When Rylan was born a week early, we were shocked. After all, Kaelyn & all her siblings were late and huge babies. But, the downside was that when we got closer to Cal’s due date, we had built an expectation that he would be early. And He was not.
Since he was a summer baby, our Indiana family members were planning to come meet him. But they eventually couldn’t push their departure any later and had to just come. Which undoubtedly made us desire some expedition on the process. Not to mention, Cal is an IVF baby (More one our IVF story here). In doing some research, we found many articles about how IVF babies can have placenta issues after 39 weeks, and we were sitting at 40+, and did we mention this was the summer when all the babies in Concord were born? When we were finally able to get an induction date, we woke up bright and early and called in just as we were told. They said, we’ll call you back later today because we don’t have a bed for you. We were very discouraged, but tried to go back to bed and get a little more rest.
We finally got a call that a bed was available around 1:30-2pm on Saturday, July 26 (7 days after Cal’s due date). Kaelyn took a quick shower and I threw everything we needed in the car so we could high tail it to Concord before someone else tried to have their baby and take our bed!
When we arrived, Kaelyn had to have a COVID test so we waited for a while in triage for the results before we could move to a room and get things rolling. We also met our doctor, who unfortunately was not even one of the normal OBs from our office, and let’s just say, his bedside manner did little to inspire our confidence in him. They finally moved us to a room and started Pitocin around 5pm or so. Our nurse was nice and the doctor was fine at that point, but they just didn’t seem as concerned as we were, and were definitely not in as much of a hurry to help us meet this baby. So, instead we sat, waited and ordered dinner from the cafeteria. So different from Rylan because Kaelyn barely had time to get an epidural, never mind have food!
Enter our night nurse. That shift change was the best thing that happened to us! Our night nurse (I’ll refer to her as M, to protect her privacy) was the most down to earth, warm, competent, gentle angel sent straight from God to our room that night.
She introduced herself and said something to the effect of, “I heard we are hoping to meet this baby tonight.” And we immediately perked up. We asked if there was anything we could do to help move things along, and she so patiently stayed with us walking us through different positions/exercises we could do to move things along. She also, because she was an angel sent from God, moved the Pitocin dosage up a little quicker than her earlier counterpart. ;)
After getting up and moving for a while, our nurse checked and we decided now would be a good time for Kaelyn to get her epidural. The epidural was when everything went downhill.
The epidural was starting to take the edge off of the pain, and our doctor came in and checked everything. He had earlier mentioned breaking her water to move things along, but decided not to do that and left. Our warrior nurse still stood by Kaelyn’s side and explained her water may break soon on its own, and that because of the epidural she may not feel it, she may just feel warm.
No sooner had she said it, Kaelyn’s face changed and said, “Uh, I think my water just broke.” But that’s not what happened.
M checked and her water had not broken. It was just blood. Lots and lots of blood. I swallowed my fear, got up from the chair I was sitting in and went to Kaelyn’s side, and that’s where I stayed until Cal was born.
There is something traumatic and even triggering for us (due to our miscarriage between Rylan & Cal) when we see blood during a pregnancy. It is never a good sign. But there was no time to have those thoughts.
Steady & composed, M informed Kaelyn that there was some bleeding so she was going to have the doctor come in and check things out.
Around this time, the epidural also stopped working. Things were going from bad to worse, and our world seemed to be spinning out of control.
While Kaelyn was in excruciating pain, the doctor decided it was a good time to tell her all the terrible things that couldbe going on and what they may have to do, including, an emergency c-section or even emergency hysterectomy. He never once made eye contact with me. He just looked at Kaelyn, while she was in so much pain that she couldn’t even open her eyes to look at him.
They gave her oxygen since she had lost so much blood, broke her water, and the doctor went back to stand in the corner of the room and bro out with the anesthesiologist, as our angel, M, came back over to Kaelyn’s side and reassured her, she and Cal were both fine. Thankfully, through it all, Cal’s heartbeat remained strong and steady.
Breaking her water moved things along quickly and intensely. Just a little while later, the doctor examined Kaelyn again and decided it was time to push. Before we knew it, the room was full of medical professionals. Because we didn’t know the source of the bleeding yet, they brought in an extra nurse, a pediatrician and another medical assistant to check Cal out once he was born to make sure he was okay.
Kaelyn was amazing. There is something so incredible about how God designed childbirth. There is something innate in a woman that causes her body to do exactly what she needs to do. Several strong pushes and our boy was out. The pediatrician took him to examine him and Kaelyn and I breathed a sigh of relief. And shared a few tears.
After looking Cal over, they found that he was completely safe and healthy, and Kaelyn was able to do skin to skin with him about ten minutes after he was born. The cause of bleeding was due to a rare issue called velamentous cord insertion, where his umbilical cord was attached to the edge of the placenta rather than the middle, and was beginning to separate. We are so thankful that it didn’t turn into anything more serious than it did!
Again, I repeat, Kaelyn was a warrior and our nurse, M, was a steady source of support to us! And in the end, we had Cal: our sweet, silly, adventurous boy. Our hands have been full in the best way since the moment he arrived!
Wanna hear Rylan’s birth story? Click here to check it out!
Newborn In Home Photos by Madison Rae Photography