The IVF/Pregnancy Diaries

Things quickly went downhill from there. S wasn’t crying at first for a few seconds, but then he started to. They put him on my chest and for a few seconds everything seemed good, but when I looked at his face it was turning whitish-purple and his eyes started to roll back in his head. The nurse came over and started rubbing him. She told me it seemed like he wasn’t getting enough oxygen and they needed to get his blood flowing. Meanwhile, I delivered the placenta with a couple extra pushes, and I was able to cut the cord.

S was still crying but only a small amount, and his color still looked really off. My midwife and the nurses started to look concerned, and they turned to each other and just said “we need to get peds in here now.” I was in a daze as they took my son from my arms, just minutes after he was born, and brought him into the other room to examine him. I could still see him from the other room, and my husband was able to be with him, but of course I couldn’t get up to see what was going on. I kept yelling out to them “Is he ok? Is he going to be ok?” Everyone kept saying “yes,” but they were still unable to get his color to seem normal.

At this point, I looked down and saw a huge pool of blood that my midwife was collecting with gauze. I asked her if this was a normal amount of blood to lose, and she just took a deep breath and said “no.” I asked if I was going to need a transfusion and if I was going to be ok, and she just said calmly: “I’m working on it.” I was shaking and starting to feel extremely cold and feverish. They took my temperature and I had spiked a 100.2 degree fever. They brought S back to me and I got to hold him for a few more minutes. I was so relieved and happy for those few minutes, but then the nurse looked at him again and remarked that his color looked off again. Before I knew it, the doctors were back and they were taking him from me again and bringing him to the nursery for further examination.

As my midwife continued to work to stop my hemorrhaging, my husband (who had gone with S to the nursery) called me to tell me that they were running a chest X-ray on him, and that he had definitely inhaled a large amount of fluid and was struggling to breathe on his own. They were rushing him up to the NICU to get him on oxygen. None of this felt real, I couldn’t believe this was happening, that my son was in such danger and that I was unable to get up and be there for him or to do anything about it. I had never felt so helpless in my life.

Luckily, my midwife was able to stop the bleeding with some extra pitocin and other medication to help me continue contracting. My nurse came back and talked to me about what to expect with my son. She validated everything I was feeling but assured me that inhaling fluid was a very common and very resolvable problem, and that she was confident he would be ok, but that it was going to be scary. She told me to have my husband send me pictures and to video chat with me when he could, so that I could see S hooked up to all the tubes and machines. She told me it was going to be terrifying to see him like that, and I was going to need to break down and cry about it, but that I had to make sure to do that while I was away from him, so that by the time I got there to see him I could be the calming presence that he needed me to be.

After about an hour, my midwife and doula tried to help me up to get me into a wheelchair to bring me to my postpartum recovery room, but when I sat up I started to feel faint and my hearing started to go out. They laid me back down quickly and talked to me to try to keep me awake, but told me there was a chance I was going to pass out and promised that I would be ok if I did. Luckily I stayed conscious, but I still couldn’t even sit up without almost passing out, so they had to bring me to my recovery room on a stretcher. My fever had also gone up to 100.4 and I couldn’t stop shivering, so I took some Tylenol to level it out.

Hours passed that I lied there helplessly in that room. My doula stayed until 10am when visiting hours began, and then my mom came and traded places with her so I wouldn’t be alone. My mom brought me some food which helped me feel a little less faint, but I still couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom when the nurses came in to try to help me get there (I made it to the toilet with their help, but then my hearing started to go again and they said my lips turned blue, so they had to rush me back to bed).

My husband Facetimed me so that I was able to see S and predictably, I broke down crying when I saw him hooked up to all the tubes. I virtually met S’s NICU nurse, who told me that the second I came on the phone and S heard my voice, his vitals immediately and drastically improved. It was then that I realized just how important it was for me to get up to the NICU, not just because I wanted to see my son, but because I knew he needed me and I had to be there for him.

I continued trying to get out of bed, but I still couldn’t stand or walk without feeling faint. But after a few hours, I was able to at least sit on my own, and my husband was able to coordinate with the NICU and the maternity nurses to send someone with a wheelchair to bring me up to S!

Seeing my son lying there helplessly on the little warmer bed, hooked up to tubes and wires, was the most horrible thing. But I followed my nurse’s advice and stayed calm, because I knew he needed me to be. I sat there for hours, holding his little hand and talking to him so he’d know I was there. I was able to hold him that evening for about 2 hours, which had both me and S (based on his vitals) feeling much calmer and more relaxed. His NICU nurse said clearly my and my husband’s presence and touch was such a comfort to him and was speeding up his recovery, so she encouraged us to be there and to hold him as much as possible.

