Lillie Belle’s Birth Story | Germany, 2020

The nurse looked up at me with wide eyes and said, “Call your husband now. You’re dilated to 7 centimeters.” I couldn’t dial fast enough to tell him to get to the hospital RIGHT NOW. We were about to have a baby! While I waited for my husband, Stephen, to arrive, the nurses wheeled me into the delivery room. Everything moved way too fast and the next thing I knew, two men in white coats tried, in their broken English, to talk me through the process of an epidural. I glanced over my shoulder in hopes that Stephen would walk through at any minute, but he wasn’t going to make it in time. I called my Mom and we video chatted while the German Anesthesiologists stuck a huge ass needle in my back, dangerously close to my spine. At that moment, I felt more alone and scared than ever before.

But I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind and start this birth story from the beginning, shall we?

Saturday, May 23rd

On Saturday, May 23^rd, Stephen had just finished a 24-hour shift at work and came home to sleep. I woke up to eat breakfast but found myself extra sleepy afterward so I returned to bed. We slept in until around 2 p.m. and finally got up to go to the grocery store. I felt like I was having Braxton Hicks throughout the day. Not feeling like cooking, we ordered Chinese for dinner and I followed it up with a long hot bath to try to ease the discomforts. Somewhere along the way, I downloaded a contraction timer app and started timing what I believed to still be Braxton Hicks to see if there was any pattern.

They were coming in regular intervals, but I still wasn’t convinced that these were contractions. Since my mom was unable to fly from the U.S. to Germany because of border closures during COVID-19, I messaged my Doula, Kim Hopkins of 7 Blessings Doula Service and she offered to come over and check on me. She quickly confirmed that I was, in fact, having contractions. I decided to labor at home for a while and then when I felt like they couldn’t get any worse (spoiler alert: they did), I asked to go to the Weiden hospital (“Klinikum Weiden der Stadt” located in Weiden, Germany).

The original plan was to deliver at Sulzbach-Rosenburg Hospital, but my OBGYN, Dr. Erhardt, was at Weiden. I decided last-minute to deliver there on the off chance that she was on call.

My contractions came about 3 minutes apart and lasted for up to 90 seconds. A quick Cardiotocography (CTG: recording the fetal heartbeat and the uterine contractions during pregnancy) confirmed this and the doctors checked to see if I was dilated – only 1 centimeter so far. The nurses suggested we return home and labor there for a little longer.

Returning Home to Labor Longer

The next 5-6 hours were exhausting. ZERO sleep was accomplished with contractions coming 2-3 minutes apart. Stephen was able to get a few hours of sleep while I tried soaking in the tub. When the pain picked up again, I video chatted with my mom (who was back home in North Carolina) and she walked me through each contraction – reminding me when to breathe and to find the peak of the contraction. Stephen eventually took over the breathing exercises so my mom could get some sleep.

Around 5 am, I decided that I was ready to go back to the hospital. They admitted me into a room after checking to see that I had dilated to 2 centimeters. Stephen was sent home, because of current COVID rules, and could only return once I was further along in my laboring.

The rule at the time for Weiden Hospital was that ONE person could be present during active labor (so my doula would not be able to attend the birth also) and then could visit for up to one hour after labor, and one hour each day. I wasn’t in active labor, yet.

Sunday, May 24th

Thanks to some pain meds, I was able to get a little bit of sleep before my next CTG at 9 a.m. When the midwife checked me for any dilation, a look of panic crossed her face. She told me that I was dilated 7 centimeters and to call my husband ASAP. I started freaking out. They needed to put the epidural in right away, so I called my mom and she helped me through the entire process. It was a lot less painful than I expected, but the relief was only temporary. My right leg was numb but I still very much felt every contraction on my left side. Stephen finally arrived, after what felt like hours; but it was really only 30 minutes.

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Some parts of that morning are hazy in my memory, which is almost a blessing to not have to remember every single detail of the contractions. The ones I do remember were excruciatingly painful, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I do remember at some point being checked again and the midwife telling us I was dilated to 10 centimeters. She then said we’d have a baby by lunchtime! Hallelujah…Or so we thought…

Disappointment & Fatigue Sets In

Noon came around and my water still hadn’t broken yet so they decided to do it by hand. In the process, they checked my cervix and said that they had made a mistake, and I was actually only dilated to 2 centimeters. I was furious! How could this even happen?? (spoiler alert: it wouldn’t be the last mistake of the day)

The pain was unbearable and I continued throwing up for the next few hours (side note: I had hyperemesis gravidarum during my entire pregnancy). After dilating to 5 cm and throwing up 5 more times, they thought it best that I have an emergency cesarean section (c-section). Our baby’s head was turned a little bit and they weren’t able to get her to move into better positioning for a natural delivery. I was all for that outcome because I couldn’t take the pain much longer. Stephen was given the choice to come into the operating room but only if I stayed awake. There was absolutely no way I wanted to be awake for that. The procedure would take less than 30 minutes, so I asked to be put under. The last faces I saw were my mom and sister’s on video chat wishing me luck, then Stephen saying bye as I was wheeled down the hallway.

Related Post: What No One Tells You About Mental Health and Pregnancy

She Finally Arrived!

