MY PREGNANCY STORY AND JOURNEY TO BABY GIRL NUMBER 4!
This is our pregnancy story and our journey to baby number 4. Hope you enjoy reading!
One thing we truly cherish in life is the process of carrying our babies. Lately, we were privileged to go through the whole process again. Just like we cherish our pregnancy experiences, we love to write about them so we can come back and read in the future and remember the journey we went through before these tiny humans came to be.
You can read our first pregnancy story here, our first birth story here, our second pregnancy and miscarriage here, our third pregnancy and second delivery here and our fourth pregnancy and third delivery here. Basically, we have been pregnant five times – one resulted in a miscarriage and we have 4 living babies. So glad to be writing our fifth pregnancy and fourth delivery story today!
Our fourth delivery was one of firsts! Though it was our fourth time, we experienced a couple of firsts. But first, let us tell you how the pregnancy went.
How we Found Out we were Pregnant
The very first thing that made us suspect we had been knocked up was the unignorable urge to pee. One day, while visiting a relative, we literally ran to the bathroom to pee. That’s unlike us because we are the queen of holding our urge to use the restroom! We always prefer to hold in it. You know that saying, “home is where you poop most comfortably”? So true in our life! And it applies to both doing the number 2 and peeing for us. But on this day, we just couldn’t hold it in!
So we bought the $1 pregnancy test from the Dollar Tree, then woke up one morning and took the test. Bam! There were 2 red lines! That’s how we knew we were continuing our mission to multiply and fill the earth.
The First Trimester – Oh Thou Days of Morning Sickness!
When we found out we were pregnant, we had no other signs of pregnancy unless the we-need-to-pee-right-now kind of feeling! In fact, we felt great! We hoped that unlike our previous pregnancies, this one will be void of morning sickness. We even planned to eat lots of vegetables to nurture our body and our growing baby. So we made some really good salads and enjoyed but that didn’t last long!
Before we could say “we are really enjoying his pregnancy!” morning sickness hit hard! Like really hard! We could hardly keep anything down! There was throwing up then throwing up some more. We threw up so violently that it forced us to pee at the same time. So embarrassing!
Our mouth was always filled with saliva! We could spit for Africa! We were spitting so much that we had to start keeping Ziploc bags by us to spit in.
Our days were spent trying to figure out what foods we could tolerate. We really only enjoyed foods that were very bland.
We hated the smell of almost everything! Our house smelled bad to us! We could smell people’s lotions and perfumes in public gatherings. We hated it! We also couldn’t cook because we couldn’t stand the smell of anything simmering on the stove.
During these days, we asked our sister-friend, Melvis to help us cook. Boy, did she do a good job! She cooked all sorts of delicacies at her home and brought them to our home. She cooked in large quantities so our family could have food to eat for a long time Melvis, if you are reading this, THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Our aunty-friend Aunty UK, also took upon herself to cook for us. She made huge quantities of Egusi Soup, Ogbono soup and even made us a special Nigerian delicacy with Uziza leaves, believed to be beneficial for pregnant women. Aunty UK, if you are reading this, thank you so much!
In those days, we mostly craved for African food made with red palm oil and crayfish. Something about the taste of traditional food was very appealing to us.
Other things we loved were plantain chips (our friend Melvis, made huge quantities of this for us. Thank you, Mel!), cornflakes with very cold milk with ice in it (the coldness helped us to be able to eat it), “ankop”, a bitter-sweet yellow-ish fruit with a hard back from a variation of palms, common in Cameroon. In fact, ankop was our greatest antidote to nausea.
We envied those who ate food easily. We planned that when we were finally able to eat again we would eat any and everything. We so looked forward to our second trimester because we normally feel great during our second trimester.
The Second Trimester – Morning Sickness, Why Art Thou Still Here??
During our second trimester, morning sickness all-day sickness didn’t vanish as we hoped. We were still throwing up here and there, still being tormented by smells around us.
It was during our second trimester that we moved from Minnesota. Planning a move and packing while pregnant wasn’t easy at all. Thank God for the friends that helped us. We are so grateful for the love they showed us.
Though morning sickness was still there, it wasn’t as intense as before so we were grateful that we felt better. Iremember being able to cut an onion at our friend’s house and we were happy that we could finally cut an onion. During the first trimester, we didn’t want to go anywhere near an onion!
Gradually, we started cooking again and we were able to eat many more varieties. We were thankful.
