Redeeming Love: The Birth of Nathaniel

It’s been a minute since I’ve been able to come on here and write. My pregnancy was hard, complicated by PTSD, exhaustion, weight gain, and last-minute changes. The last time I updated, I was about 12 weeks pregnant and optimistic about the future. So let’s start from there.

It took a while, but the dissociation I was struggling with slowly went away. I started to accept the pregnancy, and feel less overwhelmed and less sick. For the most part, up until our anatomy scan, things were uneventful. I was just, for the most part, sick, tired, and chasing around two little kiddos while also trying to get used to a new schedule of drop off and pick up for my oldest, Arthur, who had started at a therapy center during the day.

A quick disclaimer – none of this is medical advice or a recommendation of what you should do. All my decisions were based off extensive research, talking with trusted medical providers, and my own medical history. All of this is so nuanced and none of it is black and white. Neither a VBAC or a c-section should be undertaken lightly and all the risks should be discussed with your medical provider. And any provider allowing for a VBA3C should be experienced in it and go over a plan with you for going over your due date, fetal distress, uterine rupture and more before agreeing to be your provider.

At 38 weeks pregnant, just a week or so out from my scheduled c-section, I saw something on Instagram that caught my eye – the story of a woman who had had a VBAC after 3 c-sections. 

There’s no way this happened, I thought to myself. It’s supposed to be impossible and unsafe. 

I’ve had 3 c-sections myself. The first was a true emergency and likely saved my firstborn, Judah’s, life. The second I felt coerced into after a failed induction. And the third was a cascade of unfortunate circumstances that led to a c-section I didn’t want but felt was in the best interest of my baby. 

When I had my first prenatal checkup for this pregnancy, I assumed I would have to have a c-section again. When I brought it up with my doctor, he confirmed that was my only option. So I went through my pregnancy trying to mentally prepare myself for a 4th one, even though I didn’t want it. 

At 21 weeks pregnant, we had our anatomy scan, and everything blew up for me. We were at the same maternal-fetal specialist’s office who had diagnosed Judah with missing kidneys. I had been back to her office in my previous pregnancy with my daughter but all had gone well aside from being unable to get all the views of her heart and having to go back to recheck. She is a friend of ours so when she came in at the end of my scan, I didn’t think anything of it. 

And that was when she said, “A few things came up on your baby’s scan.”

My heart lept into my throat. Why hadn’t I noticed anything? After 4 babies, one of whom had 3 ultrasounds a week for 9 weeks, I was pretty good at knowing what I was looking at. But, as I realized, I wasn’t that good. I braced myself for the bad news. 

“It looks like the baby has a clubfoot on the left side and their right kidney is enlarged and has too much fluid in it.” 

We proceeded to ask questions. We were told that the clubfoot was easily fixable but could be indicative of a trisomy diagnosis. Further genetic testing was recommended. The kidney could resolve itself and most likely would before birth. We were also told we needed to come back at 32 weeks to recheck the foot and the kidney. 

At this point, we didn’t know the gender, even though I was sure we were having a girl. Earlier in the scan the sonographer had turned off the screen so we couldn’t see, taken a picture, and put it in an envelope for us. 

The doctor, leaning against the wall said, “These two conditions are more common in one gender than another.”

My heart sank at that moment. From having two other boys with medical conditions I knew, most likely, she was indicating the baby was a boy. I tried to keep smiling as we finished up. Then we left and headed to a Hobby Lobby where I knew they had confetti cannons for gender reveals. 

We wanted to learn the gender with our living kids, who were home with my father-in-law, anxiously waiting to find out. 

My husband flagged down a couple of employees, gave them the envelope, and asked them to pick the correct popper. They walked to checkout with us since they had to take the tag off so we couldn’t see the gender. They giggled and were so excited for us. I think we may have made their day and they were so happy to be included. 

We paid and headed home. 

The drive was quiet. I was slowly processing what I had heard in my head. And trying to psych myself up to be happy in front of Arthur and Ellie. 

We got home, set up the camera in the backyard, and set off the poppers. Blue confetti shot out and my heart sank. 

I had been holding Ellie so I handed her to my husband, who chatted with Arthur about how he was right, went inside, laid down in my bed, and didn’t come out for several more hours. 

After that, my PTSD reared its ugly head. I had gender disappointment, yes, but the PTSD made it severe. My brain, believing we were back in the same situation we were with Judah, especially with the baby being a boy, cycled through flashbacks, rage, panic attacks, and fear. It took me weeks to fully recover. The future was once again uncertain in the worst way (hello kidney problems) and it made old trauma resurface. 

Slowly, we got through. Slowly, I accepted the baby growing in my belly for who he was. I had to work through a lot and tried hard to be excited. My ob-gyn was able to calm my fears a bit and they were calmed more when the genetic test came back clear. 

