This is Angel Taylor, a 33-year-old mother of three from Bremerton, Washington. She recently gave birth to her son, Sullivan, after four days of labor and an emergency C-section.
Taylor said: “I had a lot of difficulties during my pregnancy, including gestational diabetes and hypertension, so the risk was really high from the beginning. In overall, it was a pretty challenging pregnancy.”
During her 37-week checkup, Taylor received some unexpected news — her blood pressure was high and she would need to be induced a week early.
Taylor added: “I wasn’t ready at all; we hadn’t even put the car seat in or finished packing … so I was panicked.”
When Taylor arrived at the hospital to be induce, her blood pressure happily decreased. There, Pitocin, a synthetic hormone used to trigger or intensify contractions to induce labor, was administered to her in small, spaced-out dosages.
“We were able to wait it out and try to have a natural birth, but we wanted to be slow because a more aggressive induction could’ve stressed the baby out or caused a uterine rupture, because I had gotten a C-section before,” Taylor said.
Taylor wasn’t dilated, so doctors used a Foley catheter balloon to help her cervix open up. Even after Taylor’s water had burst when she arrived at the hospital after four days, she was only 4 centimeters dilated, and baby Sullivan was still not descending.
“At that point, we knew a natural birth wasn’t going to happen and we were worried something was wrong,” Taylor said. So she was scheduled for an emergency C-section.
The moment Sullivan was born was captured by Taylor’s photographer, and despite the grueling and painful labor, he appeared to be the most relaxed baby ever.
It wasn’t easy getting Sullivan out, but once doctors did, he threw his hands up triumphantly and gave a big smile as if to celebrate his own birth. In the perfectly timed photo, he looks like the chillest baby in the world.
“It’s funny because he was really big on stretching when he was in my belly and during labor we kept telling him, ‘hey, there’s a lot more room out here to stretch if you want to come out,’ and when he came out he realized that too,” Taylor said.
Because Sullivan was born prematurely and with a knot in his umbilical cord, Taylor and her husband were originally concerned about his health. However, Sullivan was born in perfect health. “He was totally fine and screaming his head off — it was a big relief,” Taylor said.
Taylor claimed that Sullivan has been doing well despite initially having some feeding issues. Taylor and Sullivan were able to return home and be with the rest of the family after a few days in the hospital.
“Since bringing him home, he’s just been so sweet and hardly cries at all … and he just snuggles with us all the time,” Taylor said. So baby Sullivan is definitely keeping up his chill post-birth demeanor. “The kids just love him so much; he’s definitely fitting right in with family,” she said.
