Writing on a Wednesday #1: My Teenage Birth Story

I was 19 years old and had been in my room at Verde Valley Medical Center for almost a full 24 hours. It had been a long day of trying to induce my labor, I had slowly made my way with the help of Pitocin to 5 centimeters dilated and my midwife had forcibly broken my water. I was tired, sore, contracting like a mother, and anxious about what was coming next. It was about 7pm when my midwife Stephanie walked into my room with a doctor I had never seen before. She told me Madison’s heart rate was rapidly dipping, they believed the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, and they would need to operate via c-section immediately. I had never had so much as a tooth pulled at this point in my life, so the thought of being cut open in such a short amount of time instantly put tears in my eyes. The real kicker came when Stephanie informed me that because she is a midwife, she would not be able to perform the procedure and the doctor she had brought into the room with her, Dr. Reed, would be heading up the operation. He was nice and reassuring, and they both stepped out of the room to prep and give me the time to process what they had just told me. A doctor who I had never met before would be performing my very first surgery in under 20 minutes. Needless to say, I was terrified. In tears, having short breath palpitations, terrified. But over the 9 months I had been expecting, it wasn’t the first time I felt intense fear about the next steps I was required to take in life. And it wasn’t the first time I rose to the challenge.

Our pregnancy photos from Proud to Announce Photography

I don’t think anyone plans to be a young mom, but sometimes life has different plans for you than you have for yourself, a lesson that has been ingrained in me throughout my life. I became pregnant with my daughter at 18 years old. I was attending my sophomore year of college at Hagerstown Community College with my then boyfriend Tj. I had just rented my own apartment 2 months prior, the very first place I had ever had on my own without a parent, and I was feeling on Cloud 9. I was going to classes, making new friends, living down the street from my boyfriend for the very first time, and I had freedom to go as I pleased without having anyone to answer to. It was a very liberating period. I began to feel intense morning sickness towards the end of September 2012, but I didn’t know that’s what it was at first. We had been using protection and I was on birth control, so in my mind pregnancy was not an option or possibility. I sat on the symptoms hoping they would go away, and of course days passed and they didn’t. One day when Tj was using my car (his was in the shop) and I was stuck at his apartment, I was sitting on his couch and I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I might be pregnant. I worked up all the courage I had, approached his best friend and roommate at the time, Soko, and asked him to drive me to the grocery store to pick up a pregnancy test so I could put my mind at ease. His eyes grew wide, he said of course, and we went to the store to pick up a test. I went back to the apartment and immediately took it. Much to my relief (and Soko’s) at the time, the test came back negative. We both sighed and laughed, agreed that this would be our secret, and as I got up to throw the box away, I heard the apartment’s front door open. Tj was home. I quickly threw the box under his bed knowing he wouldn’t be looking there anytime soon and I vowed to myself I would discreetly grab the box and throw it away at another time. Spoiler, I went on about my life as usual and completely forgot about the box hiding under Tj’s bed. I was young and naive to how much my life was about to change. 

2 weeks passed, and not only was my morning sickness not going away, it was getting so intense that I couldn’t physically stand and make it to my 7am English class. I called my stepmom in a panic after another morning of missing classes, and she said that it was probably time for me to take another pregnancy test. No joke you guys, I bought 4 different tests, all different companies, and they all came back positive. I will never forget standing in my tiny apartment bathroom, staring at all the positive tests in the sink, and wondering what the fuck I was going to do. I started to cry, my stepmom told me to breathe, that everything would be okay, and that her and my dad were there for me. I began to freak out and yelled that Tj was coming over that night with Soko to help me set up a coffee table, what was I going to do?! She suggested that I shouldn’t say anything to Tj  until I had my own emotions sorted, and I agreed. I got in the car to drive to my psychology class and tried to push the whole ordeal from my mind, when I got a text message from Soko that Tj had found the box under his bed. OF COURSE HE DID, I thought. I had a pit in my stomach for hours until they came over later that night. 

A part of me was expecting to be ambushed as soon as he walked through the door, but he said nothing. He came over and said hi, kissed me, and asked if he could have some of my ramen before we got started. I said of course as Soko and I exchanged a confused look over his shoulder. We sat down and ate for a very quiet 5 minutes, then Tj ran down to his car to get something. As soon as he closed the door behind him, I looked at Soko and asked what the hell was going on. Soko said he didn’t know and that Tj hadn’t really said much of anything since he found the box. I didn’t update Soko on my latest development from that day, and just told him I wouldn’t say anything unless Tj asked me. So Tj came back upstairs, we all laughed and joked and put the coffee table together, and it was like I was living in a reality where I hadn’t just taken 4 positive pregnancy tests earlier that day. 

Fast forward a couple of days, and it was Columbus Day weekend. All 3 of Tj’s roommates were going out of town to spend time with family, so Tj would have his apartment to himself. I figured this would be my time to break the news to him, but I still had no idea how I was going to do that. The first night everyone was gone, I came over to snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. I can’t even tell you what the movie was now, because there was so much more weighing on our minds that evening. I sat on the couch and he laid his head in my lap like he liked to do. We made it probably 5 minutes into the movie, and Tj readjusted his position. In the process, he accidentally hit the back of his head on my stomach and I let out an audible ‘oof’ in response. We both held our breath, and there was about a 5 second span of dead air before Tj bluntly asked: “Allie, are you pregnant?” To which I sighed and replied: “Yeah, I am.” And just like that, on a Friday in October, we were facing the fact that we were about to become teenage parents. 

