I never thought I’d be one to write up a birth story, but I’ve really enjoyed reading them lately and wanted to remember everything about Henry’s birth. As a second-time parent you inevitably compare your birth experiences, so you’ll see a lot of that here. Mainly because the differences between Ryan’s and Henry’s births were like night and day.

I mentioned a while back how I was having prodromal labor starting around 38 weeks. It had gotten to where every night a fresh round of contractions would start up, that genuinely hurt, but when I laid down to go to bed they’d always go away. I downloaded a contraction timer app for my phone (Contraction Timer Lite, if you’re interested), which sounds really ridiculous, but was actually a great tool to have around. The contractions would always get down to 6-7 minutes apart before they’d go away. This whole experience was new to me. With Ryan, I had no signs of labor at all until I actually went into labor. I wasn’t dilated or effaced and never felt any contractions, real or Braxton Hicks, till it was time to go to the hospital. This time, it seemed like my body was just messing with me.

Last Sunday, the day after my due date, my evening contractions started up again but were more painful than usual. Just for kicks, I started timing them again, assuming they’d slow down as usual. But they didn’t. They kept up at 6-7 minutes apart for a few hours, and most of them really hurt. Mason and I started packing our hospital bags and I kept timing, waiting until they got down to 4-5 minutes apart. The rule is that you need contractions 4-5 minutes apart, at least 1 minute long, for at least an hour, and they need to be so painful that you can’t talk through them before you head to the hospital.

Well, as you can guess, these promising contractions decided to just up and disappear like the others. To say this was frustrating would be a gross understatement. I’d been been through this before, but this was the worst time of them all. I had a doctor appointment Monday morning and hoped beyond hope that I was at least dilated past 1 cm, to make all these random contractions worth it. I also decided that night to go ahead and start my maternity leave. I’d planned to work from home until the baby arrived, but after the events on Sunday I knew I was in early labor and wasn’t going to get any more work done.

At my doctor appointment we learned that I was 3 cm – yay! Still, cervical measurements don’t necessarily mean anything. I could walk around like that for another week. That sounded awful, so we went ahead and scheduled an induction for 9:30 am Wednesday.

Tuesday night Mason and I sent Ryan to stay with my parents in their RV so we wouldn’t have to wake him up early the next morning to get to the hospital. We packed our bags and made plans to leave the house early and have a last meal at Kerbey Lane before the induction. I was having random contractions again, just as before. We laid down for the night around 11 pm.

I woke up to painful contractions around 1:30. At 2 am they were coming often enough that I started timing them. After half an hour, they were still coming regularly and were so painful that I couldn’t do anything but grind my teeth and wait them out. I got up and went into the living room to see if they’d still come despite me changing positions. Sure enough, they did. At 3 am, after a contraction that had me saying “ow ow ow ow” through the whole thing, I woke Mason up and told him it was time to go. For real. I called the doctor and she confirmed that it sure sounded like I was in active labor. She asked if I planned on getting an epidural and I said, yes, yes I was. We threw our stuff together and headed out, thanking God that Ryan was already with my parents.

We got to the hospital and were directed to the labor and delivery ward. (As an aside, to anyone who works at Seton Medical Center who happens to read this, y’all should really just put laboring women in wheelchairs and wheel them up to L&D instead of just pointing the way. It would have been nice to not have to wander the hallways of the hospital, stopping to hug the wall with each contraction.) The doctor showed up a few minutes after we checked into our room and decided that she didn’t need to check my progress before giving me the epi, seeing as I’d been walking around at 3 cm for several days. God bless her. I had the epi within an hour of arrival, and it started to really take effect about an hour after that. They checked me and I was about 5 cm at that point.

When I first got to the hospital room, my blood pressure was really high. I started to worry a little because that’s what started everything going to hell in a handbasket with Ryan’s birth. However, once the pain meds started working, my BP went back down to normal. Amazing how that works when you aren’t in incredible pain anymore. Anyway, once I started to feel relief from the contractions, we tried to relax and wait for Henry to make his appearance.

The epidural made my contractions space out to around 6-7 minutes apart, so after about an hour of that they put me on a small amount of pitocin to get the contractions closer together again. Everyone figured it wouldn’t be too long until the baby was born. 30 minutes after starting the pit, I was at 7 cm – great news! Now we just had to wait until I felt the urge to push.