And then, at 35 weeks, around 5:30 at night, I started having contractions. I was cooking dinner so I tried to ignore it and then went and took an Epsom salt bath since the doula I had when I was pregnant with Ellie told me it would calm down contractions that weren’t true labor. Instead, they got more intense. I waited another hour and after tracking that they were 2-5 minutes apart and lasted over a minute, I called my doctor’s office and they advised me to come in. 

Long story short, I wasn’t dilated at all and labor eventually stalled out at 5am. 

However, when we first got baby boy on the monitor, they noticed he was having some heart decelerations. My doctor was fortunately the one on call and originally he told them to just go ahead and have a c-section but then when he found out I had eaten recently, he decided to wait and see what the baby did. Overnight his heart rate stabilized (I think he only had 2-3 decelerations) and they discharged me in the morning. 

I barely slept that night. Between the uncomfortable triage bed, my husband being home with the kids, the contractions, and the idea of going back to the NICU, I didn’t sleep. I was constantly watching his heart rate while also trying to remind myself that we were both safe and in good hands while my mind flashed back to watching Judah’s heart rate while I was in labor with him. 

Judah had bad heart rate dips every time I had a contraction. Because of his lack of fluid, they were squeezing his umbilical cord. When he was born, I didn’t see him. I didn’t know if he was alive. And then he went to the NICU without me seeing him. And my brain was telling me it was happening again. 

Trauma and PTSD took over and I didn’t sleep until after my doctor came in around 6 am and told me I could be discharged. 

I had contractions off and on again until he was born. We also had weekly nonstress tests since both Arthur and Ellie reduced their movements at the end of their pregnancies. We made it to term, were counting down the days until my c-section, and trying to finish prepping for bringing him home. And then I saw that post. 

Curious, I went into a VBAC Facebook group. There were a few stories of ones after 3 c-sections but not many. Then I looked to see if there was any research on it – I found a single study. 

This study concluded that the rate of uterine rupture was about the same as after 1 c-section, making it as safe as trying after one. It was a small study and more research still needs to be done but immediately my mind started to go into overdrive. 

Could I do this? Could I get out of my c-section? I started to search through old posts in the Facebook groups for providers. There was one doctor but he was on the other side of the city and I didn’t want to switch providers this late in the game. A few midwives’ names were mentioned and so I began to call them. Both said they could look over my c-section reports and if those looked good, they would see if they could take me on as a client. I mentioned I would most likely want a homebirth. Neither one had a problem with it. 

The last step was to call my doctor. They said he could call me on his drive home from work. I was in a meeting with Arthur’s therapist when he called and together the therapist and I got the kids to the van while my heart pounded in my chest. 

I explained to him what I had read. He had seen the same study. I told him I didn’t want to go forward with my c-section but I wanted to keep him as my doctor in case something went wrong during the birth and I needed to go to the hospital. 

He agreed and then said something that shocked me to my core, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. It’s your body and your choice.”

I fully expected him to try and talk me out of it and to burn the bridge. Instead, he did what every doctor should do with their patients – he supported me. 

I got set up with a midwife and we started trying to prepare for a homebirth. My c-section date came and went. And then my due date. I was starting to get frustrated but my midwife had told me it would be a mental game and that I needed to convince myself I could do this. 

I started journaling through fears along with curb walking multiple times a day, taking some homeopathics recommended by my midwife, and doing every exercise under the sun that I could find to help get baby into the ideal position. I also went to my chiropractor every day to do acupuncture. Nothing was working and I was beginning to get incredibly frustrated. 

One night contractions began in the evening and ramped up quickly. I texted on and off with my midwife all night but eventually, the contractions stopped again. I went to sleep, frustrated. She told me later she thought for sure that I was having a baby that night. But, as my body has done before with previous pregnancies, it would ramp up and then just stop. She recommended I give myself a break from the homeopathics, rest, and try them again in a few days. 

At this point I was getting anxious – she was only giving me till 42 weeks and I was almost there. 

Then finally, at 41 weeks and 4 days, my contractions started again at 8:11pm. They started out moderate and then quickly turned painful. I did my best to stay calm, got into the tub, and texted my midwife. 

I was exhausted but excited. I labored through the night. Contractions were coming every 3-5 minutes. I stayed in the tub, my labor and delivery playlist that I never got to use with Ellie on, and tried to stay calm. I have a pretty high pain tolerance but this was nothing like I had ever experienced before. 

Eventually, I got out and moved to the bed. The contractions were getting extremely painful and hard to get through. I kept texting my midwife and she recommended the Miles Circut based on where I was feeling pain. I made it through 10 minutes of each position and it eased some of the pain in my back between contractions. My midwife asked if she could head our way soon along with her birth assistant and I agreed. They arrived around 4:08am when I had been in labor for about 8 hours. She checked me and I was about 6cm dilated which is the furthest I had ever gotten on my own. They started helping provide pain relief and at this point it felt like my whole body was on fire. 

