Category: The Birth of Emory
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NowBlowPoMe: The Mental Aftermath Hurt Far Worse.
You should read this in order. Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7 Enough people have written me email or have left comments about my birth story to warrant some clarification. For starters, I want everyone to know that when I think about my experience giving…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 7)
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 It was 2:30 AM and I was exhausted. My body shook uncontrollably. My mother had warned me about it earlier. I was ready for it to happen, but I wasn’t ready for it to happen before I gave birth. No matter…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 6)
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5 “You’re about 2 and a half centimeters dilated.” She told me. I thought I heard her incorrectly. “What?” I asked. TobyJoe walked over to me. He looked concerned. “You’re 2 and half centimeters.” She repeated. I started to cry. “But..” My voice trailed…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 5)
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 Tuesday, August 7th was one of the longest days of my life. I was given the epidural at around 11 AM. Prior to that, I was allowed one last shower. I remember thinking, “This is the last shower I’m going to take while pregnant.” It’s…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 4)
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 We woke up the next morning early. If you’d call it waking up at all. Our sleep was interrupted dozens of times but I hadn’t really slept in weeks. If it wasn’t the heartburn, it was the pain on the upper right side of my abdomen. If…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 3)
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 My mother stood to get a closer look at the monitor. She, too, noticed I was having a contraction, a really long contraction. We both wondered silently if it was a normal response to Cervidil. Time passed. My eyes began to water. I wasn’t crying from the pain necessarily,…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 2)
(Read Chapter 1 here.) The room we were given had a most spectacular view. Unfortunately, I would spend most of my time there paralyzed from the waist down and therefore bedridden. But my mother and TobyJoe were able to look out over the East River. We had a view of the 59th Street Bridge, Roosevelt…
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NowBlowPoMe: The Birth of Emory. (Chapter 1)
Emory was born at 4:05 AM on August 8, 2007. It was a Wednesday. He entered this world at the very same moment Brooklyn was being hit by a tornado and a storm was flooding the subway. I could see the lightning from my hospital bed. We could hear the thunder overtop the sounds of…
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