Surprise!
Written by Anna
My son was born just four days after that discussion with the neonatologist. Yes, it was an emergency situation, and no, my newly created birth plan did not happen. I quickly made my peace with that. After a chaos filled day, I was just content to have a baby with a heartbeat.
I woke up on Friday, March 8 early in the morning with intense cramping. It wasn’t a series of cramping that would come and go, like contractions. I just had one long cramp that never ended. My weekly fetal nonstress testing was scheduled for that morning, so I decided to power through until my appointment at the local hospital. I went to work and got the day started in my kindergarten classroom before leaving my aide in charge while I drove down the street to my appointment. If you’ve never had one, nonstress tests can be rather dull. You just lay there hooked up to a machine that monitors changes in uterine pressure and compares it to the trends in your baby’s heart rate. This shows how well your child is tolerating being inside the womb. On that morning, my baby did not pass the nonstress test. As the new OB I was randomly paired with that day discussed these results with me, I mentioned how uncomfortable I was that morning and my long, continual cramp. She suggested I take a tylenol and come back in the afternoon for an ultrasound and sent me on my way.
I knew something was not right. I messaged my OB at UW about the morning’s events, and she was appalled that the doctor I saw did not want to contact her. She suggested that I take it easy that morning, and request a cervical exam when I go back to the hospital for my ultrasound. I let my aide run the show in my classroom that morning while I passed the time doing prep work and trying not to be overly anxious. Eventually I met up with Zach back at the hospital for the ultrasound. After 30 minutes of watching the tech count my son’s limb movements, monitor his heart rate, and determine my amniotic fluid levels, we were told that we were good to go home for the day. Distressed, I asked to see the doctor, saying that I would not leave until I got an exam.
I found myself back with the same OB I met that morning. She explained the results of my imaging and tried to send me on my way. I pushed back and said that I was concerned about how I was feeling paired with my test results from the day and that I would like an exam. She said “Anna, don’t worry, it’s not like you’re in labor.” After more pushback, she gave me an exam and quickly fell quiet. “Well, you have a high pain tolerance. You are already 4 cm and need to get checked into labor and delivery upstairs.”
LifeFlight was quickly called to come pick us up and take us to Seattle for the delivery of our baby, and a new OB started calling UW to let them know that we would be on our way soon. Zach was making plans for getting everything we needed to Seattle, and I was getting an IV, steroid injections, and a variety of drugs to slow my labor. Everything seemed to be going well until my water broke. My doctor at UW felt that I was no longer stable enough to be on a flight, so we quickly changed gears and began discussing the possibility of delivering our son in our hometown. The labor and delivery team further explored my chart and quickly realized how ill suited the hospital was to handle our delivery- we needed to get to Seattle and we needed to get there fast. An OB made calls to practically every doctor she knew in Seattle until someone at UW agreed to take me in my current state. We were loaded up on a plane, and less than 3 hours later Linus was born.