For the next several hours the midwife and her assistant took turns trading off supporting me. I threw up several times and was having incredibly intense contractions. Around 6:30am, the midwife checked me again at my request. I was still 6cm dilated and she believed that because the amniotic sac was bulging out, it was preventing baby’s head from coming down all the way and asked if she could break my water. 

We agreed and labor got so much more intense. At this point, I hadn’t slept all night except for dozing off a few times and I was so exhausted. We continued on but around 10am I still hadn’t made any more progress and somehow, was in even more pain. It was at this point that my midwife recommended a transfer to the hospital.

She believed at this point that I was just too tired and that getting an epidural could help me rest and progress. We decided to go and called my doctor to give him a heads up. There was no one to stay without our older kiddos so the midwife agreed to stay with them until a friend could get there to watch them so we wouldn’t have to delay going in. 

The drive to the hospital was horrendous. I was still contracting every 1-3 minutes and although the midwife got me as comfortable as she could, sitting up in a car for a 45 minute drive was awful. 

When we arrived we were taken back quickly. Over and over again I had to tell nurses what was going on while trying to get through contractions. They checked me again and I was still 6cm so they moved me up to the labor and delivery floor. 

There I was put in a triage room, an IV was started, and I was told the on-call doctor from my clinic was in another delivery and would be in as soon as she could. If being in the car was bad, being in the hospital bed was worse. It intensified the pain even more and each contraction made me scream. The doctor was taking longer and longer to come in and I began to tell them to go get my doctor. 

They said they wouldn’t since that wasn’t how that clinic worked but I knew he was available because I was supposed to have an appointment with him that day at that time. The other doctor, still in deliveries, ordered pain medication but, because I had had three c-sections, they wouldn’t order the epidural without talking to me, most likely to try and talk me into a c-section. The pain medication gave me no relief and I started having panic attacks and trouble breathing. My sweet husband was doing everything he could to support me but we had never been to this point in labor together before and we were both lost. 

Finally, after being at the hospital for around 4 hours, my doctor came in with the on-call doctor. He checked me one last time and I was still at 6cm. What I didn’t know at the time though was that he had pushed the baby’s head back up which he later told me sometimes helps stalled labor progress. He was very concerned and said that because my blood pressure was high, I had been at 6cm for 10 hours, and my contractions were so strong, he was very concerned that my uterus would rupture. He adamantly recommended a c-section even though he knew it wasn’t what I wanted and was very compassionate about it. He told me I could try the epidural but if I did and I ended up needing a c-section anyway, I wouldn’t be able to get something called a tap block that I had gotten in my incision the last time that had helped me tremendously with my recovery.

My husband asked everyone to step out of the room so we could discuss it. He wanted me to keep going, knowing this was what I wanted. At this point, I had been In labor for 17 hours and wanted to be done. I felt I had given it everything I had and just couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to risk not being able to have the tap block so my husband and I agreed to the c-section. 

Once we agreed, the room erupted in activity. My doctor called it as an urgent c-section since I was in so much pain which brought in so many people.There were papers to sign and medicines to take, and it’s honestly all such a blur. 

And then, with all the noise around me, I suddenly felt myself start to push. I started to call out, “I need to push! I need to push!”

A nurse told me not to worry, that we would be in the OR soon. My doctor had already left to go scrub in for the surgery and everyone was so focused on preparing for it they weren’t really listening. 

Over and over I felt myself pushing and over and over I told the nurses. I told them as they rushed me to the OR and finally one told me she would have the doctor check me one last time before the surgery. 

They wheeled me in and the doctor checked. There was silence for a moment and then he said, “She’s complete. Let’s get her to a delivery room.” Then he looked at me and said, “I need you to do a practice push before we go to make sure you can do it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He had the signed consent for the c-section. He could’ve just left it at that. Instead, he honored my wishes, had me do one practice push, and then had me rushed into a delivery room. 

I don’t remember much after that except for someone exclaiming, “Call the team! Let’s have a birthday!”

I was set up to push on my back, which I never wanted, and told that I needed to push hard and fast because my baby’s heart rate had fallen into the 90s. I was so tired but I gave it everything I had. I wanted to give up but wanted to be done more than that. They had also called the NICU team at this point since his heart rate was so low, but I didn’t know it till later.

A nurse named Frankie held my hand on one side and my husband held the other. They held my legs and encouraged me and spoke truth to the voice in my head telling me I couldn’t do it. 

At one point, they told me they could see his head and he had a lot of hair! I kept going and the doctor asked if he could do an episiotomy. Fortunately, I had heard that it’s better for your healing to tear so I refused. 

Ten minutes of pushing and the wildest experience of my life and that sweet baby was laid on my belly and I got to hold one of my babies as soon as they were born for the very first time. After delaying the clamping they let my husband cut the cord and then took him to be evaluated by the NICU team. 