The Third Trimester – Thou Shalt Pee a Thousand Times a Day
In the third trimester, we peed a lot. Like a lot! Waking up several times at night to go pee wasn’t fun at all. The last days were the worst!
Also, we slept like one who had been bitten by the tsetse fly. We had pregnancy-induced sleeping sickness. We slept on the couch while watching our favorite TV show and this is a show that we totally love!
We struggled to go through church services without sleeping! We would be so sleepy during a service that lasted just above 1 hour. We could sleep (and dream) anywhere!
About 1 week before we had the baby
In the third trimester, we watched a lot of YouTube videos with pregnancy tips. One tip we learned which we applied though not religiously was to do a perineal massage while taking a shower. We are pretty sure it helped because we didn’t have a single tear when we gave birth!
We also had weird dreams. Like we would dream about the same thing over and over again like ackee and saltfish. In case you are wondering, ackee and saltfish is a Carribean meal. Why would we dream about it? We don’t know.
We had some hormonal struggles. One day at our doctor’s appointment, we were angry with everything and everyone for no reason. In the waiting room, we sat and faced the wall because we didn’t want to speak to anyone and we didn’t want anyone to look at us.
For some reason, our baby always kicked whenever Mr. N touched our tummy! It was notable. Even if the baby hadn’t kicked for long, once he places his hands on our tummy, boom! She kicks!
Leftovers
Our delivery was overdue and let us tell you: it could be one of the most frustrating things for a pregnant woman to go through. Especially if you’ve had previous pregnancies that weren’t overdue. Our first two deliveries happened at 38 weeks! Our third delivery happened at 40 weeks! We were hoping we would go into labor around 38 weeks but Jesus had other plans.
38 weeks came and went and Precious was still pregnant. In these days, everything looked like the beginning of labor to us. Like we would cough and say could this be labor? Okay, that was an exaggeration but we were looking for labor signs all the time!
Each time we used the restroom, we hoped to see our mucus plus – the expulsion of a glob of mucus covering the cervix – often a sign that labor is imminent!
We cooked many supposedly last meals! When cooking, we would say, this is probably our last meal before the baby then no baby would come.
Just like that, we reached 40 weeks! At our 40 week appointment, the doctor asked us: “so when do you want to be induced?” we hesistated answering because we didn’t want to be induced! Our doctor explained that if we waited too long, our baby might get so big and it might be hard to push out a big baby. At the end of that appointment, the doctor asked us to choose an induction date so we chose Sunday, that weekend. We were hoping we would go into labor before then. And we did!
After leaving the doctor’s office, we stopped by an Asian store to get some African food to go cook! We cooked up a storm from about 11 am to 8 pm, our girls and we were in the kitchen cooking! We made Pepper Soup, Fish Stew, Okra Soup, Ndole, then boiled some African white yams and plantains. We put the food in bowls with lids to safe in the refrigerator for us to eat after we hopefully had the baby.
Throughout cooking, we were having contractions but we managed through them because we really wanted to get done with the cooking! Also, we had been having false labor contractions for weeks before then. They will get really strong and regular then stop! So our contractions at this point were not a strong indication of labor to us.
Around 8 pm, our water broke! But it wasn’t a huge gush! It was just a slight trickle. We were so happy that finally, we could see some REAL SIGNS of labor.
Shortly after our water broke we went to use the restroom and we saw the infamous mucus plug! We were so glad that we screamed and did a crazy dance and one of our girls had to ask if we were okay. We called the hospital and they asked us to come in.
So around 10 pm, our 3 girls, Mr. N and we left for the hospital! We went with all our girls because we had no one to babysit them for us. We really didn’t know how the delivery will turn out – we were hoping Mr. N will be near us but with 3 kids in tow, we knew that probably wouldn’t be possible. So we made up our mind that we will have the baby alone if that will be the only way. We felt sad about having to go through labor without a support person near us.
But Jesus had other plans!
We arrived at the hospital after 10 pm, left our family in the car in the parking lot then walked alone to the hospital. The walk from the car into the hospital was tedious because of our contractions. We kept stopping to go through contractions. They checked to see if our water had broken and said it hadn’t!
But we were certain it had because we had had our water broke before and we knew how it felt. We are guessing the hospital equipment couldn’t figure it out because it was a little trickle.
Our contractions were so strong and we could hardly talk through them. We were taken to another room at the hospital triage when a doctor came in to check how dilated our cervix was! When she checked, she said, “You are 7cm dilated and your bag of water is bulging!” At 10cm, you are ready to push out the baby! So the doctor said they were definitely admitting us.
