Maisy's birth story part 3

Isabel asked me if I felt like I could wait a few minutes to start pushing so she could run out and gather what we needed and call the doctor. 

I said that was fine, and while she was gone Aaron texted our family that it was time to have a baby!

Isabel came back and said the doctor was on his way. She helped me get readjusted in the bed and asked me if I remembered what to do. I admitted that I needed a little refresher.  As soon as she started talking, it all came back to me. I was ready! Right around 5:25am I started my first set of pushes. After three pushes I asked her if I was doing it right and if it was working.

"Um, yes. You're doing great. We should probably slow down a little and give the doctor time to get here."

That was definitely reassuring.

We did a couple more sets of pushes. The doctor came in around 5:30am. His name was Dr. Campbell and he was not a doctor from my OB practice. He apologized for not coming in the room earlier to introduce himself. "I've been sleeping off a migraine for the last three hours!" he informed us.

I suppose it was good I didn't need to deliver any earlier!

He glanced down to check the progress of the delivery. "Woah! Give me time to put my gloves on!"

Isabel told me to push on the next contraction but to not push very hard so that Dr. Campbell had time. I complied, and then Dr. Campbell took his place.

"Hey dad," he spoke to Aaron, "here's the metal." He held up the scissors to cut the umbilical cord. Aaron and I both laughed.

"Yeah, those aren't for me," Aaron said.

I told Dr. Campbell that Aaron was pretty squeamish and that being in the room for the baby being born was miracle enough!

It was time to push again. After three more, Dr. Campbell told me to really concentrate on pushing for 10 full seconds each time.

I agreed, but asked somebody to count for me. It was easier for me to count to 10 very fast at this point, as it's pretty tiring to push out a baby.

The next contraction came quickly and Isabel counted to 10 for me during each push. After the third one, Dr. Campbell told me that the baby's head was out and I just needed to give one more big push.

I did. And out she came! It was 5:42am and I had only started pushing 20 minutes before.

I couldn't see her very well at first, but Dr. Campbell held her up for a few seconds. Even in the mess of just coming out, she was beautiful and had a full head of dark hair.

"She's a girl, right?" I had to confirm my very last slight concern. His hand was covering a very crucial area so I couldn't actually see for myself! We had a giant explosion of pink at home and were very prepared for a little girl. Ha!

"Yep! It's a girl!"

Dr. Campbell laid her down. I couldn't see very well what he was doing, but I knew he was getting ready to cut her cord. Then next thing we knew, blood went everywhere, all over sweet Maisy.

The doctor laughed and reassured us, "I promise I didn't just hurt your child! She grabbed her cord and yanked it before I could finish cutting it!" He wiped her off.

Maisy had to go over with the other nurse in the room after that and I sent Aaron with strict orders to take a lot of pictures and videos.

Then came all of the other not-fun stuff for me. I had not been looking forward to this part and feel like it is kind of the worst part. Probably because I would rather be holding my new baby or at least be able to watch her better as she got weighed and such.

Anyway. I won't bore you with all of the labor aftermath. It was over soon enough. Finally, I got to hold sweet Maisy Kate.

She was perfect, and she even listened to me and was smaller than her brother when he was born. She was 8 pounds, 2 ounces of pure cuteness.

After awhile, Aaron's parents and my mom came in to meet her. My mom said that my dad texted that Graeme woke up right at 5:45. I joked that he must have sensed something was off. His new baby sister was born just minutes before that!

My mom left to go help my dad with Graeme and said they would bring him by in a couple of hours. Aaron's parents stayed for awhile longer and got to see Maisy's first bath and all of that fun stuff.

They offered to get us breakfast from Chick-fil-a, but I opted for something a little more bland from the hospital room service.

We were finally able to make the short trip to our hospital room and relax after they left. It was hard to believe that it was pretty much exactly 12 hours from the time my water broke at home to when Maisy made her way into the world.

I am so thankful for another healthy, quick delivery. Aaron thinks I'm crazy because after it was over and he asked me how I was, I replied, "I'm good. That was fun!"

