With baby number 5 due today, I figured it would be a great day to tell the last birth story I have to tell. My pregnancy with Jordanna was a pretty easy one. I was more nauseous than anything and I don’t think I was ever actually sick. So it seems like with each pregnancy, my body is getting more used to pregnancy and I am getting less and less sick each time. Once the first trimester with Jordanna was over, I was good to go! The only thing that was going against me was this little thing that was happening in the world called Covid!
Yes, Jordanna was a Covid baby haha! Although we knew we wanted to have another baby in 2021 if we should be blessed again. Having kids with a two year gap is a nice age difference in the fact that you’re not too overwhelmed with caring for a lot of little ones at once. However, during this pregnancy the boys were doing virtual schooling because of the pandemic and I actually started an online College program in May of 2020. It was supposed to be a 2 year College course, but with the way everything went with the boys staying home for the entire school year of 2020/2021 doing virtual school, caring for 3 kids, doing my own school work, and being in my first trimester of pregnancy, I decided to stop at the 1-year certificate program. The other deciding factor was that my final exams for the program would have taken place right around my due date, and I wasn’t sure how much time and mental focus I would have to put into the second year of school. I fully intend on finishing the school goals I had for myself over time though!
Everything went great with my pregnancy regarding ultrasounds and my glucose tests. At my 20 week appointment, we tried to find out if we were having a boy or girl since at that point during Covid, in-store shopping was banned. Even in the Superstore or Walmart, the clothing sections were roped off. So, this is why we wanted to find out the gender. If we were having a girl, I wanted to prepare for this since I only had a bunch of boy clothes and accessories at home. Well, Jordanna was modest, even in the womb. I explained the situation to the ultrasound tech and he tried his hardest to get a clear picture of what gender the baby was. I rolled onto my left and right sides and kinda jiggled around to get her moving, but no matter what, the umbilical cord was always in the way. I didn’t push it any further and said, “well I guess the baby wants to surprise us!”
Since we were mid-Covid at this point, hospital policies were constantly changing. One week you were allowed to leave labour and delivery to go get food and the next you weren’t. The OB’s office was allowing patients to schedule inductions to ensure they could get childcare for the kids at home since there was no leaving and coming back in that sense. We scheduled Jordanna’s induction for April 28, which was the day after Jonathan’s birthday. I would have been 39 weeks at that point. It was a tentative scheduling though. My OB needed to check her schedule and make sure everything was okay and I went home to talk to Jonathan to see if he was okay with the baby being born so close to his birthday.
When Josh and I spoke to Jonathan, he was actually upset. He had been praying for the baby to be a girl and to born on his birthday! I had a week until my next OB appointment and spent the week ensuring Jonathan was okay with the baby being born on his birthday or the day after and he desperately wanted the baby to be born on his birthday. When I went in for my next OB appointment, she informed me she had to change my induction date to the 27th because she was doing c-sections on the 28th. I remember actually laughing out loud at this point. Jonathan’s prayers were being answered!
The day before my induction, I went in for a non-stress test and to be checked. The test went great and I was actually dilated enough that they didn’t need to insert the foley balloon to dilate me any more. I was already about 2-3cm. We went to the hospital for 7:00 am on April 27th. We said goodbye to the kids and gave Jonathan extra hugs and kisses since it was his birthday. His only wish was to get the gift of a baby sister and I said I’d try my best! I definitely felt sad that we were missing his birthday, but he got to spend his birthday and the next day with his Nana and Grandma.
We were running late leaving and didn’t even get a chance to grab a McMuffin breakfast sandwich before heading in. Luckily I had baked snacks and we ate muffins on the way to the hospital. When I arrived, they hooked up my IV and started me on fluids. They monitored the baby to make sure it was still happy and she was good to go. My OB came in to break my water around 8:00 am and she gave me a few hours without Pitocin to see if my body would go into labour naturally. I walked around my room to try to get labour going, but the nurse in the room wanted to keep monitoring me on the fetal monitors so I couldn’t walk far. I tried bouncing on a ball and the monitors wouldn’t work with that. So, essentially I was stuck in bed which was not ideal. I was trying to go naturally for Jordanna and movement is supposed to be really great with getting the baby out and coping with the pain.
