My Journey Through Pregnancy as an Adult with Anaphylactic Food Allergies

This blog post is my personal experience to the best of my recollection and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Please remember that everyone’s medical situations are unique to themselves, and always consult with your doctor before making any decisions about your pregnancy or your health.

“Well Intentioned” - My Birth Story

I had visions of a natural, unmedicated birth. I planned for a 4-hour labour.

I can’t even write that without laughing now! HA!

I may have been naive, or was I just excitedly optimistic? I studied birthing by taking hypnobirthing classes online, nearly every prenatal class offered by my doulas, and the hospital prenatal classes. I studied countless videos of mothers birthing their children into the world, without flinching. On my laptop, a Word document remained open for months that simply read “WOMEN HAVE ENDURED THE PAIN OF CHILDBIRTH FOR AS LONG AS HUMANS HAVE EXISTED” in huge font. I wrote this mantra for myself and read it daily. I had no fear regarding the pain of childbirth. Pain is something I proved to myself I could endure when I underwent a fully reconstructive rhinoplasty without any painkillers or anti-inflammatories in 2020. I can process pain. However, my “red balloon” as they call it in hypnobirthing, was my fear of drugs. I have had a challenging road in regards to medications and my food allergies. It is very commonly ignored that drugs can contain food ingredients like lactose, stearates, soy, and other additives derived from things that I am allergic to. When I broach these topics with medical professionals I am usually dismissed and have to press further and advocate to be heard. I am also allergic to certain drugs, and have had adverse reactions to others. When it comes to my body and medications, the relationship is a total mess. So right from day one, Brandon and I decided we were most comfortable with natural childbirth, but that we would do so with a doula and in a hospital which made us feel most secure.

As is common with my allergies, I had to plan ten steps ahead. I knew that even if I avoided drugs during labour, I could potentially become infected and require antibiotics which would be another drug to navigate with the compounding pharmacist.

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Working backwards from that, I felt I had to reduce the possibility of episiotomy, and minimize instances of cervical exams. The hospital we delivered at has very low rates of episiotomy and c-sections. In our hospital prenatal class the instructor advised us to not jump into an epidural unless we really felt we needed one, as one medical intervention usually snowballs into another. For example, if you have an epidural you cannot push in the squat position, which may mean pushing less effectively, which may result in receiving pitocin (synthetic oxytocin), which may lead to an episiotomy, etc. This is just an example that was given, but it aligned perfectly with my feelings about natural childbirth and avoidance of medications. I was all hyped up to feel the pain, and with the plan I had laid out I felt no fear or nerves about giving birth.

Two and a half weeks before baby’s official due date, I went into labour. It started with a few contractions an hour apart, which I largely ignored as I had Braxton Hicks contractions starting at 5 months in. But as the contractions became more regular Brandon began tracking them on an app and we called our doulas to tell them the good news. Brandon set up the washroom so that I could practice hypnobirthing until we were ready to go to the hospital. He covered the floor in towels, ran a bath, brought in blankets, set up the sound machine and my birthing playlist, rolled the yoga ball over. We enjoyed some very peaceful time in that setup together, getting ready for our baby. Everything was going smoothly and I was able to breathe through the pain of contractions using the hypnobirthing techniques, the bath, and my yoga ball.

How Brandon found me when he came home after getting my call that I had gone into labour. We remained very peaceful and calm.

Enjoying our hypnobirthing setup at home at the start of labour

At 7 minutes apart, in the wee hours of the morning, we headed to the hospital. By the time we arrived my contractions had gone up to 3 minutes apart, but while we waited in the waiting room they dissipated to 30 minutes apart. After a cervical exam and assessment we were told to come back when the contractions were only 4 minutes apart. We were confused. Was I really in labour? Why were the contractions so wonky?

Bouncing around on my yoga ball and wearing two masks on our first trip to the hospital

Back in the comfort of my bed I couldn’t get any sleep as the contractions carried on, but seemed to have deepend and lengthened with each spike. A while later we were back at 3 minutes apart, now feeling the need to rush to the hospital so that baby wouldn’t arrive in the car. In the meantime, our doula and all 3 of the backup doulas were reporting the stomach flu, something that has never happened in the history of their business. I chose not to take it as an omen about the birth. We would have to accept virtual doula assistance, and my mom happily subbed in.

