Brace yourself. This is a long read.

I had a good pregnancy…..eer so I thought. First trimester I had absolutely no appetite. It’s like as soon as I found out, I was no longer hungry. I had to force myself to eat, but I never got sick. Around the second trimester I started to want to eat again and was beginning to regain the 10 pounds I lost. I was always rubbing my belly and every Sunday was the day Leonard and I would use our at home doppler to hear the heartbeat.

When I reached the point where I could feel the kicks I was overjoyed and slightly freaked out. I mean hey, there’s a tiny human inside of me moving around.  Overtime, those kicks would become so frequent at certain times of the day. I loved talking to the baby.

We just knew we were having a girl. We picked the name for her so quickly. It took us over two months to come to an agreement for a boy. At 17 weeks, we had an early gender reveal appointment. The baby was not interested in showing us a gender that we had to reschedule for the next week in hopes that legs would be uncrossed. That next week I’d began to get this feeling that I was having a boy, and surely enough, when the tech said boy, I just started boohooing. I didn’t know if it was tears of joy or sadness. Either way, we had a blessing coming and Leonard and I were soo excited.

Friday, September 11 started as a normal work from home day. I went upstairs to my office to work, the baby liked to kick the most while I was sitting and working. I was feeling like I had gas that just didn’t want to come out. Wasn’t painful so I ignored it on and off throughout the day. We went to visit with our besties that evening and got home about 1am. That’s when everything started changing. Those feelings of gas pain in my stomach started getting more intense. So naturally, I’m trying to go to the bathroom so I can go to the bathroom. I told Leonard not to worry, I’ll eventually be ok. I spent about 4 hours tossing and turning trying to get comfortable while the cramping kept coming and going. Finally, around 5am after being hunched over the tub for about an hour, I call my good friend Sasha who’s a night shift nurse. She was working that night and told me to call triage and tell them exactly what I told her and see what they say. I was to take 2 Tylenol, drink water, rest (ha!), and count how many times I had cramping. If it was over 6 in an hour call back.. Still texting Sasha, I counted the pain at 10 times that hour. My actual doctor was also on call that night and Sasha was consulting with her. They both told me to call triage back so I can come in.

Calmly, I wake Leonard up around 8am and tell him to get dressed. I told him the hospital needs to see me really quick to check me out. Meanwhile the pain doesn’t stop, it’s just not as close as it was. We get to the hospital and the nurse checks me and says “oh you’re 2cm dilated.” My eyes get wide and I look at Leonard like oh shit. That’s when I realized I’d been having contractions this entire time. By then the contractions were just getting worse and worse. After being sent up to the maternity ward, my doctor came in to check me out and I was going through it. She basically explained that they were trying to stop my contractions while simultaneously giving me meds to help with the baby’s brain and lung function in case I delivered. Sasha broke the news that I wouldn’t be leaving the hospital any time soon. They needed to keep me here at least till 28 weeks. Some one from the NICU came to talk to us and I was just in shock. They gave me an epidural by then to help with the pain from the contractions. Things were just escalating so I had Reva & Ian come pick up my car, bring my work backpack and some extra clothes, because it was evident I wasn’t going anywhere.

The next day, Sunday the 13th, I woke up at 5cm. They continued with the meds for the baby. They made me so woozy, that I was in and out of sleep until later that evening. Leonard was going to go home and shower and grab a few things and I thought I’d be ok. 10 mins later I’m calling him to turn around and come back because the doctor said I was 8 cm and I needed to start pushing soon. He makes it back in time and the doctor preps me to push……then immediately tells me to STOP! The baby decided to flip and became breech. So that means emergency C-section. I started to panic and freak out, and everybody is trying to calm me down. I’m reaching for Leonard to hold my hand while he’s trying to rush and put on his protective gear, which ripped by the way. There were so many people in that room. Next thing I know, I’m being moved to the operating room and they begin prepping me. (all the while a nurse was on top of me holding the baby in so he wouldn’t slide out but first. It was truly like an episode of Grey Anatomy; remember when Meredith jumped on top of the guy with the bomb in his chest? Yea, that’s what was playing in my mind at the time.) I distinctly remember this black woman prepping my stomach and noticing that I was panicking, she came over to my side and held and squeezed my hand and told me it was ok. She then handed me over to Leonard and the anesthesiologist gave me something to relax and the rest is history.