I’m really in denial about this, but when I publish this my baby will officially be one year old and I am so much more aware of how fast time goes with his birthday than with Kamden. Because it’s been one whole year I thought it would be a good idea to write down this story before I forget any of the details. I know I love birth stories but I’ve never written my own before and this blog is one way I can document my own family history as well as getting to share stories for others. And since pictures are life in my house I’ll be sharing some of those first moments as well as his precious newborn pictures.
Originally I was due on April 13th, however, when April 13th came and went I had to set a date for induction which I was praying would not happen. I had been having contractions since the end of February so I fully intended to have that baby early but that didn’t happen either. Now interestingly enough I found out that after your specified due date people feel fully justified in making all kinds of encouraging comments, such as, “Well I guess you’ll probably have a 10 pound baby now.” For some reason third trimester has always been the best for me and I have never had a desire to actually go through labor so I could have waited til June and been perfectly happy!
After about a week of having contractions starting at 2:30 am, the morning of April 19 seemed like the same drill. I got up anyways to make sure that the state of my house was in order, just in case this was the day. About an hour later Kyle got up to make sure everything was okay, and asked if he should get a sub. (For anyone who doesn’t know, Kyle is a 7th grade English teacher).I was having contractions about every 15-20 minutes at that point but still thought it might be fake labor. At 6:00 am he decided to go to school but have his sub come in just in case. We also notified Grammy, who was on standby and since it takes her 3 hours to get here we figured it was worth it even if it meant she just had a long weekend with us.
Shortly after Kyle left for school Kamden woke up so I found myself having contractions with a 2 year old climbing all over me and asking repeatedly for a show or a snack or whatever else he was in need of. Around 8 I hadn’t had a contraction for a good 30 minutes so I figured I may as well get that 2 year old out of the house and possibly distracted. Our favorite walk is to the neighbors’ house which is about half a mile away. They have chickens, which are Kamden’s favorite and lots of other fun ways to entertain toddlers. As soon as we started the walk, my contractions decided to ramp up to about 8-10 minutes apart. They weren’t awful and I have a pretty high pain tolerance so we just decided to keep going. I figured they would probably stop after we got to the house.
By the time we reached the house they were getting slightly closer together. Both times I’ve gone into labor I’ve been kind of in denial so I just kept telling myself, this was probably just practice, but I did text Kyle and let him know he should probably try to make it home by lunch, which was a couple hours away. I had a 24 hour long labor with Kamden and figured I probably wouldn’t go from that to 3 hours so I had a good amount of time. Kyle responded by asking, “Do you think you can make it to the end of the school day?” Now one of the great parts about my husband is that he is really good at getting me to try new things and pushing my limits but unfortunately
labor is not one of those things I can control very well so I told him I would do my best but wasn’t making any promises.
Right around that time my neighbor Rick, noticed we were visiting the chickens and came to see if we needed anything. I told him we were good but mentioned that I was having contractions. Now originally I figured we would just go down for an hour and walk back home, but now that the contractions were getting closer together there was one part of that walk home that I was dreading. Between our houses, right before you get to mine, I have to walk up a hill, it’s a short hill but has a decently steep incline and I couldn’t quite figure out how I was going to walk up that hill with the wagon and the toddler while having contractions so I asked Rick if he would be willing to drive us back up to the house. At this point I think he was worried that he was going to be the person delivering the baby but I assured him I would be fine.
We got home right before Grammy arrived and I called my midwife to see if she thought I should come in. When I called her she told me to wait and come in when I couldn’t talk through a contraction. By this point my contractions were about 5-7 minutes apart and we live an hour and 20 minutes away from the hospital. It was about 10:30 at that time so I texted Kyle and told him he should definitely come home at lunch. I just felt like we should go in even if she wasn’t so sure. Kyle told me he would come back once his sub had a chance to eat lunch and got to the house about 11:30. I still think he thought I might be in fake labor!
Now the difference between the drive with Kamden is that it was midnight when we went to the hospital, not noon, and I quickly realized, busy highways, honking cars and construction is much more intense to labor in than pitch black night. The hospital had decided to do some construction and since we had only been there when Kamden was born, neither of us could remember how to get in with detours. I basically told Kyle I didn’t care how he got me to the emergency entrance but that it needed to happen now. I wasn’t panicked but labor was pretty intense by then. When we went to check in the lady asked me all kinds of questions that I felt were rather unnecessary, such as “Why are you here today?” and “Are you actually having contractions?” It’s the closest I’ve ever been to screaming at a person in my life. Behind me a man was telling a riveting story of how his finger was just about severed and they had just stitched it back together. All the while I was having contractions and trying to be polite to the person asking them. I had realized that my very detailed birth plan had been left in the car so Kyle was frantically looking for that while I tried to convince them to let me in.
Finally, they wheeled me up and I was greeted not only by my midwife, but by 5 other people. No one else was in labor that day so everyone was just waiting for me, kind of felt like being in a fish bowl. It turns out that students were being trained everywhere in the hospital, and none of them had seen a birth so I was their lucky ticket to that experience. Pretty much as soon as I walked in the room I got sick so my midwife said she needed to check me right away. When she did, she discovered that I was at a 10 and could start pushing whenever I wanted to. Another perk to this discovery was that I didn’t have to have an IV port. I was really excited about that fact since needles are the worst in my view (hence why I don’t do epidurals).
Since I had just come from a rather crazy morning and felt no desire to push I told them all that they could just wait for bit because I needed some time before I started pushing. With both babies my labor slowed down at the end and I never felt the need to push. This was such a huge blessing for this second one because it allowed me to catch my breath and get in the right mindset before going through the final phase. During that time I remember seeing people mowing their lawns and some guys working on the hospital roof and just thinking, “Don’t they know what’s about to happen?!” It’s so funny now but then I really just wanted the whole world to sit and be still for a second.
After a couple hours of just going with the contractions I decided I would try to push and my water hadn’t broken at that point so they thought the pushing would get that to happen. I started pushing and when my water broke it was amazingly like the movies! I pushed for about 30-40 minutes and finally Roman Jude entered the world at 3:55pm. We didn’t know the gender of our baby going into the delivery and I was fully convinced I was pregnant with a girl so it was a surprise, but the best kind because I really love having boys! I had been so exhausted with Kamden I didn’t really remember all the beginning things but with Roman it wasn’t as bad so I watched my midwife hold him for the first time, heard his first cry and saw Kyle cut the cord. It was amazing to be so much more aware in the moment. Having two precious babies has made me reflect a lot on the incredible process of life and how beautiful it truly is. No matter how excruciating the process was, it is an accomplishment that I hold in high value and getting the end result of my boys has made every moment worth it.
If you just made it through this entire story and are not related to me that’s quite impressive! Here are some of the first moments with Kamden meeting Roman for the first time and of course his newborn pictures! We love you Roman Jude!
Hospital Pictures by me and Newborn/Family Pictures by Captured First Photography
Such a beautiful family!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
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