Sharing Birth Stories For the Charity Embrace

Sarah from Sprout Reviews has put together a team of bloggers to raise awareness for a charity for newborns that are born in poor countries. The charity is called Embrace, they are a non-profit organization that will give you a tribute card for your donation.

Send an Embrace tribute card to friends, family, or clients to let them know a donation to Embrace has been made in their name. Purchase a card for a donation of $25 to honor a loved one. This gift to Embrace will help provide a gift of life. Your donation will help keep babies warm so they can survive and thrive. These cards also make wonderful holiday, birthday, baby shower, or celebration cards. Donate $100 and get a packet of 5

In developing countries where they don’t have access to modern medicine, babies face hypothermia. In the US we have incubators and so many ways to care for children. Children that do survive the cold at birth often suffer from life long health problems. Embrace provides infant warmers to these lower income countries. This innovative infant warmer costs less than 1% of a traditional incubator. To raise awareness, we’re posting our birth stories, and mine is all about how important modern medicine is. We could have lost Miles, but we had everything we needed to know that he was in distress and my doctor saved his life.

Miles was an active baby from conception. I felt him so early and he never stopped moving. From 7 to 9 it was hyper active mode because mommy was actually trying to relax and watch TV. You could see him, he looked like “alien” and he was trying to break out of my stomach. I was so uncomfortable once me moved into the down position and he would hit his head against my pelvis.

We decided to induce and it was fairly a good choice, just because if we waiting any longer he might have been a ten pounder and I’m not sure my body frame could have handled that.

I had to go in and get a catheter put in to help me dilate to a four and we had to make sure that it was ok with the nurses before I went in. Apparently the hospital has an OB nurse shortage. My doctor didn’t give them a choice and told me to come on in.

We get there at noon and they put me on the monitors and start the medicine to create contractions. My little man decided he didn’t want to come out. Every time I felt like some action was going on the nurse would come in and turn down the medication and the contractions would stop. She said that the contractions were cutting off his circulation with as hard as they were.

I tried walking and a ball and all kinds of things to work through it but at five the nurse came in and said I think we’re going to send you home. I was pissed. My doctor came in as the nurse was getting ready to unhook everything and asked what was going on and said she’s going to break my water to get the show on the road. The nurse asked to speak to my doctor outside, and guess who won, my doctor.

She broke my water and OMG the pain was horrendous. If your doctor breaks your water get an epidural first. I got an epidural and then everything went wrong. My body is very sensitive to medicine. I pass out with one Benadryl. So the epidural made me shake, and shake and I felt like crap. Complete and total crap while I was shaking. I just wanted to go to sleep too. They lost my sons heart beat and when they found it it was very very low. Suddenly everything just didn’t seem real any more to me. My husband later told me he thought he was going to lose both of us.

My doctor was in the room the entire time and she was yelling at people to get me an OR. The nurse who called said they’re full, and she said, this is an emergency get one open NOW! The people in my room seemed like complete idiots in the case of an emergency. I remember hearing my doctor say what’s the problem people get her unhooked. Someone said something stupid and i think my doctor just started yanking cords out of the wall.

They ran me down to the OR and I started praying. My doctor was doing everything she could to get his heart rate back, she was massaging him while he was still inside me. We got to the OR and his heart rate came back, but the doctor said we have to get him out anyways so I started trying to push even though I couldn’t feel anything.

I delivered him naturally inside the OR because my doctor didn’t want to take any chances that we would lose his heart rate again. He was blue when he was born because he was tangled in his umbilical cord. He perked right up though and started screaming. I didn’t get to hold him for quite a while though because they had to make sure everything was ok with him and they had to make sure I was ok too.

I was completely exhausted but my son was alive and healthy and he is still the active little boy that he was when he was inside me. This kid does not know the meaning of sit still.

Read the story of my daughter’s birth.

The stories of the other bloggers can be found:

Jennifer Lebeda at www.lebedafamily.blogspot.com

Diana at www.hormonal-imbalances.com

Laura Jane at www.callmelaurajane.com

Louise Bishop at www.momstart.com

Meg Appleby at http://www.digitalphilanthropy.blogspot.com

Sarah Hammond at www.sproutreviews.com

Please share your story with us in the comments or link up or make a donation to embrace!