Baby Zoe: Her Birth Story

Baby Zoe: Her birth story

Today marks the day of what would have been baby Zoe’s due date! Since she is already here, I figured today would be the perfect day to write down and share her birth story, since it was definitely one for the books!

When everything is happening so fast and your adrenaline is rushing, and your eyes are closed because you’re in so much pain from labor, that whole process and series of events becomes such a blur. And as the days/months/years go on you start to forget how everything actually happened on that big day. So yes, here I am with now FOUR KIDS and a five day old newborn baby, finally jumping on my blog and writing this all down! Putting this down as a major accomplishment LOL. Alright, where do I start?

Friday, January 15 I had my 39 week doctor appointment. My hopes were that I would be dilated enough to where my doctor could strip my membranes and that would then put me in labor that night. I was extremely hopeful because this is exactly how I went into labor with Tori. Turns out, I was actually 2cm dilated, and my body had “already done its job” in separating the amniotic sac from my uterine wall…according to my doctor. So there really wasn’t much left to “strip”. In reality, that is really good news, but I was somewhat bummed because this wasn’t going to give any sort of kick start to labor, since my body was already slowly working on it itself. So she did what she could…I went home, went on a walk to try to get things moving…nothing. No contractions, no cramping. Total bummer. Especially because the three nights prior to this day, I was having lots of contractions and cramping.

Saturday rolls around…still nothing. While hanging outside with my neighbors, one of them had mentioned that she used clary sage (an essential oil) to massage onto the pressure points that are known to start contractions. She offered to let me borrow them and impatient me, said why not!? So I got the oil from her and that night, used the oils and massaged the sh*t out of my hands, feet and calves hahah. Sure enough, in the middle of the night I started having some pretty intense contractions. It wasn’t until early morning that I decided to start timing them…around 6:30am. They started off about 7-14 mins apart, and they were bearable to get through, but definitely uncomfortable. I woke Cody up and said “Don’t freak out or anything, but I think today is the day!” Around 6:45, I went to the bathroom and completely lost my mucus plug (TMI maybe? But if you’re here reading this, I guess that’s what you signed up for hahah!)

At this point, I was still having contractions, and pretty intense ones…but the time in between them was growing further and further apart, about 15-25 minutes between now. By 9:00am I had my last contraction. After that, nothing. They just completely stopped. I was super frustrated and just totally annoyed. Later that morning, we decided to go for a walk to see if we could bring them back…that was a total fail.

The rest of our Sunday went by and nothing was happening. I had some light cramping but nothing worth writing about. I sat in my friends garage which is next door, ALL DAY, just relaxing and watching the kids hang outside. I didn’t get up from my chair for probably 3 hours. Around 4:30 I decided to get up, thought I should probably take a pee break, grab some water etc. and before I could walk from her garage to my bathroom next door, I felt this trickle of really warm water go down my leg. I stopped in my tracks and thought hmmm I either just peed myself, or my water just broke….so I ran into the bathroom to pee. Once I stopped peeing, the water stopped. No continuation of water, no big gush of water breaking or anything…so again just super confused as to whether my body just decided to pee itself orrrrr my water did indeed break?

Within five minutes of peeing, I had a contraction. So now I’m thinking that my water DID break because they say once that happens, your contractions will start almost immediately. But you know, I still wasn’t convinced…and I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Well, sure enough, five minutes later, another contraction. I let about seven rounds of contractions roll through (all were about five minutes apart - insert sketchy face here) before I convinced myself that this was the real thing. My contractions at this point were pretty painful, but I was still able to stand. Normally when I get to this point, I’m on the ground dying in pain haha. Cody and I decided that we needed to just go, so we left the kids with the neighbors (thank god for amazing neighbors/friends - shoutout to Simone and Megan!), texted my mom and told her to head over, and we were finally on our way to the hospital. Also note - our hospital is about a 35 minute drive from our house, with no traffic (again, insert sketchy face here) So we always battle with when to actually leave for the hospital because I would hate to drive all the way over there and get turned away because I’m not actually in labor. But also, if we don’t leave soon enough what if we don’t make it in time…So this is where it starts to get good.

As soon as we got in the car, the pain level of my contractions totally increased, like my body knew it was go time and it wasn’t messing around anymore. We were about 15 minutes out from the hospital and it was then that I had about three rounds of contractions that had me shaking, sweating and completely freaking out because I was 100% certain I was going to have to tell Cody to pull over and call 911. There was no way we were making it to the hospital and I was absolutely going to have this baby in our car. But I, being the sweetest wife ever, didn’t want to freak Cody out, because if you know him, THAT WOULD FREAK HIM OUT. Instead, I told every fiber in my body to hold that baby in and get our asses to the hospital. Even though I was pretty certain I could literally feel her making her way down :) LOLLL. But. after those three rounds of contractions, it did almost seem like my body relaxed and the contractions eased up on me…a little bit.