Again, we were at the hospital and my contractions slowed down. Because they were so far apart, they left me in the waiting room for an extended period of time, bouncing on my yoga ball. The triage nurses insisted I was not in labour, and I could tell something was unusual. Eventually they brought me into triage where Brandon, my mom, and I were squished into a small room. My contractions were coming at different intervals and the nurses again insisted I was not in labour because I was only a few centimeters dilated. They performed another cervical exam, hooked me up to a monitor, started the penicillin IV (I held my breath as I always do when faced with new medications, but thankfully had no adverse reaction), and let me wait for 7 hours. I was so perplexed about what was happening, and felt determined not to give birth in the crowded triage room. I wanted the beautiful new birthing suite I was promised, with the bathtub and the lounge chair and all the wide open space.

A male OB entered at some point and advised me to have an epidural because I would not be able to endure the pain. I refused - and who was this guy? I had never interacted with him before. I inquired about laughing gas, the pain management option I had been recommended during my consult call, and was told that it was not available due to Covid. He did another cervical exam, declared I was not dilated enough, and left. Tension was building. We had the lights off, Brandon and my mom were massaging my legs and back, and my dad was shuttling heating pads and other supplies to and from the parking lot.

7 hours after we entered the triage room, my contractions felt like they were coming in two’s, and were concentrated around my tailbone. My pain vocalizations increased which caught the attention of the triage nurses who finally agreed to transfer me to a birthing suite. I have never felt such relief in my life.

Brandon providing emotional support while my contractions began coupling in the triage room

As soon as I got into the birthing suite, the nurse ran me a hot bath, hooked me up to the minitor, and called in the OB to assess. We were all so impressed by the attentiveness of our nurse, who was stationed in our room only so she could provide one-on-one care. Respecting that I did not want an epidural, the OB (a different one, now a woman) decided she should break my waters to get the process moving. I will not go into any detail about this process because no one needs to know me that intimately.

It was determined that our baby was posterior, or “sunny side up”, meaning that his head was down but his face was facing up, rather than facing my spine as it should have been. The feeling of double contractions was in fact true - it’s called “coupling” and is the process of the body trying to rotate the baby over so that he could proceed down the birth canal. 95% of babies turn over, but my little guy would not rotate. Because baby’s spine was resting on my spine, the pain was excruciating. My contractions had been going up and down because he was attempting to descend, was not able to go any further (due to facing the wrong way), and then stopping. This is why I was dilating so slowly too.

So for the next 30-something hours I hypnobirthed my way through coupling contractions with a posterior baby, my doula’s voice soothing all of us over speakerphone. I focussed on the things I could control as I breathed deeply outwards with each surge. The nurse helped me bathe every few hours. I was wearing adult diapers as my waters were broken. I bounced on my yoga ball and leaned on the bed as the nurse applied counterpressure to my tailbone with each round of contractions. More cervical exams were conducted.

I was still holding on to the hope that my baby’s birth would be unmedicated, until the OB visit around 40 something hours. There was meconium in my waters and baby was not descending. The OB felt it was safrest for me to have pitocin, which is synthetic oxytocin. Then they would attempt to manually rotate the baby so I could push him out. If that didn’t work then it would be an emergency c-section. The anesthetist came back in for a consult about my allergies and we discussed what would happen if I went into anaphylaxis from the epidural or the pitocin. It was a dark thought but nonetheless, I preferred to know what the process would be if that situation did arise.

He left and gave me some time to think it over, with the caveat that if I was going to get the epidural now, I had to make my decision within the hour because he was going to be unavailable during scheduled c-sections.

The OB did another cervical exam which revealed I was only 3 cm dilated. I felt completely shattered. I felt like I was suffering beyond what I could have prepared for. She advised I take the epidural now and just let my body relax a little as I had been through a lot, especially not having slept in over 2 days. If it came down to an emergency c-section, I was going to get one anyways so it was better to do it of my own will.

We consulted with my doula who reminded me that there is no shame in getting an epidural, and in this case she called it a “sympathetic epidural” because I had given natural birth my best shot but I was ultimately suffering needlessly.

When the anesthetist came back to administer the drug, I used the hypnobirthing techniques to get myself through the anxiety. I could feel the glorious numbing effect washing over my lower back and legs, and the coupling contractions were suddenly manageable. I felt disappointed that I wasn’t going to birth my baby in a squatting position but as I would soon learn, the epidural was an absolute necessity.

