Blessing in Disguise: Holistic Pregnancy Turning Into Prematurity

My husband and I had always called ourselves #TeamNoSpawn because we were SURE we didn’t want kids.

But before the pandemic hit, we had been wondering… what if there’s more? What if our lives could have infinitely more meaning? What if we didn’t have to wake up and do the same. exact. things. every single day, like robots, until the end of time?

What if becoming parents was exactly what we were called to do?

Don’t get me wrong — our lives were damn near perfect. We would be purposely “messing them up” by adding kids to the picture. And yet… it sounded right.

Call it the biological clock, call it influence from our friends and family… whatever it was, the feeling wasn’t going away, so we leaned into it. In August of 2021, we decided to try, and we conceived right away.

Making Plans

Being a functional nutritionist and having lived a very natural lifestyle for a long time, I knew I wanted to keep my pregnancy as holistic as possible. It was a fitting decision, since I had no medical diagnoses, took no medication, and ate a strong, healthy, whole-foods diet, among the many other factors that made sense.

I planned for an unmedicated homebirth, with the option of having a birthing pool set up in our living room. I found a highly recommended homebirth midwife as my primary care provider and chose against doing dual care with an OB because I did not want the Western medical influence in my pregnancy. (I was of course open to the idea should the need for this approach arise, but everything was looking great.) I also found a chiropractor certified in the Webster technique to assist in keeping things aligned and baby in the right position. I went to see her weekly, and had been getting chiropractic work done for seven years at this point, so my body was very receptive to this.

Later on in the pregnancy, I found doulas and a birth photographer. We set up the nursery from a practical point of view — keeping a full-size bed in it with a bedside bassinet, knowing I’d be spending many long, late hours breastfeeding and being near our little one in the immediate days and weeks after birth. This setup would allow my husband to sleep in our regular bed in our own room and get enough sleep to continue going to work every day.

I stocked up on things like bone broth, collagen, electrolytes, and healthy snacks. I set up a breastfeeding cart with pumping supplies, burp cloths, headphones, chapstick, water bottles… I was getting READY.

The First Trimester

I had a helluva time, and that’s putting it lightly. I never actually vomited, but my nausea was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, and it lasted ALL DAY LONG, every day, from pretty much week 6 until week 14. Even after that, I got nauseous often, it was just less intense and shorter-lived.

There were days I could barely eat or drink anything at all. Then… enter our first covid infection: both my husband and I caught it at the same time. To boot, my husband came down with horrifyingly painful kidney stones at the same time. While he was yelling in agony, I was dying on the floor. Neither of us could taste or smell, we had fevers and headaches that came and went. People delivered us food and did what they could from the other side of the door. We were in and out of the hospital for procedures on my husband’s kidney stones. Overall, this period of our lives was brutal.

Luckily, I was able to stay away from all medications and took my prenatals as often as possible. This was of course a goal of mine, in aiming for the most holistic pregnancy possible. Even medications considered safe were just interventions I wanted to avoid.

From the nausea and illness, I ended up losing eight pounds during my first trimester — I know, not great, but we both survived and my son was growing healthfully.

I met my midwife in-person at our first official visit and I had elected to pay her total fees in full, in cash. I took the money out of our savings account and brought it with me to the appointment. As I sat in her parking lot, an overwhelming feeling of worry came over me and I physically could not hand the money over. Not that I thought I’d change my mind or end up transferring to a hospital — none of that. Just worry — typical prenatal worry. I decided to pay via her monthly option, which was more expensive in the long run, but allowed me to save money should plans change.

The Second Trimester

Once I started feeling a little better on a more regular basis, I resumed my daily outdoor walks and some low-level workouts. My food quality picked back up and hydration was perfectly on point. I was attending regular prenatal visits with my homebirth midwife and everything looked beautiful on our 20-week anatomy scan.

We were planning our baby shower and a babymoon getaway to a local hotel on the water. Both events were quite a few weeks away. For whatever reason, though, I couldn’t get excited about these plans. It felt like I was participating in the planning and decision-making as a formality. A voice in the back of my head felt like it was literally saying, “You won’t be at any of these places. You’re never going to see these plans to fruition.”

