Introducing Robert Steven Brooks: Part 1

Renae loves to ask me to tell her about my six most favorite days ever, and if I answer her with any days other than my wedding day and the day each of my kids was born, I am in big trouble!  Fortunately for me, I had one of my "favorite days ever" last week when my little Robert was born.  His birth has quite the back story, too.  Forgive the novel...

When we found out I was pregnant, I was so certain we'd be having another girl.  When I was in college, I had a very vivid dream of my daughter being baptized, and her name was Abigail.  Time passed, and when Renae was born, Abigail just didn't seem to be the right name for her.  Then I had two more boys.  In the days leading up to a positive pregnancy test this time around, Seth came up to me one morning and asked, "where is my sister Abigail?"  I was floored because Seth didn't know anyone named Abigail, but that dream was always in my mind.  Pretty soon, however, I started having some pretty fun (not!) morning sickness that reminded me of when I was pregnant with Renae, and I just knew we were having a girl.  Until I had some early blood work done that told me we were having a boy.  I wasn't disappointed, but I was a bit confused...and perhaps even a little relieved.  The two miscarriages I had left me with a strong impression that they were both girls.  One we had been planning on naming Penelope, but had never discussed the other name.  A few days after we learned we'd be having a boy, I prayed to know why I had felt so strongly that we'd be having a girl.  I received a very strong impression that word for word went "aren't you glad that you now know the name of your other daughter?"  Peace replaced the confusion in my mind, and combined with a few other experiences, I really feel like that was the answer to my prayers that I needed.

The day we learned that we would, in fact, be having a boy was the day before we were scheduled to move to California.  Brandon had received an incredible job offer with a mapping software company in Southern California that would allow him to be home every day.  The difficult part in all of this was coordinating the cleaning and packing of our house while Brandon was still traveling and while I was still nauseous and/or exhausted 24/7.  Fortunately I have some tremendous friends in Oregon who helped out with boxes, food, and numerous offers to watch my kids.  I don't think we would have been able to pull off our move successfully if it hadn't been for them!

For as exciting a time as moving to California was for our family, the timing was also pretty difficult for any continuity in prenatal care.  I only had one early ultrasound and one check up with my sweet midwife, Holly, in Oregon before we moved.  I was just barely into the second trimester when we arrived in California, but our insurance wouldn't start until I was about halfway through my pregnancy.  By the time our insurance kicked in, and I was able to start scheduling appointments, I had learned that my OB options were not great in this area.  I finally settled on one practice, but when I called to make an appointment, I was told that I wouldn't be able to be seen for almost 2 more months!  They did agree to bring me in for a "tummy check" before that appointment to listen to his heartbeat and to schedule an ultrasound.  I was told that my appointment would only last about 15 minutes.  Boy were they wrong!

What should have been the start of steady, routine prenatal care was the start of a kind of nightmare for me.  My "tummy check" had been scheduled with a pretty  awful nurse practitioner who arrived at my 8:30 am appointment 45 minutes late and came in wiping crumbs off her mouth, but offering no apologies.  She then proceeded to demean me and treat me like an ignorant human being, even going so far as to tell me that she wasn't comfortable with my prenatal care choices up to that point.  What?!  She treated me like I was being criminally negligent in the way I was caring for my unborn child just because I wouldn't let her repeat tests I already had done in Oregon.  I was livid when I left her office.  I felt so helpless because my options seemed to be so slim.  While I had never really considered a traditional midwife before, I decided to explore those options approved by our insurance.  In fact, that night, I had a dream that I contacted the only midwife practice on our insurance.  When I woke up the next morning, I felt really good about pursuing that option, and after running it past one of my friends, I was encouraged by her response, "call the midwife!"

I called up the Birth Your Way Birth Center in Yucaipa, CA that day, and they arranged for our family to come tour their birth center the VERY NEXT DAY!  We didn't need to wait two months for an appointment, and I was treated with respect, which was so refreshing after what I'd just gone through.  At our appointment, we met with midwife Tammy, who gave us a great tour of the birth center (an old church!) and answered all of our questions.  Since I'd given birth without medication before, I wasn't too worried about the prospect of a natural birth, and I was very impressed with the medical equipment they have on hand in the event of an emergency.  Plus, I wouldn't need to find a sitter for my little boys for each check up because there was a play area just off the examination room where I could literally keep an eye on my boys while having the baby's heartbeat checked and my tummy measured.  It was such a great experience!  In fact, before we left, I had even had my first prenatal check done at the birthing center, with another 3 appointments scheduled before the OB's office had even scheduled my first official appointment.