The nurse waited patiently while I tried to use my breast pump to cause a spike of oxytocin before adding pitocin to my IV. It did not work. Brandon and my mom tried to find ingredients for Pitocin online as the vial was not labelled. They were unsuccessful. Prior to labour day, Brandon and I had agreed that if it came down to any medical interventions being required, I would do what was in the baby’s best interest. This was difficult but it was what I had decided and I came to terms with it well before baby’s arrival. The OB conducted another cervical exam (at this point I had lost count of how many I’d had). Then we gave the nurse the go-ahead to add the Pitocin and again waited to see what would happen. Thankfully, no adverse reaction. Then it was time to manually rotate the baby. The first OB was not successful, so she called in another who was able to grab baby’s ear and flip him over so I could start pushing. Let me tell you - one simply cannot endure this technique without some level of pain medication. Thank god I had an epidural.

Resting in the labour room after getting the epidural

Suddenly I was in active labour and pushing baby out. In my memory this lasted all of 20 minutes and my birth playlist was still streaming from our little wireless speaker, but as Brandon informed me afterwards it was 2 hours of pushing and the room was silent except for our voices.

Finally I heard our baby boy crying. I started crying immediately, completely overwhelmed with emotion. They had to suck meconium out of his little body before placing him on my chest. I abandoned my desire to have him do the breast crawl on his own - this guy had worked so incredibly hard and I didn’t need to make him work to get his first sips of colostrum. He latched immediately and I clung tightly to him.

After asking to see my placenta (so gross but so cool to see) and getting quite a few perineal stitches, we were off to the recovery room to settle in with our new little baby boy. After 53 hours of labour he was finally in our arms.

I noticed that on the door to our room, there was a note listing out all of my allergies. While we were in the birthing suite, the nurses made special mention of my allergies to each other with every shift change and to every OB who entered the room. The staff was so caring and made me feel like I was in very capable hands the whole way through.

Feeling ravenous, as I was not allowed to eat solid food during labour, I asked Brandon to pull out one of my allergy-safe frozen meals for me. By this point it had been in the fridge for 3 days and tasted somewhat expired, but I ate it down anyways. Next to me, my little baby wrapped in a swaddle with just his face peeking out. I thought to myself - we did it!!!

While this birth experience was complicated I did not feel it traumatic. I had to work through the stress of it but ultimately I felt empowered by it. I had put in the time and work to research all of my options ahead of the birth. I had undergone a serious amount of pain and didn’t lose my shit. I had conquered one of my greatest allergy anxieties. My body had produced another human. In contrast to the unmedicated birth I had imagined, I had ALL the drugs, including 5 or 6 rounds of penicillin as it was administered every 4 hours.

After two nights in the hospital we were released back into the world. I lost my shoes during the room change, couldn’t bend my hand enough to put on a bra, had sent my winter coat home with my mom, hadn’t showered in days. I left the hospital wearing a nightgown, no bra, a pair of disposable hotel slippers, and my hair looking like a scarecrow. As I waddled out the front doors and into the snow, all I could think about was getting home.

Adding Insult to Injury

We finally arrived home from the hospital on the Friday night, not having slept since Sunday night. Mommy and Daddy were exhausted and ready to let my mother in-law cuddle the baby for a while so we could pass out on the nearest flat surface. My parents had come in earlier in the week to clean our condo so that it would be fresh and ready for our arrival home. We felt very well supported by our families and were excited at the prospect of sleep.

No more than a couple hours after arriving home we noticed a smattering of red liquid in baby’s diaper that looked like blood. I quickly called the hospital and followed their instructions to head to emergency at Sick Kids hospital. Sick Kids hospital is very close to my heart as they are doing groundbreaking research into food allergies. You can donate to that program here.

The emergency room doctor, after complimenting our lovely new boy, told us we needed to get him to pee so that it could be analyzed for blood. I was against the idea of a catheter being inserted into his new and delicate body, so we opted for a pee bag instead. All I had to do was feed him. I got ready to nurse him and no milk would come out. I stood there desperately trying to hand-express but not a single drop of mother’s milk was produced. The doctor offered infant formula, a simple solution.

However they only had dairy based formulas, and I felt I would surely react to that if baby drank dairy and then later latched to my chapped and raw breasts to feed. We explained this to the doctor who said she agreed, but had never before considered it. I ventured off to find an allergen-free formula, which would surely be available at a hospital with such a robust allergy research program!

The Specialty Food Shop stocked allergy free formula but was closed (dang!) so I went to the pharmacy where I was told that allergy free formula was only available by prescription and had to be ordered in. I was in disbelief. How could they not keep a few canisters of this shelf-stable product available in a kids hospital where kids with allergies pass through daily? My last resort was to call my mother in-law who was still at our condo, to come over with the backup canister of Neocate formula we had at home for emergencies. She rushed over immediately.