…which sounds morbid and ominous, I know. I promise you I’m not trying to be dramatic — part of me had this gut feeling that something was going to keep me from going to these events.

It’s amazing what a mother’s intuition can feel.

The Third Trimester

Everything seemed to be chugging along just fine. I had a second ultrasound done at 28+0 weeks — a Wednesday — just to check in. The tech informed me that my son’s head was so low she could barely see it at all. In her words, he was “labor ready.” And he shouldn’t really be in that position for a while yet. But everything else looked good still, so we didn’t think anything of it.

By Saturday, I was having weird gas and bloating issues — which was odd for me, because I hadn’t had many complaints (other than the nausea) my entire pregnancy. My round ligament pain was increasing as well.

By Monday, I started to notice some changes in the nether-regions… specifically, what looked like small, little pieces of my mucus plug dislodging. Now, this was my first pregnancy, so I wasn’t sure if that was true or not — and to this day, I’m still not sure. But SOMETHING was changing.

Another red flag during my pregnancy, outside of things like losing eight pounds and contracting covid in the first trimester, was my stress level. My then-day-job was incredibly overwhelming and unenjoyable. I was beyond stressed. Come the following Wednesday, now at 29+0, I had a panic attack after work. I sobbed and sobbed and decided to sit in the nursery rocker to calm down, which worked. I talked to my son and told him how things were gonna change when he got here.

That evening, we had dinner and finished around 8 PM. At 8:15, I had to pee all of a sudden — very badly — like, it was coming out without my permission! Except… it was not urine. It was a huge gush of amniotic fluid that soaked my entire outfit from the waist down. I stood there, shaking, in disbelief. My husband calmed me and we called my midwife. She recommended getting checked out at one of two stellar, local hospitals, just in case I was in pre-term labor, because they had top-notch Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs).

We drove 25 minutes essentially holding our breaths, terrified of the news to come. I received an exam, a litmus paper test, and an ultrasound — all confirming a healthy amniotic fluid level and no trace of it in the birth canal. Since I was also not experiencing any labor symptoms, they told me it was likely a false alarm, that my baby possibly moved swiftly and his kick into my bladder caused a sudden release of uncontrollable urine. We signed the discharge paperwork and walked to the car.

As we walked into the parking lot, more uncontrollable leaking occurred. And then more a few steps later.

I knew better, I knew I should have turned around and walked right back in… but I wanted to believe their medical opinions and go home to my own bed, keeping on as normal.

The Night It All Changed

We got home from the hospital between 10:30 and 11 PM. My husband and I decided to have a snack, watch our favorite show, and wind down. By midnight, I was having multiple loose stools — and by multiple, I mean like 30 — which is a sign of going into labor. Abdominal cramping began, so my midwife recommended getting into a lavender bath. This helped a bit and calmed my nerves, at the very least, but by 2 AM, the contractions had gone from nothing to level 8,000 in a matter of minutes.

My husband raced us to the hospital, again, as I screamed in agony. Honestly, at this point I wasn’t even convinced yet that this was labor, because the pain felt like my bladder was exploding. I was under the impression that maybe all of this was just a really bad bladder infection and I’d need some IV antibiotics.

I was delirious for the majority of the next several hours, but it was confirmed by the SAME EXACT testing methods — you know, the ones done just a few hours ago — that my water did, in fact, break, and I was in premature labor.

Because I was only at 29+0 weeks, I was put on a magnesium sulfate drip, which is a form of magnesium that helps prevent the incidence of cerebral palsy in infants born before 32 weeks gestation. I had a love-hate relationship with this IV, because it lit every inch of my skin on fire, but it stopped my labor. A side effect of magnesium is muscle relaxation, and for me, this calmed my uterine contractions and stabilized my baby. I received steroid shots in my butt to expedite the development of my son’s lungs and, after 12 hours of observation, I was moved from the Labor and Delivery unit to the Antepartum unit. This is essentially where “labor-can-happen-anytime-now” moms go to wait.

They explained to me that because my waters had officially ruptured, they highly recommended I stay in the hospital in case any infections developed. I was more than happy to agree to this, not only for that reason, but because I continued to have regular contractions the entire time I was there — even when I was NOT in active labor — and I wanted to remain close to the NICU should delivery end up happening swiftly.

