I haven't been good at keeping up my blog, but I wanted to write down my birth story so I have it for my records, and for anybody who is interested in reading it. So, be warned, there is a lot of detail and this is long, but I don't want to forget anything.
For at least a month before I had her, I had a lot of inconsistent contractions. I only had this for a week or 2 leading up to labor with Escher, so it really threw me for a loop. On December 30, I had prodomal labor from 8pm-6:30am. I was exhausted, and thought it possibly could be the real thing, but kept second guessing. They were consistently 10 minutes apart, and sometimes I would get a weaker one in between, making them 5 min. apart. They were strong enough to wake me up, so I had a really hard time sleeping. At around 3am I texted my doula, and she helped me realize I didn't need to wake Jared up yet, because they weren't really getting closer, and if I walked around they eased up a little. The same thing happened on Jan 5th and 7th, but only lasted 4 hours and 6 hours. I thought for sure with all of this, my real labor would be super quick.
I woke up on January 9, around 6:30am feeling more rested than I had most of the 3rd trimester. I was having contractions, but I was also really sore, achy, and crampy all over my stomach and back. I got excited and just knew this was the beginning of the real thing. I remembered this feeling during the day before my water broke with Escher. I didn't want to freak Evlyn out, so I didn't say anything to her before she went to school. But, the day before, I told her that if I went into labor while she was in school, Jared's parents would be at home when she got off the bus because that was easier than getting approval for them to pick her up from school.
After Jared took Evlyn to school, I tried to spend quality time with Escher, knowing we'd be in the hospital soon. I thought that the best time for us to go to the hospital would be after I put him down for a nap, or after we put him down to bed at night. I hoped for one of those two. At 9:10am, I texted Jared a reminder to keep his phone turned on because I felt similar to how I felt with Escher. At around 10am, I realized it was too hard not to get distracted because the cramping was very constant and the contractions kept coming. I wanted to keep things moving, so I decided to take Escher to the grocery store and walk around a lot. We walked up and down each aisle, and I found some pretty great yummy food deals! After we got home, we went for a walk around the neighborhood, and ended up a few houses down. I called Jared at 11:19am, telling him not to be worried, but that I was in labor, the contractions were getting stronger, but that I thought we had plenty of hours until we needed to get to the hospital. He told me he had a meeting at 11:30, which he was doing a presentation for, and I told him I wouldn't need him until after that, and I would call him. I asked if I should text his mom for a heads up, since she was going to come watch the kids. He told me to text the doula first. I was in the middle of texting her, when my neighbor came out and we started chatting while Escher played with toys. She watched me through some contractions and was excited for me. I kept feeling the need to get Escher home and fed, but I was enjoying talking as a distraction from the contractions.
Finally, we left and I sat Escher down at the table for lunch. I told him I'd be right back after going to the bathroom, but before I could even wash my hands, my water broke. In my head when planning for this, I told myself I was going to be calm this time and not panic. I didn't do a very good job staying calm. I was worried labor would be faster this time because of all the prodomal labor, and my 5 hours of walking and contractions right before this. So, I called Jared at 11:57, with no answer. I called my mother in law, who answered the phone with, "Are you having the baby?" I said, "Yes, my water just broke." She told me she would come right away (which would take about 20 minutes) and asked if I got hold of Jared. I told her no. I had finished texting my doula literally a minute before my water broke, telling her today is the day sometime. Then I texted, "Just kidding, my water just broke". I called Jared's work and told them, "I know he's in a meeting, but when you get a chance, could you tell him that his wife is in labor?" I found out later that it was quite a funny scene at work. He was in the middle of his presentation when I called, and his family members started also calling because his mom knew I hadn't reached him. His phone was on loud, so he heard all the calls, but was trying to hurry and finish his presentation. Then, people started banging on the door because I had called the front desk and they were also letting him know. So, at 12:06 Jared called and said he was coming to get me (which would take about 25 minutes). I tried really hard to stay calm now that I knew my in laws were coming, and Jared was coming. I cleaned up my water mess, fed Escher a not so healthy, quick lunch, and tried to lay him down for a nap. I also said a prayer with him for everybody's safety, that the delivery would go ok, and that he and Evlyn would be ok without us. I was very anxious because I was having good contractions, and the hospital was still 30 minutes away.