Well, that never happened. It wasn’t that the epidural was too strong – I could still feel the contractions; they were just more like cramps at that point. I just never felt the urge to push. After a couple of hours of waiting, the nurse checked me and said he was “right there.” Once I started pushing, it wouldn’t take much to get him out. She called the doctor, who called in the team of people who needed to be in the room when the baby was born. Once everything was in place, I started pushing. This took – I am not even making this up – less than 5 minutes. Maybe 4-5 pushes? I actually laughed through some of them because it wasn’t painful at all and I couldn’t believe how easy it was. At 10:26 am, Henry was born.

I held him for a few minutes before they took him to be weighed and all that jazz. He started screaming right after birth, demonstrating his healthy lung capacity to all within earshot. When they handed him back to me all cleaned up, he started rooting around so I thought I’d give nursing a shot. He did great!

The upshot? He is perfectly fine. All the things that went wrong with Ryan’s birth went right with Henry’s. No meconium in utero, no high blood pressure, no fever, no respiratory problems, no NICU stay. So far, no colic either. He cries when he’s hungry, has a dirty diaper, or wants to be held, and (so far, knock on wood) we’ve been able to figure out how to make him stop without too much sleuthing. Nursing, in particular, has been a joy. Ryan was unable to nurse when he was born, and in the NICU they gave him formula and pacifiers, two things that can absolutely cause problems with breastfeeding. Not that I am mad at the NICU staff or anything. When your kid is in there they can tell you pretty much anything and you’ll do it if it means your kid will get better. “What’s that you say? We need to stand on our heads five times a day while reciting the Apostle’s Creed? No problem!” But, it did mean we had some extra hurdles to leap.

So, to all my friends out there whose first kids were NICU babies, I am here to say that there is hope. I think there was a part of me that was genuinely scared that we were doomed to a future of NICU stays and newborn health problems with all of our kids, just based on how things went with Ryan. Henry has proven me wrong, thankfully.

Speaking of Ryan, here he is with his little brother.

And a few glamour shots of our new kiddo.

That’s that!

Henry was born this morning at 10:26 am, measuring 7 lbs 4 oz and 20 inches in length, after a pretty awesome labor. I’ll post a full birth story in the next day or two, but the best part is that I went into labor on my own a few hours before the induction was scheduled. Good job, Henry!

39 – number of weeks gestation I arrived at this morning

33 – pounds gained

15 – number of meetings on my work calendar for next week

9 – number of weeks since people have started suggesting I must be due any day now

7– days until my due date

6 – days of prodromal labor so far (meaning uncomfortable contractions that don’t lead to active labor)

5 – number of weeks since I’ve worked out

2 3 – number of friends due after me who have already given birth

1 – number of babies “in there” despite strangers’ suggestions otherwise

1 – number of bears Ryan has learned how to diaper, swaddle, and feed

Infinite – number of times someone has said “You’re still here?” at work

Infinite – number of times people I don’t know have offered bits of pregnancy wisdom

Infinite – number of times I’ve thought it might be helpful to walk around with FAQs on my shirt

Just a quick update – we had an ultrasound this morning, and lo and behold the baby has flipped! Woo hoo! The only thing is that he is facing out (instead of facing towards my spine), which means back labor for me if he stays in that position. So it would be nice if he turned around, but I’m trying to not ask for too much at this point. There is always a chance he could flip back up, but it’s unlikely. Otherwise, he looks perfectly fine and is an estimated 6 lbs 5 oz right now. Ryan was 6 lbs 6 oz at birth, so Henry’s on track to be a little chunkier.

I don’t know if he turned on his own or if the chiro helped, but I’m going to keep seeing the chiropractor until Henry is born. If nothing else, it has helped my back pain a ton.

Now that I’m not worried about dealing with a c-section (most likely) I am starting to focus on all the stuff that needs to get done before he arrives. Stuff like:

• Wash and sort clothes
• Oh yeah, that means I need to buy some clothes. I have plenty of summer stuff but not much cold-weather stuff for infants.
• Get the bassinet set up in our room. Which means the pappasan has to move out of our room, so I won’t get to be lazy and dump unfolded laundry on it anymore.
• Make freezer meals for quick eating once the baby is here. I’ll try to do a freezer meal post once I’ve figured out what I’m making.

And so on. We’re in the home stretch!