Baby girl: 21 months
Baby boy: 12 days
:)
Hello friends!
Sorry I have been absent for so long - I've written a million blog posts in my head, but that doesn't really count, does it?
Yes, little brother is now on the outside! And with that comes a TMI birthstory for my ladies, yes?
First
of all I'd just like to say how thrilled I am to have this little baby
boy. I am so grateful we had even on healthy baby, I still can't
believe we have two now.
And I love this little
cuddlemonster to bits! He's really quite a good baby. We really lucked
out! A bit of gas now and then - but he's got less than his sister,
and we thought she was a good baby. :) I was hoping for a little
snugglebum, and I got one. Every day I reflect on how blessed we are.
And
a little pause - if you are awaiting your first birth - your story
won't be like this one. This is a second, short, birth. In fact, maybe
don't read on, there's a bit of doom and gloom (but of course you will,
right?)
So I had been feeling contractions on an off for a
few days. They say this is common in second labour - false starts. So
I wasn't too worried.
But I did think he was coming
Friday Jan 23rd, because I'd had quite a bit of contractions Thursday
night. No dice. Then I had a bunch of contractions Friday night and
Saturday morning, so I thought fo' shizzle he was coming Saturday. No
dice - no further contractions during the day on Saturday. Pippa was
out with my sister in law all day, and I thought that would have been an
excellent time to birth, but no.
So Saturday night
(Jan 24th) around 10pm, I started having some contractions again - but
this time they were harder than before. They weren't the classic 3 min
apart, 30s long - but they were 30-60s long, and about 7 min apart. We
decided to page the midwife at 11:00pm.
We ended up
with a midwife we haven't met before calling us back, that was kind of a
surprise. But my primary mw was off call for the weekend, and my
secondary had two overnight births the preceding days. But she was
totally nice, it was fine.
I told her about my pattern
(we were timing using an app), and she said she'd come by and check me
out. I felt kind of bad to drag her out of bed if labour was going to
stop, but she said it was fine, she'd rather check me out. (Babies uber
alles!)
She came by and checked me and I was 4-5cm
(100% effaced) - thank goodness, these things were starting to hurt!
(or so I thought at the time). She stayed for about an hour, but things
didn't really pick up while she was over - they sort of dwindled - got
farther apart and not as hurty.
She left, saying to
page her when I had 4-5 strong ones in a row. Well, pretty much as soon
as she left they got a lot stronger. Very much stronger - I went from
breathing through them to making the eyes-shut-screaming-face (no actual
noise). We paged her and she arrived back at 1:40am.
I
had the idea maybe a hot shower would help - and it maybe did a little
for like 2 contractions. Then I decided to sit in the tub - that was
probably not a good idea. By this time I was in a LOT of pain - it felt
like every little movement hurt. No more 'rest' between contractions.
I
was 6-7 cm by this time. "That's it? Are you kidding me?" I thought.
She said she thought the rest of labour would go fast, and I kind of
agreed. These contractions hurt too much to not be opening my cervix, I
thought. She called the backup midwife (there are always two at every
birth - one for the mom, one for the baby).
The tub was
useless and hurty, I decided to get out. I made my way to my bedroom, I
arrived on the bed and got onto all fours. Not glamorous, but there
you have it. I couldn't take the idea of rotating into some other
position, I was in too much pain. Already my contractions were at the
"this is too much, I can't handle this" level. It was awful.
3:51am
the backup midwife arrived. I did not care. I was already pushing.
Pushing baby girl out was different than baby boy. This pushing stage
lasted 14 min (according to the paperwork), but it was WAY more pain
than I could handle. (For reference, I pushed baby girl out for like
2.5hours - yikes).
The midwife put some pressure on my
hips with every push - at one point I started a contraction and she
wasn't there, and I had forgotten her name and was just like "Midwife!".
With
my first labour I yelled "OW" really loudly - this one I just
screamed. I kind of felt like a cow. ?? Serious. It was awful.
Really, really awful.
He was born at 3:58am. Baby girl
slept through the whole thing, but we did have my sister in law come
stay the night just in case.
DH and I decided to
not talk about a #3 for a year (well, it was mostly me) - but I don't
think I want to go through that again. It sounds selfish...but it was
really awful. "Awful" is the word to describe this birth.
On
the other hand, recovery has been WAY better than the first time
around. And so far I haven't been sad - huge improvement over last
time, where i was inexplicably (well, due to hormones) sad for two
weeks. Nursing is going fine, baby boy gaining weight like a champ.
He's a great baby. I loves.
