Birth of Baby P

For my second birth I decided to birth with midwives at a birth center instead of an OBGYN at a hospital. I didn't want to have to fight for what I wanted and felt just as safe. Simple as that.

I also took a birth class not offered by the hospital (as I had for my first). Though I had successfully had an unmedicated birth for my first, I wanted to learn more techniques and clear any fears I had before this birth. As part of that I made a vision board and the phrase relating to what I wanted for my birth said, "I birth peacefully supported by midwives and family."

When determining a due date for my second, I opted to go by when I was pretty sure I had ovulated (based on tracking my basal body temperature) which put me at a date about a week before my first son's second birthday. A part of me really wanted him to come before his birthday, maybe so I could have "two under two" if even for only a couple days. The only concern was that my mother had purchased her ticket to come out on my first son's birthday which meant she might miss the birth. Seeing as she had been such a huge support during my first delivery, I was struggling to know how I could replace her. I tried contacting a few friends to see who could watch Jeffrey and ask if they were interested in helping during the birth, but had little success. Whether because of this or because this guy really did need to cook longer, I had little to no indication of labor until my mother flew into town.

Really it's astonishing. Of her five grandchildren this would be the fourth birth that she would attend and in all four cases we gave birth within about two days of her arrival. As I said, she came late on my oldest's birthday (late enough that he was in bed) and the next day we spent building the bond between grandson and grandmother and trying to encourage labor. We went on a walk and I have to say, I looked SMALL. A couple weeks prior I would say I was at my biggest, but then the little guy descended into my pelvis and I was not huge by most standards. I felt some lower back cramping (as I had a couple times up to this point), but other than that not much during that day. When your mother is in town you feel just a little bit of pressure to go into labor, especially when she flew in and only has so much time there. I truly attribute that as part of the reason all of us have given birth shortly after her arrival.

When we went to bed I vaguely remember experiencing some cramping, but not so much to keep me awake (as had happened with my first). A little frustrated by this, but knowing I needed rest I slept pretty decently that night.

At about 7:00am my husband's alarm went off (yes, mid-summer, he still had work!) and I had been lying awake for the last little bit feeling what I hoped were about to become regular contractions. When I timed them they were about 8 to 10 minutes apart, so not too exciting, but nothing to sneeze at either. They weren't very intense and so we decided to go on a walk to try to help them along.

And It helped! They got much closer together, but were not very long. With my first I had gotten accustomed to contractions lasting 60-90 seconds, but this time they were literally only 15-30 seconds, sometimes 40. And they were strong, but not all that bad really. And the even crazier part is the breaks I would have in between! With my first I would only get about 30 seconds in between, but this time I'd get a minute or more!

And actually, in a way I was discouraged because I was thinking it'd need to get more intense for me to progress. Well, we got back from our walk and I decided to shower. I do think my husband had called off work by this point, even though I was thinking it still may be several hours. After showering I got my long time on the toilet in (see explanation from first labor) and then finally tried to call my midwife. I didn't get an answer, but left a message, thinking she'd call back. I was excited when the answering machine was the midwife I had hoped for (there were three at the practice).

That was about 10:45am. For the next hour or so I spent a lot of it on my hands and knees to keep the baby in a good position and my husband applied counter-pressure with a rebozo. Quick explanation: a rebozo is a long kind of scarf used in Latin American cultures for a variety of uses, one of which is to assist women during labor. And in that way it has multiple uses as well, the main one we used was to do hip squeezes that provided counter-pressure for my contractions. We learned about it in our birth class.

I was still experiencing pretty decent-sized breaks between contractions. I think we tried calling one other time and then finally tried a third time before we finally got ahold of my midwife. It was a Wednesday and that was the day they had appointments at the closer of the two birthing centers and so I asked if we should travel to the further one. The closer birth center was smaller and if I went to birth there they would have to cancel all the appointments, so I had said throughout my whole pregnancy that if I gave birth on Wednesday it would be at the further one. It was determined that I should and so we started to pack up and get ready to leave. My son and mother had been playing and doing dishes during all this time and (as it does) it took some time to get out the door. As we finally got in the car I experienced my first urge to push, and that was when I realized I may be closer to birthing than I thought I was.

We left about noon. Lunch hour traffic. And with how far we lived from the freeway...we hit nearly every red light. And to a woman in transition - uncomfortable to say the least. Really my labor had been a breeze (comparatively) up to this point, but now traveling in the car (not comfortable when nine months pregnant let alone being in labor) and not being able to position myself in different ways or have my husband's help it was very uncomfortable. Overall though, I was able to maintain composure and not completely give in to the urge to push.

When we arrived matters were not much improved because we had never been to this birth center and had no idea where to go. After waiting for a contraction to pass, I heaved myself from the car and started heading in with my husband. Upon entering the building, we were instantly lost. I had expected them to be right there, but there was no one in sight. Just an empty first floor with random furnished rooms and - oh, look! A bathroom, let's use it. So I found myself stuck on the toilet, managing contractions solo as well as I could while my husband tried to figure out where we were supposed to go.

As it turned out, the birth center was all on the second floor. My baby's head was on its way out and I needed to climb a flight of stairs. (Okay, he wasn't actually crowning, but he wasn't at a negative station either!) So once that contraction ended my husband assisted me back through the first floor and to the stairs to the second floor. There was a little reception desk and a play area where my son and mother were already situated. To give you a visual - I was standing there holding myself (as I had been doing since we exited the car because IT FELT LIKE HE WOULD FALL OUT if I didn't hold myself) and my midwife was seated behind the desk on her phone. ON HER PHONE! I finally said, "where do you want me?"

