[perhaps]

This thread frightens me.

[wondrous]

This thread solidifies my decision to, if I have children, have a C-section. Hahahaha. Everybody says it's harder to recover, but really, I DON'T CARE. Muahaha.

[Role Modlin]

I guess I should share the Christopher story too, although it's less humorous. He was a planned C-Section due to all the difficulties Robin had experienced with Geoffry. Our biggest concern was that one of the doctors had made the comment several weeks earlier that some test (the name escapes me) had come back and indicated that the baby might have Down's Syndrome. We let this wanker convince us to have an Amnio done. Well, he wasn't able to successfully draw the fluid out and tried to convince my wife to do another one. At this point their telling us about all the things that could be wrong and if we should consider terminating the pregancy. Needless to say, we were emotionally devistated. We decided that no matter what the outcome, there would be no more Amnios and no more talk about termination. Come to find out, the test which caused so much stress was done three weeks too early and had produced a false reading. In fact, the doctors had miscalculated the pregnancy from the start and were off by almost a month. My wife went through the stress for nothing.
The delivery was somewhat dramatic. During a C-Section they let the father come in after the initial incision is made. I was brought in as the doctor, the SAME doctor, was making the second incision. I was sitting by Robin's head, talking with the NA, who happened to be a former school-mate of mine. We could tell the doctor was having difficulty with the slicing and dicing and all of sudden, he blurts out, "Oh ****!" He looks up and asks, "Is the father still here?" Spence, the NA, says that I'm right there with him and the good doctor says, "Maybe you should take him out of the room."
My heart stopped beating. Robin was quiet, the drugs really had her knocked out, there were five people standing over her, jerking and pulling and slicing, and then Spence took me by the arm and said, "Let's step outside for a minute." As we stood up to go outside, I could see the doctor had grabbed those forcep things and was still muttering curses. I looked down at Robin and knew that there was nothing I could do. I have never felt that helpless in my life. And then, I felt something touch me on the shoulder. The room became much warmer and I suddenly felt at peace. And like that, Christopher popped out. I think my angel showed up, but you can take it however you wish.
Apparently, and we found this out later, the scar tissue from the first C-Section had grown back wrong. It had overlapped and basically formed a double layer that they couldn't cut through. They had to actually make a third incision and take Christopher out from the side.

[Samwise]

I had nightmares all night about having kids...I don't know how any of you can be parents - that's really brave. lol

[Andrew]

I was cute back then...

You are just dead sexy now.

I am with Amanda on this one. This thread is SCAREE!

[kook]

There is very little in this world that is scarier than going through pregnancy, childbirth and becoming a parent (especially for the first time). There is however, also little if anything more rewarding.

My wife and I tried for the first 7 years of our marriage to get pregnant. We had almost given up when we decided that we were not giving it to God to decide, we were trying to do it ourselves. We had not been tithing at that point in our marriage ( I had gone back to school) and decided that we would begin there. One month later, we were pregnant. Don't try to tell me that was a coincidence. Angie's pregnancy with Matthew (who was, as entioned before, so named because he really was a gift of God) was very uneventful. Except for some lower back pain near the end, even she would say it was pretty easy. He was 2 weeks overdue when the doctor decided it was time to induce labor, so we headed into the hospital on Thursday morning for induction. This is a small town hospital, so the same nurses that taught the Lamaze classes were attending to her. That was nice, as it gave us a sense of security, but it was also easy to tell when they thought something was wrong. After they had put the baby monitor on her as well as the one for contractions, the nurse took a look at them while Angie contracted. Angie never saw it, but I saw the look on the nurse's face as she almost DOVE for the oxygen. She put that on my wife and said she'd be back soon. Although I was sure there was something wrong, I didn't saw anything to Angie. A minute or so later, the nurse came back in with the doctor and they started studying the readouts. Long story short, every time she contracted, Matthew's heartbeat dropped dramatically. The Dr. decided that it was unsafe for him to induce, as strong contractions would most likely kill him, so he said that we'd schedule her for a C-Section the next morning and monitor the baby until then. They set up the monitor to alarm any time the baby's heartbeat went below 30 beats-per-minute and said if it went off that Angie should roll over or otherwise move in some way. This was about 7:00 am. The day went by fairly well, but come night time, the alarm started flashing fairly regularly. Unfortunately they did not have one with an audible alarm on it, so you had to constantly watch the monitor. Finally, at about 2:00 am I told Angie that she was really going to have a long day the next day and that she needed to try to sleep, I would watch the alarm. That was the longest night of my life. I can't tell you how much I prayed that evening, I think I set a record. The next morning, Matthew was born at 8:23 am, happy and healthy (or so we thought). That afternoon the nurse came in and checked his heart rate, etc. Well, granted, he was asleep, but it was dangerously low. They assured us that everything would be ok, but that he needed to be in the nursery with oxygen on him. Now, I'm used to being a very strong and emotionally stable man, especially when it comes to family. My wife calls me "the rock". But when I walked down to the nursery and saw my baby boy in that incubator with a plastic hood over his head for the oxygen, all the strength, both physical and mental, drained right out of me. I headed straight back to her room and hit my knees. I can honestly say that I have never prayed so hard and with such intensity in my life.

