Having a baby is always such a beautiful, hard, so worth it experience and Leah's is one I don't want to forget. It pushed me in ways that were hard and reminded me that I can do those incredibly hard things. And now, we get to have her sweet spirit in our home.
Leah's due date was March 30, but all my kids (except Ashtyn, as my first) have come a few days early. We were expecting to have her sometime during the week leading up to her due date (which was a Sunday) and I was feeling like Wednesday, the 26th would be the day. It was mostly a joke, but in all seriousness, my ideal was to have the baby in March and especially to avoid an April Fool's Day birthday for the baby. I also really wanted to start labor in the afternoon (or morning) because both Oliver and Rylee's labors started after we put the kids down and they were born in the middle of the night. It worked, but it was definitely more tiring that way.
The Friday before that week, Oliver got a fever and I started to get a sore throat. It was frustrating to have sickness in the house that close to my due date, but my sore throat seemed really mild. Then on Monday, I could tell I was getting worse and Rylee also got it. Tuseday, I was doing even worse.
Wednesday, I woke up feeling pretty miserable. I had a lot of sinus and head cold feeling and was thankful it didn't seem that labor was imminent. I had no desire to labor while feeling so miserable. I did a lot of things (garlic, poultices, vitamin C, etc) to try and get over the cold as quickly as possible and was praying hard that even if my symptoms weren't all gone, I could at least be over the "cold" feeling that was making me so miserable.
I rested a lot and even took a break from any nesting activities, just keeping up with the minimums and trying to give myself grace. Thursday, I could tell I had moved further into the sickness and was doing a little better, but still didn't want to start labor yet.
Friday, I woke up feeling pretty good. I still had some congestion and a cough, but the head cold feeling was gone and my sinuses were doing much better. I told Ben that I felt like we could have the baby that afternoon. He told me it was possible, but it didn't seem like I was that close to labor yet. That morning, the kids and I cleaned the house and got things ready just in case, but Ben was right and no baby came.
The next morning around 4 am, I woke up with some pretty intense feelings in my hips that came and then faded like a contraction. I'd been having a lot of braxton hix and false labor already and Oliver's birth actually started with false labor, so I wasn't sure if it was the real thing or not. They felt stronger than anything I'd felt up to that point, but they also felt weird, not like my labor usually feels when it starts.
I lay in bed awhile, hoping they would stop. I didn't want to start labor that early because if it was the real deal, then we'd need to wake up the kids to get them out of the house, and I knew if we woke them up then, they wouldn't be settling down to sleep again. The feelings didn't stop and I couldn't sleep through them, so I decided to get up and get some food. If it was labor, I knew I would need it and if it wasn't, it gave me something to do while I waited for it to pass.
As I made my protien hot chocolate, I started tracking the "contractions" and made sure the house was cleaned up all the way, just in case (the kitchen needed swept, etc). I didn't think it was actual labor, because the contractions still felt off to me. As I tracked, it confirmed it for me. They were very sporadic and not consistent at all. As I sat and drank my hot chocolate, the false contractions started getting further and further apart until they finally stopped. I laid down on the couch and was able to fall asleep again until the kids came down for the morning.
The intensity of the false labor and the timing of it (my due date was the next day!) made me wonder if I was going to start labor that day. I also noticed that my lower back was a little achy, which I knew could be a sign of impending labor (though it could also have been sore from the false labor). I wasn't exactly excited to go through labor again, but my cold was feeling much better and I felt prepared for labor if it was that day.
After breakfast, I did a last couple of things I wanted to do before the baby came and the kids I did our weekly deep cleaning, wiping down the walls in their rooms upstairs. As we got lunch, I started getting false labor again. They were not as strong as they'd been in the morning, but were still strong enough that they were a little annoying.
After lunch, I decided to go on a walk to see if that would help the false contractions stop. I did a very shortened modified version of my walk, because the walk brought the false contractions on every minute or so, pretty strongly.
I came back home and went into my room, planning to take a nap. First, I had a bowl of cereal and was just relaxing, trying to let the false labor go away. While I was doing that, around 2:30, I had what felt like an actual contraction. I got out my phone and started tracking them and they were 30-40 seconds long, about 5 minutes apart.
After a couple contractions, I was feeling more confident that labor had actually started. I went into Ben's office where he was lying down (maybe about to take a nap) and told him. Then we talked about what to do with the kids. We had planned to take them to his cousin's house (they recently moved into our neighborhood), but his cousin was out of town and we realized we didn't have her husband's phone number. One reason we'd talked about taking the kids there was because their kids' bedtime schedule is similar to our kids', but since my labor had started in the afternoon, we weren't as concerned about that.
I decided the first thing was to call my midwife, Donna. I called her and she let me know it would be about an hour until she got there. I wasn't too worried about it, because I could tell I was in the really early stages of labor and it didn't seem to be picking up very quickly.
After talking with her, we turned off the kids' show (initially this was met with a lot of backlash until they found out why, then they were all jumping around excited) and had them pick up the toys they'd gotten out that morning while we figured out what to do with them. We called Ben's sister, but had forgotten she had plans. We decided to just take the kids over to his cousin's house, and if Koy wasn't there, his sister said they could drop their plans and watch the kids.