"Fun?! What's wrong with you?"

"Well, fun might be the wrong word..."

Maisy, whether or not it's crazy, I did have so much fun bringing you into the world! I'm so glad you're here and that I get to be a mommy to a little girl. You are a princess of the King and we pray that your little heart will love Jesus always! Mommy and Daddy love you so very much. And so does Graeme...even if he doesn't know it yet!

Maisy's birth story part 2

The ride to the hospital was pretty uneventful. My contractions were more at the "annoying, kind-of-painful" stage still, but they were coming often. Aaron and I talked on the way to the hospital, but neither of us remember much about what we talked about. It was strange that the next time we were in the van we would have our baby girl with us. And we would have two kids!

It was late on a Sunday night. As soon as we pulled off Capital Boulevard onto 440, Aaron said, "I didn't want to say anything, but did you realize we hit all green lights on Capital?" (a near impossible feat!)

From there, it was a quick rest of the way to the hospital. We pulled into the parking lot around 9:30pm and Aaron pulled under the drop-off area at the Women's Center. He helped me get the suitcase in and then went to park the van. My mom came in with me, and I signed in.

I could only have one other person come up with me at first until we had a room, so I went up by myself and Aaron would follow shortly behind.

Since I had pre-registered, it was quick process upstairs. Aaron joined me and we were told to wait for a nurse to come out to take us to triage.

When our nurse came out, she ushered us to a triage room and asked me about my experience so far. Once I told her that my water had for sure broken, (I assured her I had gone through about every towel in our laundry room!) she didn't bother making me get hooked up in triage. She had me change into a gown and took us straight to a room. After having to go to triage with Graeme and being sent away, this was a welcome experience. Our nurse's name was Isabel, and she was very nice.

She got me hooked up to the machine that monitored my contractions and Maisy's heartbeat. After my water broke, I hadn't felt Maisy move as much, so it was a relief to hear her strong little heartbeat. I was also having contractions closer together than I could feel. I was only feeling about every other one. After those monitors were strapped on, she put my IV in for when we would eventually need it. Aaron had to turn away. He's pretty squeamish and had already signed my mom up to be in the room for the epidural. Isabel asked me a few more questions and then she finally checked my cervix.

"Well, you're at about one centimeter."

One? Seriously?

Well, that was a bit disheartening. 

She told us our moms could come up whenever we wanted them to and encouraged us to walk around the hospital for an hour or so to try to hurry things along a bit.

"See? You should have let me clean more. It would have helped!" I joked with Aaron.

Our moms joined us and we set off to explore the empty, quiet halls of Rex Hospital. It was reminiscent of my labor with Graeme. Aaron and I had walked these halls a couple of hours then as well.

After just a little bit of walking, my contractions had increased in intensity quite a bit. Every time one came around I had to grab onto something (usually Aaron's hand) to help. I'm not very expressive and I remain pretty quiet during pain. But they hurt a lot. My constantly-joking husband helped keep the mood light. He would often try to remind me of the breathing methods from our birthing class with Graeme in an overly-dramatic way.

"No. I'm not going to breathe like that. Stop." I said in return.

An hour passed and I was definitely at the place where walking was becoming out of the question. I gladly returned to the bed and asked for some water. Isabel came back in and hooked me up to the monitors again. I didn't know this or had forgotten, but when your water breaks on its own, they don't check your cervix as often because there is more risk of infection.

I was dying to know what progress, if any, I had made, especially since my contractions hurt a lot more. It was close to midnight when she finally checked again.

"You're at three! That's some pretty good progress for two hours."

I supposed it was. Although I felt that a higher number would have seemed a bit more fair. It would be another few hours until she would check again.

Alas, if this was the pain at three centimeters, I was ready for some sort of relief. I asked Isabel for some pain medication through my IV.

"It might make you a bit loopy..."

I definitely remembered that from last time.

She hooked me up and almost immediately I felt the effects. It definitely didn't take the pain away, but it took my mind off of it quite a bit. And I definitely felt a bit foggy and silly.