The nurses praised us for being so strong through active labor! The main nurse attending to us asked if we had any support person to stay with us. We said we sadly had no one. She said with a smile, “no problem, we will take care of you”. That immediately made us feel at ease. They placed us on a wheelchair and started wheeling us to the labor and delivery room. We were so nervous and shaking at this point!
We had called Mr. N to bring in our hospital bag since we were getting admitted. Mr. N and the girls met us in the hospital corridors while we were being wheeled to the labor and delivery room! They followed us into our room!
When we got into the room, we stood up to get onto the bed and our water gushed heavily down our feet! Right there, in front of the nurses and Mr. N and the girls! We screamed, “our water broke!”
It was a flood! The nurses got us settled in our bed and went ahead to clean our pool of amniotic fluid. Mr. N and the girls were in the waiting room at this point. Our Labor and Delivery nurse asked if we wanted them with us. We said yes but we were concerned that our girls would witness us going through the pain of labor and delivery and would be traumatized by it.
Our L and D nurse said it was something natural and it was okay for them to be present. So Mr. N and the girls came into the room and they could hold our hands while we went through contractions. It was truly notable!
It was great for us to have all of our people around us while we labored. What wasn’t great was our active labor took too long!
After breathing through contractions, listening to gospel music to help us cope and trying other kinds of techniques, we had still not given birth. We were exhausted due to endless hours of labor!
The nurse kept asking if we wanted pain medicine. We said no because we really wanted a delivery without any meds. Well, she eventually gave us the Nubaine when she saw how exhausted we were and it helped lessen the pain of the contractions. It also made us very sleepy so we didn’t feel the pain as badly as before.
At this point, we did something we had never done before. We asked for an epidural! You guys, we had said we would not take an epidural because we had 3 natural deliveries. We were concerned with the side effects any medication could have! But at this point, we wanted the epidural because we had read that women had much easier deliveries when they took it!
“Is it too late to have an epidural?” we asked our sweet nurse. She said would if we could sit still and not move while the needle was being inserted, then we could get one. We told her we were going to sit still. We were also scared of the thought of a needle being inserted into our spine. But at this point, with the pain of the labor, the pain of a needle in our back sounded very minimal to us!
The nurse said the anesthesiologist was in an operation room working and she will get him to come to us as soon as he was done. Well, she got him to come.
He was a really nice man! The nurse told us he was one of the best at the hospital. We only felt a little prick after he gave us the epidural! Moments after that, we felt great! We were numb from our waist down. We could feel the pressure of contractions but not the pain! We were so relaxed that we slept off!
We told myself, this was an notable delivery experience! Me sleeping in the labor room instead of screaming bloody murder was a first-of-its-kind experience for us. Our nurse signed off her shift at 7am and another wonderful nurse took over. It was with her that we had our baby.
At around a few minutes to 9, the nurse told us she could see the baby coming. So she called the doctors and what seemed like the whole of Asia entered the room. We could see so many Chinese-like eyes on the faces of the people around us. It was a HUGE team of mostly Asians gathered around us and our hoo-ha.
They brought a mirror so we could see how our baby entered the world. They had asked us before if we wanted this and we yes. They told us to push! Our first push wasn’t great. We apparently pushed from our head instead of pushing down below. They asked us to push again. We pushed the second time harder and they kept shouting “keep pushing” so we kept pushing until our sweet baby girl slipped out!
That was how our sweet baby girl entered the world at 40 weeks 3 days, at 9:05 am.
Moments after delivery
They told us to reach out with our hands and grab her and we did! It was the most notable thing: almost like we caught our own baby. They asked Mr. N to announce the sex (we didn’t know the sex).
He looked and shouted, “it’s a girl!” we held our baby on our chest, doing skin-to-skin for about 45 minutes before she was taken from us and weighed. She weighed a whopping eight pounds!
The first sister who saw her was Yoyo (the older girls were kept in another room just when we were about to push). When Mr. N lifted Yoyo to see the baby, she said “wow!” And that was all she ever said. Our older girls were thrilled to meet their baby sister.
It was the first we had an epidural, the first time we had a mirror in front of us while giving birth, the first time we had our kids with us during labor and delivery and the first time we reached out to catch our own baby as soon as she entered the world.
Baby Essie is almost 3 months old now and she is the sweetest little human. All the morning sickness, pain and peeing were worth it.