By this point I was covered in sweat, my adult diaper was saturated through with blood as I was running around the hospital, and I was so exhausted I could barely stand up straight. I was wearing my pyjama shirt from earlier (we left in a rush) with no bra underneath, over top of baggy track pants. My hair was a disaster. But I was focused on the singular task of acquiring safe formula for my son and I. Finally I got back to the hospital room with formula in hand, only to find out that they don’t have supplies to mix formula as the dairy based one is pre-mixed. So off I ran again to fetch a cup of boiling water and a bottle of water from Starbucks. I mixed the formula, my son drank it, and he promptly decided to wait 3 hours to pee. During that time my mom came by to drop off dinner since I was starving and couldn’t eat anything in the food court. When he eventually peed, I almost cried with relief. The doctor sent it off for analysis right away and we were cleared to go home. He hadn’t peed blood - he had peed crystals. Brandon, baby, and I got a lot closer that night. The night my amazingly dramatic child peed crystals. The night mommy ran around the hospital with no bra on, searching for formula. Once again we found ourselves to be the walking wounded as we left the hospital, both of us limping but with the purest smiles on our faces as our baby boy was cleared to go home. Parenthood is a ride.

After 53 hours, baby had arrived! I was completely fried.

Postpartum Depression

It was as I stood in my living room one week after delivery, clutching my baby, both of us naked except for our wet diapers, soaking his hair with hot tears as we listened to his birth playlist, that I realized I was experiencing postpartum depression. What had triggered this episode? The balloons we brought home the day before I went into labor were nearly completely deflated. This meant pregnancy, our beautiful little mommy-and-baby cocoon, was over.

The idea of PPD had always scared me because I didn’t understand what it was or what the implications would be. I thought PPD meant that you didn’t want your baby; but that’s not at all what I felt. Rather, I felt that I was a terrible mom, that someone else would be a better mom, and that my baby boy probably didn’t like me. I was paranoid that if I even so much as uttered the words ‘postpartum depression’, my baby would be taken away from me and I’d be checked into the hospital. I thought everyone was judging my every move. In reality, I was just severely exhausted, in constant pain, and trying to do the best I could while my hormones got the better of me. I had to process the ordeal that was his birth. I had to accept that I was going to be dependent on others until I healed enough to take care of the two of us. I had to accept that I wasn’t perfect at the breastfeeding thing straight out of the gate; an unreasonably high standard I had set for myself.

Five weeks into motherhood I revealed these feelings to my mom and husband, independently of each other. They both knew and had been worried for me. They were glad I finally fessed up to my real emotions, and assured me that I was not a terrible mother, but a great one. As soon as I came clean, I felt so much better. And over the following week, as my hormones continued to normalize and my body made significant advancements in healing, these dark feelings felt like a distant memory.

Swift, 180 Degree Change

I snipped the medical bracelet off baby’s foot and placed it in a plastic ziploc bag, then tucked it into his baby memory box. Meconium was plastered all over it from the hurried, half-asleep diaper change conducted before leaving the hospital. Somehow I cannot bring myself to remove the fecal matter from the tag because that would require some level of letting go of the birth experience, emotionally, and I am not ready yet. Although it was one of the hardest experiences of my life, I cling to it with fond memories and refuse to let it go. A decade from now I might open up that little plastic bag full of dried fecal matter, releasing the next pandemic into the air, and it will all be chalked up to my emotional fragility. I am sorry.

But this is how I am now. The day we brought Baby Rapini home from the hospital we had settled in for mere hours before we were back in the car taking him to the emergency room at Sick Kids. We sat there (or rather, I stood because I was so swollen) preparing formula using hot water from Starbucks, then spent hours begging him to pee into a medical bag. When he finally did, I took a picture of the pee and dispatched it to both my and my husband’s families.

A couple weeks later, I bought a snot sucker online and desperately sucked at it to clear baby’s nose. He was so clogged up that he couldn’t feed and was having trouble breathing properly. When the snot eventually came loose, I was so happy I could have cried.

10 months ago I could not have fathomed being so comfortable with any of these bodily fluids. Heck, I once went off avocado for a year because my brother sneezed near me while I was eating one, and it grossed me out so badly that I could not stomach it. It took an entire year to get over one sneeze. But now I am mommy, and I cheer and cry and hug my baby when he releases all kinds of fluids all over me and our bed and the changing basket because it means he is healthy and thriving. This is a reality I could not have imagined.

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