We ended up making it to the hospital around 6:20pm HALLELUJAH. Pulled up, had to deal with the valet guy at the front, Cody had to go find a wheelchair because I sure as hell could not walk. So while he’s wherever looking for a wheelchair, I’m on the ground outside, rummaging through my hospital bag trying to find my damn mask before I could get into the hospital. Realized I left my purse at home, so I didn’t have my ID or my insurance card. Golden. Got into the wheelchair, rolled up, checked in at the front of the hospital and started making our way up to Labor & Delivery.

The second we got to triage to check in, the girl at the front grabbed some information from us, and then asked us what number baby this was. When we told her it was #4 she was like okayyyy, grabbed the phone and called one of the nurses and says “Hi we have someone checking in right now, baby #4 so I need her to be checked right away!” Within seconds, they were dragging my wheelchair to the nearest room, had me take my sweats off, no time to put a hospital gown on, just left my t-shirt on, and somehow through all the pain, got onto the hospital bed so she could check how far dilated I was. I was in so much pain I couldn’t even lay down and I remember the nurse saying “Don’t worry if you can’t lay down, I just need you to lean back far enough for me to check you”. The fastest check I’ve ever done, she immediately says “Okay…you’re complete, you’re ready to go!” She calls to a nurse and says “We’re at a 10, what do we wanna do? Do we need to move her or should we just do it right here?” And in my head I’m just like….what….the….hell is going on? So to confirm, I ask her, in SO much shock…”Wait so I’m 10cm??” And as she says yes, I immediately know…there is no way in hell I’m getting that epidural. I immediately start crying hahah. They decided to move me to a birthing suite (thank god) and as we’re heading over, I’m just sobbing. She explains that I’m probably not going to have time to be able to get an epidural and in my head I’m just like nope. There is no way. I’m going to probably die if I have to do this without an epidural. She must’ve seen the way I reacted once she said I probably couldn’t get an epidural, because then she asked me if I was originally planning on getting one and I probably gave her this look like “UHH YA DUH!” and you could tell she felt so bad, so she was like “Okay, we’ll see what we can do. No promises, the anesthesiologist is finishing up on another epidural but if we have time and he makes it over here before you push this baby out, we’ll try to get it for you”

So we get to the birthing suite. They pop me on the bed and I swear within seconds, the anesthesiologist is there. They remind him I am at a full 10 and ready to start pushing, so if we can get this done as soon as possible - let’s do it. And we did. WE FREAKING GOT IT hahaha and he goes “That was by far the fastest I have ever done an epidural. What was that, three minutes???” I have never been so grateful, thankful, #blessed, EVER. It immediately kicked in and it was just like everything was going to be okay. I could breathe, I wasn’t in pain, I was just so glad I could relax. Before I could even say bye to the guy, the nurses started pulling out the stirrups and prepping the bed for delivery. I looked at them and I go “Wait, are we pushing like…right now???” And they just laughed at me like…girl, YOU’RE AT A 10, you’re having this baby right now. It’s probably 7:10/7:15pm at this point, and I start pushing. Being that this was my fourth baby, and all of my other babies seemed to have pushed themselves right out, I was shocked when I had done two rounds of pushing and nothing was happening. I could tell my body was working extra hard to push her down and she just wasn’t budging. Baby girl had also been tracking really small throughout my whole pregnancy, so I had the idea in my head that she was tiny, and this was going to be a breeze. So why am I still pushing…?

Well, the doctor notices that I kind of peed myself (and I think on her too hahah) and she asks when the last time I went pee was. I told her it was right before I had left for the hospital, when I thought my water had broke…and hadn’t had any water since then. She was confused because it seemed like my bladder was so full, that it was actually blocking baby girl from being able to push herself down. However, all makes sense since this was the most thrown together birth scene ever! Hahah they never had time to give me a catheter, which is normal protocol since I’m hooked up to an IV and have all these fluids running through me. So she puts a catheter in, ouch, and I swear we all just sat there for three minutes listening to my pee drain out of me hahah CLEARLY my bladder was extremely full.

But as soon as we emptied my bladder, we did one round of pushing and boom, she finally made her way down and she started crowning. One more round and she came right out like it was nothing. 7:43pm and we had our sweet little girl. Our tiny little peanut weighed 6lbs 11oz and was 19” long (the exact same size as her big sis, Reagan). She didn’t have a name yet, which is a whole different story, but we were so excited to welcome this little girl into our world.

I remember holding Zoe in my arms right after delivering, feeling so mind blown. My body didn’t hurt, I felt completely normal, but yet I had this baby on my chest. What in the world just happened?! 30 minutes ago I was crying, in so much pain. And now I’m here. Everything went down so quickly that I don’t think my body had time to process what was happening or what it was even doing. I even remember Cody saying, “You had this baby so quick, it’s still early enough for us to FaceTime the kids before they go to bed and they can meet their sister!” Oh, covid….

It was the craziest night ever.

Zoe girl, we love you so much already and we are so lucky that God gave us five extra days of YOU. Happy due date, nugget!