Haddie Noel's Birth Story

Since I wrote Clara Hope's birth story six months after her birth, it wasn't quite as fresh in my mind. I'm hoping starting this two weeks after Haddie's birth might help me include some more details since as we all know, pregnancy brain doesn't disappear once the baby is born. We have mom brains now and details literally just slip out of it. I'm not sure exactly how, but I know there must be a very scientific explanation for it. ;)

Also, here are my thoughts after Clara's birth story was written on what I would like to do the same or differently with my second child's birth. Obviously, we decided on a natural birth center birth with midwives.

This is a picture of me at 39 weeks, on Friday, December 6. We went to the Imaginarium with Clara that morning. I sat on a bench and watched Ian and her play half the time because I was just so.dang.tired. I'm wearing the same dress in my 9 months pregnant picture with Clara. I was much more swollen with Clara. Apparently that's what an August birth in Maryland looks like compared to an Alaska December birth. I felt a million times better in that sense with Haddie. I was tired and uncomfortable but it paled in comparison to how I felt 28 months prior.

I had been having Braxton Hicks for months, but they had been getting stronger and more frequent for the past month. Because of this, I was terrified of having the baby early and before Ian made it home from the slope. I'm sure I drove all my friends crazy analyzing every twinge. I felt like a first time mom again. I had to tell myself that nothing I was feeling would make me think I was in labor if Ian was in town, it was only because he wasn't that I worried. Luckily he made it home on December 2 and I was still very much pregnant. A last minute "work trip" (ahem...) allowed my dad to be in town for about four days over the weekend I was due. Because I was so nervous about leaving Clara and her being with someone other than family, I was praying I would have the baby that weekend.

Saturday, December 7:

I spent late night Friday into Saturday morning getting very, very sick. If this wasn't my body "prepping" itself for labor then it was mother nature's cruel joke of giving me the stomach flu on my due date.

Sunday, December 8:

5:33 a.m. I had my first real contraction. It reminded me a lot of how Clara's labor started (at 4 a.m. on a Saturday) - in the dark, wondering "When is this going to happen?!" and then...

5:30-8:30 a.m. I continued to have very irregular contractions about 10-20 minutes apart for the next few hours. I could tell it was going to be awhile so I told Ian I still wanted to go to church. He thought I was crazy but knew better than to argue with me. At 8:30 a.m. I called the midwife on call to let her know I was in early labor. They said if it's during daytime hours on the weekends they like to have a heads up.

9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. I had three contractions while in worship. I didn't want anyone knowing I was in labor because I didn't want to be bugged all day knowing it was not quick moving thus far. I did mention to a sweet friend there "I'm in early labor" because 1) I trusted her ;) and 2) she was on our list to help with Clara if we needed. Thought she deserved a heads up before I called her in the middle of the night or something. We met my dad at church and my dad asked if we wanted to go to the Glacier Brewhouse for brunch. Why not?! I don't have anything better to do. The contractions continued every 10-20 minutes. My contractions with Clara never got a regular 4 or 5 minutes apart, they would be 2 minutes, 7 minutes, 4 minutes, etc. I knew better than to wait for them to get regular but I also knew they needed to be a lot more painful and closer together for me to even think about going in.

1:00-2:30 p.m. - We all napped. I woke up to the contractions but was able to fall back asleep easily.

3-5:30 p.m. - I checked in with the next midwife on call (Trish) and told her it would still probably be closer to this evening. She said she would check back in between 8 and 9 p.m. I was ready to get the show on the road so Ian took Clara outside to play. I baked oatmeal cookies (exactly what I did during the beginning of my labor with Clara), scrubbed the floors, did laundry, took a shower, and vacuumed. I told someone "nothing compares to the nesting of a laboring mother." About 4:30-5:30 the contractions really started to pick up. They were more painful and probably 8-11 minutes apart on average. We ate dinner with Clara and I continued to just breath through the contractions. I still was overly confident that I could do this without screaming my head off. ;) HA!!!

