Happy 8 weeks to my beautiful daughter, Elizabeth! It really has been a great 8 weeks since she arrived. Most of you who know me, know that this pregnancy wasn’t that great. I had bronchitis for 6 months, Andrew was sick for 4 months until I took him out of his preschool. I also had a lot of pain from a pubic bone separation and had to get chiropractic adjustments every week. Thank goodness for having a wonderful chiropractor, Lisa Silva, who knows her stuff!
The last few weeks of this pregnancy were really tough. It hurt to move, hurt to bend down, hurt to do just about anything. Dealing with Andrew became really challenging and I just wanted to give birth to Elizabeth so that I could feel normal again. My due date was April 17th, 2013. The day before Elizabeth was born we just hung out as a family and did quite a lot of yard work. I used my handy dandy weed tool and pulled weeds all day. It seemed like I had to stop quite a lot and take breaks. Looking back, I think labor was actually starting, but I didn’t know. After Andrew’s nap we went out for ice cream, took him to Toys R Us and had Jason’s Deli for dinner. We all went to bed and of course I couldn’t really sleep.
April 14th, at 39 weeks and 4 days, my contractions started at 4:30 am. I waited until I had about 4 contractions before I woke Justin to let him know, hey, this is it! We got up, I ate a sandwich because I remembered with Andrew, I was vomiting all day from the pain. I wanted to get something in my system since I had no idea how long labor would last and I needed food for energy. I started doing some laundry and started cleaning. My contractions were about 12 min apart at this time. At 6 am I was pretty sure this wasn’t a false alarm and I called my parents to pick Andrew up. They arrived at about 7 am. I sent my midwife, Linda Weaver from Labors of Love, a text to tell her, hey, I think this is it. At 7 I was still cleaning, putting fresh sheets on the bed, etc. At about 8:30 am I thought it would be a good idea to take a shower. I wanted to be somewhat “clean” when I gave birth. I know that sounds crazy, but hey, people do weird things sometimes. Before I got in the shower my contractions were probably 7 or 8 minutes apart. After the shower they were more like 3 minutes apart and coming fast. Justin decided to call Linda to let her know that my contractions were much closer and stronger. They both agreed that it was time to come in. I thought he was over reacting, that contractions would probably slow down. I just didn’t think it was time because in all honesty, my contractions just weren’t that painful.
We got in the car and drove 45 minutes to the birth center. At times my contractions slowed down to 4-5 minutes, so I thought, great, we are going to be sent home when we get there. It was really quiet in the car, besides my deep breathing during the contractions. It was a little strange! I was waiting for the vomiting, waiting for the pain to get much worse. We got to the birth center and the contractions were more painful and intense after I got out of the car. We went into one of the two rooms that they have. Linda checked to see how far I was dilated and I was at 8cm. She started running water in the tub, since I was going to try to have a water birth. She told me that we would have a baby in about 15 minutes. I thought, yeah right! Last time with Andrew we were at the birth center for hours and I pushed for a really long time. By this time my contractions were really intense and I felt like it was time to push. I had a cervical lip with Andrew and I had one again with Elizabeth. Since the cervical lip was swelling a bit, Linda and the second midwife, Amy Bixby, wanted me to lay back on the bed. Laying back on the bed was the best position to prevent further swelling. I started pushing and it was obvious there was no time to get in the tub! Linda said she saw a head and I just thought, that’s great, but it could still be hours until this little girl is born. Since I was in denial about how much I had pushed Elizabeth’s head out, Linda put my hands on baby’s head. This helped me so much and I was even more determined to “get this baby out of me”. With the final push, I helped pull her out and just brought her up to my chest to hold her. She was so adorable and we immediately bonded. I told Linda and Amy, “that wasn’t so bad!”. It was over and I honestly could not believe child birth could be that easy! The craziest thing of all was that we arrived at the birth center at 10:01 am and Elizabeth was born at 10:24 am. She weighed 7lbs 14 oz and was 21 3/4 inches long. Just a beautiful, healthy little girl.
We rested for a little while at the birth center and then were home by about 2 or 2:30 pm. I brought my placenta home to be dried and encapsulated. I’ll save that information for another blog entry. It was just really nice to come home and relax with my family. My parents brought Andrew back and he immediately fell in love with Elizabeth. He’s been the sweetest big brother. I can’t wait for them to play together.
Elizabeth’s birth experience couldn’t have been better. Having a midwife really does make the experience as a whole so much better. Afterwards, I had four home visits, one by my midwife and three by a lactation consultant. It just doesn’t get any better than that. Justin and I are so grateful to have them in our lives. We love our little girl very much and are so happy to have her join our family. All is well in our world!
I always enjoy following your posts in Facebook and enjoy reading about your more holistic approach to life. While I don’t plan on having kids quite yet, I am interested in the all natural birth when the time comes. Did you do anything differently throughout your pregnancy with Elizabeth than you did with Andrew? Is there anything you attribute to the birth going so much easier the second time for you? I think this is an amazing story by the way, thank you for sharing and congratulations on your adorable bundle of joy.
Thanks so much Courtney! Sorry for the delay. You know, I was really sick during this pregnancy and wasn’t able to workout as much as I did with Andrew’s pregnancy. The only thing I did differently this time around was get chiropractic adjustments every week for about 7 or 8 weeks until Elizabeth was born. I think I was just really lucky! Now that I think about it too, I just tried visualizing how I wanted things to happen. I think that really helped me this time. It’s almost the same as visualizing how you want your race to go. I think because Andrew’s birth was so traumatic, I felt like I deserved an easy one!! Hehe. All will go well for you. Just trust your instincts!