The next few days were the longest of my life. Being in the maternity wing alone while I heard other people’s babies crying through the wall, and saw other people bringing home their babies every time I went out into the hallway, was so beyond upsetting. All I wanted was for my son to be safe and healthy and to be able to have him with me. I spent every second I could up in the NICU, entirely neglecting my own care and annoying all of my nurses, but I didn’t even care. The only thing that mattered to me was S and his recovery.

The next day was a nightmare of having to hook him up to a feeding tube, and having the doctors tell us that his issue “could” be more than just fluid in his lungs (it could be meconium too, or any number of other things causing a difficulty breathing). They kept saying they were hoping to take him off the oxygen tube later, but when they tried, they found out he wasn’t ready.

The following morning, I woke up feeling depressed, discouraged, and terrified. My husband had been up in the NICU since 4am, and I woke up around 7am. He came downstairs to get me in the wheelchair. By the time we got back upstairs, S’s nurse was standing over him, telling us to stay quiet and to be very calm… because she had just disconnected his oxygen! She told us that the next 3 or 4 hours were critical. If he did well without it over that time, they’d be able to keep him off of it!

Miraculously, he did well! By the time the doctor came around for morning rounds, she said she didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t go home the following day! They did another X-ray as well, and saw that the fluid in his lungs was mostly gone. That day I was also able to bottle-feed him for the first time (though I had always wanted to exclusively breastfeed, my milk hadn’t come in yet and he needed the protein to recover quicker, so we had to give him formula) and do skin to skin.

That night, I was discharged from the hospital and we had to go home without our baby. This was the moment we had been dreading for days. But just before we left, we met with the NICU doctor who told us she had already signed the papers to have him discharged in the morning! They transferred him from the warmer into a regular bassinet, and said they were going to take out his feeding tube and his IV in a few hours. We went home that night with a sense of relief, hoping to get one last good night of sleep without a baby in the house, but ended up sleeping horribly because we were so anxious that something was going to happen overnight that would result in us not being able to take him home, and also excited to pick him up in the morning. I woke up at about 5am to pump (I had been waking up every 3-4 hours to pump to try to get my milk to come in!) and called his night nurse to see how he was doing. She said he was absolutely perfect and content, mostly just sleeping, and that made me feel a little better.

We woke up bright and early at 7am to be back at the hospital at the start of visiting hours at 8am! Standing in the elevator, I could feel myself shaking with excitement and I couldn’t stop smiling. I turned to my husband and told him I had never been so happy in my entire life.

Administrative delays resulted in us not being discharged until a little after noon, but we spent the morning taking turns holding S and just being so grateful that he was coming home with us. When we got released, we brought him down to the car and honestly felt like we were doing something wrong by taking him with us!

I had an induction scheduled for 10pm on August 11, which is when I was exactly 41 weeks pregnant. All week, I had been trying to make my peace that my labor wasn’t going to happen naturally like I wanted it to, and I had accepted the fact that we would be inducing.

But at 3am that morning, I woke up feeling like I had severe gas pains on the right side of my stomach. I went back to sleep hoping it would pass and I’d feel better, but then I woke up again at 5am and it had gotten even worse. I started to get paranoid now, worrying what if it was something serious (I truly went down the rabbit hole of everything that could cause that sort of pain, from placental abruption to appendicitis) and eventually decided to call the on-call midwife and ask for advice. She asked if the pain was coming in waves and I told her no, it was perpetual. She said it still sounded like early labor! She said to come in if it got much worse.

Honestly, I didn’t even believe her right off the bat. I went downstairs and made myself some breakfast. Then around 7am, the pain started coming in waves. I still had this perpetual sharp pain on the right side, but then contractions began on top of it. They were short, but were every 2-4 minutes. I woke my husband and we headed to the hospital.

At the hospital, they hooked me up to a monitor and told me I was in very early labor. I honestly was still half-expecting them to tell me it wasn’t labor at all. They said I could either allow it to progress on its own, or they could start an augmentation process by giving me pitocin. I opted to labor on my own for a while. I spent the next several hours laboring on a yoga ball for the most part (which really helped with the pain, actually!) and watching TV with my husband to distract myself.