Finally, my in-laws and Jared made it home, we gathered our hospital stuff, and left for the hospital. Oh yeah, I called my doula after I didn't get a text back, and told her my water just broke and I had been having contractions for 5 hours before that. She and her doula-in-training had been up all night with a birth, and were currently at another one. I was worried this would happen when I found out when her other January births were due. So, the doula-in-training left the birth they were at to meet us at the hospital. Thankfully, my doula had asked about a month before, if I minded a doula in the room to shadow her. I didn't mind, so we set up a meeting so that I could meet her in case she ended up coming. I'm glad I met her before hand, because she was now my doula!
We got to the hospital around 1:30pm, (btw having contractions in the car is not fun!) and the midwife on call happened to be the one midwife in the office that I hadn't met yet. At my previous appointment, they told me that I hadn't seen one of the midwives and they would make sure I met her at my next appointment. I laughed and said that I would probably go into labor before meeting her, and she would be the one on call, since both of my other kids were delivered by doctors I had never met until delivering my babies.
We were in triage for over an hour, and I found out I was only dilated to a 2 and 50% effaced. 2 weeks before that, I was at 1.5 and 60% effaced, so I was surprised and felt dumb for rushing to the hospital. They hooked me up to monitors and I was having contractions consistently 4 minutes apart. When the nurse came to take us to the L&D room, it was awesome!! There was a nice birthing tub with jets that I couldn't wait to try! They also brought me a medicine ball, and my midwife requested a pump to have me try to speed up labor. We tried all sorts of positions and other things during contractions, but what I liked the best was walking. I tried pumping at 5:40, but it didn't seem to do much. The most comfortable and most effective thing for the contractions seemed to be walking. So, we walked all over the floor of the hospital. I assumed other pregnant ladies would also be walking around, but I was the only one. I put a second robe on so my back side wasn't exposed. I didn't get to walk around with my other 2, so this was really nice and I definitely took advantage of it! Every hour I had to stay put while they monitored Kiara's heart rate for 20 minutes to see how they reacted to each contraction. My contractions were 3 minutes apart at this point.
This hospital was so awesome! Not only was my nurse so sweet and supportive of me not getting any pain relief, but they let you eat and drink! They had a snack room with crackers, juice, peanut butter, ice, water, tea, and a few other things that you can just have what you want. My nurse also told me we could order food! We brought snacks, so I loved that I could freely eat whatever I wanted! Of course I had to have some of their peanut butter, and I brought my own snacks. :)
The contractions started to get pretty intense, and I really wanted to get in the birthing tub. My midwife said I needed to be dilated to a 4 to get in. She said it can relax you too much and delay progress. I don't know how much we walked, but we basically walked until 7:30 pm with little breaks in between to get on the monitor for 20 minutes at a time, to go to the bathroom, etc. Jared had my phone in his pocket about half of the time we walked, and my step counter said we took 5,819 steps.
At 8pm, the doula asked if we minded if she went home for a quick nap, since she had been up all night the night before. We were happy with that, because we understood she was so tired. She said she would check on us at 10. I stayed reclined in the bed for a while, trying to get through the contractions. Jared was so sweet and so amazing. The whole time, he would watch me and the second I started slow breathing through the contractions, he would rush over to support me, do hip squeezes, or whatever I needed. He also said sweet, encouraging things like, "You got this", "You can do this", "I love you", "That bed is for little Kiara. She'll be here soon", and "If you knew yesterday that you'd be having Kiara today, you'd be so excited." When the doula left, he continued to be awesome, but even more so. The contractions started to get so painful that it was getting hard to focus on breathing. No matter what I did, they were excruciating. An hour later, at 9pm, the midwife checked me again. I was so ready to try the birthing tub. But, she said I was still only at a 3, but a stretchy 3. You could tell she felt bad for me, so she stayed for about 5 minutes to chat and try to cheer me up. She said that it would probably go really fast once I got past a 4, that getting to the 4 can take a really long time. I was exhausted and loosing a lot of motivation. I started thinking maybe I should get the epidural, and even worried that she might take so long they would want to do a c-section. She left, and Jared turned on some Josh Groban music for me. I had flashbacks of labor with Escher, where I didn't feel in control with the contractions anymore. They completely drained me, and i wasn't even getting a break in between. It was like they were so long, and when they were over, they weren't really over. They got less intense, but not gone. Then another one would come. I became so delirious. I just kept praying that she would come, and that the contractions would work. I also kept praying for help, any help. Jared was trying to distract me and keep me focused on a goal. Before, the goal was to get in the tub. Now, he just wanted to keep me moving positions every 30 minutes like the doula had said. They got so painful I just went limp and laid my head on Jared's shoulder, while he was trying to hold me up.