We loaded up the kids and their bag (just in case) and Ben took the kids over. I swept the floor again and then laid down on the couch and kept tracking the contractions. There hadn't been much change, other than walking around cleaning up had brought my contractions closer together and as I sat down on the couch, the length between them got a little longer. I also took some electrolytes to help my blood pressure (I knew it was a struggle in previous labors), a supplement to help with bleeding after birth, and ate a cheese stick.
Ben came back pretty quickly--Koy had been home and could watch the kids. While we waited for Donna, Ben and I did some New York Times puzzles on our phones together between contractions. The contractions were strong enough that I knew they were the real deal, but they were fairly easy to get through.
Donna got there with her daughter Holt who was assisting. I moved from the couch to my chair, rocking to assist the contractions. As the contractions started getting a little stronger, I moved to sitting on the floor in front of my chair and lay across the chair to get through each contraction. We all sat and visited as I labored. It was all really relaxed and though some of the contractions started to stronger, they were still not hard to get through.
I could tell I needed some more food, so I had Ben cut me up an apple and then I decided to get in the tub. This was a little after 5:30, so I had already been in labor over 3 hours, but I knew it wasn't a race. The contractions were getting more intense, moving through my hips and back and bottom and the pressure was amping up. The water really helped and I just focused on really relaxing through each contraction.
Time passed and though the contractions continued to increase in intensity, they remained pretty far apart. I remember sitting in the tub wondering when the next one would come. I felt like the contractions were getting strong enough and low enough that I thought I must be getting close to pushing. Donna hadn't actually checked me yet at all during the labor, so I decided that if I didn't feel the urge to push within five contractions, I would ask her to check me.
Five contractions later, I hadn't felt the urge to push, though they were continuing to get stronger. I had Ben get Donna and she came in to check. We waited for the next contraction to pass and she checked, telling me that I was 75% effaced and dilated to a 6.
I have to admit, I was more than a little disappointed that I was only dilated to a 6. I had thought I was at a 9 or a 10 and it was discouraging to think of what it might take to get to a 10 still. Donna said she wasn't worried--she was happy that I was thinning out and dilating so much, and assured me that once I was effaced, the dilation would happen very quickly.
It was 7:30 at this point. We had planned on bringing the kids home for bedtime, but I was worried about how late it was getting and had Ben message Koy about just having the kids sleep there. Then I refocused on getting through the contractions, which were getting increasingly difficult. I remember telling Ben, "This is a hard one, this is so hard," as a way of getting through them. I really focused in on relaxing my hands and relaxing the muscles around my utuerus. The pressure was really intense and I found myself moving my body some as they came. I think I had four or five of these.
Ben and I were a little worried about baby's position, because we felt like her bottom was still really high, so we got Donna again. She came in with the doppler and found heartrate. Everything was well with her and Donna assured us she was in a good position--when Donna had checked me, she found the crown of baby's head right there, exactly where it should be.
The next contraction was really intense and I was moving my body all over in the tub to get through it. Donna could tell from how I was acting that I was getting close, so instead of checking me again, Ben helped me out of the tub and into the bedroom.
I had two or three really, really intense contractions there, very close together (basically no break between them). I leaned against the bed and Ben helped me get through them by applying counter pressure. I don't know how I could have gotten through any of my labors without Ben. These contractions were very intense for me, with a lot of pressure, especially through my bottom.
After the last contraction, the pressure was such that I could tell I was getting close to pushing despite not feeling the urge to push yet. They helped me up onto the bed (I have tried other positions for pushing and have always ended up pushing on my back, other than with Ashtyn).
Donna reached in to break my water and found the baby more than halfway through the birth canal already. That's why there was so much pressure for me and was good news. She quickly broke my water and then I was pushing.
The pushing was really intense as well. I held onto Ben's hands and pushed. I remember one break and puased to breath, but I was struggling. I didn't have the ring of fire, but it hurt to have her head right there. The next contraction, I pushed but couldn't quite get her out, but I didn't feel like I could sit there with all that pressure, so I kept pushing and she came out. I had 7 minutes of push time.
I felt immense relief when they placed her on my stomach. I remember being so, so glad to be done with the labor and to have our baby girl here.
She was born at 7:49 pm, only 20 minutes after Donna checked me and found me at a 6. Despite it being discouraging, the rest of labor went very quickly. We ended up texting Koy and having him hold off on putting the kids to bed because of how quickly it went.
We cut the cord, delivered the placenta while Ben bonded with baby, and got me set up in the bed. Then I nursed Leah and Donna checked her over while Ben went to get the kids.
Everything went really smoothly. My labor was my longest besides Ashtyn's (Rylee's was my next longest at 5 hours), but the majority of it was slow and easy to handle. The last 40 minutes or so were intense and hard to get through, but so worth it to get Leah out of it. I'm so grateful for the experience of motherhood, even the harder parts (including the lack of sleep we have now XD).
And now we are all in newborn heaven 🩷