By 1pm when we did a cervical check, I was still only 3cm dilated, which was what I had been when we checked at my appointment 2 days earlier! At that point I decided to move forward with the pitocin. As much as I preferred to have a natural labor, we had been planning an induction for later on anyway, and I wasn’t willing to sit around suffering through early labor for potentially days.

At 3pm, we started pitocin on a low dose. I didn’t feel any different until they upped my dosage to 6 units, and even then, I had a few really bad contractions that then didn’t hurt badly anymore. They got me up to 10 units, at which point my contractions became longer and more regular, but still just were not that painful. They couldn’t increase the dose beyond that, as I was having 5 contractions every 10 minutes, and they said I risked hyper-stimulating my uterus if we tried to do more.

Around 5pm, my doula came to the hospital, and her presence was an absolute game-changer for me. I was feeling exhausted from having been up almost all night, discouraged by the lack of progression in my labor, and despite the contractions not being that bad yet, I was suffering in pain from the spot on my right side (which my midwife guessed was due to baby’s positioning putting extra pressure on a nerve on that side during labor). My doula turned the lights out, turned on soothing music, gave me some tissues with essential oils to hold by my face and breathe, and showed me some stretches and positions that could help me feel a little more comfortable. After a few minutes of stretching, I laid down and she put a heating pack on the pain-spot, which minimized it enough so that I was actually able to fall asleep for a half hour! When I woke up, I felt a resurgence of energy and motivation, and was ready to do what I had to do to get through this.

My midwife came in around 7 or 8pm, after about 4 hours on pitocin, and suggested that we break my water. While I really wanted a natural water rupture (as I was nervous about complications from having it done artificially, as well as the fact that having your water broken puts a clock on your labor and how much time you have to get the baby out before it becomes unsafe) I realized there was no other choice if we wanted to try to make progress. I asked if I could preemptively get the epidural before we broke my water, since I knew the contractions would be getting a lot worse after my water was broken, and I figured I’d just start it early and spare myself waiting for it to be administered and for it to kick in!

The anesthesiologist came in, and I was shaking with nerves. I sat on the edge of the bed and my nurse talked me through what was happening and what it was going to feel like. The anesthesiologist said the worst part was the numbing injection, which would feel like a bee sting. That was exactly what it felt like, and it was over very quickly. Having the needle for the epidural slide in was still a very unsettling feeling, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Once it was in, I lied down in bed and my midwife said to relax while we waited for it to kick in, and then we’d break my water.

After a few minutes, the pain spot on my right side completely stopped hurting, which was such a relief after suffering in pain from it all day! Then legs started to go numb and I actually started to feel very unsettled with the fact that I couldn’t move them. My stomach started to feel funny, and I felt a strong popping sensation on the left side. Part of me was just so unsettled by these sensations (or lack of sensations) started to regret getting the epidural at all. But then my midwife came in to do a cervical check, and she discovered that apparently that popping sensation had been my water breaking on its own! She did a cervical check and I was STILL only at 3cm, but she said I’d be progressing now that my water broke. It was almost midnight, and she told me to sleep for as long as I possibly could before the contractions started to pick up. Her prediction was that I would be in active labor by the morning, as generally first time moms will dilate a centimeter every 2 hours.

But within about 10 minutes of trying to sleep, my contractions suddenly became indescribably awful. I was clearly in active labor, and the time for sleep was over! I asked my midwife how I would know when I needed to push, and she told me I would KNOW. My husband and my doula talked me through the contractions. I was so exhausted and delirious at this point, that I started to fall asleep between contractions, and literally started having dreams in the few seconds that I was asleep for!

After a few hours, I started to have a meltdown. I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, like I couldn’t get through the pain, like I just wanted to sleep and for it to stop. I cried and cried, and just begged for it to be over. Once I was able to stop crying and pull myself together, I started to feel like I needed to push. They told me I probably didn’t, since it was much earlier than expected. But I REALLY felt like I needed to push. And I also had realized that my meltdown sounded exactly like the “transition” part of labor that had been described to me in the past, so I started to become really confident that I was at least almost there. At some point during the contractions, I also started uncontrollably shaking, and I couldn’t tell if it was nerves, hormones, or both.

Honestly, I was still expecting my midwife to say I was maybe 6-7cm dilated. But after she checked, she looked at me and said “ready to have a baby?” I was SHOCKED. I had made it from 3cm to 10cm in a 4-hour span!