Our moms settled in the room with us and we turned on the TV. While scanning the channels, we stumbled on the football game that our dads were watching back at our house. Aaron's parents are huge Green Bay fans and it was the end of the game they were playing. They were losing by a little bit and I suppose there was a slight chance they could tie it up. We let his mom watch for awhile until it was evident they would lose.

In my drugged state it finally occurred to me, "Why am I watching football? While I'm in labor? What is this?"

We all laughed. And then we found something much more suitable to passing time while in pain:  Friends.

I was able to sort of drift off between contractions and mostly kept my eyes closed to rest. I had now been awake for almost 24 hours. I really regretted not taking that Sunday afternoon nap. The contractions were still pretty frequent. My breathing would quicken and I would grab onto the bed rail and Aaron's hand tightly each time one would come.

Later my mom and Aaron said I would all of a sudden say really random things every once in awhile. One of them being, "Make sure dad knows to take off Graeme's big coat before he puts him in the carseat." That's a mom I guess. Safety of the kids comes first. Ha.

After about an hour, the IV drugs were not very helpful at all. My mom finally said, "Whitney, why don't you go ahead and ask for the epidural? I can't watch your face anymore!"

We called Isabel and she said she would call the anesthesiologist. Aaron and his mom left the room. Aaron's dad had finally arrived and so his parents kindly went out to get him McDonalds at 1am.

My mom and Isabel helped me sit on the side of the bed. I wasn't looking forward to the process of the epidural, but remembering how much it helped reminded me that it would definitely be worth it. When the anesthesiologist came in, my mom and I both recognized him as the same guy who gave me an epidural for Graeme's delivery. I instantly felt more at ease knowing he did a great job and clearly had done this probably thousands of times since then. And who knows how many times before that.

It was a not fun experience, but it was over quickly, and then I felt a million times better. Aaron came back up with his dinner. His parents were trying to get some sleep downstairs. My mom decided to leave for a couple of hours to set things up in their apartment for Graeme's visit. I was finally able to sleep as well, and it was really, really good sleep surprisingly.

Next thing I knew, Isabel came in to check my cervix again around 3:30am. I couldn't believe I had slept for two hours. This time I had progressed to five centimeters. This actually felt encouraging since I was numb to my contractions and it didn't feel like they should have been doing anything!

I made the comment how when I was in labor for Graeme, I went from five centimeters to ten centimeters in about 30 minutes.

"Well, you never know! But I don't think we will be meeting this baby for a few more hours. You can probably hold out until 8am if you want to when your doctor will come in." (My favorite doctor, the one who delivered Graeme, was supposed to start his shift at 8am on Monday. He had joked with us at our NYE appointment that I should deliver Monday because he would be on call that day.)

While I did like Dr. Anderson a lot, I liked the idea of not being in labor for 5 more hours too.

Isabel had me roll on my side and she put a giant bean-shaped rubber ball between my legs to "simulate squatting" and help the baby drop faster. Around 4am, she left us to rest again.

Well, I quickly realized that my two hours of sleep had come and gone. This position immediately brought back the feeling of my contractions. I suppose it was doing it's job. I asked Aaron for my phone to try to distract myself for awhile. I was able to deal with the contractions for almost an hour when I finally called Aaron's name to wake him up.

He groggily answered.

"Hey. They are pretty bad again. I have a feeling it might be almost time," I told him.

He quickly gathered himself together and called Isabel in the room.

I explained how I was in a lot of pain again. "Does it just feel painful or does it feel like pressure?" she asked.

I currently only felt the pressure of answering her question correctly. 

"Ummmm...I don't know. I guess there's some pressure?" I wasn't quite sure and I hate complaining about pain anyway.

"Well, why don't we try some more medicine through your epidural. Give it 15 minutes and then if it doesn't help, I can check your cervix and see where we are."

I agreed to this, and she added the medicine and left the room again at 5am.

More medicine was indeed useless. After 10 minutes, I was even more sure that it was time to have a baby. But then I easily second guessed myself and thought maybe I was just in a lot of pain and the pain would get even worse while I waited until 8am or later. Yuck.

