Harriet's birth story, part 3: baby spinning

Alrighty! Part One got us to the point where my water broke. Part Two got us to the point where we headed to the hospital. Part Three is all about the six most athletic hours of my life. I'm smiling in the picture above because I have no idea what is ahead. And because I had just ordered a bowl of oatmeal off the hospital menu, and I loved ordering off that fancy menu.

We got to the hospital and I felt so welcome there. I didn't know if I would...we were a home birth that was now showing up without any doctor that had me on their charts. But the administrator who ran the birthing wing was incredibly warm and kind to me. And the nurse we had actually had birthed two of her four babies at home, so there was no stigma with her either. In fact, she was really knowledgeable in all sorts of baby spinning techniques, as we tried to get this baby to get into position to come into the world. I had read a bit about these maneuvers so I sort of knew what was coming.

They checked me and I was dilated to a three. They hooked up the pitocin and before we started the baby spinning I took the traditional walk down the hospital hallways.

I'd caption that picture above, "get back into life! With depends!" Because I was still wearing them... And then I'd caption the picture below, "I'm a good sport!" This smile was before the pitocin really kicked in. Also, it's strange to remember that between contractions life is bearable. The pain is not constant. Which is nice of it. I seem to forget this fact (that there is relief between contractions) from baby to baby.

But then the contractions come. And they do hurt. Oh land, they hurt so bad. My favorite birthing position was in the glider rocker, singing quietly little falsetto melodies to the music we were listening to. We were playing the new Sara Groves album (Floodplain) and the new Andrew Peterson album (The Burning Edge of Dawn). Both of which are incredible. And since they were brand new to us, I was listening to the words with great concentration. My little falsetto melodies went along with the songs and somehow the singing and the rocking lessened the pain for me.

Along with the contractions hurting like craaaazy was the penicillin IV that I had in case of strep. I hadn't been tested for strep and because we didn't know if I was positive they administered the penicillin as a precaution. And man that IV killed going into my arm. It burned on the way in and my arm felt like it might explode.

My nurse had me doing all sorts of things with my legs and belly. At one point she had me squatting as low as I could with Rory standing behind me holding my belly up from behind as securely as he could. Folks, I don't do squats on a good day, let alone through a series of three contractions, multiple times in a row. In the picture above, one leg is swung off the bed. We did other exercises with the medicine ball and after six hours of pure athleticism they checked me again and I was dilated to a four. After all that, I had earned one centimeter. I was discouraged and exhausted and called mercy. Which translated to: epidural. 

At 7:30 the lady with the epidural showed up. She told me I should be able to still feel my toes with the epidural. But a few minutes later I couldn't feel a thing from my belly button down and I could not have been happier. They kept one leg up on a medicine ball (under the sheets) still hoping the baby would get into position. They turned me every hour, changing the leg on the medicine ball. The epidural made me throw up (it has with all three kids) a total of twelve times and after a while it was obvious this baby was still not coming anytime soon. We decided to sleep for a while. Thankfully we didn't know it would still be eleven more hours before our baby would be born.

Harriet's birth story, part 2: hopeful for a home birth

Part one of this birth story got us to the gun shot: my water finally broke! Being so late I assumed that if my water did break, this labor would go quickly. But it didn't.

All night long I had a back contraction about every hour or so. It was sort of lame. I knew things were starting up, but it wasn't all that intense. We were planning for a home birth (another story for another day!) so Rory inflated the birthing tub. But things were so slow we didn't fill it with water. In fact, we woke up in the morning and things felt so relaxed that we decided to take the kids to preschool. Upon seeing the tub in living room Ivar happily danced around, pleased that there was a swimming pool in our house. And Elsie crawled behind the couch and cried and cried. She knew her world was about to change in a mighty way...

It was letter D week at preschool so I told the kids they could bring in one of mama's "duh, duh, diapers" and they respectfully declined. They went to school and one of our midwives came over and checked me and told us what we should be looking for as our next step.

Rory got the kids Happy Meals after he got them from school and then my mom came and picked the kids up to take back to their house which left Rory and I in our house alone. And it was really nice. And quiet. We had already walked our road in the morning, and then decided to take another walk to the apple trees. But once there we decided to walk into the harvested soybean field and in the end we walked about a mile to the end of the field and found a big rock by a pond and then a mile back to our house. It was so lovely and peaceful. We were so excited for all that was to come. This walk felt like a little baby moon for us...it was sweet to have such a long and peaceful day to prepare for all that was ahead.

When we got home we remembered the acorn squash we had left in the oven. And we were glad we didn't burn our home down just before our home birth.

Rory went to Cub to get some groceries and later that night we got into a fight. Looking back I'd say we both had reasonable arguments. And that we were getting a bit stressed out that things weren't moving along. I think our fears were coming out sideways...at each other. In the end, we watched more interviews with the Back to Eden gardening guy that we like so much. I slept fairly well again. Just waking every hour or so with a back contraction, but nothing unbearable. And I was ready for unbearable.

We woke on Tuesday morning a bit more annoyed that things hadn't progressed overnight. We had passed the 24 hour mark with my broken water and there were no signs we were moving forward. I called our midwives again and the other midwife came to check the position of the baby. She told us that the baby was malpositioned, face up, fist under its chin, elbow extended out and still way up in the birth canal. The midwife explained that the baby was not on my cervix, which is what really causes to contractions to get going. Contractions were what would help get the baby into position. But without the baby being in position the contractions wouldn't start. We were in a holding pattern.

