Thursday, March 24, 2016

Hank's Birth Story: Part 1

Wow. It has been over a month and I'm finally the chance to digest and comprehend everything that happened at Henry's birth. I'll start at the very beginning.

Spreading the Oiselle Love with my friend Ayesha who was due a little over a week after me!

My plan was to work up until I gave birth. I didn't want to waste a single day of maternity leave, twiddling my thumbs at home. Work kept me occupied and busy leading up to Hank's arrival. My due date was February 3. My midwife practice would let me go until 42 weeks (2 weeks past my due date) before we needed to schedule a repeat c-section. As you may recall from my previous post a few months ago, I was hoping for a VBAC birth. Patsy was born via c-section due to breech position and I was hoping to give birth vaginally this time around. But, first things first, in order for the VBAC to be successful, there were two main things that needed to take place: 1) Baby needed to be in head-down position 2) I needed to go into labor on my own. I couldn't be induced by Pitocin but if I started labor, they would be able to give me small doses.
Left: Pregnant with Patsy (subconsciously wearing pink)
Right: Pregnant with Hank (subconsciously wearing blue)

To help with positioning, I (begrudgingly) did the Spinning Babies daily exercises. Yes, daily. They were so mundane and annoying--kind of like physical therapy exercises--but they worked. Our little baby was head down starting around 32 weeks and stayed that way throughout the rest of the pregnancy.
Happy Due Date Day!

As my due date came and went, I started to get nervous. Would I go into labor? Did I need to start scheduling the repeat c-section? When is this baby going to come? As a type-A personality, it was very hard to mentally get through the long list of unknowns. I had a doctor's appointment a few days after my due date, on a Friday, and there really wasn't much progress. I was dilated to 1 cm (as I had been already for a few weeks) and that was about it. I had a follow up appointment he following Wednesday to perform stress tests and all these other things to check the progress. I was really hoping I wouldn't need that appointment. For some reason, I was absolutely convinced that I would have my baby in my arms on Super Bowl Sunday. When I was back at work again on Monday, it was really hard not to get discouraged. One of my co-workers told me something that kind of helped put things in perspective. "They can't stay in there forever." Although it was a simple sentiment, it was totally true and helped me change my frame of mind. This baby was going to come one way or another. I had to be patient and just wait it out.
Walking around the neighborhood, waiting to go into labor

Monday night, after I put patsy to bed and said goodnight to Chris, I started doing my Spinning Baby exercises. My water broke during the cat/cow pelvic tilts. I texted and called my doula and explained what happened. She confirmed what I thought and that my water broke. She suggested that I take a Tyelnol PM and get some rest. I was not going to sleep through the birth and the next day was most likely going to be a very long one! I did as she advised and tried to get some rest. According to my FitBit, I got about 7 hours of sleep that night! I didn't wake up Chris because I knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. I did have some contractions but I was able to comfortably sleep in-between them. The next day I woke up excited. The baby was finally on his/her way!

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