Symone's Birth Story

(cozy nest doula owner)

Pre warning ⚠️ Too much information: puking, very descriptive

At the time I was going by Qianna Brown

I didn’t think I would become pregnant at 19 years old.

Two missed periods, no symptoms, and going to planned parenthood where my daughter made herself known.

After getting it confirmed that I was two months pregnant without knowing it the symptoms came heavy. The morning sickness hit me that same day, the breast soreness came the next day. And keep in mind I had no health insurance. I moved to Buffalo with my fiancé (24 white male) at the age of 18 and I had insurance from Connecticut which was void here. But I got it all sorted out.

Along with the two-month wait notice she decided to wait until she was exactly 41 weeks to come into the world 🌎 😆

But to the story, we all were waiting for

On March 3, at 3:30 pm I went to Sister Charity Hospital to be induced because my blood pressure was high. Mind you before I got there I started feeling pain in my lower back. When I get there we go through all the motions. Signing consent forms, asking who is my support system and if I had an extra person(a doula). I didn’t realize at the time what a doula was, I was more street-smart than book-smart so I didn’t know what some things were. Ironically it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was twelve. So my answer was…you guessed it. It was no.

My fiancé was there with me every single step of the way. With every ridiculous question, I asked about the ingredients in the medications they were giving me. This was my first kid not to mention something severe ever happening to my body(I’ve never had surgery or anything like that). But I’m better about it now lol. When the doctors finally had me all set up with the IV and the Pitocin rolling. I was all set feeling great, my contractions “didn't” hurt yet. As walking, laughing, and even making TikTok videos.

Until then night came, I was lying in my bed feeling like I’d been run over by a truck a bunch of times over and over again, the opposite of what I started with. The contractions were stronger and more frequent and I felt like I couldn’t get a breath in at all. I was screaming and gripping the handle of the bed. Two nurses came into the room and they were the sweetest things I could have asked for. The doctors were asking me to keep it down because other moms were having babies but my nurses told me that every single mother in there was screaming as well to get the pain out any way I needed to. At some point it became too much for me, was I screaming at them to give me the epidural.

But boy was I sad that I caved and asked for the medication. The anesthesiologist’s team came in after I was prepared and ready, I laid my head down on one of my nurses’ chest crying. She asked why I was crying and I told her it was because I didn’t want it, I wanted natural. What I didn’t know was that any way you have a baby is natural.

After getting the epidural I was finally able to get some rest, not sleep because it didn’t work on my right hip so I felt every contraction in that one spot. It wasn’t as painful as having them everywhere. Doctors came in to check me with students when I was asked if I wanted them to check me.

At 6 am I felt a pop and I forgot that I had the epidural in trying to sit up from being startled. I woke my fiancé up and he called his mother who was on her way already but he wanted to keep her updated. When she gets there a different nurse comes in and tells me it’s time to do practice pushes. When we started they told me my breathing was amazing(thanks to birthing blogs) and my bearing down my good as well.

After I few of the practice pushes I started to feel sick to my stomach. The doctors told me it was normal because it was the way my baby was resting on my stomach, so it was causing me to be nauseous. The nurse told me to hold it in. She said I couldn’t be sick because I would have the baby out before the doctors came in.

I tried too hard but there was no stopping the body’s natural reflex. So getting sick is just what I did, causing my baby to fly out of my body right before the doctor came into the room saying “Oh looks like we have a baby”.

After that was said all the voices stopped, and no one took a breath. (what I didn’t know was her umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around her neck multiple times. So tight they didn’t let my fiancé cut it.)

She was alert, and not making one sound. At that moment everyone drew a breath in relief. A couple of hours after I got into my recovery room, I started seeing spots in my vision, and the base of my skull was in so much pain that I couldn’t close my eyes to get any relief. I spoke to the doctor but they didn’t listen to me. My fiancé pressed the hospital button to call my nurse and he told her to listen to me. When I explained to her what I was feeling, she called the doctor immediately so they could check me and make sure everything was fine. It wasn’t I was on the verge of having a stroke from my blood pressure skyrocketing, and she was pretty upset that the doctor didn’t listen to me when I first explained it to them. Thank god we caught it early as well.

But everyone’s story is different. So don’t take my story and get scared by it.