Given the amount of time my water had been broken it seemed best to go and get contractions started with pitocin at the hospital. And truly I was relieved. We had hoped to have this baby at home, but I had always said if we ended up at the hospital then that was exactly where we needed to be. And so we packed a suitcase and got in the car.

But it was so confusing. We really felt like we had been called to home birth. It's hard to explain but through so many confirmations I felt nothing but peace and excitement to have the baby at home. We had thought we were doing the right thing. And now we were left doubting if we had heard right or not. This is a tricky place in faith...when you step out and are left unsure.

What we didn't know was that we were right in the middle of a bigger plan, and that getting us to the hospital was going to be very important in the end. But sometimes when you're in the middle of your story, it's hard to understand why things are happening the way they are happening...

Harriet's birth story, part 1

Hattie is four weeks old today! Amazing! Life has been so full since she came. The first weekend we welcomed the kids home with us. The second weekend we celebrated Maddie's wedding. The third weekend I was down with mastitis and the forth weekend we trick-or-treated and celebrated Ivar's 5th birthday. These weeks have flown by. But here we are and I am committed to writing out her birth story...the story of the hours leading up to her arrival. This post today will be the abridged version. For some of you, this will be sufficient. But for my own memory keeping and for the few of you who love the details, I'm going to tell all the details over the next couple of days. 

There is so much suspense wrapped up in labor and delivery because you simply do not have any idea how it is all going to unfold. You just can't know. And after this last labor, I would say that it is God's good grace that you don't know how it's going to unfold.

Every phase of Harriet's labor felt a little too long and a little too eventful so that at each new stage Rory and I would think, "alright. surely now we've turned a corner. things should go smoother." But they never really did.

A quick overview by the numbers: When she finally made her earthly debut, Harriet was 10 days past her due date. It had been 54 hours since my water had broken, 37 of which were at home where I burned through a 24 pack of Depends. We ended up at the hospital where I enjoyed 17 hours of pitocin-induced contractions: 6 of those hours were the most athletic hours of my life, balancing on exercise balls, doing squats and lunges, all in an effort to get the baby to move into position. 11 of those hours were with a blessed epidural that unfortunately made me throw up 12 times. I pushed for over 1 hour and finally my 9 pound, 4 ounce baby with a head circumference of 15 inches was born.

And I was 1 exhausted mama. (This is also where a whole other story begins, but today I'm just writing about her labor and delivery.)

So you see, if a woman knew what her story was going to be before the whole shebang began, she might just cry. But you don't know it while living it, and that's definitely best.

On Sunday night of that week I stayed up late. We were seven days overdue and the birth felt imminent, even though it had felt imminent for over a week. I had posted this funny picture of me above on facebook and was getting lots of fun feedback which was good entertainment. I decided to read through Psalm 91 again, the Psalm that had come to mean so much to me and bring me so much comfort all throughout this pregnancy. And as I finished I closed my Bible, stood up from our reading chair and felt my water break.

I was so thrilled! Finally! I ran to the bathroom and then ran to Rory to tell him the happy news. This party was finally starting!

five is very, very fun

(Thanks to Kyle for taking this awesome pic of everyone at Ivar's 5th birthday party!)

At the beginning of October, while waiting for Hattie to come, I decided to plan Ivar's birthday party. And I had some thinking to do. Because last year, after his 4th birthday party, he sadly told me after everyone had left, "that was not a very good party." And that sounds like an ungrateful boy, but he was totally right. I had planned the party for all the adults coming to his party, and had somehow missed the point of the party completely: Ivar. I had made a homemade meal, we played trivia games...it wasn't very kid-fun.

So this year I was all ears. And what he kept telling me was Chuck E Cheese. Which sounded like a great plan to me. My sister said, "I think the year you have a newborn is the year you go to Chuck E Cheese." And I added, "and you buy the cake."

My fun boy had a few ideas for his party. He told me that "everyone needs to wear red to my party because red is my favorite color because Lightning McQueen is red." My dad, always the enthusiastic supporter of Ivar's latest interest, went to party city and purchased napkins and a hat and noise makers all with Lightning McQueen.

We ate pizza, cake and opened presents and then it was time to go play in the arcade. But Ivar wanted to play legos with his dad. Rory's mom had given Ivar the bucket of legos Rory had growing up...so there in the midst of ski ball and tunnel slides and tickets to be won Ivar and Rory played legos. I love that so much.

His birthday was on Sunday, so I asked him the day before if he wanted to bring a treat to share with his church family. I told him since we all had eaten so much sugar from trick-or-treating, it would be best maybe not to pick a candy. He thought for a bit and then said excitedly, "Lucky Charms!" (We clearly have some lessons to learn about sugar and nutrition!) But I loved his enthusiasm, so I brought boxes of cereal and gallons of milk to church and invited everyone for a bowl after the service.

The Lucky Charms sort of sum up the awesomeness this age. Ivar is so fun. He makes life so fun. And he makes me laugh and smile all day long. I'm so glad to be his mom.

a knight, a princess and a baby pumpkin

We had our first round of trick-or-treating tonight and it was so sweet. Kids, costumes, candy and community...I do love this weekend! The kids got plenty of candy, and you know who ended up with the tummy ache? Rory! Poor dad. He was used as an object lesson tonight as he lay on the couch. The kids noted his sorry state and decided one or two pieces a day will be plenty.

And this might be most fun for me, but these are some pretty great posts. Here are our costumes from the past few years: the shark and the cow, the peacock with hand foot and mouth disease, the farm family, a baby elephant, a groves family party, and the time that I, too, stuffed my child into a pumpkin.