Tre'Veon and Aniyah's Birth Stories

In February 2001, I found out I was eight weeks pregnant with my first child. I experienced light morning sickness, tender breasts, and extreme exhaustion. It seemed like I began gaining weight right away, and I gained a total of 54 pounds. It was a very easy pregnancy.

On October 14, which was two weeks from my due date, I began having what I thought were real contractions. They were regular but very mild. I went to the hospital and found out it was false labor. My doctor kept me and began induction at 5 AM the next morning. My labor was great, and at five centimeters I received an epidural. At 1:46 PM, almost nine hours later, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Tre’Veon Branden weighed eight pounds, nine ounces, and was 20 inches long. He made my heart melt the moment I laid eyes on him. He was my angel.

In early March 2006, I went to the doctor because I had symptoms of urinary and kidney infections. When running the routine tests, my doctor came back and announced that I was pregnant! I was shocked because I was on birth control.

From the beginning I had been feeling uneasy, and had a lot of cramping and back pain, but I was assured it was just from the kidney infection. Two weeks later, I began bleeding. An ultrasound confirmed there was only a sack but no baby. I was devastated, thinking I had lost the life inside of me. I took some time off work to recover.

In early May, I was at work and began feeling sick and light-headed. I thought maybe it was because of the infection still. I had never passed anything from the miscarriage and only bled that one day. I was curious and took a pregnancy test. It was positive! All kinds of thoughts went through my head like if I had even lost the baby or had I gotten pregnant that soon after the miscarriage? I returned to the doctor and after an ultrasound, they told me I was 10 weeks pregnant. I hoped this pregnancy would be healthy but right away I knew it seemed different. I began losing weight, had severe nausea, and I couldn’t eat much at all. I was tired beyond words and had bad headaches. I only gained 22 pounds and had a few minor problems, including testing positive for Group B Strep. I also experienced false labor a few times.

At my last doctor’s visit, I was dilated to four centimeters but sent home because I was not in active labor. In the next week, I had irregular contractions on and off, lost my mucous plug, and had a lot of groin pain due to the baby dropping.

On December 9 (four days past my original due date or two weeks before my new due date) my water broke in the early morning while I was sleeping. I arrived at the hospital with crampy pains and within an hour, the real contractions started coming three minutes apart. However, they were not showing up on the monitors and I had no cervical change so I didn’t get an epidural as I had planned. At my last check, I was five centimeters, and within five minutes I was complete! The pressure was intense and unreal.

At 7:30 AM, after three-and-a-half hours of labor and three pushes, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Aniyah Kalise weighed seven pounds, 11 ounces, and was 18 inches long. Once again, my heart melted. She was my princess! I may never know if I truly lost a child or if, in fact, had her all along. Either way, both of my children are miracles!