The birth of our fifth baby is coming fast and because of this I have been reminiscing about the births of our other children. I always think about the highs and lows. What I would do again and what I would change. How do I really want to bring this fifth child into the world? Joshua was our first child and we did not prepare what-so-ever for labour and delivery. Nesting eventually kicked in and I had his room completely ready to go. I knew the basic needs of a baby and how to keep them alive, but the labour and delivery part was a highly looked over part of the process. It is one day, but it is one huge and important day and I encourage anyone expecting a baby to take birth classes and prepare yourself! Know your hospital’s policies for labour and delivery and make sure your care practitioner knows your wishes for your labour and delivery. Even though it is one day, it does have a profound effect on you. One thing to keep in mind while you read this is that it happened over 9 years ago now, so some details are fuzzy, but some I remember quite vividly. This is the story of Joshua’s pregnancy and birth.
Josh and I found out we were pregnant about 4 months after we started dating. This may sound completely terrifying to some people, but the way that Josh and I started our relationship was by going out on a “date” for St. Patrick’s Day, then I stayed the night at his house, and we have never left each other’s sides since. We went from working together for a couple of months, then going out on that “date”, and then just living together. It seemed like it was really meant to be. Sure, there were many things we needed to work through since we are both “alpha” type people with A-type personalities, but any two people who live together need to learn how to live together. It took some time, but we worked through all of the big things. (We still sometimes bicker about the small things.)
When we found out we were pregnant, we were excited and scared. Life is about to change forever! Having a baby is not a small responsibility and is a giant step in any relationship let alone a new relationship. However, when I was 11 weeks pregnant, I started to spot. I went in for an ultrasound at the hospital and found out that we had actually lost the baby and at 12 weeks is when I actually miscarried the baby. As heartbreaking as it was, we fully believed there was a reason for it and trusted in God’s plan. I also feel like God was asking us: “Are you sure you want to spend the rest of your lives together?” We discussed it in depth and decided that we wanted to try again for another baby and that we were indeed committed to each other for life. (Even though marriage was not on the table at all at this point, our commitment level to each other was “until death to us part”. I know, we were terrible Catholics!) We actually got pregnant with Joshua the very next month and it was Christmas Eve or Christmas Day 2012 that I found out that we were pregnant again. Ever since the miscarriage though, we are a lot more cautious about telling people when we are pregnant. We tend to wait until after that first trimester to say anything.
Symptoms for Joshua’s pregnancy were terrible! I was working 3 jobs and I was nauseous and physically sick almost all day. I was not sick to the point where I needed to be hospitalized or anything, but I could get sick at any point in the day and felt sick all the time. Two of my jobs required me to be on my feet most of my shifts and that was a big trigger for me to feel sick. I also graduated from a 2-year College program in May of 2013 and I was due with Joshua on August 29, 2013. (Believe it or not, I was not the only one who was pregnant in my class! My classmate ended up giving birth about 5 days or so before I did!) I was sick until about the last month of my pregnancy. This was 9 years ago now and that is honestly the only pregnancy symptom I remember, and it sucked!
I also remember we had recently purchased a house and moved in. After moving in, we found out that the previous owner was in the middle of renovating and needed to replace the sewage pipe out to the town’s sewers. If you’re not seeing where this is going then let me explain. For about a month or possibly more, we were not able to flush the toilets or use the plumbing. We had to fill a bucket with water in the mornings to flush down our pee and then we would essentially leave the house for the day. The pipe was broken in the backyard and it was just building up until the construction company was able to come and fix the pipes. We ended up having to move and rented a house in the mean time because we could not live in a house that had no plumbing, especially while I was super sick with morning sickness. That for me was about the worst part of any of my pregnancies. Now to get down to the labour and delivery portion of this story.
By August 2013, I was down to working 1 part-time job and I was the one that was going to take maternity leave. I was going to start my maternity leave on August 24, so that would have given me almost a week before my due date to prepare for Joshua’s arrival. We did find out the gender at the 20 week ultrasound so we could buy clothes, shoes, blankets, and all the things. I was also under this impression that babies did not arrive early. They would come on or after their due date and I figured we were well prepared for him so I didn’t need too much down time beforehand. I knew I would want most of my maternity leave for when Joshua was here. I ended up changing my mind with the help of my persuasive boss, and started my maternity leave on August 17. Thank goodness I did!
At just before midnight on August 24, I was dead asleep. In my sleep I remember a feeling like a balloon was popping sort of feeling. I woke up and was already whipping off my blankets. My water had broken! Thank goodness we had put a protective sheet on the bed just in case this would happen. So, being first time parents and knowing nothing about labour except the technical parts of where the baby comes out and the fact that I would most likely have to push it out, we were super excited but also kind of panicked. What do we do now?! I ran to the toilet so the water could just leak in there and Josh ran to the convenience store to get the max strength pads. When your water breaks, it doesn’t just trickle out, there are also gushes as well. So, to prepare for this, get some extra thick pads or adult diapers or something. You will want them for after the baby is born anyway! I ended up taking a shower, getting dressed and we headed to the hospital. We didn’t really know what else to do and figured the labour and delivery staff would know.
