The Curveballs Of Pregnancy
If you are expecting your first child and have not gone through the labor process yet, I'm sure you have a plan for what you want to happen. Many people prefer to have a birth plan, which they are comfortable with. Some people want to have a home birth, such as my wife and I wanted, while others want to have a water birth, or they prefer to combine the two. There are of course a number of variations of what people want to have, but you have to be prepared to have a curveball thrown your way whenever you are expecting. This is exactly what happened to my wife and I, and we had no choice but to go with the process so we could have our baby daughter.
My wife wanted to have a private home birth, because this is where she felt the most comfortable, and I was in full agreement with her about this. However, this all changed a couple weeks before the expected due date of our daughter. While she was at her midwife appointment, my wife's blood pressure levels were well over the normal limit. This was a pretty big red flag, and her midwife asked us to meet her at the hospital, just for some routine blood test. Once we got to the hospital we found out that her blood pressure was okay, but her protein levels had actually risen dramatically, and when the doctor came in to speak to us, she suggested that my wife be induced immediately. This meant we were going to have to have a child at the hospital, and basically all of our privacy that we had hoped for was going to be nonexistent.
This started that very night, as a nurse stayed in the room with us the entire time, to observe my wife and make sure that her blood pressure and other vital signs were okay. This was extremely awkward and made it quite difficult to sleep. We also were asked if others could observe the birth, which was something that we didn't want to be done, but we ended up agreeing to it anyways. In the end we got through it all, and while it was much more difficult than we had anticipated and hope for, we did what needed to be done. This is basically the kind of mindset that you have to have whenever you're expecting, and ironically, you should never expect things to go exactly as you planned.
My wife wanted to have a private home birth, because this is where she felt the most comfortable, and I was in full agreement with her about this. However, this all changed a couple weeks before the expected due date of our daughter. While she was at her midwife appointment, my wife's blood pressure levels were well over the normal limit. This was a pretty big red flag, and her midwife asked us to meet her at the hospital, just for some routine blood test. Once we got to the hospital we found out that her blood pressure was okay, but her protein levels had actually risen dramatically, and when the doctor came in to speak to us, she suggested that my wife be induced immediately. This meant we were going to have to have a child at the hospital, and basically all of our privacy that we had hoped for was going to be nonexistent.
This started that very night, as a nurse stayed in the room with us the entire time, to observe my wife and make sure that her blood pressure and other vital signs were okay. This was extremely awkward and made it quite difficult to sleep. We also were asked if others could observe the birth, which was something that we didn't want to be done, but we ended up agreeing to it anyways. In the end we got through it all, and while it was much more difficult than we had anticipated and hope for, we did what needed to be done. This is basically the kind of mindset that you have to have whenever you're expecting, and ironically, you should never expect things to go exactly as you planned.
