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Sophia’s Birth Story

And by my best estimate, Sophia was conceived 2 days after my first Weight Watchers meeting. 

With my previous children I had guessed the gender correctly each time.  So when I guessed that this baby would be a boy, Steve was pretty confident that I was right.  I tried to explain that a lot of my “guessing” this time around had to do with *wanting* to have a boy so that he could play with the other two boys, but apparently that didn’t register.  Yes, Steve was truly shocked when I brought some girl clothes home “just in case” late in the pregnancy.

At 38 weeks I got a nasty stomach virus accompanied with high BP. Ugggh. Recovered on Friday enough to hold Jessica’s birthday party (slumber party with 6 10-11 year old girls!), and was good Sat & Sun. Monday afternoon (38 weeks 4 days) I was sick again, and so Tuesday I pretty much did nothing all day.

Tuesday afternoon I started having pains in my upper abdomen about every 10 minutes. Pretty intense pains. Because they were UPPER abdomen, I wouldn’t have identified them as contractions, except that the pain wasn’t constant–but as I said, about every 10 minutes. And I had small amounts of bloody show (prior labors I’d not had bloody show until well into dilation, other than when my OB stripped my membranes in first pregnancy). My poor hubby got home from doing a painting job (painting a garage ceiling–painting a ceiling is hard work!) and said that he wanted to take a soak before dinner, and I told him “no, you have to help me make dinner! I can’t do it!” Keep in mind that it was about 5:30 at this point…and my planned dinner was lasagna. From scratch. With 5 cheeses (really, it’s worth it!). And I had just turned on the water to boil to cook the noodles (gluten free because I have Celiac).

Being a wise man…he didn’t argue with me. 45 minutes later we were both in the Jacuzzi while the lasagna baked. Abdominal pain went away. Yay. Ate dinner at about 7:30, which is a bit more than “fashionably late” when you’ve got 4 young kids!

After dinner the pains came back. Sigh. I gave my midwife a call, found out that she’d already had one birth that day, and was with another laboring mom. Oh boy…the deal was that if she had another mom in labor at the same time as me, I might need to go to her birth center–an HOUR from my house. NOT what I wanted to do. Okay…well, let’s see what happens.

The contractions continued through the evening. My midwife’s client gave birth. Since my “contractions” were about 3-4 minutes apart and seemed to be getting a more intense (I made hubby set up the birthing pool), we decided to have her come out to see how far along I was. She arrived around 11:30 I think–I wasn’t very focused at that point.

She spent a while getting her stuff inside and chatting, then checked my cervix. I was 3 cm…and she said that was generous. She also didn’t feel that my cervix was “ripe,” and said baby was still floating high. Sigh. NOT what I’d expected. She hung out for about an hour, during which time I didn’t have any contractions. Decided to send her home, so she was out the door by 1 a.m., and hubby and I tried to sleep. I took some Tylenol, which helped with the abdominal pain enough for me to sleep. I did note that the bloody show had stopped.

I woke up at 2:45 to definite contractions- -low and in the front. They were about every 5 minutes until 3:25, then gradually slowed to about every 10 minutes, but got more intense.  I woke up hubby at 4 a.m., noted bloody show was back at 4:30. By 5 a.m. ctx were every 5 minutes, 30-60 sec long.

My midwife called around 7 to see how I was. Since I’d had the false alarm and the ctx weren’t consistently long, we didn’t want her to come out. Ctx immediately fizzled out after getting off the phone…which had me even more concerned than I’d already been about poor positioning/ prodromal issues.

My midwife called again sometime mid-morning to check on me, and I told her I wasn’t having ctx. “Oh! I just finished rescheduling all my appointments for the day!” I awkwardly replied “I’m sorry…perhaps you need a nap after the births yesterday?” She agreed that would be good.

She called me again at 11-ish…another client in labor…”okay, well I’m not, so let’s hope it stays that way!”

