Alex's Birth Story

by Shiona

My pregnancy with my first child was one that was filled with joy, apprehension, surprise, and hard luck. I was 23-years-old when I got pregnant with my son.

Six years before I had been told that I would have a hard time conceiving due to ovarian cysts and a severe case of endometriosis. My doctor told me that he would like to see me pregnant by the time I was 21. I found this hard to take because I was 17, just out of high school and getting ready to start college. Heck I didn't even have a steady boyfriend, or at least one that I wanted to have a family with. One year later I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, yet another hurdle for me to jump if I ever wanted a baby.

Fast-forward six years. My husband and I were just dating still when we decided that we would start to try for a baby. Considering my past history we figured it would probably take a few months. We had a wedding date planned for October and figured that if we hadn't conceived by December that we would hold off until after we where married. I stopped taking birth control in August and had two normal periods. My last would be October 13 (how I remember it like it was yesterday).

Early in November I started feeling very odd, I didn't feel like myself. The night that I found out I was pregnant I had been out of sorts all day at work. I wanted to cry, punch someone, and laugh all at the same time. It wasn't until someone suggested that I may be pregnant did it even cross my mind.

Sure enough, three hours later, I found out for sure. I had taken a few tests in the previous weeks because I thought something was up, but they were all negative. This one turned up very positive; I had to read the directions twice to make sure that what I was seeing was in fact a positive pregnancy test. I ended up keeping that stick until I started showing to convince myself that I was actually pregnant.

Six weeks into my pregnancy, about 14 days after my pregnancy was confirmed by my OB/GYN, my husband and I were married. We will be celebrating our first anniversary on December 14. Seven days later I was pulled out of work until after Christmas. My OB said that my job was too high stress (I am a front-end manager for Wal-Mart) to stay. I could come back after Christmas.

I went back to work on January 2, and didn't finish the day out. I had called my husband saying that I felt weird and gave him a bunch of symptoms and asked him to call the OB and ask him what to do. Twenty minutes later he called back and the OB said to get there right away. This completely freaked me out and I drove home all nervous.

We went to the OB and I found out that I had a bad urinary tract infection. The OB said that this strain could cause premature labor so he would be pulling me out of work until I began my second trimester. Four days later hubby hurt his back at work and our world turned upside down.

We were doing so well in our lives, and now all of a sudden, we are both out of work. I had a lot of sick, vacation, and personal time saved up, but we couldn't live on that alone. We decided that the best thing for us to do would be to move in with his parents. The kicker is that they lived four hours away. This meant a possible switch in doctors for me. We didn't know how long we would be there so I waited until my visits were every other week before I switched. During this time we had lost our medical insurance, and I was put on Medicaid.

At first I was excited to be having a midwife deliver me. After all I had seen one deliver before and she was quite excellent. This being said not all midwives are the same. I had to go to a clinic where I saw a different midwife every time I went and I was never sure who would deliver me when the time came. I had, thank heavens, had all the tests done before I went to them. This switch was really hard on me because my OB had been my doctor for so long, and now here I was having someone that I hardly knew being there on one of the most important days of my life.

One week before my due date I saw my favorite midwife. She said that the baby was doing fine and was going to be a big baby. I had asked her about evening primrose oil, as I had heard some good things about it. She advised us on it and told us what we were to do with it. She told us about a woman, who a couple of weeks earlier, had done the same thing and had her baby three days later.