A Dramatic Entrance: Sweet Boy’s Birth Story

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Amy

Birth story time!

I love a good birth story. This one has a bit of a crazy ending. Enjoy:

All of my first four kids were born after their due date. The third and fourth (Sis and Bubba) were induced five and one days past their due dates, respectively (you can read the birth stories for Lass, Sis, and Bubba here. I’m not sure what happened to Miss’s?).

So, I felt pretty confident that with this fifth delivery, I would be going to my due date once again, when I had an induction scheduled. December 29th was to be the day, I was quite certain.

What’s that saying about what God does when we make plans?

I woke up on December 28th at around 5am with some contractions. They weren’t too bad, but they gradually got stronger as I stayed in bed, half sleeping and procrastinating getting up for the day. Around 6-ish I started to time them, and they were about 7-8 minutes apart, lasting around a minute each. I decided to get up and take a shower, both to see if anything changed, and also, just in case.

Once I was up and moving around, the contractions got closer together and a bit stronger, more like 3-4 minutes apart, but they were shorter, only 30-45 seconds long. So I didn’t know what to think. My doctor always has told me that I should call if my contractions were five minutes apart, lasting one minute each, for an hour. These contractions weren’t fitting the prescribed pattern! I wasn’t sure what to do. It had been over seven years since the last time I had gone into labor on my own, but I figured I should still be able to determine if I was actually in labor or not. I did not want to be the fifth-time mom who came into the hospital in “labor,” only to be sent home.

My husband asked me if he should try to find someone to cover his shift at work. I thought maybe I should call a nurse. But it was early, before office hours, and I knew I’d probably have to wait a while for the on-call nurse to call me back if I called then, so I told my husband to go ahead and go to work. I said, “I’m going to go downstairs and put my feet up. These contractions will probably go away.” (If you have read Bubba’s birth story, you might remember that I started having contractions the morning he was born too, and they stopped on their own).

So, I woke up my Mom to chase Bubba around while I put my feet up and let the contractions go away.

Except the contractions didn’t go away. They gradually got a little stronger (though they never did get to the one-minute-long-every-five-minutes criteria). Since I have had a c-section (and for that reason a nurse once yelled at me on the phone for not calling sooner when I was having contractions with Lass), I figured I should call the nurse and see what she recommended. When I did, she said that my doctor (Dr. K) was off that day, but that the doctor who delivered Bubba (Dr. C, not my usual OB, but the one I went with for his delivery and also loved, because when I was pregnant with Bubba, Dr. K had taken a break from delivering babies for a while) was the back up on-call doctor and could see me that morning.

So, I called my husband and said he needed to come home from work, got my stuff together to go to the hospital, and off we went.

When we arrived, we went right in to see Dr. C, who checked me and pronounced that I was at 5 cm (already!) and that I was in labor and should be admitted. She said she’d come upstairs later that morning to break my water, and we went on upstairs to the L&D floor to have a baby.

As usual, the nurses assigned to me had me get in the bed for monitoring and to get my blood drawn and have an IV needle put in place in case of an emergency. My contractions weren’t too bad at this point, so I was talking and joking with my husband and the nurses throughout this time.

After this part was done, I got up and began to walk around the halls with my husband. We have done this together so many times before. So many laps on this same L&D floor. We talked and joked. He hummed Pange Lingua. Every few laps we’d stop and let the nurses do their monitoring. The contractions were getting a bit stronger, but not too much at this point.

I focused on offering each contraction for a prayer intention, which I had loosely planned out in my head, but had not gotten around to writing down (I was supposed to have one more day for that!).

On one of our laps when we passed the nurse’s station, our nurse told us that Dr. K had called (Dr. C must have called her), and said that she had an appointment that afternoon that she couldn’t miss, but if I hadn’t delivered but he time she was done, she would come in and do the delivery. How awesome that my two favorite docs were both willing to deliver my baby!

At around 11am, Dr. C came up and broke my water.

A few more laps after this and things started to get real. I started to feel like I didn’t want to walk anymore, but when I stopped in the room and sat on the yoga ball (my go-to position from my labors with both Sis and Bubba), things would slow down.

My husband said I needed to stop looking so cheerful when he took my picture

I was torn, because I really liked being more comfortable on the yoga ball, but I wanted things to keep moving, and walking was a good way to get things progressing. For a little while, we alternated between walking and sitting. By about 1:00 or 1:30 or so, my contractions got too hard for walking.

