The baby is finally here! What an experience it was bringing her into the world, yet what a joy to look upon her every day!
On my due date December 14th, Aiden, his son, and I had a dance party to see if that would get stuff moving a little faster. Sure enough, at 2am the following morning I woke up feeling wet and when I stood up I started leaking everywhere. I went to the barn and had a shower and then tried to sleep since I wasn’t having contractions yet. However, I was so full of adrenaline I didn’t get much sleep.
By 8am we decided we should probably get checked at the hospital even though I wasn’t in labour yet. Sure enough my water had broken but I still wasn’t contracting. At 2pm I agreed to be induced since things weren’t moving along. I then spent the next twelve hours hooked up to oxytocin and baby monitors slowly starting to feel contractions intensifying. At around 2am the following morning I felt the need to push really strongly so the doctor checked me and I said I was 10cm dilated and it was time to push. I pushed as hard as I could putting everything into it for about half an hour....no progress. A new doctor who had just come in for her shift came to check on me and the resident who was tending to me. “ She is only 3cm dilated,” the doctor said. I don’t think I have ever felt so defeated in my life. They all left the room to asses the situation while I laid in the bath starting to feel a lot of pain and not in control of the situation. They came back and tried to explain the mistake to me while I moaned and half processed what they had to say. It turns out the front of the cervix had thinned right out but the back had not and the resident hadn’t checked the back since my baby’s head was right there in the front. I agreed to an epidural as I was exhausted from pushing and having been up for over 24hours: They kept saying the epidural would be there in 5min, one hour later after several rounds of laughing gas and a shot of fentanyl, the specialist finally showed up. I barely remember any of it, not even the needle going into my spine, I think I finally found sleep around 4am, and woke up feeling incredibly numb around 7am.
I called my Mom explaining the situation and how I didn’t think I was going to deliver till the afternoon. After the call, the nurses were debating if they should check my progress. The one nurse decided to give it a try and turned to the other nurse looking a little shocked and was like, “Yeah, the head is literally right here.” Apparently I looked shocked and confused, having zero trust after earlier that morning. “You can feel her head if you would like,” the nurse suggested. Sure enough, I felt her little head of hair with my finger. She was right there! Soon a different resident and the doctor from earlier in the morning were there and I was instructed to push like before. I couldn’t feel a thing, it was all rather surreal and strange. They set up a mirror That helped a lot as I could see my progress since I couldn’t judge by feeling.
At 8:06am December 16th, just as the sun was starting to make an experience over the ocean horizon that I could see from my hospital window, our little Sequoia entered the world crying and pretty instantly trying to find a breast to feed off of. She was a healthy 7lb 9 ounces with a head full of hair and able to lift her head on her own. I delivered a pretty massive placenta with a chunky cord and I lost a lot of blood and tore a lot! Thankfully, didn’t really feel any of this because of the epidural. We stayed till Saturday evening in the hospital as I needed a couple blood transfusions and iron drips; I lost a significant amount of blood!
It’s been a week since her delivery and I don’t know if I could have been blessed with an easier baby! She gets up twice at night to feed, she is a breast feeding champ, and only cries when she has a dirty diaper. I feel so blessed to be her Mom and share her with Aiden and see the joy she brings everyone in this family. I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas present!
As for myself, I’m starting to putter around the barn again and feel my old energy come back. I feel pretty hormonal sometimes and even miss being pregnant on occasion. I miss falling asleep feeling my baby in my womb! These weren’t feelings I had expected and sometimes I struggle to process them. However, I’ve never felt so blessed nor so happy in my life, and to share this little bundle of joy with a man I love very much, to have a child we can call our own is an amazing and beautiful thing! He proved himself a phenomenal partner and was by my side the entire delivery and I feel so much love watching him play and cuddle with our daughter. My biggest take away from this whole experience is that God is Really Good!
