Billy's Story

This is the story of Billy, my second baby. The fact that we lost our first makes him even more special.

Billy really did give me a hard pregnancy. Hard on my body, but really what could you expect from getting pregnant only eight months after losing the first baby, who, by the way, was born by C-section. I suffer from antiphospholipid syndrome, so during the whole pregnancy I had to do heparin shots two times a day, which caused me to lose the last baby. Once I hit the 28-week landmark, the doctor had me in there twice a week for non-stress tests and every four weeks for an ultrasound. That part I didn’t mind as much as the terrible pain I had every time I tried to roll over, or how hard and uncomfortable it was to walk with Billy being head down, really low and BIG.

At 32 weeks the doctor did an ultrasound and told me that Billy was already the size of a full-term baby, and that by 40 weeks he would probably weigh about ten pounds. I was nervous about that. You see, I had wanted to try a VBAC but the doctor said NO WAY. The baby was just too big and there were too many potential complications if I were to attempt a natural delivery. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. When I was 36 weeks into my pregnancy, I started having contractions. Some days they were so bad I thought I would end up having him, but I didn’t.

On December 23rd, I went for my appointment and discovered I was 2 cm. dilated, 80% effaced and that the baby’s head was at station zero. We were all sure that he would be making his appearance by Christmas. But no, we weren't that lucky. So we waited.

I got an appointment for the C-section and we went in on our scheduled date, January 6, 2004. We arrived at 6 a.m. and they began prepping for surgery. They shaved me and inserted a catheter twice. You see, the first time they inserted it the catheter leaked, and even after the second attempt it was still leaking. I told the nurse, who was about to do a third catheter insertion but she changed her mind, came back into the room and said she wanted to make sure it wasn’t my water that had broken.

Sure enough, it was! So that baby decided he was coming that day no matter what. Good thing because they were doing a lot of cancellations! Everything after that point was pretty routine. A little snip here, a cut there and at 8:14 a.m. my beautiful baby boy, William Richard, was brought into this world. He was a hefty eight pounds, twelve ounces and measured twenty one inches long. And boy, was his head ever big at fourteen, three quarters inches! The pediatrician said he looked like a two-month-old. He was so alert and curious!

We now call this little angel Billy. The gift of life is truly an amazing thing.