Birth Story, Uncensored, but really not that yucky.

Check me out, ladies!

Back on the blog here to run my mouth. I'll try to include more pictures than words, but my lovely and beautiful sister-in-law requested a birth story. She is due in December and we're so excited about it! I'm so excited to shop for more baby stuff!

Our baby story is not super eventful but there are a few moments in there. For anyone who knows me well, you know my body likes to have contractions. Contractions are to my uterus what door slamming is to Sawyer - just cannot get enough, gotta do it again! The first painless and pointless contractions came around 20 weeks. Gradually they picked up and by 34 weeks I'd have painful contractions that came and went. The whole "false labor" thing that lots of women get toward the end and make a couple wasted trips to the hospital for, that's what I experienced a lot the last month. However, since the doctors checked me a lot, we knew it wasn't real.
Overnight into early morning July 19, I had back pain and contractions. At some point during the night I thought to myself, "Bring it!" knowing that I'd be thinking the same thing the next night. This was nothing new. It wasn't until 4:45am that I rolled over to my cell phone to check the time, rolled my eyes and figured I'd start timing. They were 5 minutes apart and got worse quickly. I asked Pat, who was just waking up for work, if he'd take his time getting out the door. Within a few more minutes I was in the shower washing quickly between contractions and Pat was calling his parents to meet us at the hospital. I also debated the big question of the day:

Should I at least paint a clear coat on my toenails between contractions?

Then the visual of delivering a baby on the side of the road...later explaining to my daughter that she was a roadside baby because mommy needed to have nice nails. So I scrapped that idea. Sawyer came with us to the hospital and didn't enjoy watching me in pain. Some ladies on A Baby Story on TLC sound like they're singing in a gospel choir while giving birth. I'm more quiet and sort of hummed through the bad ones. Either way, he didn't like it and held his head down looking at the floor. Pat had to walk him around the hospital until his parents came. Eventually, Pat's parents took Sawyer home to our place to hang out so that he'd be all geared up to come back to the hospital after the baby was born.

The hospital had me in a delivery room and I requested an epidural. Sawyer's delivery was fun and easy and the epidural worked really well for me. Fortunately, it was the same this time round. Unfortunately, the anesthesiologist was not a hot guy like last time. Can't win 'em all. My favorite doctor was on call. Dr. Edwards is young and has a great sense of humor. She came to see if my water had broken. She lifted up the sheet to take a look and said something like, "Oh my gosh!!!" I was half expecting to see a baby chillaxin' on the hospital bed down there but it turns out it was my bag of waters, unbroken. Totally weird. Those might have been her words, too. Totally weird. Dr. Edwards had never seen a bag hanging out unbroken and said, "This just made my year! How cool is this?!" I wasn't feeling quite as excited as her, but did reach down to feel this bag. It was there alright. The doctor broke the bag, though things were already progressing quickly enough.

By 11am or so I was 10cm and we were ready to push. The nurses got Dr. Edwards and rolled out the mirror. Yes, the mirror. Pat and I got to watch it all happen just like with Sawyer and as strange as it sounds to some people, it's awesome! It's also fortunate because at some point during pushing, Dr. Edwards and I were chatting when I noticed Haddie's head was coming out on its own. I pointed this out to her, but all it really meant was that I needed to give a couple more pushes. Start to finish, labor was somewhere around 6 hours and pushing was 6 minutes. Pat was great and I'm so glad he's into the whole childbirth thing and was able to see it all. He has a tough stomach and is pretty mature about everything, probably more mature that me.

We had a bit of drama at the moment Haddie was born. During pushing, her blood pressure was dipping and rising a bit. It was so far into labor that there wasn't much to do but just put me on oxygen (which we'd done with Sawyer) and keep on going. I wasn't worried at that point. Once her head was out, we realized the cord was wrapped around her neck pretty tightly. Also like with Sawyer, Pat didn't get to cut the cord as the baby came out. (He did later get to cut it closer to the belly once she was on the table and you can see her feet were still a bit blue.) Haddie came out purple and limp and quiet. Everyone who's had a baby knows there's a moment of silence that's broken with a cry. You want the cry strong and loud and it can't come quick enough! Haddie's didn't come. Eventually, we heard a sort of weak cry put at that point they were already putting her on the table to work with her. Seven people rushed in. I had nothing to do but lay there and count the doctors over and over. Seven. One lady had a medical emergency bag with her. I heard someone coaxing the baby, "Come on, you can do it!" That scared me. The blank look on Pat's face scared me. Haddie's cries started to come but I still didn't know if she was okay. Dr. Edwards kept telling me the baby was fine and that it wouldn't be a problem, but she didn't turn to look at the group behind her working on the baby.

When all was said and done, in a matter of minutes, Haddie had just come out a bit quickly and stunned. They deep-suctioned her to get her clear of anything she'd swallowed and to get her lungs going. Her color was there and she was fine. There were no lasting effects. A nurse explained to me that her first minute Apgar score was a 1 (out of 10). But that at 5 minutes it was a 7 and then a 9 at 10 minutes. The fact that her score kept rising quickly showed that her body was adjusted.

That's really about it. We were anxious to get out of the hospital. We'd gone in on Monday and left on Wednesday. With Sawyer, we were afraid to leave the hospital. They'd told me he'd stay in the hospital until closer to his due date. The next day they'd said maybe just a few weeks and hours after that they told me I could leave the next day. We were not prepared! With this baby, we had a toddler waiting for us to get back to his normal routine and cute clothes waiting to be worn. Haddie was full-term, nursing well and sleeping, all I could ever ask for in a newborn. I was someone who loathed newborns. I thought that all they did was squirm and cry and make you feel completely incompetent. No, that was just our little Sawyer! Plus some new parent anxiety and planning a move overseas.

Haddie is now a month old and had a great first month doctor's visit. She's nearly 10 pounds. She'd only lost a few ounces the first few days and then was back up past her birthweight by one week. She's starting to smile more, and they seem like social smiles. She winces through the million kisses her loving brother gives her but will not tolerate being held by Pat during her fussy time at night. The look on Pat's face when he does hold her is priceless. He's a natural dad. Just how good a dad he would become was impossible to know when we were married. I consider myself really blessed that he's got these kids' backs and my back!

I'll post lots more pictures and some more interesting stuff about these kids and some strange musings later. Such as the fact that I have this odd need to be around really old people right now. I really want to just pop in on the senior center in Odenton and play some Monopoly. Would they be as fun as the old folks in Cocoon? Or In Her Shoes?