5:30-8:30 p.m. The contractions were getting much more intense and closer together. At about 6:30 I remember thinking they were more intense than the ones I experienced with Clara now, and I got the epidural with her when I was 5-6cm so I was very hopeful that I was at least 6cm. I was having to breath through them, sometimes rock back and forth...We put Clara to bed at 7:30 p.m. and told her we would be having the baby that night and her Papa Bear would be with her in the morning. I was thanking God I didn't have to ask friends to stay the night and that someone she knows well and loves would be with her when she woke up. (Not that she doesn't love our friends, but no one compares to Papa Bear. ;) I called the midwife at 8:30 p.m. She told me to meet her at the birth center to be checked about 9:20. She said "We'll see if you'll stay or you might go home to labor some more." A few minutes prior I had a strong enough contraction and made the poor choice of sitting down and I had cried out, thinking I'd wake Clara. I wanted to tell the midwife if she sent me home I would head to the hospital for drugs because there is no way I could make it through another labor as long as Clara's! But I held my tongue. ;)

9:00 p.m. - My dad arrived and Ian and I (mostly Ian) gave him a quick run down of Clara's routine but in between contractions I said "I think we'll be home by morning." I  was so, so glad he was there. It was not nearly as emotional putting Clara to bed knowing he would be the one with her if we weren't home by morning. I waited a couple minutes outside the car door to have my next contraction hoping I would only have one in the 10 minute car ride there if I did that, and thankfully I was right. I had practiced a lot of breathing techniques and taking some "Birthing from Within" classes, but mostly I just defaulted to the same breathing and rocking back and forth I did with Clara...but this time, it was way more necessary. During the contraction I had in the car since I couldn't rock back and forth or grab a counter top, I tried another technique we had talked about in my class - breathing/repeating a line, prayer, etc. So I started off  "I can do all thingggggssssssssssss througggghhhh CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!" And that's when I figured out that yep, just stick with breathing and rocking. The latter didn't help. And Ian had to stifle a laugh. ;) lol.

9:30-10:00 p.m. We got to the birth center and spent some time talking to Trish, the midwife on call, about my labor pattern and how it compared to Clara's. She checked me and I was really hoping to be 6-7cm, especially when she looked at me immediately after and said "Ok, well you're definitely staying." But then she followed up with "You're 5cm and 96% effaced." Ok, well, that's not so bad. But I was scared that if the contractions were this bad at 5cm and they weren't with Clara...what was I in for?! She gave me the choice of getting in the shower which can help speed things along or walk up and down the stairs in the building and do some stretching which might help lower baby who was still a little high. We moved all of our things into the birthing suite we chose, since luckily no one else was giving birth that night. (More reasons on why that's lucky for the other expectant mothers, later.) Here are some pictures of the suite from their website:

 

10:00-11:00 p.m. Mostly we walked slowly up and down the stairs as the contractions started to get more intense again, as they had slowed down when we initially arrived. Ian timed them on my phone. He also took a video of me breathing through one. I could watch this video, I still can't bring myself to watch some of the video he got of me in transition/close to pushing. I'm not sure if I ever will. lol. Trish mostly left us alone but did come up to look at my contractions (on a free contraction app Ian had on his phone) and get my blood pressure and the baby's heart rate, which was great.

