth story.  Besides, it’s the only thing I consistently do for each of my kids. 

Beautiful memory box? No. 

Darling photo album of every step of my pregnancy up to birth? That’s what Instagram is for. 

A blog post? Here you go, dear child of mine. 

Let us begin:

—And before you wonder why I’m dragging you through the months of the year (which I am) be assured that all of this is integral knowledge to understanding the maybe-semi-miraculous circumstance of Jonah’s birth.  Semi-Miraculous? I dunno, maybe that word is too much, maybe not. You’ll see.

~ OCTOBER ~ NOVEMBER – DECEMBER ~

Positive pregnancy test showed up in mid-October, right after bringing home a new puppy. I‘ll save you time and sum it up by saying: don’t get a puppy during your first trimester. Also, we were sick- and sick enough to cover the next 3 years. (But if you want to extend your read: I already discussed these months in my previous post here.)

~ JANUARY ~

The hope of a new year came it felt like we were catching up with life; my nausea had finally subsided, stomach viruses had finally passed, the house had been sanitized, voluntary self-quarantining before it became healthy-chic was over, Bosco’s musty puppy smell was more tolerable and there was no more finding dog crap filled with parasites in the one carpeted room in the house, among the regular stay-at-home-homeschooling-mom-every-day-stuffs (I’M TELLING YOU- DON’T GET A PUPPY THEY’RE GROSS.).  Partial normalcy at last!

~ FEBRUARY ~

February lumbered in on drunken troll feet and began spluttering nonsensical things amidst the cold, gray, drizzly days here in Ohio about a virus in China, and a toilet paper shortage. I still cannot work out how toilet paper became the issue and not hand soap, but hamsterkauf the people did, and I grappled with my loss of control over life by drawing this:

 

I also created this video short series of googly eyes stuck to popsicle sticks to express my feelings:

As one may rightly infer, I was already at mental capacity before Corona Virus made its Proper entrance and everyone got all uptight-undies-in-a-bunch about masks and social distancing and now you can hardly joke about it.

~ MARCH ~

Just as the hysteria began really ramping up about a pandemic, my midwives discovered a problem with my placenta and umbilical cord: something called a Marginal Cord Insertion (Not to be confused with the more serious velamentous cord insertion). This elevated me into an “at risk” pregnancy which would rule out the freedom to birth at home during this pandemic.

 Granted, I had not wanted nor planned to birth at home, but now that it seemed particularly unsafe to enter a hospital, I found myself with a new set of worries, wishing that I could at least entertain the idea.

St. Gerard Majella is a saint I’ve always known as the patron of pregnant women and birthing. I’ve never paid much attention to him, nor read his story, nor felt a sense of admiration for him like I do with my patron saints. However, along with my heavenly friends JPII and Padre Pio, we began asking for St. Gerard’s intercession as a family during our nightly prayers as soon as we found out I had a marginal cord insertion.

So, dear reader, we made it through March, and if you lived through this time as I have in some way, you probably have a grasp on how the physical/mental/emotional rollercoaster ride of everyday life in the times of COVID-19 went from there through April: Sometimes sitting up at night just crying.  Some days waking up totally fine and glad to be isolated from the whole world. Other days baking bread and unapologetically eating the entire loaf. Spending Easter Sunday in our own home, watching Mass live on YouTube was the oddest experience ever, though we tried to make it as special as possible.

 

 

 

 

Then there was one night early in May…

~ MAY~

I laid in bed completely asleep and was jolted awake by my own senses as I felt my heart rate slow w a y y y down; as if a tiny worker bee inside my body stood at my heart’s power station and pulled down a lever like a “system shut down,” and then raised it back up with such force that my heart started back up as if it’d been tossed from an airplane while sleeping, expecting to land on its feet.

 BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! Relentlessly.

My whole body pulsed and throbbed from the rapid force of my heartbeat. I felt like I was waking up a dream victim out of the movie Inception.

I’m not the kind of person to panic about health problems, pandemics and all, and I usually Dr. Google myself a rational explanation, figure out how to deal, and wait and see. But after nearly an hour of sitting with Craig waiting, moving around, trying to be totally calm, and trying to breathe controlled deep breaths, I felt like I was going to pass out and seize. I told Craig I was scared, and he called 911.

