Emily Boehringer started her education career eight years ago but just four years ago she joined the Falcon family. And on Sept. 2 at 6:02 p.m. daughter Addilyn Mae Boehringer was born and joined the Falcon family as well.
Boehringer is a new mom; however, her teaching career all led up to this actual experience. She is currently teaching Human Growth and Development and Practicum of Human Services, and in previous years has taught Child Guidance and Child Development. The curriculum is not limited to but includes the stages of pregnancy, stages of child development and birth defects or risks that go into having a new born.
“It fosters what I teach in my classes about prenatal care and pregnancy and labor and delivery and child development so any experience I have and can share with my classes, it helps them out and makes our class that more fun and relatable. It was so fun to have the kids make a week-by-week calendar of what a pregnant woman’s body is doing and how they are changing in each week of pregnancy, how the fetus is changing, and what size fruit/vegetable the baby is during that week. Every week the kids would ask me what my symptoms were and asked to compare the baby to the size of something they could visualize,” said Boehringer.
The Human Growth teacher was quick to involve her classes. With the anticipation of the students knowing her desire to one day have a child of her own, combined with the excitement of Boehringer of getting to share the experience with her students, she revealed the pregnancy to her students in various different creative ways.
“I told my classes we were going to do fun Valentines Day activities on Valentines Day and they did puzzles that they had to decode that were fun Valentine’s Day phrases they did in groups, and then as a class, I had one on the board they had to decode that said ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, from now until August, I’ll be eating for two’- some got it right away and some took a while and some thought I was announcing I was pregnant with twins,” said Boehringer. “I was very close with my senior class officers and I bought them donuts for a meeting one morning and on the donut box I wrote ‘Eat up, Mrs B doesn’t want to be the only one with a big belly’- it took them a few moments to actually understand why I would write that. It was classic. We also did fun gender reveals in my class as well.”
In the midst of pregnancy for the 2016-17 school year and the beginning of 2017-18 school year, Boehringer continued to teach her classes and manage the senior class as she is the senior class sponsor. She concluded her last day at school on Sept. 1 before she went on maternity leave. Before her absence, she managed to execute and attend such functions like senior sunrise, Mr. Falcon and the stressful night that is prom. Transitioning from being immersed in the school to the maternity leave, Boehringer already misses the students.
“Doing senior class sponsor events and activities during my pregnancy was tiring and exhausting during the early and late months of pregnancy and executing prom and Mr. Falcon was added stress during my pregnancy but it was all good, healthy, fun stress. I have amazing student leaders that helped during those events and an amazing support system at school and with my family and friends who all helped me keep my cool during the hectic times,” said Boehringer. “I am so used to being very busy and involved actually being on maternity leave and not being super involved in school activities will be really hard for me! I already miss teaching and my kiddos and I haven’t even been gone a week. Obviously I would have loved to plan to have a baby in the summer so I didn’t have to miss school, but nature had other plans.”
Boehringer knew she always had someone available at school if anything ever happened. Mother in law, Debra Boehringer works at Timber Creek as the attendance clerk, which provided Emily Boehringer with comfort knowing family was close even at work.
“It was definitely a relief knowing if anything went wrong or I got sick or my water broke or something crazy, that she was here if I needed a ride to the hospital or needed to get a hold of my husband or anything,” said Boehringer. “She would always make sure I had food for my late nights when I supervised Falcon Night school and detention and was always looking out for me.”
With being as educated as she is on the topic of child birth and the development of new borns, Boehringer didn’t fear too much; however, she was fully aware of the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrom, as she has discussed it in her classes.
“Making sure you do what you can to reduce the chances of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is really hard, especially when your baby won’t sleep. You’re not supposed to have any blankets or lose items in the crib/bassinet with them, you shouldn’t sleep in the same bed as the child, and they should be laying on their backs when they sleep. My daughter refuses to sleep on her back and I tend to fall asleep feeding her in bed, so it is hard to get her back to sleep after moving her to her bassinet,” said Boehringer.
Despite the worry that comes with a new born, Boehringer has developed great joy for the new life she brought into the world and the family and friends she gets to share her with. She explained that Addilyn Mae was loved even before those had met her which is heartwarming for Boehringer.
“Bringing my husband and family a new life into the world to love on has brought me the greatest joy with being a new mother so far,” said Boehringer. “I gave my parents their first granddaughter and that is special and I gave my husband’s family a baby close by. Their other grand babies live in North Carolina, so they don’t get to see them as often as we would like, so I am happy that I can give them a little one to love on so close to home.”
Boehringer had a ceserium section, which has been a difficult process to recover from. The dependency that comes from recovering with a c-section was not as anticipated by her. Things such as bending over or adjusting pillows to get comfortable or even feeding the baby has become a painful process. Further, simple things like laughing or coughing add to the pain as well, because her incision lies on her stomach. The way she helps her recovery process is simply by walking and getting stronger at it while the swelling goes down on her feet.
“Having a c-section was really hard to come to terms with. I was extremely upset and disheartened. I knew that it was going to be so much harder to recover from and I was really looking forward to the ‘womanly’ experience of pushing and giving birth to a baby that I’ve dreamt about for years. It was really upsetting also that I went through the hours of painful labor and waited for my body to be ready to push all for nothing. The baby wouldn’t drop low enough so we had to go through with a c-section. I know there was nothing I could do to change the outcome of having a c-section without risking the health of my baby, [but] it was really scary,” said Boehringer.
Boehringer was due on Aug. 28; however, she was induced the morning of Sept. 2. The c-section was due to many risks in the process of her birth. Boehringer was in labor for 20 hours, and couldn’t get her baby to drop at appropriate levels. Boehringer learned after the fact that the baby was head down but face up so every time she laid on her back the baby’s neck was hyper extended and the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck.
“When Addie came out, she was given a very low APGAR score. She needed assistance breathing and was very limp and pale. They warned us before the c-section that we shouldn’t expect to hear her cry when she is delivered. She had a bowel movement in the amniotic sac that is dangerous if ingested, so they wanted to clear out her mouth and lungs so she didn’t swallow and feces,” said Boehringer. “They knew this because they saw meconium when they broke my waters. Hearing this after the fact was really scary because things could’ve ended up very very bad, but I am so grateful for the medical team we had that gave me a safe and beautiful baby girl.”
With being a new mom, there comes opinions and judgments from various people on how to properly raise a child. However, Boehringer encourages new mothers to do their own research and educate themselves on what is best for them and their baby. She also cautions against comparing themselves to other mothers because every experience is different.
“Right now I would say all the judgement you feel with the decisions you make for your child. Whether you are delivery naturally or with an epidural or breast feeding or bottle feeding your baby, everyone has parenting opinions, think they know best, and has judgements and aren’t afraid to tell you,” said Boehringer. “I did a lot of reading and research and thought I had my whole parenting plan planned out but with the c-section and what my body could do after surgery has greatly affected a lot of my plans, so you have to be able to adjust to the unknown and take what life gives you, because so much of what we are dealt is out of our control.”