The medical staff couldn’t find a reason for why this happened. I had excellent blood sugars — even better than before pregnancy. My blood pressure was spot on, there was no proteinuria, no physical trauma, no infection, no placental abnormalities, no IUGR (that we could reasonably tell). By all accounts, I was having a textbook perfect pregnancy.

But that all ended in just a few moments of fluid and chaos and stress. Enter my foray into the conventional medical model.

The Extended Hospital Stay

I was admitted for a total of 17 days. The Maternal-Fetal Medicine team (and many others) rounded on me every morning. They told me a lot of things, and overall they were very knowledgeable and helpful, but the one thing they said that I couldn’t divert my attention from was that they had seen mothers whose waters broke early sometimes make it up to 37 weeks before delivering!

You mean there’s a chance my baby won’t be premature?! SAY NO MORE (seriously). I’M MOVING IN.

I had my husband bring all my food, supplements, clothes, and belongings to the hospital. He stayed with me most days and nights, as well.

Like I mentioned, I continued to contract while inpatient. The contractions were as frequent as a few minutes apart and eventually got to about an hour apart toward the end of my stay — but they never fully disappeared.

I also went into labor three times before delivering my son the fourth time. That magical magnesium sulfate continued to slow my labor and give me more time to grow him on the inside every time labor began again, which I was grateful for. He was being monitored very closely and seemed to tolerate all of this well, so the medical teams agreed that continuing to wait was the safe option.

It’s difficult to summarize 14 days being pregnant and struggling in the hospital (the three additional days were postpartum). There was a lot of counterpressure, NSTs, shift changes, Netflix binges, slow walks, Starbucks runs, Amazon purchases, book reading, talks about the imminent future. I was bound and freaking DETERMINED to keep my son inside until full-term. Unfortunately, this would not be our story.

The Night It All Changed, Again

At 8 PM on my 14th day inpatient, I was feeling amazing. Contractions had gotten less intense and less frequent. We decided I was stable enough for my husband to return to work the next day, so he packed up his things and went home. I had my evening NST, which normally lasts about 20-30 minutes if everything looks normal. At the 45-minute mark, nobody had come in to end the test and take the monitor off my belly. Eventually a resident whom I had never met before (and I met pretty much everyone at this point) walked in and told me my baby appeared to be in distress, and that I’d be heading to Labor and Delivery to be induced.

I immediately challenged her credentials and demanded to know how much experience she had — not that I’m an expert, but listen lady, I’ve been analyzing those NST charts and learning so much from the nurses and medical teams that I was pretty sure I could spot fetal distress when it happened. It did NOT look like that to me. After much debate with the attending staff, they wheeled me to the L&D unit again, and I had to call my husband to come back... AGAIN.

At this point we were both extremely frustrated with the back-and-forth between L&D and Antepartum. I was FINALLY feeling stable and well on a regular basis, not going into labor every five seconds, and overall feeling positive about a long-term stay. After calling in my doula, and many conversations among the different medical teams in charge of our care, the attending agreed that it was time to induce. I was NOT convinced and asked about watching and waiting.

I don’t recall this doctor’s words verbatim, but the message is something I’ll never forget. It went something like, “You’re more than in the right to call the shots here and wait. We can wait as long as you want — hour by hour, check in tomorrow, etc. — but just know our professional opinion isn’t going to change: we recommend induction whenever you’re agreeable and ready. I don’t say this to alarm you, but your baby is in distress and it’s only a matter of time before he needs to come out. It’s going to be early and that’s just the way of things now. I’d hate for you to wait even a moment too long, just to get another hour or day or week under your belt, to have his distress reach a fatal level. I’m recommending induction based on my years of experience in this situation with premature mothers, and have also seen it go bad at a certain point. I would hate for your baby to pass away because we wanted just a little more time on the inside.”

This hit me in the feels. And while this may seem kind of fear-mongery, it wasn’t. He was being absolutely honest with me. He couldn’t, in good conscience, let me make my decision to wait without knowing all the facts and opinions. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but that doesn’t make it wrong, either.