I remember him saying, "After this next contraction, you're going to get backwards on the bed." Basically kneeling with my arms over the side/top of the bed. I couldn't talk at this point, and just did as he said, with his help. The next few contractions were so strong, I started pushing. I couldn't help it. It reminded me of Escher's labor again, and I thought they were going to come in and tell me to stop pushing. The feeling was the exact same, but I couldn't not push. Then, I felt a big, hard pressure like a small bowling ball was trying to come out. The next few contractions, I kept pushing and started screaming, "she's coming!" or "something's coming!" I'm glad I yelled that because I still didn't fully believe she was coming yet. But, apparently the nurse in the hall heard me and knew what was happening. She called the midwife and ran in. I didn't know what was happening, and thought Jared was still next to me. Apparently, he had run to turn the lights up, and the nurse told him to glove her, because she only had one glove on. Jared couldn't get the glove on all the way, so the nurse caught Kiara's head with one glove. I remember hearing her say the head was out, but for some reason I still didn't believe I was really pushing her out. It hurt like crazy and felt like things were ripping, but in my head I just kept thinking I was only at a 3 and how in the world was I going to keep this up for hours? The midwife ran in to help with her shoulders coming out. After that, the rest of her body was way easier, and I wasn't expecting the umbilical chord to feel so weird and twisty.
They held her up for me to see and told me to turn around, which was hard because not only was I exhausted, but I was still having contractions for the placenta. I turned around and they handed my sweet baby girl to me, and put her on my chest under my hospital gown. I was in shock, and Jared said, "you did it!" He grabbed his phone to film, and I held Kiara for 5 minutes, still in shock and not fully comprehending what just happened, and still in pain. It slowly started to dawn on me that I was done! I already had her! Then I heard the midwife say there was a lot of blood and she needed the placenta out to see what was wrong. She clamped the chord and asked Jared if he wanted to cut it. He said no, and she asked if I wanted to. I didn't say anything (I was still delirious) but took the scissors and cut the chord. It wasn't as fleshy and gross as I imagined it would be, and it was white. Then, I had a big contraction and delivered the placenta. Thankfully, the midwife said my bleeding was okay and it was just the placenta. Then, they cleaned my whole stomach because Kiara had pooped all over me. I was surprised to see it, because I didn't even notice. In fact, when the nurse said, "she pooped!", I thought she meant me and I thought, "what?! that's so embarrassing!" But, i was Kiara, and she did that 3 times. haha. Finally, they decided to weigh her and put a diaper on her before she did it again. They were surprised how much poop came out of her! The nurse said she probably weighed at least 7 lbs. because of all of that. It was seriously so much! I found it in her neck folds an hour later, and still a little bit on me too. She was born at 10:09pm, weighing in (after the poop) at 6 lbs. 15 oz, 20 inches long. She's so sweet and beautiful!! After an hour of sin to skin, they took me to the recovery room and Jared went home to sleep so his parents could go sleep in their bed, and so he could get Evlyn off to school the next day. I couldn't sleep because of adrenaline, and I just kept reliving the whole thing. Finally, probably around 3 or so, I got about 2 hours of sleep. I was pretty happy about that amount though, because I literally couldn't sleep at all the first night after having Escher.
So, although so many things seemed to go wrong and it's quite funny how everything happened, I am so grateful for this experience! Births never go as planned, and things didn't go as smoothly or as quickly as I had imagined, but it was an amazing experience. I'm so grateful for everybody who helped in the whole process, watching our kids, etc. and I'm grateful that Jared was such an amazing support. Seriously, if you want a super intense, bonding, marriage therapy session, have a baby with no pain meds. haha And, it's so wonderful having a newborn in the house. They bring such a special, sweet spirit.
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