Category Archives: Birth

Catch up on Part I and II before diving into Part III

It was almost 4am and it didn’t feel like we were anywhere close to meeting our baby…

After 9 hours of active labor I was exhausted and discouraged. Since I had to get back in bed for my penicillin dose and to be monitored for a few minutes, I asked the nurse to examine me to see what kind of progress I’d made since I was 4.5 cm in triage over 8 hours ago. “Surely I’ll be close to 8 cm and entering transition! Surely!” After checking me, she said she was having a hard time distinguishing how dilated I was and called another nurse in. This nurse examined me and told me the bad news: I was only 5cm dilated. After dilating 3 cm in an hour, I only made .5 cm of progress in almost 9 hours!! I started to sob.

Daniel was able to calm me down and get me prepared to start our rhythm of walking the halls. I started to feel disoriented. We didn’t get too far down the hall before I felt nauseous and we went back to the room. I barely made it inside before I started to vomit. I wanted to be on my hands and knees and after a strong contraction, I would throw up. I felt horrible, but I knew that I always throw up as I’m entering transition so maybe things were finally going somewhere! I tried to stay on my feet because that’s how I had the strongest contractions–with Daniel holding me upright while I breathed through them.

My memory starts to get fuzzy here and I’m not sure exactly what time it was when this was happening. But I got back into the bed on my side for a few contractions (still throwing up after each one.) Each contraction was between 2.5 and 3 minutes long. Then I started to feel the urge to push. Daniel was holding one of my legs up as I rested on my side and I remember mumbling to him that I needed Dr. B to come in. When she arrived, she examined me and advised me not to push because I was STILL only 6.5 cm dilated and she didn’t want me to tear my cervix. “What am I supposed to do?!” I asked her. She advised me that I probably had a long way to go and that I could try some different positions to make more progress. When she stood up to leave, I begged her not to go. “Please! Just stay five more minutes! Something’s different. I know I’m about to have this baby! Please stay for a couple more contractions!” I think she thought I was nuts, but she sweetly complied.

My mom left the room to reheat the socks filled with rice in the microwave for my back labor. I got up to use the bathroom. On the way back to the bed I had a strong contraction while standing up and holding on to Daniel. Then I wanted to be on my side in the bed with my legs around one of these peanut shaped birthing balls they had at the hospital. As soon as I hoisted my leg around the birthing ball, Gwen’s positioning changed and she wanted to meet the world! I yelled, “I’m pushing! I can’t help it! She’s crowning!” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dr. B stand up, wash her hands, and get her gloves on. I tried very hard not to push since the idea of tearing my cervix was terrifying and about 30 seconds prior I had been 3.5 cm away from ready to push, but there’s no stopping your body from pushing when it wants to! I felt Gwen’s head come out and Dr. B told me to give a good strong push which was what my body wanted to do anyway and it felt like Gwen’s shoulders and body jumped out.

Dr. B passed me my beautiful baby girl right away and I remember being out of my mind in awe of my new daughter and saying, “Gwen! I love you so much! You’re so beautiful!” over and over again. The relief and the joy!

All of this took approximately 3 minutes because my mom then returned from heating up the rice sock in the microwave for 2 minutes and missed all the excitement. Our nurse also had stepped out for a minute and heard someone say that I had delivered to which she said, “No, you must have that wrong. I was just in there and she was only 6.5 cm.” Dr. B. encouraged me and said, “Well, you knew your body! I’m glad you told me to stay!”

Gwen started nursing and I snuggled her while I delivered the placenta and then got stitched up for one small tear. Daniel picked up his phone to text family that Gwen had arrived and he realized that it was May 30th, St. Joan of Arc’s Day and Corpus Christi!***

After several minutes of nursing, I was exhausted (and had lost lots of blood which is typical for me), so I needed Daniel’s help holding her while she finished nursing. Usually, I am exhilarated after delivery and can’t imagine sleep because I just want to gaze at my baby forever, but I was so worn out that I had to hand Gwen over to Daniel and then I immediately fell asleep. My blood pressure was very low for a few more hours and I was faint and light-headed, so they made us wait until I was more stable to move us to a recovery room. I have not bounced back as quickly as I did after Lucy was born. Probably a combination of a long labor, blood loss, and a little fever that my household has been passing around. But I’m starting to feel like myself again and our friends and family are taking such good care of us–bringing us food and keeping the older kids entertained while we get to know Gwen.

She is such a sweet, precious baby! She reminds me so much of her big sister in her calm temperament and she has figured out her days and nights in record time. Although she wakes to nurse every 1-3 hours at night, she’s sleepy all night long and goes straight back to sleep after eating for 10 minutes. Champ! And my sweet husband has been taking “first shift” most nights between 9 and midnight so that I can start the night with some uninterrupted sleep.

