Our Birth Story Part 1

He's here, he's here, he's finally here!!!

I can't believe as I type this I have our precious baby boy in my arms. In fact it is his one week birthday! This past week has been the most amazing week of my life and I can't even describe how I am feeling, however, I will try to explain in my 1 week postpartum post that I plan to type up tonight as well assuming the little man allows it. For now I want to give you our birth story. I'll try to make a long story short but not too short I mean after all, that is what you clicked this open to read.

I can't believe I have my own birth story to share now and that it turned out as well as it did. We were trying everything we could to get little Eli to come before my Dr. appointment on Friday, Feb 9th knowing the Dr. would want to induce, but Eli was being stubborn. On Wed. the 7th we were calling our Bradley teacher asking for any last minute  natural induction ideas she could offer and we told her that our Dr. was not going to let us go much longer because to him we were already in week 42. She suggested a labor inducing massage, some herbal supplement that we couldn't find, and lastly an "induction cocktail" that our local birth center gives their past due patients.

Mark booked me the massage at the Charleston Holistic Center for Thursday, the next day, and it was amazing. She worked certain pressure points that supposedly help induce labor. That night we also mixed up the cocktail which contained a horrible mixture of apricot juice, white champagne, almond butter, and castor oil. We blended the mixture and I managed to down the whole thing at about 10:00pm. I was told if it was going to work it would in about 2-6 hours. We joke that we were doing all kinds of voodoo nonsense to get this child to come. I had also sent out prayer request to my loved ones and friends that Eli please make his way on his own.

At 1:00am on Friday morning I woke up and had to go to the bathroom...like big time if you know what I mean. When that fun experience was over I went to sleep in our living room because Mark was snoring and I started having contractions that I tried not to get too excited about. I was quite used to false alarms but I started timing them anyways and they were about 5-6 minutes apart. I tried to sleep but woke up about every hour and would time the contractions to make sure they weren't going anywhere and sure enough they stuck around.

Timing contractions...there's an app for that! 

At 6am a painful contraction woke me up and it felt different than my other ones that felt like the braxton hicks. The pain was also in my back with each one. I started timing and they were 3-5 minutes apart. Mark had a long work day the day before so I decided to wait a bit to wake him up but by 7am they were pretty consistently 3 min apart and I was having to breath through them. I woke Mark up saying I'm pretty sure today is the day. I showed him my contraction timer and we both just knew we'd be meeting our baby in no time.

We hadn't packed our hospital bag figuring we'd do it when I went into labor but I was having to stop during each contraction and lean over the bed and breath. Contractions stayed 3 minutes apart and at about 8ish we texted our family and said today is probably the day and that we'd keep in touch. We called my Dr. at 9am since we had an apt at 10am and he said to come in now so they could check me since he knew I didn't want to go to the hospital.

On the way to the Dr.

When we arrived he said my water had broke, I was 4cm and in early labor. I was a little sad we weren't further along but at least the day was here. They hooked me up to monitor my contractions for about 20 minutes and then he gave us the go ahead to go to the hospital or go home and then the hospital. My contractions had slowed down to about 5 min apart again so we went home.

I look like death...fat death but Mark is giving a thumbs up. We are both ready! 

At home I labored, and labored, and labored some more. Mark and I both said to each other that worse case is we meet our little man at 8pm. That was our guess....HA! Anyways....I wondered around the house leaning over anything as soon as a contraction hit. I labored on the exercise ball but it was really uncomfortable when a contraction came. I took a warm bath around 4:30 and after that we decided we would go to the hospital at 6. I don't know why we choose then...I think we just wanted another step forward. I wanted to wait until the last minute but we had no idea it would take so long.

I had a little emotional meltdown on the way to the hospital knowing that it was the last time we would leave our house as a family of two but Mark comforted me and we got excited about little Eli.....

To be continued...

I'll stop there because obviously I can't make this long story short and I don't want to wear you out. ;)


Danielle