Maron Elizabeth's Story

It was three weeks before my due date and I was in the doctors office for my weekly check up. I'd had an ultrasound to determine the size of the baby and we were just waiting to hear the results. I had been on bed rest for the past week due to really high blood pressure, so getting out of the house was nice.

My mid-wife came in and asked me what my plans were for the day. I said that my husband was going to take me home so I could get better aquainted with my couch and he was going to work.

He said no to that and told me that we were having a baby that day. The ultrasound had indicated that the baby was around nine pounds, seven ounces and climbing. "There is no time like the present," he said.

They took me over to the hospital wing and started the induction. This was at noon. By 2:30p.m. I was dilated to 3 cm. and they broke my water. My midwife then told me that he would not be delivering my child because he was going out of town. I would be working with the other midwife whom I had never met.

I was in hard labor by 6 p.m. and had an epidural at 10 p.m. The nurse, who was fantastic, was sure that we would have the baby by midnight. Well, midnight came and went. Around 1:30 a.m. they turned off my epidural and had me pushing by 2:30 a.m.

I pushed for two hours and the baby never moved. We then found out that I was not completely dilated. I pushed for another three hours, and there was still no progress. I was exhausted and in so much pain.

Finally the midwife called the doctor on duty and they proceeded with a vacum extraction. They discovered that the source of the problem was not the baby's head; it was the shoulders that were stuck in the birth canal. That baby was not coming out on its own.

The nurse jumped on the bed and started pushing on my stomach. I didn't even know when the baby was out until they told me to stop pushing.

I saw them take a bundle over to the warmer and by then, there were about 14 people in the room. I couldn't see my baby. Then someone told me that we had a baby girl. I was so happy.

That feeling was soon overshadowed by fear because she was not crying. They were giving her oxygen and I could see her little foot kicking, but she still hadn't cried.

Then they said that they had to take her out. I begged them to at least show her to me before they left. They held her up as they ran out. It was 8:09 a.m.

I didn't see her again until 2:30 p.m. that day. She was in the NICU, was connected to tubes and was receiving oxygen. She had central lines in her umbilical cord and all sorts of monitors hooked up to her. I was terified. I was also amazed that something so beautiful was mine.

The nurses in the NICU were terrific. They made us feel at home and were very positive about her condition.

It didn't take her long, only about another hour, and the doctors removed her tube and she started breathing on her own with gusto. They explained that because she had got stuck in the birth canal she had been stunned more than anything else. They knew she would be fine. She continued to progress in leaps and bounds, and only stayed in the hospital one day longer than I did.

It wasn't until much later that I found out she had broken her collarbone during the delivery. She was born weighing nine pounds, eleven ounces and was twenty two inches tall. No wonder she got stuck.

She is now a happy, healthy five-month-old who rolls over and is about ready to crawl. No matter the pain, she is worth it, a thousand times over.