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Week by Week

Joshua

Birth of Joshua In October of 1991, I found out that I was pregnant. I got very scared because I was only 18 years old. When I told my boyfriend he just said that he hoped it was a boy. I started to let myself get excited about it. The doctor estimated my due date as June 20, 1992. On November 9, 1991, I started bleeding pretty heavily. I went to the hospital and they said my HCG levels were going down and I was probably going to miscarry. I went home and continued to bleed over the next day or so. We went to visit my boyfriend's mom and dad and while there, I felt an unbearable need to go to the bathroom.

When I went in there, I passed a golfball size blood clot and knew that I had, indeed, miscarried my baby. I went to the hospital and they confirmed it by telling me rather rudely in the hallway. I was devastated and quite mad that they weren't sympathetic. They gave me some medicine to help my body go back to normal and sent me home.

In mid-December, I will still on the medicine and became quite ill. I started vomiting uncontrollably and having diarrhea. After a few days of this I went to the hospital emergency room. The doctor came back in and asked me if I was pregnant. I told him that I had miscarried the month before. He said that the blood test was positive and to stop taking the medicine right away and to see my OB. I was in shock. I went home and saw my OB later that week. Come to find out, I got pregnant again right after my miscarriage. I was young and naive and thought that you couldn't get pregnant so soon after a miscarriage. Needless to say, I was really scared.

They estimated my due date at August 18, 1992. For the first few months, I was really scared about miscarriage. After the first trimester, I started to relax. In my fifth month I had an ultrasound and they told me I was having a boy. I was really excited. The whole pregnancy was pretty uneventful. The only two things that went wrong were 1)I was really sick the whole pregnancy and 2) in the 7th month, I was sent to the hospital by my doctor because the baby's heart rate was irregular. It turned out to be caused by caffeine. I stopped the caffeine and the baby was fine.

On the evening of August 17th 1992, my boyfriend and I had sex. I was feeling pretty good and decided that sex would be an okay thing to do. Later that night about 1 am, I woke up with an overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom. I went and nothing happened. I was having a little pain but not much and thought that it was because I had had sex earlier. I was young and no one had told me that labor felt like you had to go to the bathroom. When the urge didn't go away, I called the hospital and they asked me some questions about my symptoms. After I told them, they told me to go to the hospital right away. I woke up my boyfriend and told him it was time. We called my mother and headed off for the hospital. In the car, the pain started getting worse.

When we arrived at the hospital they hooked me up to the monitoring machine to watch the contractions. They told me they didn't see any and they were going to send me home. I knew that I was having them and they were painful. I told the nurse that I wanted a 2nd opinion. Another nurse came in and did an internal and told me that I was six centimeters dialated and my water had broke. From the looks of it, she said my water had broke a long time ago. I never knew it. It had been slowly leaking for hours.

After that, they moved me to the L&D room where I remained from 3 am until 6 pm that evening laboring. I had an epidural and it relieved me for about 2 hours. When it started to wear off (about 11 am), they said that in order to give me more pain relief, that they had to re-insert the needle (they never did tell me why) and that I would have to sit completely still. I asked how much longer and they said two hours tops. I figured that I could deal with the pain for two hours so I refused. I ended up being in hard labor for 6 1/2 more hours. Around 4 pm I hyperventalated and they had to put me on oxygen. At 5:39 pm, my son was finally born. The doctor lifted him up and said "It's a boy!". At first, I was scared because I felt him come out, but didn't hear him cry. When the doctor brought him up to me he was just staring as if in awe of this new place. I was crying and talking to him and he just looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes. He never did cry until the nurses took him to clean him.

I was in labor with Joshua for a long time and for many years, I thought that I would NEVER have another child. But what they say it true, you tend to forget the pain and focus on the joy of the moment. Joshua's father and I broke up and unfortunately he isn't part of Joshua's life. Luckily for us though, I met a wonderful man who took Joshua and treats him as his own. We were married this past summer and now we are expecting another wonderful addition to this world. I am due May 28, 1998. Joshua really wants a sister, but my husband and I don't care as long as it's healthy. Be looking for that story in May!!!!!