This post will probably take me a while to write, Hunter’s birth story was unlike my two previous births in so many ways! Everything I thought I knew about my body and it’s ability to labor and birth a “certain way” was thrown out the window the second I walked into Labor and Delivery on 2/1/21. It’s been almost a week now and I think I have all the pieces to Hunter’s birth story, I’m relying on the notes I took, what bits and pieces I remember in addition to details my husband has helped me identify. Lets start from the beginning…
My Previous Births
I think it’s important to give some background into what my births with Reagan and Elliott looked like. For their full stories, read Reagan’s birth story HERE and Elliott’s birth story HERE.
While my births with each of them were different, there were a lot of similarities. Basically, I went to L&D, experienced strong contractions, had my water broken, received an epidural, felt an urge to push, and pushed baby out over the course of 5-15 minutes and at the coaching of a contractions monitor and my OBGYN.
Everything went smoothly, and baby was placed on my chest immediately after delivery for skin to skin bonding while my tears were stitched up. Both experiences ended in peace and quiet and calm, with the medical staff cheering me on and praising my body and my efforts for a smooth and easy delivery.
Weeks 38-40 with Hunter
It was made clear around week 38 that Hunter was a very stubborn baby who was not planning on coming out on his own. At my midwife’s appointment I was 0 cm dilated and not effaced. I scheduled my induction for 2/1 just in case nothing happened. At my 39 week appointment, I was still 0 cm dilated, 50% effaced, but my cervix was still high and baby was posterior and stuck behind my pubic bone. My mom came into town that day, so I started walking and eating dates and drinking red raspberry leaf tea to try to get things going.
40 weeks came and went and I had another appointment the morning of my scheduled induction. My midwife wasn’t in the office yet so I had one of the doctors check me. He informed me that I was 2 cm dilated, but my cervix was still high and baby was posterior. He gave me an idea of what the induction later that night would look like, and I went home to get last minute things ready before heading to the hospital.
My Birth Plan
If you read Elliott’s birth story you know that I made it to 7cm without an epidural, and then she came so quickly that I still felt a lot of the pains of birth. That experience gave me the idea that I could birth a baby naturally, and the competitive side of me decided I wanted to try natural birth with our last baby. I talked to my midwife, researched different coping mechanisms, and decided I liked the Lamaze breathing techniques and would rely on that for labor. I watched this YouTube video, practiced breathing during Braxton Hicks contractions, and read tons of natural birth stories online to prepare.
Induction Night
For some reason, the hospital I was delivering at schedules all of their inductions for the night time. We were scheduled to go in at 8pm. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that at 6:30pm I got a call that the L&D floor was full and we were being postponed. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so irritated! The nurse on the phone told me to keep my phone close by because they could call me in the next hour, sometime in the middle of the night, or even the next morning. Lucky for us, they called at 9:30 pm and we headed to the hospital right away!
Once we got checked in, I was hooked up to an IV and a wireless fetal monitor. I’m so grateful our hospital had this option because it allowed me to easily get up and go to the bathroom and walk around without bugging the staff.
At 11:30pm on 2/1 I received my first dose of Cytotec, a drug meant to start contractions, ripen my cervix, and move the baby down. It did start contractions for me, but they were so mild that I slept through them until my second dose came at 3:15 am. When I say sleep, I mean I was hyped on adrenaline and trying to rest but in an uncomfortable hospital bed with machines beeping at me every few minutes.
The second dose kept my contractions at the same intensity level, and I was able to get some more intermittent sleep until 7am. I was checked again and dilated to 4cm, 50% effaced and baby was still pretty high.
Labor
At 7:30am we started Pitocin at 2ml/hour. Over the next 3 1/2 hours my dose was increased hourly by 2ml. Contractions were noticeable but mild, I was pretty bored and eager for something to start happening! I explained to my nurse that I wanted a natural birth but was open to getting an epidural if it came down to that. She was very supportive, and let me know that the anesthesiologist had scheduled c-sections at 9:30 and 1:30 so to keep those times in mind as I labored. At 11am I asked to be checked and I was still at 4cm. This was incredibly discouraging, so I asked for my water to be broken. My midwife was at her office, so the on call laborist doctor came in to break my water.