Our daughter, Lillie Belle, was born at 7:56 p.m at 6 pounds and 11.5 ounces!!

When I woke up, I was back in the delivery room — drugged up and Stephen sitting by my bed. I was instantly confused about where my baby was. They told me she had already been taken to the NICU, never giving me a chance to do skin to skin or to even see her. The only thing I got was a picture of her hanging above my bed. I was heartbroken and dumbfounded.

Stephen had held her for almost an hour while I recovered and came to from the anesthesia. I don’t even know what my baby looked like the day she was born, besides pictures!

After a while, I was taken back to my room and they advised Stephen to go down to the NICU and spend a little more time with our daughter. I drifted in and out of sleep throughout the night due to the pain at the site of my incision and the feeling of loneliness with no family, husband, or baby by my side. The nurses continued to wake me up every few hours to check for vital signs.

Monday, May 25th

The following morning, I woke up and asked when I could go see my newborn. No one had an answer for me. It took calling my Doula and then finally the Tricare Patient Liaison (translator for medical care through our military insurance) before I could get a response. Waiting was killing me and I became more impatient by the hour. I could barely get out of bed and move into the wheelchair but I was determined to get to my baby.

18 HOURS later. The first time I laid eyes on her tiny little body in her NICU bed with cords running everywhere, I burst into tears. I wanted so badly to kiss her, smell her, love on her, but I couldn’t through my mask – and they wouldn’t allow me to pull it down (more COVID restrictions). I was frightened to hold her tiny body. It felt like I was going to break her. I’ve never held such a small human before and my emotions ran high.

Through tears in my eyes, I looked her all over – her little turned-up nose, tiny hands, and wrinkly feet. I have never been so in love and in awe that I could have created this little bundle of joy. Still, it was so painful to see her hooked up to different monitors. A feeding tube ran through her nose since she wasn’t eating well; bandaids covered her heels from being pricked over and over again; and she slept nonstop, sometimes never opening her eyes the entire time I was with her.

Breastfeeding was something I really wanted to accomplish and I continued to voice my case on getting her to latch; as that is so important in the early hours. Plus, I missed out on the original skin to skin moments. I fumbled my way through it while sitting in the wheelchair beside her NICU bed with no help from anyone whatsoever. When the nurses realized she wasn’t latching properly, they immediately asked me to stop and had me switch to a bottle of formula. I was frustrated that no one was helping me or even willing to give me time to try. It was an emotional struggle between what was best for her and what I wanted for her.

Introducing Lillie Belle to Family (Over Video Chat)

I’ll never forget calling my mom, Lillie Belle’s Mimi, and introducing her to her granddaughter for the first time. It had been an emotional roller coaster the previous few months hoping that she would be there for the birth, but ultimately not being able to because of COVID border closures. It broke both of our hearts that she couldn’t be there, but thank god for video chat.

I stayed as long as I could with her until the pain from my incision became unbearable. Only one parent was allowed to visit their baby in the NICU at a time, so Stephen and I took turns. There was a time limit for him to visit me in my room (1 hour), but no maximum time on how long he could spend in the NICU. A nurse finally came to my room and showed me how to pump so I could take bottles of milk down to her every now and then. I returned to the NICU a few times throughout the night, trying to get her to take a bottle but to no avail.

Epidural Mishap…

That same night, I continued to not have any feeling in my lower back and when I had a nurse take a look, she realized that my epidural line was still in. I could write a separate post about all the things that went wrong during my labor and delivery at Weiden Hospital, but I’ll keep it semi-short for now. Basically, it took me calling Patient Liaison again, who then contacted the Chief of Anesthesiologists for the hospital. He himself came to my room late that night to remove the line and apologize. There was absolutely no excuse for this to have happened — after I voiced time and time again the nervousness I felt about getting an epidural since I had already had a blood patch once before (in my college days).

The following days flew by because I now had a purpose. Eat, hydrate, pump, wheel myself all the way across the hospital to the NICU, and then rest. They made me get out of bed, use the bathroom, and eventually shower – which felt like the greatest accomplishment! Before I could be released from the hospital, I had to show them that I could walk all the way from my room to the NICU department (an 8-minute walk on a GOOD day).

Going Home

By Wednesday, 3 days later, I was released. Lillie Belle was made to stay another day because she was having trouble eating and required a feeding tube. Her blood sugar was consistently low so she needed extra monitoring and they wanted to keep an eye out for the slight hip dysplasia that she was born with. In order to leave, she had to prove that she could drink enough from a bottle.

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I felt empty going home without my baby in my arms.

We finally picked her up on Thursday morning and the best chapter of our lives began. It was also the first time that Stephen and I had been together with her at the same time. I was an emotional wreck, had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I had the best partner there to help me navigate this new way of life. Every day since then has been so incredible and exhausting in the best way possible – filled with photographic moments, sleepless nights, and lots of snuggles. Being a parent is nothing, yet everything that I thought it would be.

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Giving birth during a pandemic in a foreign country is something that I don’t wish for anyone to have to go through. Not having family, friends, or even my birth Doula there was tough. It was lonely and scary at times, but we all survived and feel stronger for it. Stephen, Lillie & I are so appreciative of all the virtual love we’ve received and to YOU for reading our birth story!

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