Personal Narrative: My Hypothetical Newborn Baby

The cold October wind blew the drizzle right into my face as I got out my car. The fog coated my glasses as soon as I walked into the Hinsdale United Methodist Church. I was invited to play the violin at a ceremony hosted by the local hospital for women who had a miscarriage. In pain of sorrow there is consolation, in the face of despair there is hope, and in the midst of death there is life. October is the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month and the first candle to honor the experience, validate the brief life and pay tribute to the loss of babies.

On September 28, 1990, I embarked on this journey called life. Due to me being a premature baby, I had a few complications in my early years of development. Also, my mother who I love dearly has been handicapped my entire life and the first couple of years of my life was wheel chair bound. Because of these two factors, I would mimic much of my behavior in my early years after her. For example, I did not walk until I was two years. This caused doctors and my mother to be concerned about my development. So for the first four years of my life, I went to a number of therapists.

There were many emotions that I experienced throughout the time that I had the baby. One among many was not anger but almost a despise of the fake baby. I did not think that taking the baby would be really as bad as it was, this being in the way that I was so strung out over this tiny machine making noise and others making a big deal out of it just adding to the stress. Also there were several points in this time that between my tiredness and my anger I was having mental collapses, crying, panicking, anxiety, these were things like me waiting for the baby to cry and then when it wouldn stop I would have to hold myself back or I felt like I was about to snap.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I just had got off the bus and I looked at my phone I saw I had 20 text and 8 missed call. I was wondering why I had so many text and calls before I could even look at them.

Since birth, my life has been very hard to understand but I've always been very open to whoever wants to know about it. On January 13, 2003 I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My parents were Anita Gomez and Billy hunt. I then moved to Georgia a while later, and then made my way to Calhoun.

It was July 6, 2015, I woke up at 4:45 a.m it was time to get ready and go to the hospital. I was having my baby boy today! I needed to be at the hospital between 5 and 5:30 to be induced. I was so nervous, but I had carried my baby boy for 9 months and I was ready to finally hold him.

During my two pregnancies, BabyCenter L.L.C. has been a frequently surfed guide for my children's developmental milestones. Referring to the site and zealously studying the information served as a litmus test for personal successes of parenting, in addition to my index of "expertise" for engaging in educating conversations with my pediatrician. Currently, my younger son is six-years-old. As a first grader, his teacher requires him to know his age and birth date. However, a favorable assessment considers more than the month and day; he must have knowledge of his birth year also. Therefore, my son's inability to communicate those details would alarm his teacher that he has not reached a crucial milestone in his development. Correspondingly, I

My prenatal development was normal. There were not any concerns or worries about my development. My mom had a fairly normal pregnancy other than preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is a medical condition in women who have not experienced high blood pressure, and developed in during a pregnancy (Preeclampsia and Eclampsia, 2016). High protein levels in urine and swelling of the hands, legs and feet are other symptoms of preeclampsia. My mom had an ultrasound at fourteen weeks. She did not have any other testing like an amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling. It was unnecessary.

I decided to discuss the second trimester stage of development because for me, with both of my pregnancies, that is when I started to get really excited about having a baby. There is the whole scare of losing the baby in the first trimester but also that’s when I started to feel the baby move, both times in the 16th week, when the baby, and myself, grew the most (I gained 8 pounds in the 5th month with both pregnancies), and when I got so heavy I had to walk instead of run, it was actually faster from about 18 weeks on. Babycenter.com says that the fetus of 14 weeks of age is the size of a lemon, 3 ½ inches long and weighing 1 ½ ounces, while parents.com says it’s the same weight and length but the size of a peach. At 27 weeks both sites said the babies are at 2+ pounds, 9.25-14 inches long and either the size of a head of cauliflower or a sock monkey (which wasn’t fun to look at when your trying to picture a cute little baby). On page 96 of the textbook in Figure 5.8 it is confirmed that after the 16th week the mother may start to feel the baby move. The fetus is also forming small hairs all over the body, including the scalp, and the lungs are beginning to

I remember when I decided to exclusively pump for my son. I had struggled with nursing him in the three weeks since he’d been born, and we’d been going to the doctor every few days for a weight check, because he still wasn’t back up to his birth weight.

The Birth of my first, Jayden, was pretty normal, and he was on time. I was in labor for

I gave birth to twin daughters. They were extremely premature (born at 6 months gestation), weighing around 2 pounds each. Given that I was already dilated and in labor by the time I reached the hospital, they decided to have the babies naturally. Despite having contractions for more than 30 hours, I recovered quickly after the births and was discharged the next day.

Five years ago I gave birth to a baby boy, although I can't really call him a baby since he was the size of a small elephant. I knew I had to do something to afford him the best life possible. A friend of mine had gone to a local technical college for a medical assisting program. She graduated and soon moved up to being the practice manager at the pediatric office she worked at. I asked her some questions, she gave the school and job a rave review and I was hooked. I walked into school when Greyson was three weeks old and asked the counselor to sign me up for the next available class. The counselor looked at me with wandering eyes, letting them fall to rest on Greyson at my chest. She asked me "are you sure..you have a new baby?" I replied

It was just 8:30 p.m. when I got ready to witness a surgery at Christus Spohn Hospital. As I scrubbed in, the obstetrician informed me about what my eyes were going to observe – childbirth. He told me about the woman’s experience with labor: “I am about to perform cesarean-section on her and I want you to know, that her womb may be empty”. I was shocked to hear such words come out of Dr. Shelton’s mouth. Thousands of questions immediately came to my head. Why would her womb be empty?

I will never forget the moment my labor began, the moment that marked that step in my journey into motherhood. I can remember everything about it so clearly. My mom, fiancé, and I woke up early Friday morning to make our way to Western Missouri Medical Center. I stood in front of the mirror looking at my belly knowing it would be my last time standing in that bathroom with my baby inside of me still. It was a bittersweet moment that I cherished as long as I possibly could. I was set to be induced that morning and very excited, yet a little bit nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I’d been waiting a very long 37 weeks to finally meet this precious human that had been growing inside me. I had ideas of what he might look like, and what the experience might be like, however nothing could have prepared me for what was in store over the next few days.