At 210 bpm, my heart didn’t stop there. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital my “resting” heart rate climbed to 225 and I was given 2 individual doses of what I have now come to understand is a scary drug to both administer and receive (wow.), which finally reset my heart. 

To give a general gauge of my usual heart rate, it rests at 60bpm, and I’ve never seen my heart go above 190’s while exercising… strenuously… in college… 12 years ago. 

I have no history of heart issues, and I saw a cardiologist who ran me through all the tests, did an echocardiogram, ran my blood through labs, and even sent me for an ultrasound on my legs to check for blood clots (DVT), and everything was normal, except that I was low in electrolytes.  They told me I had SVT (supra ventricular tachycardia), pumped me with magnesium and potassium and sent me home with a prescription medicine to slow down my heart if I happened to have another episode (which I didn’t want to take because it’s in drug category C for pregnancy).

 

I spent the rest of my pregnancy monitoring my heart rate (thanks, AppleWatch) and going through mini bouts of SVT with an avg resting heart rate of anywhere between 90-115 bpm while laying in bed each night, and not touching a drop of coffee, though morning coffee is a love language for me. I switched instead to an electrolyte drink every morning and every night on top of keeping up on my magnesium intake.

It was around this time when I received packages from two separate people I do not know, and have never met before in my life. 

In both packages were relics of St. Gerard. 

One contained two handkerchiefs, blessed salt, holy oil, and a note indicating that the handkerchiefs were 3rd class relics of St. Gerard. The other was a first class relic from a generous mama who messaged me on Instagram after I’d shared about being diagnosed with MCI. 

Not ever having been in possession of a relic from any saint before in my life, and still not having read the story of St. Gerard, I followed my intuition and quickly placed the handkerchief over my belly, right there in the kitchen, and asked him to intercede and pray to our Lord Jesus for my son, for me, and for a safe labor and delivery. I folded the handkerchief up and went back to the dishes.

~ JUNE ~

For the first time in all of my pregnancies, I tested positive for group B Strep. When my midwife reported to me that I was positive, I shouted WHAT! so loudly that I think she might’ve felt like I was holding her personally responsible. 

Apparently having Group B Strep  requires 2 rounds of antibiotics in 4 hour intervals while in labor. I’ve never had to deal with this malarkey before but I know what antibiotics do, and I know that receiving them while I’m also doing something so depleting and strenuous as giving birth is just plain terrible for me, and terrible for baby (granted Group B Strep comes with its own risks.). 

I didn’t have the brain space to look up my options and battle the hospital protocol on that score. I already had to prep for the possibility that they might want to separate baby and me if I tested positive for Covid, along with prepping myself to deal with condescending tones when I refuse all shots, which I figured was more worth the battle than antibiotics. Relining my gut with good bacteria, I know how to do. Fix a vaccine injury? not so much. That’s the benefit of medical freedom: where there’s a risk, the patient must have a choice.  And those are the choices I made this time around. I bought a quality probiotic, and began taking them right away, knowing I’d need to maintain a gut-friendly diet afterwards, so that baby’s immune system can get all the good bacteria back through breastfeeding.

So, as I prayed each day asking St. Gerard to intercede, I felt feeble doing so knowing the count against me looked grim:

• Marginal Cord Insertion
• Risk of preterm labor due to MCI
• Risk of pre-eclampsia due to MCI
• Risk of vasa previa, which could lead to a c-section, due to MCI
• Risk of underweight baby due to MCI
• Risk of stillborn baby due to MCI
• Supraventricular Tachycardia and who knows how that would play into the game (death, I was sure, during my most anxious moments).
• Group B Strep + antibiotics = stripping of all gut bacteria, good and bad, which could lead to health issues for both baby and me down the road.
• Covid-19 and everything that goes with it.

 All of these worries swirled though my head for months, and while I’m not a terrible worrywart, I am a realist; the variables against me were too many to have a positive outlook that everything would go without a hitch.

I took comfort in thinking constantly about how Our Blessed Mother, facing much adversity, must have felt while pregnant with our Lord, knowing she would certainly cover me in prayer.