Me with my friend Moriah about 2 weeks before I found out I was pregnant

The next several months were filled with many challenges, from breaking the news to both of our families, to deciding who’s parents we were going to move in with while we got on our feet, to making the decision to move in with mine and moving to Arizona, to spending 7 months of my pregnancy by myself while Tj tried to earn a little money at his jobs before leaving Maryland. Leaving his family was one of the hardest things my husband has ever had to do, he wanted to give me the opportunity to have a relationship with my dad after almost a decade of not being in my life. It took me years to truly understand the selfless act he had taken, and it is something that I will feel deep gratitude for for the rest of my life.

I didn’t have any friends, didn’t have a baby shower, and I couldn’t work as I found out I am RH negative and was considered a high risk pregnancy; to say I was depressed would be an understatement. My phone was mostly what kept me company, and there were some days even that wasn’t comforting with the amount of judgement I was receiving on a daily basis. I had women accuse me of getting pregnant on purpose and accuse me of trapping TJ so he couldn’t leave me. I had men and women alike tell me how I had just made myself another statistic and how on earth could I expect to have a baby at 19? And I think the worst comment of all came from someone who said I was a lost doe eyed puppy dog who would pathetically follow TJ to the ends of the Earth even if it ruined my life. Keep in mind, I still didn’t understand how I became pregnant in the first place, but at the time I had such a low self esteem that I took every single comment to heart. It was a lonely, scary time in my life. Looking back now, I feel so much pride in my heart that I got through it, that I have my beautiful daughter to show for it, and that period in my life stands as one of the many testaments that I can overcome any adversity life throws at me. 

Before long, Tj joined me in Arizona and we were counting down the days until we could meet our little bundle. I went into false labor at 32 weeks. Tj was at work at the time in Sedona, and raced to the hospital to meet me and my stepmom. We have a funny anecdote that we pass around our family now because Tj and my stepmom argued profusely over the fastest route to the hospital. To this day, I still think both routes were around pretty equal time, but don’t tell either of them that. I progressed about 1 centimeter before the nurse on night duty gave me a sedative to help me sleep. I woke up the next morning, my labor had stopped, and I didn’t progress any further until I was induced at 42 weeks. I did everything to try and induce labor. I would do squats in my bedroom every day, Tj and I would go on long hikes, I walked up stairs anywhere that I could find them, I was even eating certain foods that historically could possibly be contributed to progressing labor. I was desperate! In the very last weeks of my pregnancy, I couldn’t bend over even halfway without my ribs feeling like they were going to burst through my skin. Years later, I like to joke that at 32 weeks, Madison got a taste of the Arizona early summer heat and decided she would stay in my nice temperately controlled body. 

Tj and I in Phoenix at a Diamondbacks game a few weeks before I had Madison

My induction date of May 30th came and it was time to bring Madison into the world. I was binge watching Grey’s Anatomy in bed all day before I had to check in with the hospital at 6pm that evening. Our baby go bag was all packed, and we were counting down the minutes until it was time to leave. I was filled with excitement and anxiety. I had hated pain all of my life, taking off a bandaid was a scream worthy ordeal for me, and the thought of having an at least 7lb. baby come out of my cooka was just too much for my 19 year old brain to handle. But I was also dreaming about the moment that I would finally hold my baby girl in my arms, and the joy I would feel in my heart after months of little kicks and hand movements and hiccups that felt like butterflies in my tummy. It was a complex emotional feeling. 

I went to bed that night at the hospital, and woke up the next morning early so I could be started on Pitocin, a drug to try to make my uterus contract and hopefully encourage labor. For several hours I progressed very slowly, but the amount of pain I was in was minimal. I even remember suggesting at one point that maybe I could go the whole way without an epidural, then my midwife broke my water and I was quickly singing a different tune. I began to have contractions every 2 to 3 minutes, and if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to take your pelvis and shove it through a meat grinder, look no further than labor. My nurses called for an anesthesiologist to come in and inject me with the Epidural. This guy poked me in the wrong spot not once, not twice, but THREE different times, while I was trying to hold my body very still as contractions were riddling through me. It was too the point where the nurse in the room looked at him and said ‘you have one more shot to get this right or I’m getting someone else’. He got it right on the fourth time, or at least that’s what he said, because looking back I’m honestly not sure after this next part of the story I’m about to tell you. 

It was a couple of hours after that that the news was broken to me. I began to hyperventilate so heavily they had to give me oxygen. Tj was putting on a brave face by my bedside, then sneaking into the bathroom to call his parents to have a little freak out of his own. They came in and strapped me to a gurney like Jesus with my hands out long next to me. As they were wheeling me to the surgery room, my mouth began to feel very dry and I asked if there would be any water I could have. The anesthesiologist (a different one than earlier) looked at me sadly and said no, unfortunately that was due to the drug they had given me to prep me for the surgery. That of course only made me hyperventilate even more.