And she looked up and saw the position I was in and said, "let's get you to the birthing suite," while thinking, "she's having a baby!"

We get back there and another midwife meets me and says, "Woah, this baby is coming, where do you want to be? We have the stool or the bed, and not much time to decide."

A little irked that she was not being more gentle, I just lay myself on my side on the bed as if to say, "This is where I am, this is where I will stay. I will not be moved!"And everyone started getting things ready around me. Then she asked if I wanted my mom to be there and I just said, "if she wants to be!" And they went and got her.

At this point while reclining on the bed, I finally got my husband's support again and realized that it was okay for me to start pushing. And so I did! Looking back, I actually wished I hadn't so much pushed and just let the little guy descend on his own more because I ended up tearing right through my old episiotomy scar. Grrrrrr.

My mom and son got on the bed beside me to watch, my husband was on my other side standing by me, and two midwives and a few attendants were... "below" me and had to dodge as my water broke during one of my pushes. I'm so grateful it got to break on its own because it certainly made labor much cushier!

Approximately 10 minutes after arriving to the birth center, he was there. He was blue, but they went ahead and placed him on me, and he eventually started crying and getting pinker. Having gotten there so fast I still had my shirt on and so he was just kind of awkwardly on my bare tummy. We were stuck like that for a bit while I got stitched up but eventually we got more comfortable and I was able to start breastfeeding.

This experience taught me several things:
1. Labor can go much faster for a subsequent birth!
2. Long breaks can occur between contractions and labor can be relatively comfortable!
3. Keep calling the midwife until she answers!

And in the end, I got just what I had visualized: "I birth peacefully supported by midwives and family."

Life with our two-year-old

It’s hard to believe my baby is already two! And that two years ago I was giving birth - time really flies. We thought his brother would be here by now, but it looks like he’s waiting a little longer to come. In the mean time, here’s an update!

Letters: He started showing interest in letters really randomly and without prompting, just by asking about lettering on shirts and so forth. From there it led to him first identifying “O” and then “S” and then it just went crazy from there. Now he can identify the whole alphabet (all upper-case and some lower-case) and loves pointing at and naming letters. 

Colors: Similar to letters, he just started pointing at things and naming its color. I want to say he started with red, but he was also really good at blue and orange to start out. Now he can do the whole rainbow, as well as brown, black, white, gray, and pink. Sometimes my husband and I will get really technical and tell him something is “tan” or “teal” and sometimes he remembers! So it’s really funny when he’ll surprise us with “silver” or something like that. 

Numbers: I hate to sound repetitive (or boring to anyone who could care less about our son’s development) but he also randomly started saying, “one, two,” only he would repeat that over and over. Eventually he started adding more numbers, and currently he loves counting to ten, only lately he’s been skipping six. Sometimes he likes to tack on a “yeven” (11) at the end. 

Talking: On top of everything described above, his vocabulary has also exploded. I can’t even list everything he says because he learns new words every day! He’s now to the point where (when he’s in the mood) he’ll just repeat anything we say. It’s really cute when it’s something like “Wow!” or “Crazy!” (the other day it was “that’s insane!”), but it gets me in trouble when it’s “Shoot!” so I have to be careful. He has started to have more complete sentences, and just today he said, “I got it!” after retrieving something, it was so cute. That was particularly awesome because more often he’ll refer to himself as “you” and say things like “hold you” when he wants us to hold him, and call us “me--” when he wants to help us he’ll say, “help me?” Pronouns are tricky to say the least. He also likes to identify when people or things are “funny” or he’ll describe people like “Mommy sad” or “Daddy cute” and so forth. It is so fun being able to communicate with him more.

In general he can repeat after us anything we say, and so we have started to have him say prayers and read scriptures. So that’s been really fun, and he gets really excited about “Jesus!” He can identify Jesus in pictures, although sometimes he’s a little off. For example, once he saw a picture of Dumbledore and called him Jesus. To make matters worse, once when Jeffrey was speaking gibberish and said something like, “Duh-ba-do,” my husband started having him say, “Dumbledore.” Though he’ll still call pictures of Dumbledore both Dumbledore and Jesus. Then, in church yesterday my son decided that was a good time to practice saying Dumbledore, both to my amusement and horror. It was pretty funny.

Nursery: Also at church, he has gotten much more excited about going to Nursery lately. Sometimes he even asks to go during the week! He always talks about playing with cars and balls there, and can name the other children. I don’t know if he sings when they have song time, but with us he has started to try to sing and it is so cute. Once at nursery he even offered a prayer when they said it was prayer time without being asked - that was unexpected!

Around the house: He loves to be a big helper and “kween up!” (clean up, sung as in the clean up song) “errbody!” He tried to use the vacuum and broom, and can help put dishes in the sink. He hasn’t quite got putting books back on the shelf though (a true misfortune, since he still loves to tear them off). He also likes to help in the kitchen and use the “whee,” (any mixer is a whee, and he gets sad if I hand-mix instead). 

Books: He LOVES reading. We get new books from the library all the time and he gets favorites while we have them. Sometimes he’ll still ask for certain books after we’ve returned them! He’s really good at just sitting and turning pages on his own (he’s only torn a few, on accident, he really is gentle) and loves to read the same book over and over “ghen?” (again). 

Baby brother: My son has been really cute with the baby in my belly, hugging and kissing it. Granted, for a while he also would point to his own or daddy’s belly and say “baby brudder,” but if we ask him to point to where baby brother is he points to mine. He loves getting to lift my shirt so he can cuddle my belly. Then about a month ago, he started also trying to take my belly “off” and wanting the baby to come “out.” I guess we’ll see how ready he is when the baby gets here!