Margo W.

This was my first pregnancy. I was 20 years old. I was a week past my due date, and I went in early in the morning on a Thursday just for a regular follow-up visit, or at least that’s what I thought.

When I got in, they did an ultrasound just to check on my son and see how everything was going in there. And they said that there was not enough amniotic fluid and that they were going to induce labor.

So then they take me upstairs. They put me in a room. I’m being admitted. I have to call my boyfriend at the time. Thank God my mom and grandmother were with me.

We all go upstairs. They put me on Pitocin. The contractions start coming, and they don’t stop.

I was in labor for a few hours, and I had a nurse come in, and they checked to see how far dilated I was, and I was only at three centimeters.

By this point, I was dealing with quite a bit of pain, but I decided to just push through.

A few more hours of this, and my mom could tell, like, I was in a lot of pain. And they had me hooked up to monitors and stuff so you could see the differences in the contractions.

So my mom, thank God for her, was advocating for me. And she goes to the nurse and she says, “Hey, my daughter is in a lot of pain. She needs some medication.”

Now, I couldn’t have an epidural because I had a condition where my platelets were too low, and they were afraid that I would bleed out.

But they could have given me something for the pain.

The nurse did not believe that I was in pain because I wasn’t screaming. I wasn’t calling out for help. I was just kind of grinding my teeth, holding my mom’s hand, just praying.

And the nurse just did not believe us.

My mom fought and fought. And I think after we had already been there more than half of the day, they finally gave me something.

Everything was a blur to me because I was trying to sleep through the pain as much as I could. Because even, I think, between six and eight hours in, we still were only dilated to three centimeters.

Somewhere down the line, my water broke. And when my water broke, it came out green. So for those of you who know, that means that the baby had his first bowel movement inside.

Even then, I was told to just get back in the bed and to just keep riding this out, to keep riding it out.

So I just had to bear through it.

Um, this went well on into the night. I got there in the morning. This went well into the night.

I was just left there in pain, and the nurse did not believe, um, that I was in pain.

When she came in, she would come and, like, kind of shove her hands in there to see if there had been any progress. And there was not any progress.

We really were left in the dark. Nobody knew what was going on or why there wasn’t any progress.

Finally, after I had been in labor for over 24 hours, so this is the next morning that my mom is asking questions, my boyfriend asking questions, my grandmother asking questions, and trying to figure out how we can move this along.

And I still hadn’t dilated past three centimeters.

They finally take me for a C-section.

What they found out was that my son’s head was stuck in the birth canal, and that’s why we couldn’t progress further than three centimeters.

Because I couldn’t have an epidural, I had to get general anesthesia. And because I had to have general anesthesia, no one could go back into the operating room with me.

So here I am, a 20-year-old, in incredible pain, scared out of my mind for myself and for my baby. And I had to just trust that God had me because, to be completely honest, I did not trust that the hospital had me.

Thankfully, my son was born, I believe, around 3 p.m. the next day.

And I was completely out of it.

They took me back to the room and gave my son to my boyfriend and my mom.

My grandmother told me that she had to shape his head because of how long he was stuck in there. His head was misshapen, so she had to shape his head for me.

But that moment, I’ll never get that moment back.

I wasn’t the first one to hold my baby or to see my baby.

I woke up and didn’t even really realize it was the next day.

I woke up with drugs still in my system and just really out of it. But I just wanted to hold my baby and have that bonding time with him.

And I finally got that later in the afternoon on that Friday.

But my son is still alive. He is still well.

And although I had that terrible, terrible experience, I’m so grateful that I have my baby.