K's Birth story

After about 3 ½ weeks of BH contractions I was getting anxious to meet the new baby. On May 5th, I was having contractions every 6-7 minutes that were uncomfortable enough that they woke me up. This went on from about 6 a.m. to noon and then they just sort of stopped. The next couple of days I didn’t feel anything and started thinking that the baby might stay in until 42 weeks. On Friday, Jason, my mom, the kids and I went to Costco to buy a bunch of food just in case the baby decided to make an appearance. When we were there we picked up a pizza with lots of basil on it to see if that might help things along. We also headed to Stevanie’s (my amazing friend and chiropractor) office to see if an adjustment and some reflexology might start things moving.

On Saturday morning, May 8th, I woke up with some uncomfortable contractions. They were painful enough to wake me from my sleep at about 6 a.m. I tried to go back to bed but found that while I could lay there through the contractions I couldn’t really sleep through them. I decided to stay in bed as long as I could so that I could rest up just in case this was it. At about 9 I got out of bed and told Jason that I was having contractions. I thought that this was probably it but didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up so I just said I needed to take it easy. I ate some breakfast and took a shower. Around noon I wanted to get out of the house and we started talking about where to go. I really wanted a pretzel so we headed up to the Anthem outlets. At this point I told them that today was probably the day and that I wanted to walk around a little to speed things up. Once we got to Anthem and walked to the food court I was sure that I was going to have a baby. The kids were acting all crazy so we ate the pretzel and decided to head home. We stopped on the way home to look at curtains. When we were in the store I had to stop to breathe through the contractions every 3 minutes or so. Once we checked out and headed home we started to make plans for later that afternoon. I called Emily (another amazing friend) to let her know that the kids were going to be coming over to her house soon because it would be time for us to go to the hospital. Once we were home I texted Stevanie who had offered to come over and adjust me before we headed to the hospital. She texted back that she would be there is 10-15 minutes. When she arrived she adjusted my stomach first (which immediately made my stomach feel much better) and then my back. She worked on my lower back during a contraction and showed Jason the pressure points to help move the contraction from my back to my stomach. There was immediate relief as the pressure from my lower back moved around front- it felt much better to have the contraction fully in my stomach. Then she worked on my entire back. When she adjusted my spine I could feel the baby move- it felt like a pretty big move so it was probably getting right into position. When she was done we loaded everyone up and headed to Emily’s house to drop off the kids and then to the hospital.

We got to the hospital at about five and once there we headed up to the third floor where we were hoping to register. Since it was a weekend we had to register in the ER. Jason headed downstairs to register and my mom and I went into the LDR triage. The nurse checked me and I was 2 cm dilated and 70% effaced. I had not been checked before so I had no idea how much progress that was or if it was progress at all (she couldn’t believe I hadn’t been checked at 41 weeks). She called the midwife on call and I told her that I was fine with heading home. The midwife told the nurse to send me home and so we were just waiting for Jason. He came upstairs about ½ an hour later and I asked the nurse to check me again because I had had a few strong contractions. She checked me again and I was a 3 ½ to 4 so we decided that I should stay. We went to the room and immediately filled up the tub. I jumped in and started the jets- it was amazing. The water really helped ease my discomfort. At about 6 the midwife came in. She was the one midwife in the practice that I hadn’t met yet but I immediately liked her (a lab tech knocked on the door and she yelled at them to leave so I knew that she would have my back ,lol). I labored in the tub for a little while and was feeling the contractions in my lower back. Jason started using the pressure points that Stevanie showed him and that really helped. After a while I got out of the tub to use the restroom. After I was done I decided to go and lay down on my side to see if that would help with the back pain. I labored on my side for a while with Lisa, the midwife, rubbing my back and Jason rubbing my upper arms and shoulders. It was much easier than either of my previous labors and I think that is because there was a constant pressure on my lower back from her massage. We worked this way until about 8:30 when I asked her to check me. I joked that I was probably at a five but she checked and I was at a 9. We talked about it for a little while and decided it was time to break my water. She broke my water and I labored a little more to get to a 10. At this point I told her that I had never felt the need to push with my previous two labors and that I would need coaching. Once I was at a ten I started pushing. This was by far the most difficult part of labor for me. I really didn’t feel a need to push and couldn’t really tell when I was pushing. My mom, Jason, the nurse and the midwife were all trying to talk me through it. At one point I told them that I quit (I was actually joking because I figure that you have to quit at some point but I don’t think anyone took it that way). I was getting scared because I thought that if I didn’t feel the need to push I might not be able to push the baby out. Finally the put a squat bar on the bed and wrapped a sheet around it. I held onto the sheet and that seemed to help me to push. After I had been pushing for a while Lisa started to get a little gruff with me (I guess the baby’s heart rate was dropping and she really wanted me to get the baby out). That seemed to be what I needed and I started pushing harder. I pushed the baby’s head out so quickly that Jason didn’t have time to get to the foot of the bed to catch the baby. At that point we stopped so that they could get the cord off of the baby’s neck- it was wrapped around the neck three times. Once the cord was removed the baby sort of slid out and Jason and I pulled the baby up to my chest. I felt around and announced that it was a boy. He was born sunny side up which explains why I never really felt a strong urge to push (and the back labor). I told everyone that he was so tiny and someone said it was because I was so used to Wyatt. I said that he was a tiny baby and when they weighed him he was only 7 lbs 10 ounces- much smaller than either Mia or Wyatt had been. The placenta was delivered and it was huge. Baby boy looked perfect and started nursing about an hour and a half after he was born. We finally named him Mathieu David when he was six days old.