But also, the people who offered up prayers for baby and me carried me especially when my faith felt weak. If you muttered even the simplest of thoughts up to Jesus for me, I thank you. In fact, I can’t thank you enough, and have been offering prayers in gratitude since. Intercessory prayer is to me what carrying a wounded soldier to safety through crossfire is on the battlefield in war. 

Intercessory prayer is so powerful, and to my prayer warriors, I thank you.

We saved the 1st class relic and, with Craig leading the prayer, we prayed as a family over the baby and me merely a few days before going into labor.

~ JULY ~

My estimated due date came.

I knew it would come, and that it would pass. 

If you are new to reading my profound brain things here on my blog, I will alert you to the fact that I usually suffer something called Prodromal labor, which consists of real contractions that wax and wane over the course of a few days to a few weeks before and after my due date.

It’s exhausting, frustrating, painful, and creates a monster out of me. One Easter Sunday while in the thick of Prodromal labor with Jude, a well-meaning, sweet woman spoke to me during the sign of peace during Mass and asked if I was expecting “a girl this time, I hope!?” And I responded with a slow, one-blink b*tchy resting face and gave her a flat, insolent “Nao.” And then turned my back on her without shaking hands. I apologized to her right after Mass, but still, prime example.

So this is exactly what I was mentally preparing for, except, thanks to NFP, I was 99% sure I had pinpointed the conception date, so I found myself disappointed that I hadn’t even felt a strong contraction at all. NOT ONCE as my due date approached.  Just a bunch of little Braxton hicks for weeks which easily went away as soon as I moved around. In the past, after my due date had slouched by with a sullen shrug, I’ve:

• used essential oils
• done the miles circuit
• Guzzled a great cup or three of red raspberry leaf tea…

but I’d never tried castor oil because I hear it really just makes you run to the toilet a bunch, and is quite unpleasant to swallow.

~

The morning passed. I realized our pantry and fresh produce had dwindled to a low quantity, we were out of toilet paper (irony in the times of COVID), and in a fit of sheer “obstinate headstrong-ness”, I left the boys with Craig (who had returned to working from home because people at his workplace kept getting sick with Covid) and I went to Costco.

I power walked through the entire store —as I was supposed to be under self quarantine and take a weekly Covid test until delivery— having bought everything a family of 7 usually needs in under 30 minutes, and I didn’t forget anything!

At home, we cooked a pre-fab Costco Lasagna dinner, I bathed my grubby little kids who’d been running around with chickens all day (oh, yes, we got baby chicks as well this spring because tp shortage instantly brought to reality our desire to be more homestead-y and self sustaining, and obviously chickens is where the natural thought process leads one, instead of in the direction of a bidet, right? Right.) and I developed heartburn which stayed with me to the bitter end of this story.

I distracted myself by complaining on Instagram about baby missing the due-date memo, and my IG friend Erin asked if I’d tried castor oil. She gave me a handy protocol tip: 1tsp castor oil mixed into a small root beer float, 6 hours apart, no more than twice, and wait.  

A root beer float? That I can try, methinks. I’ll take it once, and if I don’t notice a difference, I’ll just shrug and carry on with my miserable self. 

So at 7pm, I drank one. 

Then before bed I drank a double strength cup of red raspberry leaf tea.

I went to bed with raging heartburn and general disappointment in spite of what I knew deep down would be happening: another week of being pregnant.

I laid in bed, listening to a comfort read on Audible, Dominic having long since fallen asleep twirling my hair, and at exactly midnight—

—WAIT. 

WHA’S THAT?! 

A great tightening in the front of my belly which slowly wrapped around to my back and down my legs… 

…eh, it could be one, but we will ignore.

Three minutes later, it happened again. 

And three minutes more, AGAIN. 

Out of amusement, and most likely desperation, I uploaded a contraction timer app, and started timing these stupid things, knowing they’d taper off at any moment.

A half hour later of perfectly consistent 1 minute contractions every 3 minutes, the app told me to go to the hospital.

HA. 

HAHAHA. 

Righttttt. 

