If you’re familiar with the labor of my first daughter, you’ll probably find that this birth story is much shorter and, possibly, more “boring” than that one. That is something that I am SO okay with!
Tuesday, September 8th: Appointment with my midwife, 39 weeks: 1.5 centimeters dilated and 50% effaced
Monday, September 14th: I woke up to contractions starting around 5:30 in the morning. They were manageable, but I got out my phone and began tracking them on an app anyway. They were consistently 5 minutes apart so I was pretty sure this was going to be THE day! I decided to get up around 7:00 and shower.
At 10:00 AM I had an appointment with my midwife that had already been scheduled since I was now 40 weeks. At the appointment, I was dilated to a 5 and 50-75% effaced! This was super exciting for me since my first labor was incredibly long (I labored at home for 5 hours after my water broke, went to the hospital and was just dilated to 1, and then labored for another 30 hours).
My midwife suggested that we get some lunch and walk around until my contractions were more unbearable. This was a time that I had been dreading my whole pregnancy. Usually laboring naturally isn’t very glamorous, and it’s really beneficial to be in a comfortable space. We were living with my parents at the time so I really felt like I didn’t have a good place to labor. Before heading to their house, we stopped by Walmart to get hospital snacks and I wanted Nick to get a towel just in case my water broke before we got to the house. I did NOT want to be without a towel and have to clean our van later. We also grabbed lunch at Jersey Mike’s Subs, a smoothie for me at Einstein Brothers, and then we went to a park to eat and walk. We walked a lap around the park and I was tired of people looking at us funny and having to stifle my groans when a contraction came along so we left around 12:30 PM to head to my parent’s house that was across town.
We weren’t at their house long because again, it just wasn’t a comfortable place to labor for me. I called to let my midwife know that we were headed to the hospital. I checked into triage around 2:00 and at this point, I was 6 centimeters dilated! I was moved to the delivery room fairly quickly. The picture below shows my pain and frustration with how many times it took for an IV to be put into my arm, while also being incredibly uncomfortable having to lay in the hospital bed while having contractions between the needle sticks. This is something I really hate about a medicated birth.
After having my first daughter in April 2019 (16 months earlier) I hemorrhaged. I was told that this was likely to happen again so I had been contemplating whether or not to get an epidural or to go without. As much as I wanted to have a natural birth, and as doable as it seemed since I was already dilated to a 6 just a few hours in, I just really couldn’t imagine the excruciating pain I would be in if I hemorrhaged again. I remember the doctor and nurses rushing in and how much my body was being jerked around by multiple people who were trying to stop the bleeding. I really worried that if I had a natural birth with Nora that it would be incredibly traumatizing to experience that without any pain medication. I chose to get an epidural and it was administered at 2:41 PM. By 4:11 I was 8cm dilated and 90% effaced. At this time my water was still intact so my midwife broke that to move things along. I was also so glad that I still hadn’t needed any Pitocin while having the epidural and that my body was doing what it was supposed to do to help move things along quickly unlike my first labor.
During this time I tried to rest and Nick and I watched Impractical Jokers on the small hospital room TV. I moved as needed to help get Nora into the best position, drank a lot of juice to keep my blood sugars high enough, and texted friends and family.
At 5:30 I was 9cm and by 8:30 pm they started a very low dose Pitocin so that my contractions were more consistent and I could start pushing soon. I pushed for two hours with Emery so I was determined to beat that time! At 9:00 everything was ready to go and I began pushing. Right before she came out it was discovered that the cord was wrapped around her neck. Thankfully, little Nora was born shortly after at 9:21 pm!
Unfortunately, after she was out I did hemorrhage again. Even though I had an idea that it may happen it didn’t make it any easier, and this time around was worse than the first time. I lost more blood and I had terrible postpartum shaking. The combination of how bad I was shaking and how vigorously the doctor was “massaging” my stomach caused me to become extremely nauseous and I started throwing up. It felt like this went on forever and it was the most miserable I have ever felt in my life. Nick was standing next to me holding Nora while trying to also hold my puke bucket and console me.
I remember glancing around the room and seeing a pile of blood-soaked cloths on the floor. Sometime in the midst of all of this, Nick cut the umbilical cord (delayed cord clamping!), and Nora had some fluid that she aspirated that needed to be sucked out. She weighed in at 8 pounds, 14.5 ounces and they rounded that to 15 ounces which was kind of cool because Emery also weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces!
Everyone in the room did a great job to take care of me and Nora. After all of the commotion, we were able to breastfeed for the first time at 10:15 and it went SO well! I was incredibly happy to finally have that time with my baby after basically losing the first hour after birth to trying to stop my bleeding. We were able to head to the postpartum room at 12:30 AM. Nick grabbed us some dry sandwiches from the hospital hospitality room and then we were finally able to go to sleep after a long day!
