I have a confession. As I was posting my last blog entitled Happy “due date” to me! Why do babies never want to leave my womb on time?, I was totes having mad contractions and literally minutes away from heading to the hospital. Hey, I wrote the blog the night before so I wanted to get that bad boy posted before it became old news, even if I was bent over in pain while hitting the publish button! I mean, obvy I’m super loyal to my craft.
So, the baby did take note of his due date
It was my baby’s due date and once again, I was disappointed during my 9am doctor’s appointment when she checked me and told me I was still only 2 centimeters dilated, same as last week. She had me make an appointment to come back the following Monday to discuss induction dates and sent me on my way. From there I went to the gym, lunch, the pumpkin patch, and then enjoyed an afternoon nap on the couch with Annabelle. I awoke to the strange feeling of cramps – much like those pesky period cramps I used to get when I was 13, and very much like the early contractions I felt during labor with Annie. UH OH. Could this really be me going into labor on my own? No induction needed? I didn’t want to rush to any assumptions that a baby could actually come out of me on time, but over the course of an hour I started thinking I was def feeling something legit. As the contractions got stronger and more frequent, I decided to Google when I should go to the hospital. I had timed my contractions to be about three minutes apart and lasting one minute each. And it was getting harder to comfortably talk through them. Sure enough, the Internet said if contractions were less than five minutes apart I am in active labor and should go to the hospital. OMG, this is really happening, I’m in labor! I was thrilled and so happy that my body was working properly and doing this on its own!
I had to wait in the maternity ward triage for nearly two hours with heavy labor pains before I was admitted to a room. My doctor wanted to come and check me to be sure I was really in active labor and not just being a baby, I guess. My husband told them I’m either having this baby in the hospital or in the parking lot because we’re not going home! I was showing progression from 2 centimeters to 3, not a lot, but some. But I had gone from 50% effaced at 9am to 90% at 5:15, so that’s something. I was begging for an epidural and they kept stringing me along, bating me, making me think it was just within my reach. I came to the hospital at 5:15, was admitted to a room by 7, and had my epidural by 8. Then – instant RELIEF. Omigawd, I know everyone has a reason for doing what they do, but I would never choose to experience labor without an epidural! It put me at ease and I could rest comfortably throughout the rest of labor. Thank the lord.
Like hell I’m getting a C-section
I tried to sleep but the anticipation of seeing my son was keeping me awake, not to mention a nurse was coming in several times an hour to check me. I was pretty freaked out when after a couple hours the doctor said I wasn’t continuing to progress beyond 5 centimeters despite the fact that my water had broken. She said if I don’t progress further soon we may need to perform a C-Section. WHAT! You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. I’ve had the easiest pregnancy on earth, plus a history of very easy labor and childbirth with my daughter, and now they’re threatening a C-SECTION on me. YA RIGHT. I didn’t even really get too tweaked about it because I honestly didn’t believe that would happen. The doctor checked me again and realized some of my bag of water was still in-tact, so she broke it and was able to manipulate my cervix to dilate further to about a 7 or 8 centimeters (out of 10). Unfortunately my baby’s head was in an odd position of being tilted back, so the back of his head was pushing against my tailbone as opposed to having his chin tucked in, which is the optimum head position during birth. That would explain why I had to have my husband continuously massage my tailbone during active labor, it was the source of a lot of pain. My awesome nurse came up with the idea to flip me to my other side and put some pillows between my knees to see if little guy would change positions. Sure enough, within 5 minutes I started having serious abdominal cramping, which was cray that I even felt it considering I had an epidural. But apparently this was a sign that baby had moved into the right position and was all set to take a trip down the birth canal. The doc was like; “Ok, let’s go, time to push!”
GUSH!!!
I made a point of telling my husband to stand by my head so he wouldn’t have a front row seat to the gory childbirth show. I mean, I wasn’t excited about Jeff seeing me shit on the table again while pushing. He’s never let me live that down the first time it happened with Annabelle! JERK! (Btw, pooping during labor is totes normal.) I pushed and was encouraged by the supportive cheers from all the nurses and the doctor as they could see the baby popping out already. On my second push there was a gush of fluid that came out, which was the remaining remnants of my amniotic sack. And the funniest thing on the planet happened – most of it landed on Jeff’s Ugg slippers and sweatshirt!! LOL!! The look of disgust on Jeff’s face was classic and I started cracking up while my baby’s head was hanging out! (TMI?) What a great moment of comic relief for everyone in the room in the midst of something very intense. And with the third push my little man had entered the world – ten minutes later!! I thought it would be impossible to beat my 4 pushes in 25 minutes with my daughter, but I was wrong. Me and childbirth, we’re friends. My doctor told me I had birthin’ hips!
It was so wonderful to hear him cry right away because my daughter was born with the cord wrapped around her neck twice and she wasn’t breathing for about 2 minutes. The sound of a baby crying upon entering the world is the sweetest sound on God’s green earth. I cried tears of pure joy. After they delivered the placenta, stitched me up, and cleaned up the ‘lil guy, we finally got to meet – like 20 minutes later!! Aww….my son.
Welcome to the world, Leo
We named our baby Leo Joseph. I’m a fan of vintage names and Leo is definitely an old vintage name and it just stuck with me. I thought it was classic yet still cool and relevant today, so we decided on Leo pretty much at our 20 week appointment when they told us we were having a boy. Joseph is my husband’s middle name, which is a family name he shares with his dad and brother, so it meant a lot to him to include the name.
We are so in love with our little Leo and I can’t wait to share with you how life has changed in the last week and a half since bringing him home. I’ll save this for my next blog post, the postpartum post. I hope you enjoyed following along this pregnancy journey a second time with me and will continue to follow along as I chronicle life with a toddler and newborn – YIKES! Or is it really that bad? Hmm….we’ll see!