People meet us and look at my son and say, “well he looks fine.” Yes, he does, now.
My son was born on April 22nd 2013 in a military hospital in Texas. I had a birth plan and had requested a water birth, since they advertised a water birthing center. They told me it had never been used and none of the nurses were trained for it. I asked for delayed cord clamping and was denied. They asked 10 times if I was SURE I didn’t want him circumcised. I denied any and all vaccinations and eye goop in my birth plan. We were not allowed to film the birth “for the hospitals protection”.
At 10:58pm I finally got to meet my perfect little boy.
He was so strong! When they turned him to his belly to check his spine, he lifted himself up in a full push up and outstretched his arm and reached for me. They tell you that babies cannot see very far when they are born….but that is because they blind them with eye goop. He received NO eye goop. Turns out, that is the only thing they honored on my birth plan.
We walked to our recovery room down the hall. I held him for hours. Just staring at his perfection. We were exhausted. It had been a long night for both of us. We both fall asleep while I am breastfeeding him. A nurse comes in. I’m groggy and half asleep. She takes him from me and removes him from my breast. She placed him in the plastic bedside crib and fiddles with him. I can hear him fussing. I fell back asleep. A few hours later I awake to my perfect little boy, that hasn’t cried once, screaming.
I grab him, comfort him and feed him. He calms and falls back asleep. It kept me up. It’s been almost 24 hours now and he hadn’t done that before. Not one cry…to SCREAMING.
Something was wrong. It’s now the middle of the night, day 2. We get to go home tomorrow…..or so I thought.
My baby can’t breathe!! His breaths are shallow and labored. His lips are turning blue. He is burning up. They rush him to the NICU. He has a systemic infection, encephalitis and gasping syndrome.
That nurse, the one that removed my child from my breast in the middle of the night, she gave him the Hep B vaccine, and the Vit K shot, that I said NO to and now my baby is dying.
He spent the next 72 hours in NICU on IV antibiotics and oxygen. They refused to allow me to breastfeed my baby for 3 days. One evening, while visiting him in NICU, the baby next to him lost the same battle. That could have been my baby that died.
This is why I fight this fight. No mother should have to fight so hard to say NO! No mother should have to go through any of this. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would have given birth at home.
