Just had a near miss with wife having newborn, now I have a healthy 2nd boy

benjmck2

New member
Dads, and in this case future dads, trust your gut.

So my wife and I have been expecting our second for 36 weeks and along the way his measurements started getting "ahead" in size, most clearly by 32 weeks, creating concern of gestational diabetes (for the docs). For me however it always felt like a he'll be early situation.

Anyway at her 36 week ultrasound my wife expressed concern that the night before our new one had a few hours that he didn't move much compared to how he had been moving around. The doc seemed mildly concerned and said something along the lines of sometimes they'll have a lazy hour, but more than that just come to L&D for monitoring. Wife and I aren't well off, so we're hesitant to take on more costs unnecessarily, but we still added it to the thoughts and concerns of pregnancy that we didn't have with number 1.

Well yesterday she had a fair period of time that she was experiencing at most 2 movements an hour without direct stimulation on her belly, when she told me she said 7hrs (5pm-ish). I initially said do what you think is right, but within 30 minutes I was telling her call my parents to watch number 1 and go on in, not worth regretting not going, and regretting going was a lesser regret.

So, she got to the hospital slightly ahead of me (working 30 minutes farther ahead) so when I walked in they were escorting her to L&D. They put her on a fetal heart monitor for 2 hours and while his pulse seemed strong except for maybe one short burst when it appeared to drop to 110 for less than 30 seconds. They followed that up with an ultrasound in which he didn't really move for 20 minutes (30=indication to immediately C-section) and he wasn't practice breathing which wife and I had witnessed him doing every weekly ultrasound since 29 weeks and I could actually feel him doing 2 days previous if I touched her belly.

The opinion of the docs was "He meets all the criteria to be ok, and at 36 weeks he's considered premature, but something does feel outside of the norm for this baby so we should make a mutual decision on how to proceed." After a short discussion and a few more gut feelings being expressed, the OB led us to the decision I didn't want to be the one to make the final call on and said, "I think we should have a baby tonight."

We proceeded to have a C-section and on exit, it was discovered that not only did our new one have the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice, but the umbilical cord also had a true knot in it that had almost tightened down. If we would have waited, we could have had a stillborn.

Tl;dr: If I, my wife, or her doc hadn't trusted our gut, I may not have a second son.
 
@benjmck2 We've heard of "dad reflexes"... this is dad preflexes. Powerful story of being your own advocate, SO happy to hear how this story turns out. Congrats mom, dad and older sib on #2!
 
@benjmck2 This sounds pretty familiar. We were nearly at 41 weeks and in early labor, 7 weeks ago. Contractions were 3 to 5 minutes apart for a few hours, and were ramping up, but she was insisting based on experience with #1 that they weren't strong enough yet. I insisted that we go in just to get checked out.

Fast forward several hours after we finally get a triage room, and they're having trouble getting a steady fetal heart rate. After a while, it becomes a bit more clear that it's not just the monitor slipping around or the baby moving, it was dips in the heart rate.

So, we move to a delivery room and start induction to move things along, which only makes the dips worse, sometimes below my wife's heart rate. And so, emergency C section revealed the cord around her neck with a true knot tied in it. If I hadn't insisted we go get checked out, we might have lost her.
 
@gna530 Yeah, those gut instincts are important. I'm happy for you, your wife, and your new daughter that you trusted yours and your baby is with you.
 
@haniball Pre-visit: reduction in movement for several hours both intensity and frequency and a friend that had lost before who had offered us the advice to not brush those off

During visit: brief reduction of pulse rate from the normal 130-160 down to 110 not caused by a contraction for my wife also lack of visible practice breathing on ultrasound.

Unmentioned vague contributor: Dog started acting differently towards wife, usually she keeps her distance but she was super velcro and whimpered once or twice which she hasn't done period since being a puppy.
 
@benjmck2 I'm so glad I read that your baby boy made it here. I lost my son at 36 weeks with very similar scenario with what they found with your boy. Think about it quite a bit with what I could have done differently.
 
@recovering I'm very sorry for your loss.

As much as I'd like to think it was mine or my wife's intuition that guided our decision, it could just as easily have been something out of our control that the boy himself did that allowed our decision to be made. Even now I'm sitting here in fear of SIDS being a gut punch of more ferocity as I've had friends I've seen that happen to.
 
@benjmck2 Congrats on #2!

Our second son had the cord wrapped around 3 times as well as a true knot. Thankfully it was something we found out when he was born, but it was quite shocking to hear the doc count that out as he arrived.
 
@benjmck2 This story brought goosebumps to my arms and a small tear to my eyes. I'm genuinely so relieved for you. My little girl had the umbilical cord around her neck which was absolutely terrifying, but we didn't know it until they pulled her out on the final stretch. I was just extremely grateful she was ok and it wasn't any worse. Congratulations to you all on your new addition.
 
@benjmck2 Way to go dad! As parents you just know at times when something is wrong. Way to go with your gut! Glad your baby is going to be okay and the other baby as well.
 
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