Ctx started shortly after noon, every 10 min. DRAT! Hubby was back at the painting job, but had promised to be home around 2–when the older kids would be home (they get out of school early on Wednesdays). I tried to distract myself from the ctx by processing the last of the tomatoes from my garden that I’d picked the afternoon before the first frost less than a week previous. LOL! By 1:30 ctx were ever 3-4 minutes. I called hubby to confirm he would be home by 2. He wanted to stay a bit longer to be home at 2:15 (I know how that goes! Add 15 minutes to whatever his predicted time home will be…but I didn’t want to make him stop in the middle of rolling a wall…he would have to clean up all of his tools, only to have to set them back up another time to do 15 minutes of work). So I didn’t say anything about the ctx, just urged him to finish up as quickly as he could.

Kids came rushing home at 2…”did your water break yet?” asked an excited Jason (6 years old), “did you have the baby yet?” asked Jessica (10) and Katie (8) in succession as they got through the door a minute apart. Two of Jessica’s friends had written me “congrats” notes (too cute!–they’ ll go in the baby book!), she was so sure I would have the baby while she was at school.

About 2:25 Steve got home. I called my midwife at 2:30. Her other client was no where close to delivering. She seemed distracted. I had a ctx at 2:33 and couldn’t focus on her–although in retrospect I’m not sure she knew I had that ctx. “Okay, we’ll figure this out, keep me posted” she said. I hung up.

Ctx continued, getting more intense. 3:30 hubby called midwife. Somehow she thought my ctx stopped at 2:30! HUH???? She must have been really distracted! She said she’d check with another midwife to see if she could come out. Keep in mind that she had called said midwife the previous day to see if she could provide back up…and found that this midwife was shoveling 15″ of snow out of her driveway–not exactly typical conditions for this time of year in PA!!! We didn’t have even a flake at my house…about 45-55 minute drive south.  I’d talked to this “back up midwife” on the phone before as “doula to doula” conversations and e-mailed, but I’d never met her in person.  She had only just recently finished her CPM stuff and started attending births on her own, I didn’t think she was technically certified yet–she was still apprenticing when I got pregnant.

The back up midwife could come…so that was the plan. She would arrive around 5. 

Hubby finally got the birth pool all set up, and I got in around 4. I did not like it as much as I like the Aqua-doula I’d gotten for previous 2 homebirths. “Reccommended” water level was too low from top, so I couldn’t comfortably lean forward over the edge–my back curved too much. I thought about asking hubby to fill it fuller, but I knew that he was already paranoid about it bursting and leaking into the first floor. I also think it needed to be warmer for me (as I always liked the water at about 102 in my previous labors…but again, hubby was paranoid about bursting the pool because the directions said to keep it below 96, so I was already pushing it in his mind to have it at about 99!). I stayed in it though. Ctx got more and more intense.

Our friend Ellie arrived shortly before 5 to take care of the kids.  She and her husband are our “Titus 2″ mentors from church.  She set about getting dinner ready for the kids.

The back-up midwife showed up 5-10 minutes after Ellie.  Set her stuff up, and then I got out of the tub for her to check my vitals and then my cervix. We laughed about the nature of our meeting. “Hi Jennifer!”  ”Hi Jenn, so nice to meet you in person finally! Now let’s check that cervix!”

She said I was 5-6 cms with a bulging bag of water, baby at -1 to 0 station. Sigh. Not quite how far along as I’d hoped to be as I’d gotten to 5 with barely any significant ctx with my previous 2 births, although not *completely* depressing, since I went from 5-birth in just a few hours with those. This was probably at about 5:10.  Jennifer called my midwife to report my cervical check, and my midwife reported that her other client had just birthed, so she would wrap things up, and then be over in about an hour and a half (her daughter–who is an RN and works with her–would stay with that client for a while).

So I had put my swim suit bottom back on (yeah…full swim suit–my sons were in and out of the room after all!), and was trying to decide if I wanted to get back into the pool, or labor out of it for a while. Ctx…very intense.  At the end of it I feel a pop…there went my water! Good thing I’d had hubby put chux pads on the floor! Pulled off the swim bottoms to switch for dry panties with a maxi because I did not want fluid running everywhere. Getting that on was a trick! I tried sitting on the toilet, but couldn’t before a ctx hit and it was INTENSE. Hubby had no clue what to do to put a pad in my panties for me (this is why women are better doulas–LOL! How many pads have I put in for laboring women…).