When we arrived at the hospital, we went in through the Emergency doors and up to labour and delivery. I was not having any contractions at this point and I am assuming they did confirm that my water did indeed break. They told us to go back home and come back when I started to have contractions that were intense or come back by noon the next day if nothing happens. That gave me 12 hours to see if my body would go into labour on its own or whether it needed help the next day. Well, nothing happened so, we made our way back to the hospital for noon on the Sunday. They ended up hooking me up to an IV bag and eventually putting me on Pitocin. (I’m sure they explained all of this to me at the time, but I only know what medications I was on from watching birth vlogs and reading books within the last couple of years.)
For myself, it takes about an hour to an hour and a half for the Pitocin to start giving me regular contractions that are super intense! To me, the contractions come on strong and fast. There is no gradual build up to the intense contractions like when your body contracts normally on its own. I went from having mild contractions every couple minutes to INTENSE contraction every 2 minutes all within the span of 15 minutes of the contractions starting. Then you deal with the intense contractions for the entire time you’re in labour until you give birth. Since I hadn’t prepared myself for labour at all, I did not know what to do or how to cope with the contractions. I tried using the laughing gas to cope with the contractions, but I found it so difficult to breathe in through the machine that it ended up frustrating me more than anything. They then offered me pain medication, like a short lasting Morphine, but I declined that and went for the epidural. I also remember that Joshua was not tolerating the Pitocin very well. At one point they had to keep turning the medicine down and wait until his heart beat showed he was tolerating the contractions.
For myself, epidurals do not hurt at all. The thing that I find hard to handle is when they put in the freezing. It feels like someone is punching me in the kidneys and it is hard not to move. While waiting to receive the epidural, I can remember a nurse telling me to “rag doll” during the contractions, but I really had no idea what she was talking about. After I had the epidural, everything was wonderful in my opinion! Josh and I were just enjoying each other’s company. I remember at one point I had asked Josh to read to me while I was trying to take a nap and a nurse scolded Josh for reading to me saying: “that’s not what she needs right now”. That is one thing I also wish I had prepared myself for. Use your voice! You have a right to allow your husband to read you a book and I wish I would have told her that I wanted him to read to me, but the epidural was also making me very sleepy and I am not up for confrontation like that. I ended up taking a nap and when I woke up, it was close to pushing time!
This epidural was not like the epidurals that you can get now. This epidural worked so well that I felt nothing! Like no pressure with contractions, nothing. I didn’t even know I had legs at this point. This made it hard to feel when things were changing, when it was time to push, and how hard I was pushing. I know I pushed for over an hour, but now I don’t really remember the exact length of the pushing stage. It was also really weird pushing a baby out, feeling nothing, having nurses and the doctor asking you to push harder and not knowing if you are pushing harder or just straining your face more. It took a long time to get his head to stay on the other side of my pelvic bone. I do remember the doctor asking me to push and hold the push until the next contraction and then keep pushing and since I had an epidural, it didn’t feel like it was too hard to do. Now, after reading so many things on labour and birth and watching so many birth vlogs, I think he was in the posterior position which just makes it harder to push a baby past your pelvic bones when you’re lying on your back. Once I got him close to coming out, the doctor asked if she could give me an episiotomy to make it easier for his head to come out. The weird thing with this epidural was, I felt the episiotomy! I remember yelling out “I felt that!” I also remember feeling the stitches they gave to sew up the episiotomy.
Once Joshua was born, everything was fine. He was crying and pinked up quickly. Josh cut the cord and we got to cuddle with Joshua. He was born at 2:05 am so my labour and pushing took about 14 hours in total once we arrived at the hospital and it had been about 26 hours from the time my water broke. The thing that I found great was that the nurses offered to take Joshua to the nurses lounge for the night so we could get one last good night’s sleep! We did formula feed him so we were ecstatic to get a few hours sleep without getting woken up by a newborn and the nurses loved having him in the lounge with them. They said he was an angel and he slept most of the time too! We stayed in the hospital for about 48 hours with Joshua. He had all of his routine tests that hospitals do for newborns and he passed them all. Our families came to visit us in the hospital which was nice because then when we got home, we were able to just be by ourselves and figure out life with a newborn.
Now that I am preparing for the birth of our fifth child, I just want to add a note here. I would highly recommend that anyone who is pregnant should definitely take birth classes or read about birth and educate yourself in general. I thought it was going to be a silly class but I regret not being informed and prepared for birth with our first two births and I was only about half prepared for the last two births. I would more specifically like to add that you should research how to give birth naturally, even if you’re not planning on giving birth naturally. You never know what is going to happen within the hospital and I think everyone should be prepared for a natural delivery. After educating myself more about the birth process, hospitals/birth centers, labour interventions, etc., I believe there are numerous benefits to giving birth naturally for everyone involved.
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