Based on my previous labors I expected contractions to pick up once my water broke, and they definitely did. They gradually got more intense, and at a certain point in the next hour I started needing Jared to support me through contractions. We tried different recommendations I had read about for managing the pain–sitting on the yoga ball, applying counter pressure, walking around–but none of those worked. For me, the best thing was to either stand or sit on the bed with Jared on my right side. He held my hand and used his other arm to support under my arm and almost lift me up. I would breathe through each contraction, and really focused on remaining as relaxed as I could. When contractions got more painful, I would push my forehead into his chest or his forehead for extra support. Interestingly, as my contractions increased in strength I started feeling like I had to pee in the middle of each one. I figured this was just pressure on my bladder, but this is an important part of the story towards the end.
Something that surprised me was my need for absolute silence through this all. I really transported into a different state of mind and while I was aware of things going on around me I was in my own world. When I felt a contraction coming on, I would wave my hand and Jared would come get into position. When a contraction ended, I would literally melt and allow my body to rest before the next one started. Jared was watching the monitor and started telling me when one was coming, but I asked him to stop so I wouldn’t tense up in anticipation of the pain. When my nurse would come into the room, Jared had to answer questions for me because I literally felt like I couldn’t/didn’t want to speak.
In all the research I did on natural birth, almost every single woman said that when you feel like you can’t do it anymore is when you are entering transition (dilating from 7-10cm) and at the very tail end of labor. Ironically, even though I knew this, I didn’t realize it was happening to me. At 12pm I was going to the bathroom and decided that while I could keep doing this naturally, I really didn’t want to. I felt like I was wasting my energy and since I had been only 4cm an hour ago I felt like I would be at this for several more hours. The thought of total relief from an epidural sounded very appealing, and I told my nurse I had changed my mind.
She started me on another bag of fluids (you have to have so much before getting an epidural) and let me know the anesthesiologist would be in as soon as I finished the bag. I looked up at my IV after every. single. contraction. just willing it to empty into my veins faster. At this point, contractions were very painful and I was struggling to remain in control through breathing. I noticed that every time I started to moan or cry out that the pain would only worsen, so I kept most in control by relying on those Lamaze breathing techniques. I’m not sure how far apart my contractions were, but I’m guessing I had about 30 seconds in between each one.
The Birth
At 12:35 I finally finished the bag of fluids and the anesthesiologist walked into the room. I remember him cracking jokes with my husband and I was relieved that my pain would be over soon and I could join in on the fun. While he was setting up, I had a contraction and stood up off the bed to work through it. After it passed, I sat back down and he started cleaning my back with iodine. Right as he was finishing, I felt another contraction coming on. But this one was different. I all of a sudden felt the overwhelming urge to pee and I shouted “I have to push I have to push!” I felt everyone in the room tense up as my nurse told the doctor “she’s a third time mom she knows what she’s doing, I need to check her.”
At this point, everything starts to get blurry. The nurse tried lifting my leg up (since I was still sitting on the bed) and she said I was complete (10cm) and needed to lay down and get into birthing position. She called for the laborist doctor to come back in since my midwife wouldn’t be there in time. Tons of people started piling into the room, and I remember my body started pushing on it’s own as they tried to maneuver me onto my back. The doctor came in and asked if I wanted to wait 20 mins for my midwife or deliver now. My eyes were closed but I remember thinking he was nuts for thinking I had an option and I managed to say deliver now!
Everything from here on out is pieced together by what tidbits I remember and what my husband told me happened. My eyes were closed for this part and I officially lost control of what my body was doing and how I was managing the pain. I remember Jared asking where he should stand so he wouldn’t be in the way of everyone. I had my nurse on my right, Jared on my left, and I think they were holding my legs up. There were other nurses in the room but I have no idea what they were doing.