No more cheerful

I have a history of labor-puking, and I felt extremely hot and nauseated, so I made sure the puke basin was nearby, though I didn’t end up needing it.

At some point, I really don’t know when, maybe around the time I decided I was done walking, the nurse checked me again and said I was at seven centimeters. I suppose that was decent progress, but I remember thinking that seven still seemed awfully far from 10.

Around 2:00 or so, I started having a lot of back pain and couldn’t sit on the ball anymore. I had my husband adjust the height of the bed and I stood up and leaned over onto the bed on my elbows, which helped a little bit. I had my husband squeeze my hips during each contraction, which helped some too. He was reminding me to get through one contraction at a time and to offer up the pain, which was also helpful, though I was beginning to really struggle to get through the contractions around this time.

The nurses came in, and I told one of them something like, “I think I’m starting to maybe feel a little bit of pressure.” I was definitely feeling pressure, but afraid to get my hopes up or to have my progress checked only to find out I had made minimal gains. I was experiencing a strong fear of the end-of-labor despair. The nurse asked if I was feeling pressure all the time or only at the end of my contractions, and I didn’t really know the answer to this, so I just said “only at the end.” She suggested maybe waiting 15 minutes and then checking my progress. I think she too was concerned about my reaction if I had made little change.

Within a few minutes of her saying this, I asserted a bit more confidently that I was feeling pressure and really felt the need to push. One of the nurses said something like, “Hop up on the bed then, and we’ll check you.” I remember thinking how ridiculous that idea was, and I said, “Okay! I’ll just hop right on up there then!” with the tiny bit of a chuckle that I could muster.

Then things got crazy.

The next few minutes were a complete whirlwind as I barely managed to get myself onto the bed between contractions (I think my husband and/or one of the nurses might have had to half lift me on there?), then I immediately said that I had to push. My nurse checked me, and told the other nurse to call Dr. C, and suddenly there were tons of nurses in my room, but no OB, and I remember thinking “Please don’t try to tell me I have to wait until the doctor is here!”

I noticed that my nurse was gowning up and there was a senior nurse who had come into the room who basically told me to just do what I needed to do, which was good because I had already been covertly pushing as everyone was hurrying and getting things ready.

A few minutes and a few more contractions later, Little Buddy emerged, delivered by the nurse, in a dramatic entrance to rival that of Sis (in which I did manage to wait for the doctor to come upstairs).

The doctor came in a few minutes later. Everything was fine. Baby was healthy, I was fine, we all had a good laugh about it. My two OBs had been willing to deliver the baby and neither of them made it in time.

The nurse who delivered him told me I did a good job, and I told her she did too. Then I asked her how many times before she had had to do the delivery. She said, “Technically, that was my first” (She had had one other situation when she could have delivered the baby, but she deferred to the more senior nurse that time).

And there you have it. My first ever delivery before my due date. My first delivery without an OB present. Not my first fast-ending delivery, but perhaps the most dramatic.

Sweet boy was 8 lbs, 13 oz (my smallest baby) and 21 inches long, born at 2:32 on Dec. 28th.

We are all soaking up the newborn days. The kids adore him, and we are happily (though sleepily) adjusting to life as a family of seven.

Baby Boy’s Birth

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Amy

I just love birth stories. And I really enjoy reflecting on labor and delivery of my own kids. So, three+ weeks after the fact, here’s the story of my little man’s birth.

Note: I’m not going to go into crazy detail, but there are a few birthy-type words coming up, so be forewarned.

My due date was May 31st. I had an induction planned for June 1st. All my kids have been born past their due dates. But, up until the first few times that my OB checked my “progress” toward being ready to deliver, I thought I might go into labor early this time. My last two kiddos were breech until being turned at around 37-38 weeks. This little guy was heading in the right direction the whole time, which led to him being much, much lower than any of his sisters had ever been, to the point that I kind of thought he might fall out. Therefore, for a while I was sure I would deliver him early.

So, I was a bit surprised to find out that, at each OB appointment in the few weeks up to my induction, I had made almost zero progress toward being ready to deliver. One centimeter at each appointment. One. At my last appointment one week before my induction, I had to see a different OB because mine was out of town. He said I was at one centimeter “on a good day.”

This lack of progress made me a little nervous, because my doctor said she might want to give me some pitocin for my induction if I wasn’t any more dilated than that, rather than just breaking my water, which is what I had done for my last induction.

