It's been a while but this got too lengthy for instagram and it's nice to have this one in the same spot as the others. I re-read my previous birth stories while I was pregnant and I had forgotten so many details. I'm glad they are recorded somewhere because apparently my memory can't store them...
Birth Story time! I normally try and get the birth story done right away before I start to forget details but I guess with kid #5 I should be glad I’m getting it written down at all. And luckily, it was a pretty uneventful birth - except for the wonderful baby we got at the end part.
None of my previous children have come before their due date so mentally I was trying to aim for August 3rd or later. That said, I really did think my official due date was a bit later than my real due date based on what I knew about my body plus my first very early ultrasound matching that. I had my first ultrasound at only 6 weeks. I know a lot of obs won’t even see a mom that early but with my history of hyperemesis gravidarum, I get to be seen asap so I can get all the drugs to keep me hydrated and alive. This pregnancy was actually my worst for hg and I ended up taking 3 different hg meds until all the way to my third trimester and I never did get off zofran. But I digress.
Anyway, the kids really hoped for a baby on August 3rd or before so we could maintain the multiples of 3 situation they love (Jude’s 7th birthday was August 4th at which he point he would be seven and not fit with the 15, 12, 9 and 0 of the others). And I was really hoping for a July baby because as much as Jude said he didn’t mind sharing his birthday/birth week with the baby, I did want them to have a bit of spacing just for very practical purposes. But I wasn’t confident that would happen. And I did not want to be sitting around all of July wishing I wasn’t pregnant anymore.
So I filled up our summer! The very end of June we drove to North Dakota for a family reunion/hometown birthday celebration. Had I known the baby would have come as early as he did, I don’t think I would have gambled with that trip but I am glad we made it so I guess it's good I didn’t know! I had already started having a good deal of Braxton Hicks contractions, especially when in the car or out in the heat but that's not that unusual for me.
The rest of July was filled with VBS and day camps for the kids with the last week of the month left open for resting and last minute nesting. On Monday the 21st, all 3 big kids had camps in the city so instead of spending 4 hours driving home between all the drop offs and pickups, Jude and I went to the Science Museum and had a mom-son date. I had planned to do something similar on Wednesday at the Magic House (a children’s museum) but Tuesday night I changed my plans as I was feeling pretty tired.
So Wednesday, at 38 weeks and 3 days, one of the hottest days of the summer (heat index 111 - yuck!), I dropped Jonah and Norah off at art camp 45 minutes from the house and headed home. On the drive home I had 2 contractions. They were very noticeable but the car had been triggering contractions all the way back in June so I didn’t think too much of it and still stopped off at Aldi for 2 things…that turned into 12 things, then I had another contraction in the freezer section and decided I needed to go home, get out of the heat and put my feet up. Luckily Lucy was around and keeping an eye on Jude so I was able to lie down and as soon as I did, no more contractions. I got up a bit later to get the kids from camp and had another contraction or two on that drive so by the time I got home, I texted Craig and told him that he needed to plan to take the kids to camp the next day. I specifically said in that text that I didn’t think we were going to have a baby today but I was done driving more than 10 minutes anywhere. Then I managed to make dinner with only one more contraction.
After dinner, I still just felt very antsy so I took a bath then Marco Polo’ed a friend to ask her to pray since I was feeling anxious and tired and did not think I could do this for another week or two. Right after that, 8 pm (the only real times I had were the things I did on my phone like calls and MPs) I had some “show” so I went and told Craig that maybe I was wrong about not having a baby tonight. I felt a bit silly calling the midwife to say I had only had 6-7 contractions over the last 10 hours and none in the last 2 hours or so (hardly the 5-1-1 rule you’d find in a pregnancy book :-) but I just felt like I was going to go into labor soon and I have a strong history of precipitous labor and we all knew I was really not to dawdle with the updates this time around. My main midwife was supposed to be out of town so I texted her partner just to give her an update and have her on standby but it turned out that my midwife wasn’t able to leave as planned so she gave me a call (8:20). She offered to come but I told her to give me a bit more time but I’d let her know. I think she prepared to come pretty quickly anyway. After I hung up, things started. A little after 9, I told Craig to call her back as they were coming every 5-7 minutes now…
So now it was clear I was in labor but I could not get comfortable. Jude’s birth was pretty much pain free and I had really hoped to replicate that but I just could not find a position where I could comfortably relax. Finally I went upstairs to the living room. It was hotter up there but Craig put all the fans on me and I was able to rest on the couch with the lights dim and relax. The boys were already in bed but the girls said good night and I told Lucy I thought we might have a baby before morning so she wished me good luck.