He was coughing up a lot of amniotic fluid but once they got him stable and me stitched up, he was brought to me and we were able to just snuggle and nurse for the next few hours. The absolute bliss and birth high I felt was amazing and absolutely nothing like having a c-section.

After a while, we were transferred to the mom and baby unit. My husband and I soaked him in, talked about names, and then my husband went home for the night to watch our kids so our friend could go home. 

That night, our nurse mentioned that he seemed to be breathing faster than she wanted and asked if she could take him to the nursery for further observation. I agreed around midnight and they said it got better and then brought him back around 6am. After shift change the next nurse said he was breathing fast again (he was also having trouble nursing) and that he needed to go back to the nursery. 

My husband wasn’t back yet since we were waiting for my father-in-law to get into town to take over with the kids. I had my breakfast and then two doctors came in. They said they thought he needed to go to the NICU. 

My heart started to pound again. They told me they were transferring him in a few minutes and that I could walk down with him. Fortunately, I had changed out of my hospital gown into a dress and said I would come. 

During the walk down, seeing my baby once again in a transport box, I did everything I could to keep the PTSD from coming back. I walked him in, watched him get transferred into a warmer bed, and inside I broke. And as soon as I heard an alarm beep again, everything from our NICU stay with Judah came rushing back.

Seeing my baby in a NICU warmer, hooked up to monitors again, was such a painful experience. And having to leave him there was even worse. Over the next few days, I was able to visit him often, since the NICU was just an elevator ride up from the mom and baby unit. They kept me inpatient as long as my insurance would allow but then I had to be discharged. Leaving the hospital without my baby, after having to do it so many times with Judah, tore me apart. 

Over the next few days, Nathaniel (we picked his name when he was 2 days old) started to improve. He started on oxygen and a feeding tube. They never found out why he was breathing so fast – the top theory was that he was born too fast and not all the amniotic fluid came out of his lungs. I was only able to visit him for a few hours a day because it was all the older kids would tolerate. Arthur came in to visit him but Ellie wasn’t even allowed on the same floor as the NICU because she’s under 5 years old. Mostly, our visits would consist of me holding him and pumping while my father-in-law and husband took the kids to do something else. 

Leaving him every day was like a punch in the gut. While I was grateful he was doing well, being separated from him was like leaving behind a piece of my heart every time. I took home one of his blankets and would just hold it, wishing he was wrapped in it and soaking up his smell. But even that became too painful of a thing to do so I just set it on my dresser and left it. Every time I passed it, I would try not to burst into tears. I just wanted to bring my baby home. 

Finally, on day 5, they were able to pull his feeding tube out (he was off oxygen on day 4) and they said that to come home, he had to take all his feedings and not fall asleep for 24 hours. We anxiously waited, calling every now and then to see how he was doing, and were relieved each time to hear that he had emptied his entire bottle. And when we called the next morning, they told us he could come home that day and they would call us when he was ready to go. 

I quickly started switching our room out of labor mode and into newborn mode. I hadn’t been able to do it before thanks to not being able to bear looking at an empty bassinet. I soon realized I couldn’t find the bassinet sheets, so I made a makeshift one out of a swaddle. Then I impatiently waited for everyone to be ready to go so we could drive to the hospital and bring Nate home. 

When we got there, Arthur, my husband, and I went up to the NICU. We let Arthur hold Nate and waited for the doctor to give us our final approval to go home. In the meantime, we dressed him in an outfit I made for him, took pictures, and then the doctor finally came. We were cleared to go home and were told to wait for someone to walk us out of the NICU. I buckled Nate into the car seat and, once the lady finally came, we proudly walked him out of the NICU. 

It was a day I had dreamed about with Judah but a day that never came. Walking Nate out, as he slept peacefully and Arthur chattered on about this and that, the momentousness of the occasion as well as the events of the last week, washed over me. Everything we lost with Judah was restored with Nathaniel. Why it took until my 5th baby for our redemption to come, I don’t know. But the things that happened with him and his pregnancy and the parallels with Judah I know were not a mistake. They were the direct work of God, His mercy on our lives, and His grace to restore what we had lost. 

Nathaniel doesn’t replace Judah. And he doesn’t have to live up to his legacy or memory. While they share a name (Nathaniel is one of Judah’s middle names), Nate is his own person with his own life through whom God has already shown us grace, mercy, redemption, and love. He is a testament to God’s faithfulness to us when there was once in our lives that I wasn’t sure that God was even real. From that low place of a callous heart that was so angry about yet another negative pregnancy test to walking out of the NICU with my third living baby, He has been so, so good to us and has given us so much redemption. I think it’s best summed up by the verse we chose as Nate’s life verse: 

“Indeed, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” – Jeremiah 31:3 (ESV)