Knowing that I planned to deliver without pain medication again, I really wanted to avoid pitocin if at all possible. So I was really, really hoping to make a bit more progress before induction day. Fortunately, the night before my induction was scheduled, I started having some stronger contractions at about 3am. They weren’t regular or very close together (just enough to keep me mostly awake for the rest of the night), but they were much stronger than any I had had previously, so I was hopeful that maybe they were doing a bit more work than had happened up to that point.

The contractions never did pick up or turn into actual labor, so on induction day, we showed up at the hospital as scheduled at 6:15am.

My doctor came up to break my water at around 8 am. At that point I found out that the contractions from the night before had been working. I had progressed to 3cm, which was a big relief.

I asked my doctor to hold off on the pitocin, and she didn’t have any problem with that. About a half hour after she broke my water, I was about to get up and start walking to get things going.

My husband and I walked, and he hummed or sang “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” (a favorite hymn) as we went. With my previous induction, it took several hours of walking for my contractions to really pick up. This time around, it took much less time. It was only an hour to an hour and a half before I was ready to stop walking and stay in my room to manage the contractions on the big yoga ball. That’s what I did with my last labor and it was the best way to deal with the contractions then, so this time I figured I’d start out by trying what worked before.

The yoga ball was the most comfortable way to labor this time as well, though I was struggling a lot more this time with back pain during contractions, so they seemed harder. During each contraction I tried to offer it up for an intention from the list I had made. Offering the pain I was experiencing for the intention of another was helpful, but I did have a few contractions where I couldn’t seem to focus my mind enough to think of an intention to offer up (and by the end I lost my ability to focus on this technique at all!).

After a couple of hours, the contractions were getting really intense. The nurse checked me and I was only at 5-6cm, which was pretty discouraging. I think I was remembering my previous labor too much and how quickly that ended up, and hoping for the same fast resolution this time, which led me to feel disappointed when it wasn’t wrapping up as quickly as before.

My back was killing me. My husband was awesome. He kept reminding me to keep relaxed and to breathe slowly. Up until I got close to the end, I think I did a pretty good job with this, thanks to him.

After a little longer the nurse checked me again, or maybe it was my doctor, I’m not really sure, and I was at 7-8 cm. After this, everyone seemed to think that delivery was rapidly approaching. My doctor even stayed up on the delivery floor, not far from my room. So when the nurse asked me if I wanted to get out of the bed and back onto the labor ball, I said that I might as well just stay where I was.

In retrospect, I think this was a mistake, as laboring for that last little while on my back on the bed was really, really awful. I think the yoga ball would definitely have been better. The one good thing about being on the bed was that I was able to doze off a bit in between contractions. Since I had been up since about 3am with contractions and nervous anticipation, I was pretty tired. My husband thought it was pretty amusing that I was snoozing between contractions, and I think he was making jokes about this to the nurse. To which I replied, “I can still hear you” quite a few times. It seemed to me in the moment like a little bit of comic relief, though I’m not sure if it was actually funny.

^^ It’s quite possible I was asleep when this photo was taken ^^

Anyway, when I was awake and contracting, I remember praying for St. Rita’s intercession during this last part of the delivery. She’s my Confirmation saint, and I remember thinking that she had children so she would understand what I was going through. And also, I was praying for Mary’s intercession, because she’s Mary.

When I started to really feel like I needed to push, my nurse said I wasn’t quite fully dilated, so I had to wait a bit. My doctor told her to get out a labor ball thing they called “the peanut.” I had to try to roll over on my side, as much as that was possible given my enormity and pain level, and hold this peanut-shaped labor ball between my knees for a while. This was supposed to be some sort of magic trick to move things along the last little bit so I would be ready to deliver.

After doing this for a bit, my doctor came in and said the trick had worked. So, on the next contraction I started to push and then started to scream. I clearly remember having the thought that if I was screaming, I couldn’t be pushing very well. So I clamped my mouth shut and got to work. At least for a few pushes. I still yelled a lot, though, especially right at the end (my husband got a video of the birth and it was, um, intense). I think it was about 4-5 contractions after I started pushing that my little man came into the world, just over five hours after my doctor broke my water. He emerged with his fist up by his face, just like he often was in ultrasound images.

He was absolutely perfect at 9 lbs., 11 oz., and 21 inches.