Daniel has dubbed her our “happiest baby yet.” There’s something slightly elvish about her little adorable face and I can’t wait to learn more about her as she grows and reveals her personality. Big brother adores her has been making up songs about her: “We love Gwen so much much much” and “Sittin’ in the backseat with my Gweeeeen!” However, any big changes in life make Benjamin’s more, ahem, challenging personality traits emerge. Big sister Lucy wants to kiss her baby sister all day and I have to keep an eagle eye on her to make sure she doesn’t try to “hold you, Gwen!” Yesterday was the first day that felt a little like normalcy with three kids. Despite the exhaustion and craziness, I have to pinch myself that I get to live life with these precious little people.

So our Gwen Stellamaris (Fair Star of the Sea), named after my confirmation saint, St. Gwen, and after Our Lady, the Star of the Sea, was born at 7:41am, 7lbs and 4oz, wailing and bright pink! With a full head of jet black hair and grey-blue eyes, she’s gorgeous. May she ever be a beautiful light for Our Lady and Our Lord! We love her so!

***In a sad, but beautiful turn of events, the sacristan at our parish, Lena, passed away later in the day. She was in her 90s and had been the sacristan since she was 14 years old–over 75 years! Her favorite saint was St. Joan. Gwen’s godmother, Julia, had been helping to care for her as she declined. Julia came to see Baby Gwen at the hospital just before receiving the news that Lena had passed away.

As I shared in Part I, I was dilated 4.5 cm in triage, so they got us set up in a labor and delivery room with our wonderful nurse Christine just after 7pm. My mom (my unofficial doula) arrived and started heating up socks filled with rice to place against my lower back to relieve some of the pain from the back labor while I got my penicillin drip. Socks with uncooked rice, guys! Helps so much! I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone has this experience but the penicillin STINGS. It stings so bad! The pain would shoot up my arm and was almost worse than the contractions. So Christine made the drip go really slowly so that it wouldn’t hurt so much. The downside was that I had to be hooked up for what felt like eternity in order to receive the full dose.

When I was finally done with the antibiotics and had been monitored for the fetal heartbeat, we noticed that my contractions had slowed down. So Daniel and I took a long walk around the halls to speed things up again. When the contractions started to intensify, I opted to try laboring in the tub for awhile so that the water could relieve some of the back labor pain. The warm water did help with the pain, but it felt like I had gotten TOO comfortable. Again my contractions had spaced out, so we decided to get me out and try laboring on the birth ball for a bit. Daniel and I prayed a Rosary as I sat on the birth ball and I looked at a holy card of Our Lady and the Christ Child that Abbey sent me.

As it neared 11pm, I started to feel exhausted. My contractions were strong but not regular. I remember apologizing to Daniel and my mom about how boring the labor was.  I really wanted to lay down and rest, but I was worried that would slow things down and just make me more tired in the long run. But since it was time to get more antibiotics and be monitored, we decided I should rest while I was hooked up to the IV. By this point my contractions were difficult with intense back labor. I would breathe into each one while praying Hail Marys and Daniel stayed by my side every minute, encouraging me and helping me remember to relax and let my body work.

It felt great to lie down on my side for a bit while I received the second dose of penicillin, but just as I feared, the contractions slowed down and I was antsy to get out of bed and start walking again. Midnight came and went, so I knew our Gwen wasn’t going to be a May 29th baby. After what felt like forever, my second dose of penicillin was finished and we could get up and walk. I remember telling Daniel, “I’m just so tired. I don’t remember feeling like this last time.” We consulted Dr. B. who offered to give me something to help me sleep for a bit. Daniel and I talked it over and he was worried that I wouldn’t actually get good rest and that it would just slow everything down with an end result of being more exhausted than before. So we decided to soldier on.

I had been snacking on and off and drinking water and orange juice but I was hungry for something more substantial, so our nurse brought in a sandwich tray and I devoured a ham and cheese. That perked me up a little bit and I was having some good contractions in the rocking chair. I kept getting up and walking around our room and the halls because that seemed like the best way to make progress. My contractions were getting longer and closer together and I couldn’t pray Hail Marys anymore while breathing through them. I switched to a combination of counting down from 20 with each slow breath (by 0 the contraction would be over) and praying to favorite saints with each breath “St. Lucy, pray for us. St. John of God, pray for us. St. Michael, pray for us. Bl. John Paul II, pray for us...”

I got back into the tub to get a little break from the back labor pains. It was almost time to get another dose of penicillin and I was getting so discouraged and tired. Lucy’s birth had been so fast and I hadn’t expected another long and painful labor like I had with Benjamin.

During labor I am very calm and quiet. I go inside my head and breathe through the contractions and don’t move or make noise. But the pain and exhaustion were becoming overwhelming. The back labor and pain in my thighs with each contraction was getting unbearable and I knew it meant that Gwen was likely in a weird position like Benjamin was. I didn’t want to go through that kind of pain again. I looked up at Daniel and just burst into tears. “I can’t do this! I’m not going to be able to do this! I’m so tired and the labor isn’t going anywhere! I don’t know what to do!” I might have also said really reasonable things like, “Do something!” and “Fix this!” He held my hand and looked straight into my eyes and said, “I know you can do this. You can do this, Haley.” It was almost 4am and it didn’t feel like we were anywhere close to meeting our baby…