Eli Arrives!

Right after the induction was scheduled my mental state improved somewhat. Just knowing there was an end in sight (so I thought…) helped immensely. That Sunday (February 26th) Will and I arrived at the hospital at 4:30 to begin the induction process. My other best friend was luckily off work during this time and was able to drive up, and that night she and my parents and my grandmother brought us Whataburger for dinner, the last meal I would be able to eat until after delivery. Neither of us slept well. I woke up at least three times needing to go to the bathroom, and I was in so much pain I couldn’t walk on my own; Will had to get up and help me walk across the room to the bathroom. He wasn’t sleeping well either, apparently the  couch was VERY uncomfortable. Finally morning arrived, my doctor came and checked me out, and started me on Pitocin.

I had told my family there was no reason to show up to the hospital early on Monday morning, that labor would very likely take a long time, and if it seemed to be moving unexpectedly quickly Will would call them immediately. Of course they didn’t listen and showed up by about 7 AM. The day passed mostly uneventfully. I got an epidural put in quite early because I have a low pain tolerance and was terrified of how much it would hurt. Basically, I’m a huge chicken and I have no shame about it. I slept on and off and tried not to think about how hungry I was. I ended up with a migraine (common for me, even when I’m fed, relaxed, and well rested) and my nurse brought me juice and Tylenol to try to get rid of it. My family might not like to read it, but they did make the stress worse. Every time my doctor would come to check on me and say I wasn’t ready, and Will would let my family know it would be at least a few more hours, I felt like I was letting them down. My dad isn’t patient (much like me) and I knew waiting all day was just killing him. At one point he came in to check on me and I pretended to be asleep because I couldn’t bear to disappoint him again, and tell him I didn’t know when I would be ready. Luckily, I wasn’t focused on the potential achondroplasia issues for most of the day, but they did cross my mind from time to time.

About 8 PM things got real. My epidural ran out. I started to feel nauseous, and I kept telling the nurse I was in pain but she kept implying I was feeling pressure, not pain. I finally got firm and told her, “No, it’s DEFINITELY pain!” I started crying and they sent someone in to fill up my epidural device and give me an extra shot to tide me over until it kicked in. Then my legs went COMPLETELY numb. For some reason I found this hilarious at the time and kept poking my legs and laughing because I could feel absolutely nothing. My doctor came back around 10:30 and said I could push if I wanted to. She probably thought I was crazy, but the first thing I did was look at Will and say, “Ok go brush your teeth.” I HATE coffee and the smell of coffee, and I hated it even more while pregnant, and of course Will had been chugging coffee all day and I knew I would not be able to focus with him breathing coffee breath into my face.

Luckily the pushing and actual birth went quickly. My best friend, who had just had her baby 12 days earlier, gave me advice on how to push and that’s all I was thinking about. About 30 minutes later, at 11:01 PM, Oliver Elias McDonald entered the world. All I really remember is Will with the camera and them cleaning Eli up and putting him on my chest. It was (and still is) so bizarre for me to imagine I had been growing that human in my body for 9 months. Because we hadn’t found out the sex, I decided a few days before his birth to play a little game with everyone, and have everyone guess what they THOUGHT we would have, then we would show a picture and they had to guess if the baby was a boy or a girl. I wanted to see if babies really do look like boys or girls from birth, or if people are just predisposed to assume the gender they expect. Really, I think it was just a distraction from all the issues we were facing. But it helped me, so if anyone was annoyed by it…I don’t care. Will went out to the waiting room and after everyone had followed my instructions and guessed, he let them know we had a boy, and told everyone his name.

Let me expound here on what it feels like going into birth knowing you might have a child with serious issues. It’s such a crazy place to be. On the one hand, you are so overjoyed. I was so excited to meet our baby and start life as a family unit, and when he was born he was so tiny and cuddly and easy to love. It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, and it many ways, it was. But I also have so many mixed feelings about Eli’s birth and infancy. We were essentially robbed of a typical birth story. I don’t remember the happy moments getting ready for him to come, wondering when I would go into labor, what we would say when we called family to tell them we were on the way to the hospital, etc. I remember laying on my couch for hours, crying, wondering if we were going to have a child with dwarfism, and if it was my fault. If only I had drunk more milk and less caffeine, if only I hadn’t forgotten my prenatal vitamins some days. Maybe I caused it because of that one time I accidentally took a migraine pill when I thought they were safe for pregnancy. When he was born, I was so overwhelmed with joy, but one of the things I remember most is looking at my OB with wide eyes asking, “Is he normal? Is he short? Is he a dwarf?” The nurse had him over at the warmer and was weighing him and cleaning him up and my only concern was finding out how long he was. They didn’t measure him for a couple hours, until we got upstairs into a room. And as soon as I was told the measurement, I was on my phone, searching to make sure his birth length was within normal range. I obsessively looked at his fingers, determined to see if there was even a hint of trident hand; I stared at his face in profile, praying I wouldn’t find any frontal bossing (both symptoms of achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism).