Hey friends!! Sorry I’ve been MIA lately but we finally welcomed our sweet little rainbow baby to the world and our lives have been a little hectic as we learn how to become parents!

Sweet William was born June 23rd at 10:01p.m. weighing 8 pounds 12 ounces.

I am sharing my experience mostly for my own personal reflection, but of course if you are interested please read on! I am going to go into a lot of detail so keep that in mind if you decide to continue reading.

All throughout my pregnancy, I wondered what contractions would feel like. I kept asking people I know who have babies and everyone has a different way of explaining them. I couldn’t wait to finally feel them for myself (I would soon regret wanting this).

Friday June 22 my husband and I were sitting in bed watching a movie. I was eating my daily bowl of frozen fruit and just didn’t feel like my normal self. I told my husband that this could be the night! It wasn’t. But the nice thing was that we got a full night’s sleep and even slept in until 10am! As soon as I woke up, I knew I was having contractions. They weren’t really painful yet but they were definitely there and they were coming pretty frequently. They felt like strong period cramps and every once in a while I would get the urge to go #2. At around 12pm I started timing my contractions and they were still pretty irregular but coming often. I was having one every few minutes and they lasted anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute each.

My husband decided he needed a hair cut so I told him he better hurry because my contractions were coming very often! While he was gone the intensity picked up so I started to get myself and our things ready to leave for the hospital. I showered, did my hair and makeup (which was completely unnecessary because after pushing a baby out, your hair and makeup does not matter, haha), and made sure I had any last minute items packed and ready to go. As soon as he got home I showed him my contractions that I had been timing and we decided it was time to go and get checked out. By this point they were coming every couple of minutes and lasting between 45 seconds and a minute and a half, but the pain was still manageable.

We got to the hospital around 2pm and got checked into triage in the labour and delivery unit. I was asked to remove my pants and put on a gown so a nurse could come and check me for dialation. As I was undressing, I felt a big gush. And then felt another as I got into the bed. Once the nurse came over, I told her that my water may have broken so as she was checking me for dialation she also did a swab to see if any amniotic fluid had come out. I was between 4 and 5 centimeters dialted and she did detect some amniotic fluid so she figured I probably had a high leak somewhere. That was enough for us to get admitted! Yay!

We got to our labour and delivery room and by that point my contractions had gotten even more intense and much more painful! The nurse who was assigned to us asked if I wanted an epidural, to which I quickly replied “yes please!”

Throughout my pregnancy I kept telling my husband that I wanted to try and go through labour without an epidural if I could but I wasn’t against getting one if I thought I needed it. Welp, labour is painful and there’s no shame in getting the epidural! The nurse ordered the epidural right away for me.

While we waited, I found standing the was the best way to get through the contractions. My blood pressure was a little high so we had to wait for my blood work to come back before the anesthesiologist would give me the epidural. By this point I was in a LOT of pain and having trouble breathing through the contractions. Luckily around 5:00pm my blood work came back normal and I was able to get the epidural. As soon as it was done and I laid back in the bed I felt my water fully break. The nurse came to check me and I was 5.5 centemeters dialted and she confirmed that my water had fully broken. Unfortunately my amniotic fluid was a little green, which meant that baby boy had pooped inside of me. The nurse explained that because of this, there would be a NICU nurse and a pediatrician in our room during delivery just to make sure he able to breath properly once he is born.

The epidural took about 20 minutes to fully kick in but once it did, it was fantastic! I felt so much better and was able to relax a little bit. I got the shakes pretty bad which worried my husband, but I knew that it was pretty normal after getting an epidural from all the birth vlogs I watched during my pregnancy.

At around 6:30pm the nurse checked me again and I was 9cm dialated already!! I was shocked but also so excited that I was progressing so quickly! I was getting very anxious to meet our sweet boy. She told me that they usually wait about an hour after I’m fully dialated before pushing so she told me to try and get some rest while I could.

I started pushing at 9:05pm and holy smokes, pushing is NO JOKE. Typically you will push 3 times per contraction, for 10 seconds each time but my contractions were long so they tried to get me to push a fourth time during each contraction and it was so hard but obviously worth it, because in 56 minutes, we finally got to meet our sweet little rainbow baby!! William Wyatt was born at 10:01pm on June 23rd, 2018.

They placed him on my chest for about 10 seconds before taking him away to check on his breathing. He was screaming and seemed to be breathing ok but he had inhaled a lot of meconium so they took him to the NICU right away to be sure he was okay! My husband went with them.

My poor husband had to watch them stick our brand new baby with a bunch of needles to try and give him an IV. They then placed him on a CPAP machine and put a tube down his throat to remove excess air from his belly.

Meanwhile, I was sitting in our delivery room counting down the seconds until I was able to get up and out of bed to go see our baby. As much as I loved the epidural, I was wishing I hadn’t gotten one at this point so I was able to get out of bed!

As soon as little William was stable enough, my husband got to do skin on skin with him! He sent me this picture which instantly had me bawling.

I was filled with so many emotions – happiness, fear, love for my baby, love for my husband, guilt that I wasn’t there with them both.

About 3 hours later, my nurse got me out of bed and into a wheelchair so I could go and visit my baby boy!

I can’t even explain the emotions I felt seeing my precious baby boy, that I was able to keep safe for the past nine months, hooked up to a bunch of machines. It was terrifying but at the same time I felt so lucky that we had such great doctors and nurses that did everything they could to make sure our sweet boy was okay!

Fast forward about 18 hours and we got to take our perfect baby boy back to our room for the night! It was a rough night with a lot of firsts for us new parents but we felt so lucky to have our healthy baby boy in our arms without any machines!

We were sent home the following afternoon and the rest is history!

The last month has been one of the hardest, most rewarding months of my life and I cannot wait to continue watching our sweet William grow!

 

xoxo. -K