It’s been over three weeks, and sometimes I can still barely believe he’s here.

Welcome to the world sweet boy.

Fast and Furious – Sis’s Birth Story

Posted on March 29, 2012August 17, 2012 by Amy

Baby Sis arrived yesterday, beautiful and perfect, after a labor that started out very ho-hum and ended up with a crazy fast finish. I had agreed to be induced yesterday morning, fully believing that she would arrive before then. Of course she didn’t, so we got ourselves all ready and came on over to L&D.

Because of my history of a c-section with Miss, it isn’t safe for me to be induced with pitocin. That is entirely fine with me, as I would prefer not to have medication said to make contractions even more painful than they are naturally. So, for me, an induction consisted of having my water broken and hoping labor would start. I felt pretty confident that it would. In fact, I was surprised by how slowly it got going. I kind of expected the contractions to start up right away. They didn’t. But once they did, things happened fast.

My doc came up and broke my water at around 8am. I had to stay in bed to be monitored for an hour.

Then I could get up and move around, though I still had to carry the monitor with me. I put my lovely hospital-issued “track shoes” on and my husband and I got to walking.

We walked for three hours, almost nonstop. We did have to pause for a minute after each lap around the L&D floor so our nurse could monitor Sis’s heart rate, because the mobile monitor wasn’t working well while I walked. After three hours, we took a little break. I didn’t want to stop, because every time I did, my contractions, such as they were, would slow down, but we were hungry and just needed to sit for a few. So I hung out on the labor ball, my hubby got lunch and I got some Italian ice and Jello (and snuck a few of his fries), and we took a short break.

We got up and walked some more after lunch. Labor had started, in that I was having somewhat regular contractions, but they were pretty mild and my husband and I continued to joke and chat as we walked. After a bit we had to stop again for monitoring because of a deceleration in Sis’s heart rate, so I sat on the ball some more. As you can see, my labor was still not too difficult at this point.

In fact, my husband and I were lamenting how slowly things were moving and trying to gear ourselves up mentally for another really long labor like Lass’s. At 1:30 the nurse said we could get up and walk again but she wanted to check my progress first. I didn’t really want her to, because I just knew I had not progressed much, but I let her anyway because I’m cooperative like that. I was only 5cm. I had been 4cm when I started at 8am. This did not encourage me.

But things began to change rather quickly after that. We got up and walked a bit more, though I think we only made it one and a half laps or so. We were going much more slowly and I was having to stop for each contraction. The contractions were coming much more closely together and I told my husband we needed to go back to the room. When we got there I sat back on the ball and things got serious.

We weren’t joking and chatting anymore, and by about 2:30 it was all I could do to stay focused through each contraction. As he was during my labor with Lass, my husband was awesome.

I decided I wanted to try something different, so I asked to get into the tub. The nurse again said she wanted to check me before I did. I was feeling kind of discouraged and thinking I was not going to be able to continue without an epidural the way things were going if she told me I hadn’t progressed much, but I agreed to let her check me. As soon as I stood up, she almost didn’t need to. I immediately had an overwhelming, all-consuming need to push. This urge came with two conflicting but equally strong thoughts, “Oh my gosh this is pure torture!” and “Woohoo! I’m almost done!” The nurse checked me and sure enough, I was ready to get the job done. Unfortunately, the room was not set up and my doctor wasn’t there, so I had to wait a bit before I was allowed to. This was the worst part. My husband and nurse kept reminding me how to breathe to keep myself from pushing. The best thing that my husband said to me, many times during that short period of intense labor, was “This will end. Just get through this one contraction.” That was the perfectthing to say to help. Even so, it seemed to take forever (though I’m sure it was only 10 minutes or so) before everything was ready and my doctor was there. Two or three contractions later, Sis was born!

Then she peed on me.

Born at 3:06 pm. 9 lbs, 7 oz, 20 inches of gorgeous. As you can see she is just perfect.

I am going home later today after my husband gets off work. I can’t wait to see my big girls and let them meet their baby Sis. I am so thoroughly blessed.