The team then stepped out to give us privacy and talk it over. My husband’s message, which came next, was also something I’ll never forget: “Anthony has been trying to get here for two weeks now. You’ve done an amazing job, suffering through the unimaginable, refusing medications and sticking with your personal plans. We’ve also been blessed to live only 25 minutes away from one of the best NICUs in the state. We’ve been led by amazing doctors and nurses, had great care, and everyone’s honored our wishes. They’re STILL even willing to honor our wishes — about waiting to induce — if we want. But maybe this is also God stepping in to relieve you of this impossible burden and let these amazing people He put into our lives, do their jobs and help care for our son. You’ve done everything so well so far — I think it’s time to let go and trust God is doing this FOR us.”

I am choking up just typing this out. It was one of the most profound moments of my life. I don’t think my husband even knows how much of an impact these words had on me, to this day. It turned out to be potentially life-saving advice and I’ll never forget the feeling of trust that washed over me.

I agreed to induction. It was 1 AM on March 9, 2022.

And, like an idiot, I stayed up chatting away with my husband and doula (you know, instead of trying to get a couple hours’ rest before the biggest physical event of my life — I was already awake for almost 24 hours at this point, and this was not the first instance of that during my hospital stay). Every time the staff left the room, my husband snuck bites of food (jerky, nuts, honey, dates, bone broth) and sips of mineral water to my bedside — since they don’t “let” you eat or drink. After about an hour or two, contractions began.

To be honest, not much else remains in my conscious memory. I have flashes of pushing in multiple positions, struggling to find strength, being physically held up by my husband. Contractions went on for a few more hours as my cervix continued to dilate. Once fully dilated, I was probably delirious. I’m sure I was instructed on pushing. I pushed for two hours before whispers began to fill the room.

My doula lovingly came to me, saying I should consider an epidural placement. Not that I NEEDED to take medication, but having it placed would be a safeguard in case things ended in surgery. She said it was being tossed around by the teams in the room and she wanted me prepared. First of all, C-section was TOTALLY outside of the realm of possibility for me — my thought was, this baby is going to be so small, how could he not be born vaginally?

Anyway, I agreed to the placement and eventually the medication. It went as smooth as butter (and I have no residual effects from it). Once it started kicking in, I actually got some sleep (probably 15-20 minutes) before being instructed to push again. It was definitely a lot easier to push with strength in my bones, but the epidural eventually made the entire feeling of my contractions disappear, so I could no longer push “with” them. It was hard to feel much of anything, and I’m pretty sure I just wasn’t doing it right.

The teams did SO much to help — they let me get into as many positions as possible, given the magnesium and eventual epidural. They tried turning my son manually. They put pressure on the area to focus on for pushing. They put a mirror up, crossbars, all the things. They gave me time. But eventually there was nothing more to be done. It had been another hour or two of pushing at this point and I’m told I was as white as a ghost. Anthony was in major distress and potentially not getting the oxygen he needed anymore. The team informed me it was time to head to the OR.

I sobbed uncontrollably. How did this happen? How did I go from an amazing pregnancy to running the gamut of the “cascade of interventions,” ending up exactly where I swore I’d never be? How could God let this happen to my son, this innocent baby, who deserves to grow undisturbed like the majority of other healthy babies?

The Wild Experience of Awake Surgery

I don’t remember much — I was picked up by the sheet beneath me onto the OR table, given preparatory medications, more pain blockers, the drape went up too close to my face, people were rushing around and it was VERY bright in there. And freezing. My arms were strapped down like a “T” on either side of me. My husband wasn’t allowed in until the nerve blockers were confirmed to be working.

Eventually he was let in, gowned-up and holding my head in his hands. After much shaking and rough manhandling on the other side of the drape, I heard the surgeons say, “He’s out, he’s out!” …8:09 AM, March 9th. My son, Anthony! A sigh of relief. Then more of my body being tossed around like a ragdoll as, I presume, they removed my placenta, controlled the bleeding, and began sewing me up. (I cannot emphasize the amount of movement my body was making on this damn table. I thought for sure I’d be “still” — not a chance. I was violently moved the entire time. I guess it’s par for the complication.) A few minutes had gone by and we hadn’t heard our son’s cry yet. There were many voices, many sounds of machines and equipment being used, and I was going in and out of consciousness.