Somewhere in there Jessica came in to see what my progress was, and I told her my water had just broken, that she should tell Jason since that had been his repeated question for days when he’d get home from school. “Baby will be born sometime tonight.” So she went downstairs. And I was aware in the ensuing melee that Jason came upstairs…though I never actually saw him. Jessica stayed downstairs because she thought nothing exciting was going on and she was watching the Hannah Montana movie and calling a friend to report the progress.

Finally I got myself put together and walked back into my bedroom.  Another ctx hits and it again is INTENSE, I’m leaning on the end of my bed, Jennifer is squeezing my hips and encouraging me, and then it hits me…I’ve got to push!

Jennifer pulls my underwear off.  Asks if I want to get on the bed or in the tub. I don’t know, can’t think. Steve is calling the kids so they don’t miss the birth.  Jessica later told me about how she hastily got off the phone with her friend “well the baby should be born sometime tonig…wait, I’ve got to go, she’s having the baby NOW!”  The next ctx hits, and yes, baby is coming–and I was not pushing with it (yelling, yes, pushing, no–LOL! I didn’t want to make it any more intense!).  Steve yelled again that the girls better get upstairs or they would miss the birth.  Another ctx, and baby’s head slides out.  Jason snapped a picture on his disposable camera at that moment.  Jessica walked into the room to see me from behind with a baby face between my legs, which was not what she’d expected!  She backed up a couple of steps out the door…then came back. Next ctx baby was completely out…Jennifer somersaulted her through a nuchal cord, and I just stood leaning on the bed relieved that it was over–LOL! After catching my breath, I turned and took my baby, then walked over to the bed to lay down.

I had a baby girl at 5:28 p.m., October 29. She was 6 lbs 3 oz, 19 inches long Sophia’s Birth Announcement

The kids were SO excited! Sean didn’t come up until after the birth.  Ellie kind of poked her head into the room about 15 minutes after Sophie was born, but wouldn’t come in–went back to finish with making dinner.  We finally got her to come in about half an hour later.

It took 75 minutes for the placenta to deliver, during which time my midwife arrived.  “What happened to 5-6 cms???” she asked. It was my hardest 3rd stage so far, I guess my uterus is just tired.  I had burning back pain with it like a posterior labor.  I tried standing, sitting on the toilet…of course Sophie was eventually nursing (she didn’t leave my arms for the whole time I was waiting for the placenta, one of the wonderful things about home birth!).  I pushed more than I’d had to with my others. We left the cord intact again until the placenta delivered.  Like last time…no hemmoraghe. I hemmoraghed with my first three, and because of my high BP, my midwife was concerned I would this time too.  She had even mentioned at my last prenatal that she wanted to do a prophylactic Pitocin shot, but I told her I’d rather only use the Pit if my uterus wasn’t clamping down or I was bleeding too much.

I felt great the next day–probably too great–LOL! It’s a double edged sword you know, because people tend to think “wow, she’s bounced back, I guess she doesn’t need much help…” but I did still have a newborn taking up an aweful lot of my time! And I had Jessica’s birthday the day after the birth–which I needed to bake a cake for (okay, hubby offered to go buy an icecream cake, but she had been asking for my gluten free chocolate cake for over a month–it is REALLY yummy)…at least I had wrapped her presents previous Friday when I was feeling well!, sent Jello-Jiggler pumpkins to preschool with Sean on Thursday (had made them on Wednesday before ctx kicked in) and the older 3 kids had a Halloween parade at school Friday which I needed to pack them up for…and I needed to cut up apples for all of their classroom parties WHAT was I thinking??? At least I have one of those apple slicer/corer things which neatly cuts them into 8 wedges… People from church brought over dinners for a few days, as did several neighbors.  All told, it translated into 15 meals when you count in leftovers…

Tags: Birth Stories, Children at birth, home birth, Water birth