The Story of Strong

Please submit your birth story via email to femconscious@yahoo.com with a title and your name. 😊

We look forward to reading and sharing your crazy and amazing stories.

---

The Birth of Strong

I always wanted to be one of those fit moms. I’ve been into fitness since 2014 and would find myself amazed at all those fit moms I saw on Instagram working out with their big bellies. It wasn’t until I lost my first pregnancy in 2015 that I was diagnosed with an incompetent cervix. It was literally the worst experience of my life. 7 months after that I got pregnant again and the doctors told me in order to prevent another loss I could do a procedure called “Cerclage”, it’s a procedure where they stitch up your cervix so that you’re able to carry the baby full term. I am very grateful to have the cerclage option as it allowed me to carry my baby to almost full term. I had him at 34 weeks and he was a preemie in the NICU for 30 days, but he was a REALLY healthy baby despite being 6 weeks early. I am extremely grateful for my doctors and the procedure and recommend it to anyone who has also been diagnosed with an incompetent cervix. It is definitely a life saver! I worked almost all the way through my pregnancy but was not able to make it to any of my baby showers (work and family) because of his early arrival. Interestingly enough, removing the cerclage unfortunately was more painful than the actual birth and the reason being was because I started dilating before the cerclage was removed causing the stitches of the cerclage to go deeper inside and therefore harder to remove. It was a really painful experience, but I am still extremely grateful for it. If removed on time, this won’t happen. I was at work when I started feeling what felt to me like contractions. I planned to work all the way through and I kind of did. A few people told me that it was probably Braxton hicks, but due to what had happened to me before I did not listen to them and listened to my intuition instead. I went home and used an app to monitor my contractions and they were really close to each other, so I went in, I got sent home twice before they let me stay. They realized I started dilating with the cerclage still in and decided to remove the cerclage right away and then waited for an empty room to put me in because they knew I was close to giving birth. My actual due date was March 26th and I had little man on January 26 at 2:01 pm. I wasn’t in the hospital for that long as I had gone in the day before in the afternoon. I was starving, they don’t really let you eat and of course after waiting for hours to eat when I finally decided to eat my water broke! The doctor came in and told me she didn’t like the way my water smelled, and I had to give birth immediately. The 3.5lb baby came out of me with so much energy despite being a preemie baby screaming at the top of his lungs and it made my heart melt. He had to go immediately into an incubator, and I couldn’t hold him right away which was a little sad, but my child’s father and my doula (my cousin) managed to take pictures and videos. That night I was allowed to go see my baby with his tiny self and it filled me up with joy. All the nurses told me he was the most chilled baby in there, such a good baby! All those meditation and peaceful times I had while being pregnant paid off. I was able to perform skin to skin, maybe not right after his birth, but that same day at night. He stayed in the NICU for 30 days. I was very sad about my incompetent cervix at first but very grateful for the cerclage which allowed me to carry my son to almost full term.

Advertisement