Birth Stories

I don't know about the rest of you mommas, but Labor Day always makes me think about the days I met my babies. Way before I became a mother, I spent hours reading pregnancy books and searching birth stories online.  I ingested as much information as I could to best prepare myself for the unknown.   If you're like me, you enjoy reading about labor and delivery - the incredible miracle of birth! So, I thought I'd share all three of my birth stories with you, my lovely readers.

We’ll start with my firstborn, Joel Benjamin. Let's just say I wasn't blogging in those days, so there's not a beautifully written birth story for him... However, I did take great notes throughout his labor so that I would always remember them, and that's what I'm able to share with you...

Let me start by explaining the amazing timing of his arrival!  We had just found our first home, after renting for three years.  We settled on a Friday, moved on that Saturday, had my baby shower on Sunday, my water broke on Monday, and he was born on Tuesday.  For real.  You can’t make this stuff up!  And did I mention he was three and a half weeks early?  So, naturally we had unpacked everything except for his nursery, assuming we’d have plenty of time to do that later – ha!

It started when my water broke at 6am.  It was the classic roll-over-in-bed-not-sure-if-you-peed-yourself saga.  Lovely.  Decided to wait it out for three hours, and then still didn’t want to just show up at the hospital until having said water confirmed to be amniotic fluid.  So, we saw my midwife at 9:30, who literally laughed at me and told me to go to the hospital - where we arrived an hour later, after running some we-just-bought-a-house errands.  They even called us like, “Um, yeah, hi.  Where are you?”

I started having contractions, which gradually got more painful, and hubby and I walked the hospital hallways for HOURS.  I wanted a completely natural birth (you can go ahead and laugh now), so they were graciously allowing me to do everything I could to have labor start on its own.  Nine hours after my water broke, I finally ended up getting pitocin at 3:30pm.  Two hours later, 5:30pm, contractions were 3 minutes apart, and I was feeling done physically and emotionally.  Three hours later at 8:30pm, I got stadol, and received a second dose at 9:15pm.  That made me pass out, only waking at the peak of every contraction.  So, while it gave my body a rest, I totally felt like I was dealing with one long, horrible contraction.  Fun.  I was checked at 10:30pm, fully expecting to be ready to push (come on, already) and was told I was 4cm…  Epidural came at 11:15am, we all went to sleep.  Was checked again at 1:50am and was 9.5cm.  More resting… then pushing, and he was born at 4:33am – 22 hours after my water broke.  I do remember at one point the doctor on-call came in and said if he didn’t come soon, I’d be getting a c-section.  Thankfully my midwife looked me in the eye and said, “You can do this.”  And I did.

My second blessing was the day I met Gabriel Dean. His birth story can be found on the website I created when we got his fatal diagnosis at 20 weeks gestation, the direct link is here.

And, my third baby is my only girl - Zoe Elizabeth. Her birth story was written on the "Family Blog" portion of that same site, found right here.