DOMINICS BIRTH STORY
You know those movies you watch where the woman goes into labor and everyone rushes to the hospital and she is breathing heavily and in pain because the child is ready to fly out of that uterus? Yes, that was the case with the birth of my son Dominic. Granted this is our second child so we were mildly prepared already we knew what was coming our way. NONE of what we planned for happened, in fact it was the complete opposite for us. The birth of my daughter was a bit different, she was a c-section baby because she had “failure to decent.” Which if you don’t know what that means, it’s when the baby doesn’t drop down so the mama can push them out. Dominic’s story is a bit different. It was July 29th 2020 around 2:30am, my wife woke me up “Babe, I think I’m in labor, but its different this time, it really hurts.” I told her to get ready and i’ll call her mom to come stay with Arianna. How my mother-in-law got from glendale to our home in the short amount of time she did, i’ll never know. I can only imagine the amount of traffic laws she broke.
It is now about 3:30am and Natalie is getting extremely anxious as the contractions are getting closer and closer to one another and the pain increasing with each one. The moment her mom came over, we ran to the car and drove to the hospital. Thank god our hospital is St. Josephs in Burbank so it wasn’t too far, otherwise we were going to have a car birth which let me tell you, I cannot handle. As her contractions are getting closer and closer, I immediately start to sweat profusely as my intense anxiety begins to hit me. I drive as fast as I could possibly drive without endangering the both of us and the baby. I fast and furious my way to the ER bay and we fly out of the car, the moment natalie stepped out of the car, her water broke.
It is now around 4am and we reach the ER bay. OK before I continue, is it just me or are all hospitals ANNOYINGLY calm with expecting mothers who are screaming in agony? Like, is this a part of the whole thing? Is that how they were trained? Anyway, I digress. As they take us into the labor room, they immediately checked her only to find out she was 8cm dilated. Which, for the boys that don’t know what that means, it means my child was ready to fly out... that’s what it means. Of course, in the middle of all of this chaos, this was all during a global pandemic so, natalie had to do a covid test which she passed. Immediately after that, we were moved into a different room to get ready for what was about to come. Not even 10 minutes after they checked her the first time, they checked her the second time only to find out she was 10cm dilated. Which, again if you boys don’t know what that means, it means my blood pressure went sky high, my anxiety kicked itself into overdrive and my sweat was drenching me because this child may just fall out of her uterus at any given second. My poor wife did not even get a chance to get epidural because she was way too far along. So she felt absolutely every single contraction, tear and all.
While we were waiting for the doctor, at this point I myself was 10cm dilated. The nurses were telling natalie to hold off on pushing because the doctor wasn’t there yet, but she could not help herself. She was in so much pain that doing little micro-pushes relieved her of some of the pain. The doctor ran in breathing heavily and said something to Nat I will never forget. He said “Natalie listen to me, you had a c-section last time but we don’t have time for a c-section this time. By giving regular birth you are risking uterine rupture. Do we have your consent to do a vaginal birth?” My wife’s response was “I DON’T GIVE A SHIT GET THIS BABY OUT OF MEEEEE!!!!!” I was shitting bricks at this point. He and the nurses scrubbed in and with 1 push, my son came out. And just like that, we fell in love for the second time.
Sometimes, things don’t go as you planned but it ultimately will lead you where you are suppose to be.