They eventually brought him over to me — still not crying, by the way — and he looked… horrifying. He had suffered very visible head trauma having been stuck in the birth canal for so long. I learned later that he was difficult to remove even in surgery and they almost had to expand my incision to get him out.

I also learned later from my husband that our son had to have multiple rounds of resuscitation while I was being worked on. There were about a dozen people with their hands on him, all trying to save his life many times over. All of this was going on while I was in and out of reality and being thrown all over the table. But oddly enough, I had an overwhelming sense of calm. I fully surrendered. I knew in my heart he would be okay and that he was in the best hands possible. I was HAPPY about this.

He eventually became stable enough for NICU transfer and I told my husband, as we had discussed dozens of times in the last two weeks, to follow him and never leave his side. That I would be fine. Be with our boy, who has been thrust into this world in fear and pain and way too soon. Don’t let him be without a parent, not even for a second. So he did.

The “After” Time

I woke up in a wing for post-op monitoring, with my doula at my bedside. (God bless her, she had already been through an overnight “labor” with us once before, and here she was, again, holding my hand until the wee hours of the morning.) She got me water, cracked jokes with me, and made sure I was stable before leaving. After a couple hours, they wheeled me to my son’s NICU room, where his fantastic nurse and my husband were waiting for me. They provided me hand sanitizer, brought my bed right next to the isolette, and I got to put my hands on my son for the very first time. At 31 weeks gestation. I was in absolute awe — of his color, his body, his movements, everything. A baby so tiny, who had gone through so much already, was so strong and mighty and an absolute, swear-to-God miracle. I broke into a million amazing pieces in that very moment.

The last few days of my stay were focused on back-and-forth wheelings to the NICU, sleeping at odd hours, suffering through the pain of breast pumps, trying to heal and learn to navigate a life with a major abdominal surgery and a baby I couldn’t bring home yet. Once I was finally discharged and Chris took me home, it was a relieving feeling. I was sad to leave without my son, but also absolutely at peace knowing how well he was being cared for. NICU nurses are unlike anyone in the entire world — princes and princesses of a magical land God created for these souls. They are truly some of the most amazing humans I’ve ever met.

The rest of our story isn’t birth-related, so I’ll end this long post here. It was lots of trips to and from the NICU every single day, 12 hours at a time. It was sleepless nights on the couch, tears from breast pump pain, struggling to make milk, trying to eat and drink enough, covering my ass with work and my client base who I had left hanging (obviously), holding our small son, learning how to fee him properly, sitting on the edge of our seat 24/7, making other exhausted premature parent friends in the lounge, getting food prepared and made for us by family, slowly going through baby shower gifts, learning how to navigate life with a preemie. But it’s a damn beautiful story, if I can say so myself. It was equal parts traumatizing, heartbreaking, and terrifying, but it was unique and powerful and earth-shattering, too.

I also realized there were plenty of lessons from God to be learned during this time. My son and I had FANTASTIC care at the hospital, from physicians I’d never met before. Physicians who could’ve easily judged me for wanting a homebirth and ending up with a premature one. Physicians who could’ve easily tried to bully me into every aspect of the medical model. But instead I was heard, I was held, and I was HUMBLED. Modern medicine saved our lives and I realize now that I had been harshly judging births and birthworkers that operate in a medical setting. It was the biggest lesson of all, on top of surrendering, as someone who fights incessantly to be prepared and have as much control as possible, thinking I always know best. Shocker, I don’t.

Motherhood alone teaches you you have no control, of course — but our birth story was just as much a lesson in this for me, if not more so. I KNOW God more now that I ever have. I’ve seen His work through these amazing humans that saved both mine and my son’s lives. There were miracles happening all around us, all the time that we were there. I turned a corner the day Anthony was born — my eyes had been opened to a version of myself I’d never thought possible. I met her — my real self — for the first time and don’t regret a single detail of our story.

And to end on a bright note: for those who don’t know us, this story has a happy (present) ending! Our son is now almost 20 months old and has officially come off the prematurity scales as far as growth, development, and milestones. No more preemie curves. No lingering health problems. No nothing — he’s a regular kid living a regular, holistic life.

I couldn’t be more grateful for our story. It was an honor (finally) sharing it with you.