I told Craig “something might be happening” but I was going to sleep and see how it was in the morning. They were uncomfortable, for sure, but I could ignore them. I was SO exhausted and come to think of it, I really wanted a solid night of sleep, despite how irritated about not starting labor I was a few hours earlier. 

Well.

A half hour more of the same consistent contractions, and like 5 more alerts from the app to
“GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW.”
and I figured I should at least text my Mom and Dad, who are about a 45 minute drive away to come stay with the boys. Better safe than sorry.
I still expected things to completely halt and leave me bristly and irate and tired the next day.

I got up and walked around and things did not completely halt as I expected they would— THEY GOT HEAVIER. 

1:00 am had now passed and 1 minute contractions were coming every TWO minutes, I went to the bathroom and saw my mucus plug on the toilet paper (sorry there’s just not a more lady-like word for that). I grabbed my hospital bag and woke up Craig, who had not even started started packing his bag and began doing so as if he were sleepwalking.
We are well-conditioned by my Prodromal labors, you see, and just don’t believe in urgency as far as this goes, because it’s never out of the blue urgent, and I usually have a week’s worth of warning.

1:30am and I found myself needing to stop bustling about and bend over the couch to work through each contraction. I dialed my midwife in between contractions, and felt what I thought was just a gas bubble; like, thank goodness, let’s get this heartburn gone—I stood up and out gushed my waters. …ohdang. 

My personal laboring history suggests that once my water breaks, a baby shows up within an hour. 

Remembering that the hospital is 30 minutes away, I managed to holler “CRAIG WE HAVE TO GO NOW.” while shuffling back to the bathroom, water trickling down my legs. I feebly attempted to put a tiny pantyliner in my underwear, as if that would help anything at all; my rational self trying and clearly failing to function in panic mode.  

I stood up, and saw that Craig’s thoughts about my progress matched what mine where the hour previous, and he didn’t fully comprehend the urgency, as he was still sleepily rummaging around for something (probably socks).

“MY WATER BROKE. WE HAVE TO GO.”

“OH!” And that snapped him to, rushing upstairs —TO WAKE UP THE BOYS?! Out of a knee-jerk mama-instinct of not wanting to disturb the well-oiled machine of peacefully put-to-bed kids, I barked at him to stop and acted like he was willfully creating anarchy for no reason.

 I couldn’t understand that Craig had no other choice but to load them all into the car because my parents were nowhere near the house yet, and the only other option would be to call an ambulance, which I refused point blank to do.  Had one in May, thanks. Don’t want the bill for that again. 

So at this point I was down on all fours, becoming quite audible, in the dining room with a towel (which I’d grabbed because I was afraid I might have the baby in the car) and all my boys were surrounding me, Dominic laying at my head, holding my hair in one hand and a blanket in the other, just being there in (relative) quietness for a precious short moment while I swayed and held many head through the avalanche of contractions.

Craig ushered them into the car and I realized I’d need to work against gravity during the drive and remain on all fours, with my bottom higher than my head, if I wanted to keep this baby in there.

The drive to the hospital is usually a solid 30 minutes, and Craig later told me we made it in 17, somehow never hitting a red light.

From my place facing backwards in the passenger seat, my head hanging over into the laps of my oldest boys buckled into their seats, I could see the bright lights of the ER entrance and I felt relieved.  The biggest hurdle completed, one step closer to the epidural. 

I’ve had 2 unmedicated births. It was during these births that I learned I birth posterior babies, and I get the urge to push at about 7cm dilation, while also having that most nightmarish stuck anterior cervical lip which just. won’t. retract. Pushing against an anterior cervical lip is… well, if you really want to know you can go here to read the tale, but I’ll sum up by saying I have vivid PTSD even 5 years later and I just cannot get my emotions and head straight enough to attempt to face doing it again. 

As the ER nurse literally RAN me to the maternity ward in a wheelchair, leaving Craig waiting in the car with the boys for my parents to arrive, I found myself mentally battling the very real possibility that I would have to go through this, without medication, again. But every mental fiber insisted I WOULD NOT. 