"Do you want me to get her?" asked Aaron.

"Well, it's only five more minutes until it will have been 15 minutes. It's fine. I can wait."

(Yeah, I'm almost positive Maisy would have come five minutes earlier if I didn't have an overwhelming need to not be a bother to people...)

Isabel came back in at 5:15am. "Do you feel any better?"

"No, not really," I confessed.

"Alright, let's check then."

She was quiet for a second while she felt. "Oh! Yeah, you're done. There's the baby's ear. We can get ready to start pushing!"

"Does she have hair?!" I needed to make sure of this.

Isabel laughed. "Yes, I definitely felt some hair."

I was so happy that it was time to have this baby girl that I had been carrying for so long. The same thing happened with Graeme... There's something about that phrase, "It's time to start pushing," that suddenly makes me forget all about being in pain, gives me tons of energy, and makes me so excited. Labor suddenly becomes really fun.

That's probably a really weird thing to say...

And I'm sure a lot of it is the epidural talking.

To be continued...

Maisy's birth story part 1

It's been awhile since I've had time to sit down and blog, and as I'm sure you all know, Maisy is here!

Yes, she is beautiful. I mean, I'll be honest in that I was a little nervous that our second baby wouldn't be as cute as our first. Graeme was clearly adorable...

I had nothing to worry about though. God gave us two beautiful, healthy children. We are so very thankful for both of them!



I guess I'll backtrack a bit before I get into the birth story...

The end of my second pregnancy got fairly miserable. I know I didn't have it nearly as bad as some people, but I was done being pregnant. My feet were so swollen and sore, and I was running out of shoes that fit. My back hurt. My heartburn was bad. I was so tired all the time. And uncomfortable. Among other things that weren't fun. Oh, and I still had to wrangle a heavy toddler every day...

Sorry. After-the-fact, not-necessary complaining is over.

And I knew that any day none of that would matter anymore and of course it would all be worth it. And I knew I shouldn't complain because I was blessed to be pregnant with a healthy baby. But, truthfully, when that "due date" is still a mystery and days keep going by with no baby, it gets a bit frustrating. I wasn't really counting on Maisy coming early, but I hoped that she did.

She did not.

January 1st. New Year's Day. Due Date.

It came. And it went.

I had an appointment on New Year's Eve (Thursday) and my doctor said I was half a centimeter dilated. I was pretty sure he just said that to try to make me feel a little better. My only solace was that I had an appointment Monday morning and I could schedule an induction from there. I was nervous about going too late because Graeme was a pretty big baby and Maisy had been measuring big too. 

I tried to keep my hopes up and pray a lot. I knew that God knew exactly when Maisy would come and all I really cared about was that she was safe and healthy. We enjoyed a fun weekend with Graeme.

On Sunday, all was normal. No signs of baby Maisy. Graeme and I went to church. I sat in our first service with Aaron. I had steady contractions all through the service, which was really nothing new. They were hardly painful. And when I stood up afterwards and moved around, they stopped.

I lead worship for our preschoolers during the second hour. One of the songs was a bit lively and required some jumping. I told the kids that it had better help me have a baby.

Little did I know, it just might have...


Graeme took a great nap that afternoon. I had considered a nap, and was tired, but at that point it was a lot harder for me to sleep at night if I slept during the day. (But I really should have taken a nap!)

Aaron had to stay late for a meeting after church and didn't make it home until around 4:00 that afternoon. When he got home, we put in place our plan to start cleaning the house for the week ahead. I typically do all of the cleaning, but the week before when I had cleaned by myself I hurt my back really bad. I relented that I was pregnant enough (at 40+ weeks...ha!) that I needed his help that he had offered for many weeks. He played with Graeme while I did the lighter work of dusting and wiping things down. Then we would switch and he would vacuum and mop the floors and do anything that required a lot of bending over. 