I did, however, keep the ultrasound appointment that I had scheduled through the OB's office for the following week.  I was about 26 weeks pregnant and anxious to see my boy!  The ultrasound went well...or so I thought.  A few days later I received a voicemail from the nurse practitioner's assistant telling me that there was something wrong they detected in the ultrasound and that I'd need to schedule a follow-up ultrasound immediately.  Talk about putting a pregnant woman into panic mode!  Since I'd filled out a form at the ultrasound office to release my records to my midwife, I called her to see if she'd received the ultrasound report.  She hadn't.  So I called the ultrasound office, and they didn't seem to want to release the records to her, even though I'm pretty sure legally they were obligated to do so.  Instead, they told me I could come pick up a disc with the photos on it the next day, but that the report wouldn't be ready for another week at least.  Long story short, I had to return two more times to the ultrasound office to retrieve my records and take them to my midwife.  I also played phone tag for a few days with the nurse practitioner's assistant before anyone let me know that the issue that came up in the ultrasound findings was that I had borderline high levels of amniotic fluid--a condition called polyhydromnios.  This could potentially be a really big deal because it could indicate issues with the baby's kidneys or carried with it the risk of premature delivery or having a prolapsed umbilical cord when my water broke.  Once again, the nurse practitioner treated me like I wasn't doing enough for the health of my unborn child, but fortunately my midwife went over the risks associated with polyhydromnios and cautioned against panicking.  We agreed that I'd have a follow-up ultrasound about 6 weeks later, concentrating on his kidneys and rechecking my amniotic fluid levels.

Of more concern to midwife Tammy, however, was the blood work I had done.  Not unusual for me was that my hemoglobin levels indicated pretty serious anemia.  I've been anemic with every single pregnancy, however, legally midwives aren't allowed to deliver babies outside of a hospital if the mother's hemoglobin levels drop below a certain point.  Mine were borderline at that point.  So, I was to take 2 iron pills a day for 6 weeks to boost my numbers.  At the end of those 6 weeks, my blood was drawn again...and my hemoglobin had actually dropped.  That was devastating.  I was told that if my numbers didn't improve or hold steady in the next two weeks, I wouldn't be able to deliver at the birth center.  So, I switched to a plant-based iron source called Hema-plex for the next two weeks and held my breath.  Fortunately, my hemoglobin increased by a whopping tenth of a point, so I was cleared to deliver at the birthing center!  The major risk with my anemia was that I could hemorrhage after delivery and need to be transferred quickly to a hospital anyway.  As a precaution, I needed to continue taking iron and would have an IV line ready to go in my arm during labor so that pitocin could be administered quickly in case of a hemorrhage.

While the polyhydromnios and anemia weren't fun and left me feeling very uncomfortable/in pain and tired all the time, life also threw us some curve balls during the second half of my pregnancy.  Soon after we moved to CA, I was bitten by something on my leg that left a good 6 inch bruise on my leg that became dry and itchy while it was healing...a process that took a good month.  We also had issues with ants in our kitchen and critters in our attic that took a while to resolve.  Unfortunately, roof rats are a pretty common problem here in Southern CA, and even though our pest control guy was pretty confident that he closed up all of the holes leading to the attic, he closed them up with at least one rat still in there.  Needless to say, that rat died in the attic right above our bedroom and made our room reek for about 6 long weeks.  During those 6 weeks, I pretty much couldn't go in our room without almost vomiting, so I slept (uncomfortably) on the couch.  Just as the smell was dissipating, our family was hit with the flu.  Renae and Seth caught it...and then gave it to me.  I was knocked out for about a week and a half with a fever, sore throat, cough, no energy, and no voice.  It was awful.  It shouldn't be legal for women in their third trimester to have a cough.  It is painful!  Because of the extra amniotic fluid, it was also pretty easy for Robert to flip into a breech position, which he did frequently.  In fact, just a week and a half before he was born, I spent one painful evening with him in a transverse position (sideways across my abdomen).  Then some pretty intense lower back and hip pain set in, making walking difficult some days, which wasn't helpful when our van decided to start leaking fluid two weeks before the baby was due.  I was without a vehicle for almost a week and needed to walk to and from the school to pick up Nick and Renae.  I think I was in near-constant pain the entire last month of my pregnancy and just prayed every day that our little guy would just come and put me out of my misery, though the thought of all of the possible complications that could arise during labor and delivery left me feeling pretty scared and overwhelmed at times.