Time gets fuzzy here but I do remember Craig accidently turning up the living room light when he meant to turn on the porch light for the midwife and I started yelling “turn it off, turn in off!” while he scrambled to dim them again. But other than that, I was finally in my laboring groove but also starting to feel a bit pushy. Not anything I couldn’t relax through but definitely something. I had started timing my contractions with an app originally but it kept resetting which annoyed me so I gave up on that which meant I had really no idea what time it was or how long I’d been laboring or anything.
My midwife arrived (about 10pm) and I could tell she was waiting for a break in contractions to talk to me - and I was waiting for a break to respond but everytime I thought one was ending, another started and it was then I realized “Hey, I’m in transition!” which was nice because I didn’t feel as nearly out of a control/done with labor as I often do at that point. I finally got a break and we talked up whether to move downstairs to my nice prepared bed and all the birth supplies we had arranged down there but I knew the stairs were not going to happen at this point so she and Craig quickly brought everything up and her partner arrived. I like to push on my hands and knees so it really didn’t matter whether I was on a soft bed or not. I started to push and I heard and felt my water break. A few more pushes and his head was out. He came out with his one hand up by his face and with a sticky shoulder just like Jude but the midwives got me to change positions a bit and helped work him out. At 10:29, we had a baby! (That woud be 2 hours and 20 minutes from my first midwife text when I told her that I wasn’t in labor but thought I might be soon!) They passed him up to me and I checked for his gender and the first thing I said was “Oh, I was wrong!” Every other birth, I very strongly suspected a specific gender and was right. This time, I was much less sure but still leaned girl just because of how sick I was (and I had been sicker with the girls than the boys up until now). But the last week or two of pregnancy, I was really bothered that we didn’t have a boy’s name decided on - a few strong contenders but nothing official. Maybe that should have been a sign!
He whined a bit but didn’t give a good yell right away so the midwife gave him some taps on his back and chest and when he did give a good cry, the girls both popped their heads round the door and we told them they could come meet their brother. Apparently at some point during all this Jude also woke up and went to the bathroom. Craig thought he might notice the commotion but I guess he didn’t because he went back to bed without a word and I didn’t even know he had gotten up.
A few minutes later Jonah came up too (I guess Craig had told him what was happening when he checked on him earlier in the evening). Then they all headed off to bed. We spent the golden hour up on the couch. Craig made me french toast (the first meal after giving birth is always the best and this one more so because I was finally free of nausea!). I cut the cord and then we all headed downstairs to the nice comfy bed where the midwives did his first check-up and weighed and measured hi - 9 lbs 13 oz. Not my biggest baby but he was also born 11 days earlier than Jude so he might very well have beat him had he stayed put longer but I’m also quite happy that he did not do so. gg
Eventually the midwives cleaned up everything and headed out (people always ask about “the mess” but its really a non issue - even when you give birth on your living room floor). Craig and I finally decided between the names James and Calvin - kinda. We picked both but with James first. I love both names so the decision was really about whether we wanted to mix it up with the J theme. It was never our intention to have a J theme for our boys and actually when we first started thinking up names we were specifically looking for a different letter but then I read a list of biblical boy names and I read out James and both Craig and I were “oh, I like that…wait, that’s a J name!” But in the end, we decided we didn’t want to leave him out. I call him Jamie, Craig calls him James and the kids are divided. I still think I’m going to have to find him a cute tiger as a lovey to go with the Calvin middle name though.
About 2am, James and Craig were sleeping. I was running on adrenaline and there was zero chance of my actually falling asleep but I rested in bed enjoying the cuteness next to me when Jude came down to tell us something but we never even got to hear what it was because he saw the baby. And was shocked! It was really funny. After his meet and greet, he headed back to bed, I finally got some sleep and our new life as a family of 7 began!