I don’t know why they couldn’t do intermittent monitoring at this point because I wasn’t on Pitocin but either way my body did not start contracting on its own. They started Pitocin and those crazy intense contractions I talked about in Joseph’s birth story started quite quickly. Within an hour and a half to 2 hours I was asking for an epidural! The great thing about Covid at this point was that there were no surgeries going on so the anesthesiologist came by within 10 minutes to give me my epidural! Josh reminded me that I wanted to warn the doctor that I tend to flinch when being given the freezing needles. The anesthesiologist laughed and said it was alright and I got my epidural and he left. Then I kept pressing the top up button but it kept buzzing at me. The nurse told me I shouldn’t need that at this point but I told her I did. Then the doctor ran back in and said we were so busy joking around that he forgot to give me the initial dose of the epidural. Then he administered it and everything was great.
This again was one of those “light” epidurals that you could top up if needed and you could feel the pressure without the pain. I was good with that! This epidural did almost make me pass out though. I felt really nauseous, dizzy, and faint and had to fight to stay conscious for about 20 minutes and then it passed. I began to feel sleepy and went into a light sleep. I remember hearing all the conversations around me but I was in a deeply relaxed state that everyone thought I was sleeping.
After some time went by, I felt the pressure changing with each contraction. Something was different but I didn’t know what. I was trying to tell the nurses that the pressure was changing. There were a couple of nurses in the room that remembered us from Joseph’s birth and we were having a great time chatting while my assigned nurse was on her lunch break. I was in and out of deep relaxation mode but I kept telling them that things felt weird. Then at one point I remember opening my eyes. Two nurses were staring at the fetal monitoring chart results and discussing something. I remember saying that something was definitely weird and different and the pressure was weird. They agreed and kept pointing to the chart saying there was a definite pattern going on which meant pushing time soon.
Finally, I just whipped off my blankets and said something felt weird at the exact same time that my nurse was coming back in from lunch. She was getting her gloves on and looks up at me and says, “there’s a head!” I lean forward to look (like I’m going to be able to see anything? haha!) and Jordanna just comes right out. The nurse ran over to grab her. Luckily they hadn’t broken the bed apart and the foot section was still there so she only landed on the end of the bed. She came out without any pushing! That was when we found out we had a girl! I was so shocked! They were putting her onto my chest butt first and I had looked between her legs and said, “what the hell is that!” I was just in so much shock at that point because I had given up all hope of every having a girl!
She was able to stay on my chest for over an hour before they took her to weigh her. She wanted to nurse all the time and she was quite a calm, cool, and collected baby. I was definitely nervous about breastfeeding again after what happened with Joseph. Jordanna didn’t seem to be nursing quite right, but I knew it took Joseph about 2 weeks to get the hang of it. We decided after our extended stay from Joseph’s birth, that we wanted to go home after the newborn tests were done which was after the 24 hour mark. Jordanna passed all of her tests and we went home just before dinner or bedtime the next day. I remember that one night away from the kids was so hard because I had never been away from Joseph for a night before and I was missing all of the boys so much! I wish I could have gone home hours after Jordanna was born, but with Covid, they didn’t want a lot of coming and going for things like the newborn tests. One funny thing was that we had left in such a rush the morning of her induction that we had forgotten the diaper bag with all of the baby clothes in it! So, Josh had to run home to get that and he brought us back some delicious food!
Life with Jordanna as a newborn was definitely scary for the first few weeks! She did not feed well and my milk supply dropped to almost nothing. She lost almost a pound after she was born and we went into drastic measures to save my milk supply, get her fed, and get her gaining weight. I have a video explaining everything I did to successfully increase my milk supply from less than 1 oz in total to well over 15 oz within a week. I went to see a lactation consultant for some help. Jordanna had a bit of a tongue tie, a lip tie, and a cheek tie. We went to a dentist to get them corrected, but there was no night and day fix. It took about 5 months of breastfeeding and pumping but just after Jordanna was 5 months old, she figured out how to breastfeed! Then we exclusively breastfeed until she got teeth! What an experience the whole thing was! I do have a video from our YouTube channel where I tell her birth story just after she was born so that may be more accurate lol!
Jordanna’s birth definitely gave the nurses a unique experience! We were the talk of the hospital that day and they still remember it! When I went in for my first OB appointment with Baby #5, the student doctor came in to start the appointment and said, “well I hear your last birth was quite the experience! Your baby’s just come walking out now!” Lol!!!
Leave a Reply