His Birth

A month before my due date my mom started joking that I will give birth soon, my brother and I were both born 26 days before due date and she said as I was already copying so much from her pregnancies that I would give birth at the same time. So 26 days before my due date, a Monday I had my regular OB check-up, an ultrasound and a NST. I did those and they said that on the ultrasound the baby hasnt grown in the past two weeks, and it would be better to induce labor and have him born. They decided they would do that the next day, the day I turn 37 weeks gestation, they check me out and find that I am already 3 cm dialated. They tell me to go home, pack my stuff and wait for the hospital to call me and tell me my room was ready, I was to spend the night just in case. My mom and I go home, I call my husband, he was having iftar (Ramadan fast breaker meal) with the family and I got to talk to all of them and get squeals of excitment and all. At 7 pm the hospital calls and say they are ready for me, and off we go. Get to the hospital sign in, get checked out, say I am at 5 cm and go to sleep, wake up early the next morning take a shower and get hooked up to the inducement drug Pitocin after 5 needle poke attempts, I was fine and comfortable from 7 am till 11 am when they come in to break my amniotic sac and that’s when the pain started it was like my fluid was a pillow against the cramps, with that gone the pain really started, I didnt want to get an epidural and asked for something else they told me there was a pain medication given in the IV that lasts an hour and I could only take 3 dosages of it, so I take the first one and fall asleep it was so good, it wore off after the hour and tried to bear the pain before I asked for the second one, asked for the second one awhile later and the nurse kept asking me why I didnt want an epidural, I said I heard too many complication stories about it and really didnt want to poke my back, she said with 20 years as a nurse she’s never seen any complications and its perfectly safe and it totally wipes out any pain, so I finally agree, she said before they can give it to me they have to empty a saline solution bag in my IV and that would take some time, as soon as she starts it and leaves I feel pressure and think its the baby’s head, we call the nurse and she said yes I was crowning and there was no time for the epidural I have to start pushing. My OB comes in and they tell me to push, I remember the pain mostly of my OB pushing the skin from around the baby’s head, and the worst was the episiotomy itself , I remember telling myself that if I wanted all this pain to end I must push with all the strength I had and get it over with and I did that with the next 2 pushes and Bilal was born at 12:39 pm almost 6 hours after I went into labor.

Bilal at Birth

He was 4 lbs 12 oz and 17.5 inches long. He was considered a low birth weight baby and was checked out every couple hours, my milk hadn’t come in yet so he was started on formula and a breast pump was brought to my room.  He was not jaundiced and we were released 2 days after he was born.

Crib sticker