My body was pushing with contractions which were nonstop at this point, and I remember being annoyed and confused because the doctor was urging me to push faster and kept saying I needed to get the baby out NOW. With my other births, I was encouraged to push slowly to keep from tearing so this was unfamiliar to me and I knew something was up. I got the head out in one push, got the shoulders out in the next push, and the rest of his body in the next. All in all, I was pushing for about 15 seconds.
They placed Hunter on my stomach immediately, but there was no immediate bonding or connection. I was shaking so much from the adrenaline that I couldn’t touch him, and I kept saying “someone hold the baby I can’t hold the baby.” At this point I still didn’t know he was a boy, and I couldn’t lift my head up to see anything for myself. Jared told me he was still next to me, but I have no recollection of where anyone was or what they were doing. The best way I can describe this is that I was still in my own world and I had sort of tunnel senses about what was happening. It was almost like an out of body experience, except that I was still in my body but my mind wasn’t.
The baby nurse finally took him to clean him up, and I told Jared to go be with him. I think this is when I found out that he was a boy. The doctor was shouting at the nurses to get Misoprostol and TXA to control my bleeding. He also asked me if I wanted something for the pain and I quickly said yes, so he shouted for Fentanyl as well. I remember the nurses being flustered and trying to find all the medications, and the doctor having to ask 2-3 times for them to be administered ASAP. As I’m writing this, Jared said they gave me a shot in my shoulder which I have absolutely no recollection of. I also had two nurses trying to start an IV in my other arm because they were planning on transfusing, but my veins kept blowing because I was losing blood so quickly and my blood pressure was really low. The Fentanyl was quick acting, but left me even foggier as to what was going on around me. I kept asking the doctor to talk me through what was going on, and he said I was bleeding a lot and they were trying to get that under control. The nurses were “massaging” my uterus looking for clots, and the doctor was coaching me on pushing the placenta out. Turns out they thought the source of bleeding may have been a placental abruption or uterine clots, but luckily it was neither.
My midwife arrived at around this time, got caught up and jumped in to take over for the doctor. The baby nurse had Hunter all cleaned up and cheerfully announced “okay pull down your gown so you can do skin to skin!” I think everyone else looked at her like she was nuts since I was still shaking, completely foggy from drugs, getting stitched up without an epidural, and crying from several nurses and my midwife doing major physical work on my uterus. I remember calling out for Jared to come hold my hand because I was in so much pain, and I think the baby nurse hung out with Hunter for a bit.
Hunter was born at 12:45pm on 2/2/21, and I held him for the first time at 2:30pm. He was strong and healthy and had apgar scores of 9/9, had a full healthy set of lungs and some slight bruising on his face that looked like adorable freckles. Jared got to do skin to skin with him early on which I was so grateful for, and it took me a while to comprehend that the baby I held two hours after birth was really mine. He looks like a mini version of my husband, and has tons of dark hair and dimples just like Reagan did when she was born.
Recovery
The hardest thing about this labor and delivery was the shock that my body and mind went through in the very quick time it took for Hunter to be born. I don’t remember a lot of what happened, and I’ve had to grieve the fact that I didn’t get the videos, pictures, immediate skin to skin or breastfeeding time, or calm peaceful birth that I was expecting. I’m so grateful though that all the complications were about me and not Hunter. He was totally fine and I am so grateful for that!
I ended up losing 1 liter of blood during the delivery. I threw up twice after all the drugs they gave me to control the bleeding. I definitely have PTSD from the nurses pushing on my uterus to make it contract, that was excruciatingly painful. But despite all of that we were cleared to come home about 28 hours after delivery! We came home to my mom taking excellent care of my kids, and a comfy bed where we could all get some much needed rest.
While Hunter’s birth story isn’t what I was expecting, I am grateful for the perspective it gave me about what birth can look like. I’m so proud of my body for doing this naturally, and I’m proud of my husband for being so involved and supportive during the whole process. And I’m so grateful for an easy recovery once we got home, and a baby who is stinking cute and only cries when we change his diaper.
I’m also so grateful for all of you who messaged me during labor with messages of support and distraction, for those who checked on me after the birth. You carried me through a very difficult time and I’m grateful for all of you!