11:10 p.m. We decided to move into the shower, where things quickly got more intense. I was making noise throughout all of the contractions, and before where I needed Ian to hold onto...now I NEEDED him. Like if he walked a few feet away I started to panic. Totally gross but every woman who has had a kid knows this feeling - during one of the contractions in the shower I screamed out "OWWWWW I KNOW I DON'T HAVE TO BUT I FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO POOP (A BABY)!" lol. Trish was like "Good!" In the meantime she had called Barbara, the owner of the birth center. Trish is new to the practice so Barbara still attends births with her. I muttered something about not wanting to and Trish kept trying to instill confidence in me but mostly I was just like "dude I know I can do this, I just don't want to." And Trish said "When you get to the point that you don't think you can do this - that's when we're having a baby." I was thinking, I don't care, my whole body hurts, but whatever, check me and tell me I'm 10cm and lets get this show on the road. Poor Trish. She is so nice. I was just...you know, not in the mood. I think I stayed relatively nice though, lol. She checked me on the bed and said I was 8cm and she was going to call Barbara and the birth assistant (Victoria) to come in because I was very close to having a baby. THANK GOD. At this point I was basically done.

11:30-12:58 a.m. Ian set up the video camera (which ran out of footage before baby was born, so we just have the before mentioned footage of me screaming like a lunatic) and the birth playlist I made had been playing. Here's a sample of what I had and I couldn't wait to find out what Haddie's "birth song" would be. I told everyone to pay attention to what song it was (since I knew I wouldn't be able to.) 

 

 

As you can tell, it was quite the eclectic spread. All three of them commented on it at some point. Victoria commented on how much she liked the song "Roar" by Katy Perry and then Trish said "Erynne, this is the perfect song for you!" and I just groaned. LOL. Barbara asked what kind of music "Rock Your Body" was and they all said Justin Timberlake, and that he is kind of genre. She said it reminded her of Michael Jackson. I again groaned. Loudly. They loved that I had Christmas music on there since I was having a Christmas baby, and Victoria said (closer to midnight) that it was her birthday and she loved it when babies were born on December 9. Ian told her "Happy Birthday" in between telling me I was strong and I could do it and I literally wanted to murder him. Totally irrational, I know this now. But at the time I wanted to scream "THIS IS ABOUT ME AND THE FACT THAT I THINK I'M DYING RIGHT NOW!" but I knew I couldn't. Mostly because I couldn't string together anything coherent other than "My pelvis is being ripped apart!" and "FUCK!!!" Ian said when I said the first one he made eye contact with Barbara and they looked at each other like "well...yeah. It kind of is being ripped apart." lol. At this point I was screaming and groaning and thinking these thoughts, basically on a loop:

Damn, I really should have finished reading 'Birthing from Within' 

 I wonder if I'm the loudest laboring mom they've ever had 

 I'm never ever ever having more children 

 I don't want anything to go wrong, but just maybe something will happen and they'll have to take me to the hospital and I can have drugs. Maybe they can have them waiting for me in the ambulance.

Why would any idiot do this without drugs?!

This must be more painful than other people's births. How do people do this without screaming? Am I weaker than those moms who breathe out their babies? No. No. Something must be wrong with my body, it hurts more than it should. The midwives can't possibly know how badly it hurts. I should tell them. Repeatedly.

This baby is going to be stuck in my pelvis forever. FOREVER. They will literally have to cut it out of me because I have no idea how it's going to make it's way out.

If another laboring mom comes in, she's going to run screaming to the hospital because I will have scared her out of this.

