Marigold's Birth Story, Part 1

Our sweet baby GIRL has arrived! If you didn't see the announcement, head here. And now I present to you, her birth story!

In the week's leading up to baby's arrival, so many people asked me if I was feeling ready. Which is such a difficult question to answer, because who's really ready for the newborn phase? Whew! But it's true that usually by the end, I'm just ready to get the show on the road.

However, this time around, we were taking the last precious weeks to enjoy being just a family of four and get house projects done and so I was really at peace with waiting on baby to make his or her arrival whenever pleased. It was honestly the most relaxed end of pregnancy ever.

I didn't even let my OB do cervical checks at my appointments because, "why care about a number anyway?" I'd tell her. She just smiled and went along with it. And when my visit to a chiropractor at 38 weeks pregnant revealed baby to be in perfect position with my body in nearly perfect alignment, and the chiropractor told me she though for SURE I'd go into labor early, like so soon, I just shrugged it off with a meh and put it out of my mind.

It felt good not to be caught up in making things happen at any specific pace.

It probably helped that we also ate like royalty for the last week or so. You never know when you're gonna have your last family-of-four meal, so might as well eat out every night! That's a saying, right? :P

Lenten fish fries (3 times!).
Drive thru fries and soft drinks.
Piled-high BBQ tator tots.
Buffalo chicken nachos.
Large veggie deli sandwiches.
Fro-yo with all the toppings.
And this crowning glory. . .

At 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant, we treated ourselves to the biggest banana split in town. Oh mama was it good.

But you didn't come here to read about my junk food diet, did ya?

We went to bed that night with super happy full tummies and no idea of what would be in store the following day.

I woke around 8am on my due date, a Sunday morning, and noticed the tiniest bit of spotting when wiping during my morning pee-stop. Since bleeding is always a trigger for me (hello previous miscarriage and infertility!), I reached out to my doula immediately and asked her if that was normal. She said, "Oh yes!" and agreed that this was a sign baby was probably starting to make moves. By 8:30am I noticed I was probably having a few contractions, and that I guess I had actually felt some crampy ones during the night but wasn't really with it enough to realize what was going on until now. This was surely a good sign that things were really happening!

While we sat down to breakfast, John received a text from my OB, Dr. H. She had taken me as a private patient and had basically guaranteed, barring a random emergency or coincidence, that she would be there to deliver my baby. We loved working with her during the pregnancy, she was totally on board with the birth plan, and we were excited to have her there for baby's arrival. But of course, with my luck for these sorts of things, on the morning I start to feel contractions, she texts to say that it's her birthday and she will be at a family party from 4-10pm, not able to deliver during that time. My heart sank. Now I was on some sort of weird clock, where I could either deliver before 4pm, after 10pm, or just take whoever showed up to deliver me between those hours . . . with no actual control over any of it. So we did the only thing we could do and just surrendered to God's will and did our best to put it out of our minds.

Since the contractions were super mild and very random with no discernible pattern, we decided to go to Mass at 10am. Which, thinking about it now, was a GREAT way to start labor. Oh the graces I'm sure I received. :)

During Mass, I probably had 3 mild contractions, and while hanging out with friends for about an hour after, probably 3 or so more. Nothing too serious, and the company of God and friends was a great distraction!

We decided to get drive through food for lunch, Pal's turkey sandwiches, fries, hot dogs, and a peachy Dr. Enuf. If that sounds like gibberish, it's because you're not from east Tennessee. But trust me, it was goooood. (Side note, if you're ever in east Tennessee, please go to Pal's -- it's an institution here.)

By the time lunch ended, contractions were starting to pick up. Not enough to head to the hospital yet, but enough to know this was probably the real thing. This was around 1pm. I texted Wendy with the following screen shot and let her know if contractions continued in this pattern, we'd be headed to the hospital within the hour.

Freya, the contraction timer app

I put John on boy-nap duty and sent him upstairs to get the boys sleeping. Before they went up, I hugged them both so close and said a most tearful goodbye. I'm not a weepy, emotional person typically, but knowing that I probably wasn't going to see them again without a new baby sibling, AKA a huge family change, made me tear up.

They headed up the stairs and I got to work putting together the rest of the hospital bag and getting things ready to load up in the car.

It didn't take long for contractions to get real serious. Perhaps it was being on my feet and moving a bunch of stuff around, or maybe it was knowing the boys were taken care of and I could let go of that responsibility, but something put my body into gear.

My contraction timer app, Freya, has the option to play a breathing technique called up-breathing (breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds, out through your mouth for 8 seconds), and I had turned it off until this point. It hadn't been necessary. But now, as contractions were getting stronger, I needed to be sure my oxygen was still flowing well, so I turned on the feature. And it was immeasurably helpful at keeping me calm!

At 1:32pm, I texted my mother-in-law to let her know to head our way to watch our boys, and I texted my friend and neighbor, Sarah, to have her swing by too. I wasn't sure how long my MIL was going to take; she took an hour to get to our house during Jude's birth and I knew I didn't have that amount of time this time around, so calling in extra back-up helped put me at ease too.

John still had to pack his hospital bag, so I labored through some longer and stronger contractions (about 1.5 minutes long each and 3 minutes apart) while he scrambled to throw his things together. I listened to the up-breathing counter on the app and walked loops around my family room, kitchen, and sun room. He finally emerged from the second floor and then furiously started bring our stuff out to the car. During this time, I had two contractions right on top of each other and knew it was really time to go.

Sarah arrived and, to our surprise, within two minutes, my MIL arrived too! So we were set to take off! Praise God for good people who are willing to watch your kiddos on the drop of a dime.

I had John put a maternity TENS unit on my back to help me get through these more intense contractions. I was especially hoping the TENS unit would help with contractions while stuck in a seated position in the car.

(Side note, if you've never heard of TENS before, it stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation, and it does exactly that -- it delivers a small shock to your skin and that pulse helps the body release endorphins and distract your brain from bigger pains that are going on in your body. Since I had taken a British Hypnobirthing course (online), and maternity TENS units are big over there, I decided to look into it and try it out for this labor. Spoiler alert: it was awesome!)

At 1:52pm, we texted Wendy, our doula, that we were headed to the hospital. And then we were off!

For part 2, click here.