It was about 3am when I started pushing. The beginning of the pushing-stage was a welcome relief. It actually felt good to be able to push along with the contractions, rather than to just breathe through them. It didn’t get too agonizingly painful until his head got very low. My doula was able to hold up a mirror and I was actually able to see the top of his head! Despite having an epidural, I could still feel an intense pressure and pain in my pelvis, like the type of pain when you have a very bad upset stomach, only worse. The worst part was waiting between contractions, when I literally couldn’t do anything about it. At least during the contractions I was able to push and make progress, but between them I just had to sit there and wait for the next one, while meanwhile suffering in the agonizing pain of his head just hanging out in my pelvis!

Each push I kept feeling like it was going to be “the last one.” My whole team kept telling me I was “almost there,” but that went on for at least an hour, so it just started to make me even more frustrated when each push wasn’t the last one. I started breaking out in a sweat and getting extremely discouraged that he wasn’t out yet. I had been awake for almost 24 hours (minus the 30 minute nap I took) and the sheer exhaustion was starting to catch up with me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open most of the time, and I could barely even stay awake. I also realized at some point that I was holding back and not giving 100% to pushing, because the tightness and pressure was so intense that I was very confident that I was going to tear once I pushed his head out, and the fear of the pain that I knew was going to come was preventing me from putting my all into it. I told my team this, and my nurse told me I had to just stop thinking about that, the more hesitant I was the longer it was going to take for him to come out and the more pain I was going to be in. I tried so hard to get the thought of it getting worse out of my mind, to focus on each individual contraction and on putting every last drop of energy I had into each push.

I’ve been telling my midwives for the past month that I wanted to be induced at 41 weeks, they kept saying they could only book it a week in advance, today I tried to book it & they say “the hospital may not have availability that day.” So I may have to go past 41, which I don’t feel is safe.

Also, apparently the outside of my cervix is dilated to 1cm but the inside is still closed? I didn't even know that was a thing, but she was unable to do a membrane sweep because of it, so we’ve made basically no progress in terms of going into labor on my own either.

I slept for less than an hour, and then was up for hours in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back because I had to pee literally every 10 minutes. I did eventually fall back for another couple hours (hours later) but I feel absolutely horrible.

I went into my midwife’s office today, and I brought my mom with me to help me advocate for myself and make sure we were heard and taken seriously. And the midwife who was there was the head of the practice, and she actually took me seriously! She thinks the swelling is just baby’s positioning but if I don’t deliver in the next few days, she wants to see me back in 3 days for repeat bloodwork, ultrasound, and cervical check, and although they don’t recommend inducing until 42 weeks, she understood that I wasn’t comfortable with that and said that on Thursday we can schedule an induction for 8/11 (41 weeks). But I am really hoping we don’t make it to then because I really don’t want an induction, so little man has 9 days to decide to come out on his own.

I got my bloodwork results back from when I was at the hospital last night and there’s a number of red flags that look like it could be potentially warning signs of preeclampsia, and liver issues. Spoke with my midwife and she’s shrugging it off, as they usually do. She said if I’d like I can come in tomorrow to get checked and they’ll consider inducing me later this week. I’m just so frustrated, I feel so unheard and not taken seriously at all. And I really don’t even want to be induced but I don’t feel like things are right and I’m scared for him to stay in for much longer. Oh and my ankle is swollen and tingly again.

I was pleasantly surprised though, a couple hours later the OB who consults with my midwife practice called me directly. He said he wasn’t too worried about the results but he understands my concerns. He said he was happy to rerun the tests today if I want but he thinks we’re fine to wait until tomorrow. He also recommended against inducing right away and to just be monitored twice a week for now (and if anything gets worse, we’ll induce ASAP) but that if I want an induction now, we can discuss that. So I feel a lot better now that I feel like I was actually listened to and taken seriously! I’m going in tomorrow to be checked again and for repeat labs.

My right foot suddenly started tingling and it’s swollen, getting progressively more swollen and starting to go numb. I haven’t had any swelling at all during my pregnancy and this literally just came out of nowhere. I called the on-call midwife but got her voicemail.

With still no call back after almost an hour, we decided to go into L&D because this did not feel good. I seriously can’t believe how disappointed I am with how they’ve been treating me lately. After 2 hours at L&D, they still hadn’t checked for a blood clot, I still hadn’t seen my own midwife. Then they told me they couldn’t check for a blood clot at all because “we don’t have access to the doppler on the weekends.” They brushed me off saying “maybe I twisted my ankle and don’t remember” or “maybe it’s a bug bite.” They were just sending in various nurses and talking to us like we were children, I have never felt so patronized in my life.