But all those thoughts came out sounding like this "AHHHHHH FUCK NO NO NO I CAN'T NO NO NO I CAN'T FUCK!" Ian tells me I wasn't that bad. That I was definitely louder than I was with Clara but not as bad as I perceive. I also remember commenting that I was going to faint (ummm melodramatic, much?!) and that I was going to throw up - I actually thought I was going to do the latter at one point but I didn't. What I have pieced together from comments made during the labor and conversations with Ian and the midwives we had after the birth, was that basically at 8cm, the baby was stuck with her face kind of sideways. Clara was born OP (sunny side up), and while this isn't like that, it was definitely not the ideal position. Barbara said I basically had to "muscle" her into position so for about an hour and a half, while I was thinking those thoughts about, I kind of pushed and beared down but also just sat through the contractions on the bed (super fun) until she was low enough, face down and putting enough pressure on my cervix to fully dilate me. When I first started bearing down, my water broke and exploded everywhere and was apparently a lot of water, lol. TMI (what part of this story isn't?!) but they had their hands in me a lot, feeling for position and trying to stretch me and see what's going on. That made it a million times worse. I was with it enough to know I couldn't kick them ;) but I did say "no, please no" at times when they went to check again. At one point I think there was concerns about her heart rate, because the next time Victoria did it I heard Barbara say "I like those heart tones better." I think they discovered they needed to whisper around me because I heard her say "her cervix is a 7" and I said "NOOOOOO!!!" and Trish said "Erynne! Cervix change during labor! You aren't going backwards!" and they whispered quietly from then on. lol. They all kept reassuring me I could do it, I was doing it, my body was made to do it, while I writhed and screamed and said "I can't I can't I can't!" I'm not sure I could describe the pain at this point. It was the contraction pain, but also the pressure pain, and worst of all the pelvis pain that radiated into my legs. I remembered some of that from Clara - I had convinced myself that was a hot nerve, torn ligament, or something to do with her position. The nurse had told me from that birth that I had a hole in my epidural and I now believe her...but that was just a smidget of the pain I was feeling now.

12:58 - 1:08 a.m. - Finally I heard Barbara say "Ok, let's have this baby!" I wasn't sure if she was excited because it was close, or if I really needed to have the baby because something was wrong. I didn't ask. She told me to bear down and push and I did and we screamed together "It BURRRRNNNNSSS!!!" I thought I pushed for hours because of how long I felt the ring of fire and I couldn't tell how much progress I was making. They didn't tell me until after that I only pushed for ten minutes! When I got her head out, it sounded like there was some brief concern about if the cord was wrapped around her neck but it wasn't, just her body. I pushed some more and before I knew it, there was a light blue little body on my chest. They were rubbing her back and trying to pink her up and get her to cry. Ian yelled out "The baby looks just like Clara!" but she was face down on me and I couldn't see her face. They had to give her a little bit of oxygen but as soon as I did she started to cry. I asked "What is it?! Ian!!!" and Ian looked and said "IT'S A GIRL!!" I was so excited. I thought it was a boy based off of Ian's family history, but I think in my heart knew it was a girl. Either I knew it, or I wanted it, I don't know. But it was just like "Of course. That's what was supposed to happen." I yelled out "I wanted a girl!" and Barbara said "You did?!" and I said "Yeah, I guess!" Haha. It just kind of came out. I'm sure I would have been thrilled with a boy, but my heart was so full of love for my second daughter and I was so thrilled to raise two sisters. They asked what her name was and I said "Haddie." They said they loved how well Haddie and Clara went together, and then asked her middle name and I said "Noel." Haddie Noel was born at 1:08 a.m. on December 9. We didn't get many pictures but here is a cropped (to make PG) one:

1:08 a.m.-5:00 a.m. - Ian commented on how much smaller she looked than Clara. They asked how big Clara was and I told them 8lb 8oz and they said "Oh, I don't know, thiis is a big baby." They had also all noticed how long her umbilical cord was, and how long she was when they placed her on me. I guessed 8lb 7oz. She was 8lb 11oz and 21.25 inches. A big healthy girl! We spent the next hour nursing in bed before they came back to stitch me up (I had one very small first degree tear from where I tore with Clara). She latched right away which was a huge relief after my breastfeeding experience with Clara. We ate, went over what to do once home, nursed some more, I showered, etc. We left by 5:00 a.m. and were home before big sister even woke up.

I will write more on my reflections on the birth experience, how breastfeeding is going now, and Clara's reaction but for right now I need to get to bed! I will sum it up by saying the post partum experience overall has been so drastically better than my first that I would do natural birth again in a heartbeat (IF, big IF, we were to ever have a third). Plus, we're all pretty fond of miss Haddie. So totally worth it. :)

Sorry for all the typos. Subsequent children don't get edited birth stories for mommy's blog. ;)