Darius Alexander

by Paula Jackson

I was expecting my second child on March 3, 2003. I had a very clam and wonderful pregnancy.

I was much bigger than I was in my first pregnancy and was ready to have my daughter, Syan Abigail, arrive. Though everything was peaceful and fairly picture perfect hindsight allows me to say that we would encounter two large surprises. The first surprise was that two weeks before my due date we found out that my husband was going to have to leave for a month on a business trip. He would leave on, yes you guessed it March 3. I REALLY did not want to have this baby without him there, so one week before I was due I tried all kinds of natural induction. I tried nipple stimulation, goldenroot tincture, walking. I even involved my husband, having him perform his husbandry duties J. I could not try the blue or black Cohosh because my mother had a sever reaction to the black Cohosh, she was using it to help with her hot flashes, and I did not want to risk a reaction. Nothing was working!!! I started to become very nervous that my husband was not going to be here for the birth, and my husband was even worse. He finally called me from work on the Thursday before my due date and asked (or rather ordered) me to call my doctor to see if he would induce me. So I called and ended up with an appointment at the hospital the next morning at 6am.

I did not want to be artificially induced especially since there was no medical reason but I did not want to go threw this birth without my husband there either, so to the hospital I went. I had heard horror stories about the petocin and was very nervous. I was already nervous about an normal labor since my first was 36 hours of irregular and off the chart contractions now I wondered how bad it would be to add petocin into the mix. Once I was at the hospital I found out that my doctor was going to break my water first to try and start labor and if that did not “do the trick” then he would use the poticin. Well my little angel decided to move her head out of my pelvis (where it had been resting for the last two months) so he could not break my water. I was sent to walk in order to see if I could get her head back in my pelvis. So after a couple of hours my doctor came to check and guess what, my baby was just not cooperating. She was apparently quite comfortable where she was and had no inclination to move. So onto plan two and the potocin was plugged in at 11am. After six hours of a petocin drip nothing happened. I was extremely frustrated, I had spent a day “tied” to a hospital bed away from my first daughter and it still looked like I would not have this baby with my husband there. I expected the doctor to come and send me home still pregnant, after all it had been almost seven hours and NOTHING was happening. Finally right at 6pm I felt a contraction and by the end of the hour they were coming strong and regular. I was practically jumping up and down in my excitement between the contractions. This was wonderful and not as painful as my first labor. Hold that thought, shortly after 7pm I said forget this, give me an epi NOW. I received and epi about 7:45 and felt much better and my husband would be the first to say that my “attitude” was greatly improved.

I had asked my husband to call my mom once I got the epi and the whole crew arrived at the hospital shortly after 8. My mom, sister and brother-in-law were joining my husband at this “event”. My dad stayed home with my sleeping daughter. Just as the initial dose of the epi was wearing off and I began to ask to have my pain meds increased (about 8:30) I was surprised to find out that it was time to call the doctor and get prepared to push. Surprise that was fast. I pushed three times and at 9:05 pm on Feb. 28, 2003 out came my beautiful baby girl, no wait, big SURPRISE it’s a BOY. My little Syan that I had been dreaming of for the last nine months was a boy. All I can remember at that moment was seeing the doctor lift his body up onto my stomach and seeing that he was a boy and at the same time hearing my sister say what!!! It’s a boy? . On the video all you hear was Mike my brother in law saying “see I told you so but no one ever listens to me”. I know that every time there is an “argument “ with him in the future I will hear and Darius was a girl, right (he had been saying that Darius was a boy the entire pregnancy, even after the sono. read that the baby was a girl).

Well we finally named him Darius Alexander. Garrin and I had already picked out the name Darius in the unlikely event that we ever had a boy. Garrin always felt that he would have nothing but girls and the sono agreed with him so we never thought we would use the name, certainly not this time anyway. Around two weeks I realized that I hated the middle name Alexander so I filed a amendment and changed it to Gabriel. Now six weeks later, just like with our first child, we could not imagine our lives without our precious son. Also like with our daughter we do not remember how our lives were before he arrived. Tivika, my daughter, could not be anymore in love with her little brother and neither could we.