They send us home after a week, lots of tests run and the only determination was that he must have a weak heart that SHOULD develop eventually. We had to have a heart monitor on him whenever he slept. One week into that the alarm went off in the middle of the night that identified his not having taken a breath for 30 seconds. Each possible problem has a different audible alarm... you pray that you never hear that one. I performed CPR on my baby son that night and thank God that he lived and I never had to do that again. I slept nearly the entire next day after the adrenaline wore off. I would not wish that experience on anyone in this world. You just can't imagine the helpless feeling. After that, things got better and 3 months after he was born he was 100% healthy baby boy. My second son Chirstopher, was traumatic for me because of the problems with Matthew, otherwise there were no problems at all with his birth. I didn't have problems with him until he turned 18 months... LOL

[Gracie Love]

I will agree that seeing your baby in the NICU is very hard. My Matthew had to be in there because of his blood sugar. It is hard. After Ethan was born I didn't sleep in my hosiptal room at all. I was afraid of something like that happening. I know the pain of either knowing or finding out later that your child is in that danger. Ethan (18 months old) had to have a biopsy a month or so ago. He has asthma and so putting him asleep was a hard thing for me to consent to. Ethan went back and I began praying prayers like Jonah's inside the fish. I prayed so hard. That is also when I started smoking again. They whole thing was supposed to take about 30 minutes. It took over an hour before they came out to tell me anything. At that hour mark I really started praying even harder. I knew something was wrong. Finally the Doc came out and said he is fine now(liar). He had some problems with the medicine to put him asleep. He had 2 major asthma attacks as a reaction to the drugs, then they paralized him so he wouldn't fight the resperator. When they did that he coded no heart beat. Clinically... well I can't type that. Then when they got him back he was fine untill after the procedure. They though he might be too cold so they warmed him up too much. When they brought me back to see him they had already iced him down once and he was still fire engine red from head to toe and burning up. They checked his temp while I was in there and he started having seizures again from his temp being 105+. They had to ice him down again. Needless to say I don't care for Docs at the moment. He is completely fine now and shows no sign of anything being wrong. Thanks to God.

I know this wasn't a birth story but it goes with Ethan's story from before and the story just above. Which by the way isn't Matthew a great name.

[kook]

You bet it is, Gracie! Mine is even Matthew James, so we snuck a couple of apostles in there on him!

I'm also very thankful that your Matthew is doing well now. Thanks for the story.

[Pipercostal]

My wife and I had our first child at home with midwives. My wife was having some Braxton-Hicks for about 4 weeks. Some of them were pretty regular so by the time that real labor started we were still pretty skeptical. As soon as my wife got up, she felt as though she was in labor, but was unsure because of the previous false labors. So I went to work. About 2 I got a call from her telling me that her contractions were getting stronger and she thought it was it. So I started for home, and her mom and sister drove over to our house.

I finally made it home at about 4 (stupid transit system) and she was in the bathtub laboring. Made her contractions feel soooo much better. Highly recommend water for labor and/or birth. Anyways the midwife got to our house at 5 to check my wife. She was only 3 cm at that point so the midwife told us to rest, thinking that it was going to be a long time until she gave birth. About 7 o'clock my wife started feeling that she wasn't in control of herself anymore so we tried rearranging to make her feel better. We got on our bed when she announced that she felt she had to push. Sure enough she had gone from 2 cm to fully dilated in 2 hours. We phoned the midwife back, who was skeptical at first but after talking to my wife she booked it as fast as she could. My wife meanwhile had to do her best to not push.

The midwives got there at about 9 (the major road to our house was having construction done, she later told us she went on the wrong side of the road in the ditch to make it our house). We got our birthing pool set up and at 10:22 our daughter was born. She weighed 7 pounds 5 ounces.

Our second kid is due may 3rd. We're planning for a homebirth as well with this one.