It was slow going, but we made a lot of good progress. We would be able to finish quickly once Graeme was in bed and we could both work at the same time. Around 5:30, we did one final switch before we would take a break to do Graeme's bath/book/bedtime routine. I came upstairs to play with Graeme while Aaron went down to mop all of the hardwood floors.

Graeme and I were in the playroom and I had painstakingly lowered myself down to sit on the floor for the thousandth time that day. Even though I was trying to take it easy with the cleaning, I had still been working pretty hard and had been on my feet a lot all day. Graeme got up from where we were playing with his kitchen and ran into his room.

"What are you doing, buddy?"

No answer.

"Hey, Graeme, come back out here please..."

Silence.

Not that there is anything in his room that could hurt him. But, he's a toddler. We are constantly only seconds away from some sort of giant mess. And it was really close to bed time. I looked down at my watch. It was 5:44pm. The time for giant messes had passed.

The thought of getting up from the floor to stand and walk the 10 feet to his room sounded nearly impossible at that time. My brain couldn't get my legs to stand. But, crawling didn't sound so bad. My legs didn't mind that so much.

I began crawling to Graeme's room. And all of a sudden, I felt a very slight and strange twinge-y thing in my stomach. And then my legs were very warm. And very wet. And I quickly deduced that it was impossible that I was peeing my pants.

And remembering it now seems like it all happened slowly. But no, it was very fast. I suddenly had no trouble at all bolting to my feet and running quickly to the bathroom that was thankfully right next to me. All the while yelling "IT'S HAPPENING! IT'S HAPPENING!"

"What?! What's happening?!" Aaron yelled from downstairs. "What's wrong?! What is it?"

"MY WATER JUST BROKE!"

I was in quite a bit of shock. My water did not break when I had Graeme and I was not expecting it to this time. It was quite the strange feeling. 

Aaron ran up the steps freaking out and brought me towels.

I called the on-call doctor while I stood in the bathroom on towels. I had to leave a message.

While I was on hold to leave a message, Aaron quickly called my parents to try to figure out what to do with Graeme since it was almost time for him to go to bed. I asked if they would mind coming up here so he could just sleep in his own bed for that night. They agreed that would be easiest.

Graeme thankfully ran around clueless to everything but probably thought we were being quite crazy.

Thankfully, the doctor called right back. It wasn't a doctor from my practice, but he was nice. It's funny to me that the first question is "Is this your first baby?" I feel like when I say it's my second I earn a few points and they trust me a bit more to know what's going on. The doctor said that since I hadn't been having any contractions, there was really no rush to get to the hospital. As long as I was comfortable at home, we didn't need to head that way for a few hours.

This made me feel much better and then I was able to be quite calm. I loved that I could now put Graeme to bed like normal, finish cleaning the house, finish packing the hospital bag, and take a shower. As long as I did all of those things with towels in between my legs, of course. Ha.

Aaron, on the other hand, thought I was insane when I spouted off all the things I wanted to do. He might be right, but coming home with a baby to a clean house was definitely something we were doing. No question.

My parents arrived not long after we called them as we set them into panic mode as well. But, it was good that my mom was there to help Aaron finish cleaning. The plan was for my dad to spend the night at our house with Graeme and for my mom to come to the hospital with us.

Aaron's parents joined us shortly thereafter and his mom was going to come to the hospital with us too while his dad kept my dad company and watched the football game before he would come.

Around 8:30pm I finally decided that I should probably drink some water and actually rest for awhile.

As soon as I laid down on the couch, I noticed that I was having contractions. And they were a bit painful. I started watching the clock and realized they were only two-three minutes apart.

Thirty minutes later, I went upstairs where Aaron was shaving and finishing getting ready to go.

"Hey...so, no big rush, but I think we should probably leave pretty soon. My contractions are starting to hurt pretty bad and they are about three minutes a part..."

At that, he accidentally cut his face in his rush to finish shaving. I reminded him that I had said "no big rush..." We quickly threw the last couple of things in the bag, peaked in on Graeme one last time, and said goodbyes to our dads.

Our moms got in Aaron's car while we got in our van. And off we went to the hospital. Maisy was for sure on her way!'

To be continued...