We got to the surgery room and they lifted a blue tarp above me so I couldn’t see past my shoulders. My anesthesiologist was a nice guy, and he was trying to crack jokes with me to lighten me up. I looked at him mid sentence and asked if I could sleep until it was time to take Madison out and he said by all means if you can, do it! I don’t remember too much after that until right before Madison came out. I felt the tugging and pulling and I heard my midwife’s excitement that she was almost to the baby. It was silent, then it wasn’t. I heard my baby girl’s cries echo through the room and instantly felt tears. It felt like I was starting to have feeling coming back into my lower half, but I was so distracted with my daughter that I didn’t even notice. Tj brought her around the sheet so I could meet her for the first time, and I will never forget her sweet little face. She wasn’t crying, and her eyes were wide open looking at me, the little expression on her face in my mind said “so, you’re the lady I’ve been calling home for the last 8 months”. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. 

My very first photo with my sweet girl Madison at VVMC

Tj took her away and I was instantly hit with pain that continued to grow worse and worse. An epidural was not something Stephanie and I had explicitly talked about, so I wasn’t sure what pain was normal to feel and what wasn’t. My stepmom had prepped me before and told me I would feel some tugging and pulling. So I didn’t say anything at first. But when the doctor went to staple my wound, and I felt every single staple enter my body, I knew that wasn’t normal. I don’t remember the end of the surgery, or being wheeled to the recovery room, the pain was blinding. I was sobbing in tears asking for something to help with the pain, and the anesthesiologist replied that he had already given me a drug that ‘should’ve taken the edge of’. I cried harder and screamed I didn’t feel any difference and I needed something. I took 3 doses of morphine before I finally calmed down and stopped shaking from the pain, it felt like hours before I was calm enough to hold my daughter for the first time. I have never been even close to that much pain in my entire life, and lets just say that the experience kicked my phobia of pain to the curb with a thunk. 

I had heard from several other women that the recovery from a c-section is brutal. But honestly compared to the procedure itself, it was a walk in the park. I was up and taking myself to the bathroom within a day, and I felt seemingly normal within a week. The scar has healed really nicely over the years, and I haven’t had any complications other than the normal ways your body changes after you have a baby. After the daunting experience that was my C-Section, i’m grateful to say that that was the hardest part of my body’s journey. I have been blessed with an easy recovery to a sense of my old self. I know this isn’t the case for everyone. 

Tj and I a day after Madison's birth, first look photos by Proud to Announce photography

It wasn’t my choice to have a c-section, and for months I shamed myself for not being able to have the natural experience of having a baby. I shamed myself for not being able to produce breast milk in the way that I’d hoped, and having to switch to formula when Madison was 5 months old. I shamed myself for being a young mom. I shamed myself for a lot of things. And when I found out April is C-Section awareness month, I knew that I had to share my story. Not just for every woman out there, but for the insecure woman that I used to be who was prone to everyone else’s opinions and expectations. 

At the end of the day, we are ALL mothers. Whether we had a C-Section or a natural birth. Whether we used drugs or didn’t. Whether we breastfeed or don’t. Whether we use disposable or cloth diapers. Whether our babies were surprises or thought out plans. Whether we were young or old. Whether we homeschool our kids or send them to public school. Whether we vaccinate our kids or we don’t. Whether we feed them organic foods, or a bag of Goldfish. We are mothers, fearless and strong creatures who have experienced an amount of pain that some go their whole lives without feeling, and lived to tell the tale. We are the thankless warriors who from the day we became a mother began to put another life before our own without a question. Who have had countless sleepless nights, frustrating days, painful nipples, upset stomachs,  and a lack of alone time, all to help guide your little one to grow and find their identity while you feel you’re losing yours. If you haven’t been a mother, you can’t truly understand the sacrifice. And if you are a mother, you know that several steps along the way were so far from what you had originally envisioned and planned. We should be triumphing one another for the amazing feat that our bodies conquered. We brought LIFE into the world, we created it within our wombs, and I’m supposed to feel bad because my kid had a little more screen time than Betty’s did today? No more. Motherhood is a remarkable thing that most of us do not realize is a privilege to be blessed with. Every day is a success, even when you feel everything is going wrong. Because you made it another day! We give ourselves so many unnecessary hoops to jump through, whether that’s false parameters set by other moms or society as a whole. But ask yourself, do these hoops really matter? Does it really matter if I do every homeschool assignment my daughter’s teacher asked me to do? Does it really matter if I participate in every PTA fundraiser and bake sale? Does it really matter if I give my child 20 minutes or 2 hours of screen time? Does it really matter if I snapped today and lost my cool because my kid asked for a snack for the 10th time in a half an hour? Does it really matter? And on who’s authority? Because at the end of the day, your kids were fed, they were bathed and clothed, tickled and hugged, kissed on the forehead and told that they were loved. They drift off to dreamland with a knowing in their heart that their mommy will always be there. And really, what’s more important than that?