A Birth Story – Lass’s Arrival

Posted on September 21, 2010June 8, 2014 by Amy

I know that I always like to hear about other people’s experiences in the childbirth process. Here is the story of Lass’s birth:On Monday, August 23 I started having strong regular contractions at around 5:30 pm.I began timing them at about 6 while we were eating dinner on the deck.I knew the contractions felt strong and different from those I had had previously (I had to stop and breathe through them as they got stronger) and was pretty sure labor had started.I gave Miss a bath and put her to bed.When the contractions continued to get stronger during this time, I told my hubby to get our things in the car, I called our babysitter and the on-call nurse, and we left for the hospital.

When we got to the hospital, I was monitored for a bit to make sure I was really in labor and we finally got into our room around 9:30 pm. Here I am in the triage room still:

In our room at about 11 pm:

We got a big yoga ball and I sat on that for a little while and then we went out to walk around the hallways. My contractions were definitely stronger and closer together when we walked the halls, but I was more comfortable when I was sitting on the ball, so we alternated these two things for a while. When I had a contraction, I faced my hubby and put my hands around his neck and kind of “danced” with him and breathed through the contraction. After a while I tried lying on my side and trying to get some rest, as it was getting really late and I was very tired. I continued to alternate resting and walking for a few hours. Then I got into the tub for about an hour and a half or so in the very early morning.

The nurse said that the on-call doctor would probably want to break my water around 7 or so in the morning to get things moving, so at that point I decided to try to stay in bed and get as much rest as possible for the last few hours, since I figured I would not get much rest after my water was broken. Through all of this, my hubby was great, reminding me to breathe slowly through the contractions and relax.

Some time in the wee hours of the morning:

The on call doctor came in and broke my water at about 7:30 am (I think). At that point I was only 4 cm dilated. Of course, once my water was broken my contractions became much stronger. My hubby really had to help me get through them at this point. I got back into the tub for a while and sat on the ball some more.

I started to feel a little unsure that I would be able to continue without pain relief.I think I said to my hubby a few times something like, “I don’t think I can do this.” He continually encouraged me and told me that I could do it. It was probably around 10 am when the nurse offered to check my cervix to see how far I had progressed. We agreed, hoping I had made progress and it would help me to feel more certain that I could proceed without medication. When the nurse checked me she said I was almost 7 cm, which really helped me to get my “second wind” and I again felt certain I could do it.

A while later the nurse checked me again and said I was 8, almost 9 cm, with just a bit of cervix left. Around that time I started really feeling the urge to push with each contraction, though I couldn’t push because I wasn’t completely dilated. The nurse suggested I try getting on my hands and knees or lying in the “recovery position” (on my side with top leg forward) to help get my cervix to dilate the rest of the way. The “recovery position” was very uncomfortable and made my contractions more painful, so I spent quite a while on my hands and knees.

I was so tired I almost dozed off and face-planted several times while in that position. The urge to push continued to get stronger, and I would say this was the worst part of my labor, needing to push but not being able to. I think this went on for at least 45 minutes or so. The nurse checked my cervix a couple of times with minimal change.

Finally she said she could check with the doctor about whether she could stretch my cervix enough to allow me to push, and she called the on-call doctor (my doc was on vacation). The on call doc happened to be the doctor I had seen the previous day for my appointment, so I was familiar with her, which was nice. She came in and said that she would be able to stretch my cervix enough that I could start to push, so I did. It took a few tries to get into the right position and push the right way, but I got it pretty quickly and seemed to be making good progress.

I got great feedback from the doctor and from my hubby that I was doing a great job, which really helped. I was so tired I was dozing off in between contractions. I pushed for about an hour and a half, according to my hubby, though it didn’t really seem that long to me (maybe because I was sleeping between contractions??). Finally:

As soon as she was born, the doctor placed Lass on my chest, which was amazing. It was the best feeling ever. Unfortunately, she was not breathing very well right away and she wasn’t really crying, so I didn’t get to hold her for long, but the few moments I did were the best.

They had to take her and do lots of suctioning to help improve her color and get her breathing better. She did start to look better pretty quickly and she started crying more, which was good.

Man, she looks huge in these photos.

They ended up needing to take her to the nursery for monitoring for a few hours, but she turned out to be just fine and was back in the room with us after about two hours.

I’ve written a dissertation and earned a PhD. I’ve written a book. I’ve worked in various prisons with dangerous criminals. I have trained for and run two marathons. Going through 20 hours of labor and giving birth to a nearly 10 and a half pound baby without any pain medication was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I could not have done it without the help of my husband. No way. It was an incredible experience to go through with him, and I am so glad I got the opportunity have that and that our girl was healthy and perfect.