We made it to my room, and my nurses were standing there with my midwife, waiting for me. I hurled myself onto the bed, and on all fours, braced for yet another contraction. My nurse guided me through each contraction like a sports coach, and I mean it in all sincerity when I say I am so grateful for her. A firm voice in my ear with total belief in the womanly ability to bring forth life, and confidence in me to do this job is so empowering especially during the height of a contraction, when you feel like you can’t take it anymore, like your body might split in two if it doesn’t relent. Waves crashing upon waves, swallowing me and pulling me under, and a spilt second to breathe before the next wave curls over my head, and the undertow rips me away.

And in that split second I used my energy to say, in a cavalier voice, “Um, so… is the epidural on its way?”

The answer was no, not yet.
There is a protocol, of course.
Have to get a whole bag of water through my arm to make sure I’m hydrated,
have to run my blood through labs real quick,
and then there’s the whole sitting upright and jabbing me in the precisely exact right spot of my spine while I hold perfectly still through my torrent of contractions.

I could tell they didn’t think I’d make it through all of that, but they tried anyway, God bless them all.

As usual, the nurses had a difficult time placing my hep-lock, and blew out the vein in my right hand before trying my left (exactly as they did when in labor with Dominic), and even at that, I had to hold my hand in a curled position to get the fluid running properly into my vein. 

One of the nurses stood at my saline drip, squeezing the bag to get it through me faster while I continued to contract, my face in a pillow, my butt in the air, my bruised right hand punching the bed.

And finally came Craig, who was certain he was going to miss the whole thing. 

At this point I was getting delirious. In between my contractions I spoke in what was an eerie high-pitched singsong voice and interrupted anyone who spoke, finishing their sentence for them with “—and bringgg the epiDURalllll?!”

My midwife checked me and I was dilated at 7cm and starting to push through my contractions, just like I have in my previous labors. I just couldn’t not push. It brought a bit of relief.

 But I knew the rest of the story even if my midwife did not: it looks like the end is nigh, alas nay, my wretched cervical lip lay in wait, to serve me hours of pain when I was supposed to feel relief, and double peaking contractions and never a moment of daylight until I’ve broken hundreds of blood vessels in my face and clenched my teeth so hard that I have a 7 day headache afterward.

At long last —and actually it was only 3am so it was very quickly in all reality— Stacy the anesthesiologist entered the room and went to work right away. It couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes, 2 contractions and she was done with me.  

I felt my legs lose their feeling, but I was so terribly frustrated to continue working through about a half hour more of full blown contractions, at which point Stacy gave me an additional dose of “medicine” they all kept calling it, and again once more. 

It turned out that I had what is called a “hot spot” where a part of me just didn’t take the epidural, and I continued to feel pain there.  So that was not enjoyable, but after some shifting in the bed, it seemed to lessen significantly.  I mean, I didn’t want to be totally numb. I wanted to be able to still have a sense of my contractions, just not to be breaking blood vessels in my own face.  My jaw was already sore from clenching my teeth.

AND THEN! As per the fairly usual scenario with all epidural’d laboring moms, my contractions slowed down and I got to REST for the next 4 hours. And I was so grateful. Beyond grateful. I kept blurting out how grateful I was that we “got it” in just the nick of time.

And truly we must have because at 7:30 am, the nurses came in and prepped the room. My midwife came in at 7:40am and they took one look at me and said “There’s his hair! It’s already out!”

Craig and I burst out laughing. My midwife asked if I wanted to push with the next contraction, and I gave it the tiniest, smallest push, mostly due to my continued laughing— and out came his head! And then his body! 

He was born as I laughed, and Craig and I continued to laugh and cry in disbelief and gratitude at this anomaly of a birth as he was placed on my chest. It took a bit of vigorous rubbing before he finally took his first breath and the color came to his skin, but he did, good boy.

Just as we have with each of our children, we gazed endlessly and sat in wonder at this new person; this irreplaceable new creation, a tiny perfect rosebud planted in my womb during a time of such worry and distress, so lovingly grown, completely beautiful and unaware of it all. 

Jonah Daniel was born perfectly healthy and without complication July 8th at 7:46am, exactly 40 weeks after the death day and Feast of St. Gerard:  “il santo dei felice parti,” the saint of happy childbirths.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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