July 27, 2026

I don’t know if I would say that I experienced Birth Trauma in any of my deliveries. The end of all 3 were fast and furious and I felt out of control. I advocated for myself throughout all 3 labours, and especially during Archer’s.

A lot of the stories I’ve read this week are of emergent deliveries, unexpected complications, unexpected NICU stays, or births that end in loss.

Archer’s delivery doesn’t really fit into any of these categories. We knew from halfway through my pregnancy that Archer would go to the NICU shortly after delivery. We met with one of the amazing neonatologists and got a tour of the NICU about 6 weeks before he arrived where we (who are we kidding – I asked all my questions). And got the best case scenario that I might get 5-10min of skin-to-skin if Archer was doing well before he needed to go to the NICU for life-saving medication.

So when delivery day arrived – we felt we were as prepared as we could be. I had our Doula and Logan for support, and we had a plan for Logan to go to the NICU with Archer and for our Doula to stay with me until I could go up.

I advocated fiercely for movement over monitoring. For the interruptions of the many teams that were coming to introduce themselves to stop. And to let my body do what I know it knows how to do. I wound up with the “do not enter without talking to Nurse” note on my door.

I continued to advocate for movement and negotiated for time off the monitors because of where Archer was sitting – the monitors weren’t picking up his HR unless the nurse was standing with me pushing it into my belly. At the end of one of these negotiations, the OB (I had graduated from the resident to the OB for these conversations at this point) told me that we could do 20-30 minutes off the monitors, and 10 minutes on, but that while I was off they couldn’t see what Archer’s HR was doing, I was more than fine with this because he had not shown any signs of distress during labour – and she’d be back in a couple hours.

Before she had made it 5 steps out of the room I told everyone that they should get her back because he was coming. 15-20min later Archer was in my arms. And I got just shy of 10 minutes with him skin-to-skin. They took him after about 5min to put the monitors on him and then brought him back to me for a few more minutes.

Archer was born just before 4pm and I think I was in the NICU around 6 and got to hold him again after his echo around 7.

My birth story with my NICU baby wasn’t a whole lot different than my other deliveries – apart from the extra anxiety around how he would do on the outside. I feel incredibly grateful that we knew what to expect and could feel a little more prepared in a situation where you only know so much, and so much more is unpredictable.

I read a post this week during Birth Trauma Awareness Week, that NICU Trauma is Birth Trauma because it’s still in the perinatal period. But for me they are different. The big difference between Archer’s delivery and Rylie’s was that my movement was more restricted because of the extra monitoring for a known heart defect. So I don’t know if I agree with that piece.

But I did want to share Archer’s Birth Story – because maybe someone needs to see what I didn’t when I was pregnant – that a high-risk delivery isn’t always traumatic, that there are full-term NICU babies, and that if you know before delivery that baby will need the NICU – to ask for what you need to prepare for that. Maybe I’ll share my list of questions in a different post…