My grandpa passed away earlier this week, when I was 38w5d. Just a couple weeks away from meeting his great grandson, and namesake. I’m not ok and it’s just too much to deal with this all at once.

Midwife appointment a couple days ago at 39w1d. We had an ultrasound and baby stuck his tongue out, was eating his foot, then started licking his cord, and then started sucking his thumb voraciously. I’m not dilated at all but my midwife said my cervix is very thin and his head is very low, and she’d put money on him coming within the week. I really wanted to schedule an induction for sometime between 40 weeks and 41 weeks, but every time I see a different midwife she tells me a different thing than the other midwife told me, and now this one told me I can’t induce until 41 weeks at the earliest. So I’m feeling super discouraged, even though she said she thinks he’s coming this week, I truly don’t feel like he is, and I’m just getting anxious about it.

2 nights ago I was up until 4am with baby kicking relentlessly, and then woke up every hour after that. It is so frustrating basically having a newborn sleep schedule but not even having the newborn yet! Baby has been especially squirmy and restless and I think he is getting uncomfortable running out of space and doesn’t like that he can’t stretch as far as he used to, but he sure will keep trying and stretching my stomach so far that it hurts!

Today I woke up at 6am and am struggling so much to fall back. I am having restless legs now too so even though I feel exhausted, my legs feel like they are ready to go for a run and so I can’t get comfortable in bed. It is getting so frustrating and stressful to be sleeping so poorly because I know I need to get my strength up before labor but I’m just so exhausted.

I am fairly certain that I lost another piece of my mucus plug now. I am still feeling crampy on and off. I had been constipated the past couple months, but now suddenly today and yesterday I am not anymore. I’m hoping these are all good signs that things are progressing!

I think I may have lost a piece of my mucus plug this afternoon, but I’m not 100% sure if that’s what it was. I also started having some mild cramping this evening that kind of felt like my period was about to start, and it was cramping in my lower back too. I’m really hoping this means things are progressing and baby may be coming soon!

I also noticed sometimes when baby makes really big movements, sometimes I’ve heard a cracking or popping sound. I looked it up and I think it may be his joints cracking from kicking so hard? If that’s the case that’s just so cool to me, I can’t believe we can actually hear him!

I woke up to pee, still exhausted, still need more sleep, but I’m so over tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable all night that I actually feel exhausted and burnt out from trying to sleep…..? Somehow even sleeping is exhausting.

This morning I also saw my husband sleeping with his hands on his head which is how baby is usually positioned (based on ultrasounds and where I usually feel his movements) and it was just the most precious thing ever. I love seeing ourselves in him already and I can’t wait to see how else he’ll end up being like us once he’s out.

Midwife appointment yesterday with our final scheduled ultrasound. We couldn’t see much of baby because he’s too big but we got a glimpse of his spine, ribs, heart, and the back of his head where we saw a good amount of hair! He’s measuring 7lbs right now which is absolutely insane. At my other scans I kept being told he was “average” but now it’s seeming more likely that he’s going to be huge, which makes sense because huge babies run in my family. I’m actually starting to get a bit scared about it because my mom and grandma have had complicated births due to their babies being huge (and we are all really petite to begin with) so I’m thinking of asking to be induced on my due date even though initially I was going to wait until 41 weeks. Really hoping now more than ever that my instinct has been right and that he comes early on his own though, because if the 7lbs is accurate and he keeps up at gaining half a pound per week, he’ll already be 9lbs by his due date. It’s crazy how I’ve spent the past 4 months terrified that he was going to come too early, and now I’m terrified that he’s going to come too late. It’s always something I guess.

Baby dropped today! Everything I’m reading says we have 2-4 weeks until he’s born now that he’s dropped, which puts him in a mid-to-late July arrival which is what my mama instinct has been telling me this whole time! I’ve been hardcore nesting over the past few days especially and I still have so much to get done before he’s born so I’m really trying to get it all done as soon as possible even though it’s getting tricky with how exhausted I am and how slow I am due to being so pregnant.

My Braxton Hicks are also getting more extreme. When I first started having them, sometimes I couldn’t even tell if that’s what it was. Then they started getting noticeable but not uncomfortable. Then they became uncomfortable. Now they are VERY uncomfortable. It’s only a matter of time before they’re painful, I’m sure, and then before they become true contractions.