Patrick's Birth

Each and every birth is its own unique journey.  Births vary from woman to woman and even within one woman's different labors.  I've had 22 and 20 hour planned home births, a traumatic miscarriage at 9 weeks on a ride home from the beach, a 5 hour exciting car birth, and a few days ago a 10 (ish) hour hospital birth, which I'll tell you about now.  I'm glad I didn't assume that this boy would come even faster than Silas (the car birth), because I would have been quite mistaken, but I also assumed he could which was useful in getting us to the hospital in time.

   The night before labor started, I was feeling like this baby would come sooner than later and that a little encouragement would be ok (I was just a few days past 38 weeks, which is also when my first two were born).  What sort of encouragement? Dancing.  I turned on "What does the Fox Say?" which makes me giggle, and danced around the dining room in full force, which also makes me giggle because a full term belly dancing like crazy is purely entertaining.  It gave Justin a good laugh too.  The song ended and I was huffing and puffing, and sure enough I was crampy from that point through the whole night and next morning.  I thought about cancelling my 2 year old school group with Silas and one of his friends, but decided to continue as usual since my cramping was fairly mild and irregular.  We had fun doing an Easter Egg hunt and an Easter painting.

   Once I picked up my daughter, Vera, from preschool and had some lunch, I decided to tune in to my body a bit to see what was going on.  I was having spotty contractions every 5 to 15 minutes.  They weren't strong, but they weren't really going away either.  I called Justin and asked him to consider coming home soon in case things picked up.  As he put it, "There is no risk in me coming home and working from there, but much risk in me staying at work too long...", so he came home around 1:00pm.  I walked around the yard with Vera and Silas and we admired the wild violets and our beautiful weeping cherry tree.  

   By 3:00 I felt like the contractions were powerful enough to consider them contractions... like maybe they were starting to get some work done (this is when I'd more or less consider labor starting... though it was all a bit grey).  We got in touch with Lea, our exchange student from Germany, and suggested she come home on the bus rather than go to the away soccer game that night.  She had taken our Bradley Birth Class and was planning on coming along to take pictures and witness a birth!  We left for the hospital as soon as she pulled her things together around 4:30pm.  I didn't feel like I had done much work yet or that labor was very strong, but we didn't want to test the limits and have another car birth this time :) even though it had been quite an exciting adventure.  

   I felt myself getting choked up as we got ready to leave our home.  I gave all the kids big hugs goodbye and told myself I'd be ok.  I didn't want to go to the hospital, really, but I'd made this choice and was sticking to it.  I'm not a fan of the machines, strangers, smells, and fears inside a hospital setting; I said prayers and took deep breaths.  I felt adrenaline surge through my body as we climbed in the car.  Contractions didn't stop, but I can tell the adrenaline did slow things down a bit.  

   I talked to the midwife on call and was thrilled that it was Lynn, who I felt shared and appreciated my philosophy on birth.  In triage she checked me and I was 5-6 cm.  We headed to a L&D room and settled in.  The nurses were kind and pleasant, and Lynn sat down to listen to me share Silas' whole birth story.  I was blessed with supportive staff.  

   My friend Megan came, and she and Lea sat on the couches and we all hung out while I labored for the next 7 hours.  Whenever baby needed to be monitored I settled into the bed to rest.  Then I'd pace around the room a bit and try different positions, welcoming any time the contractions would get closer or stronger, since that means getting closer to baby.  Contractions never seemed to get consistently closer than 4 minutes apart every so often, but they stayed strong.

 Lea and Megan

 Relaxing with Justin

   A little after 10pm I finished my second dose of IV antibiotics to treat GBS, and that meant we'd only have to stay in the hospital 24 hours instead of a 48 hour minimum after the birth. (yay!)  Now I was REALLY ready to have this baby.  I jogged around the room a little :).  By midnight I was feeling a good deal of pressure and asked Lynn to check me.  The contractions had been very powerful and I was sometimes wanting to push with them.  She checked and I was only 7 cm.  The bag of waters was still intact, bulging, and she confirmed what I'd been thinking, "Once that bag of waters breaks this baby is going to come right on out."  She knew I didn't want her to break it, but I felt like I could probably take care of the bag myself with the help of gravity.  I headed to the bathroom and jumped up and down a bit, sat on the toilet to go to the bathroom...and...POP! went a little water balloon size squirt of clear fluid (12:20am).  The urge to push soon became strong and I headed to the bed to work baby boy down.  Pushing was a much more intense time for me than 1st stage (dilation), but it wasn't long before baby's head was coming out and I made myself take deep breaths to ease him out gently.  Once his head was out and I gave the final push, he came flying out straight onto the bed along with at least a gallon of fluid.  12:48am April 1st. After saying hello to my little son my next phrase was, "Oh Lord I'm in a sea!" because of all the amniotic fluid I was kneeling in.  

 And now here is the whole story you just read in video form, thanks to my dear husband for putting it together and to Lea for taking lots of pictures for us (no nudity in the video...you may like to turn up the volume at the 12:48 video to hear Patrick being born):

   Up until this point we were completely unsettled on a name for our boy.  And after he came out we still didn't know his name... only that we had an adorable little guy who was covered in vernix and was a champion nurser.  He measured in at 7lb 8oz and 19in.  It was a few hours after the birth when Justin confirmed from our extraordinarily long name list that he really liked the name Patrick.  So baby boy was named Patrick after Justin's grandmama Patricia and St. Patrick (who's day I was born on).  His middle names are "James" for my step-dad (the only name we had previously decided on for certain) and "Markley" for Justin's paternal grandma's maiden name.     

 Patrick meets Grandpa Jim (James) who his middle name is after.

 

This little guy is adored by William, Vera, and Silas.

 Big Sister Lea from Germany was there every step of the way!

 

 Silas is so excited to be a big brother and has lots of fun questions about the baby... he especially liked touching his umbilical cord :).

 

 Patrick is already getting good use of the cradle I made with Justin's Grandpa in Upper Peninsula Michigan when we were dating (yes, I made a cradle for my future children with Justin's Grandpa while we were dating... it was Grandpa's idea). :)

 So much love and such a very tired Daddy.

 Patrick (day 2)

Vera sings Happy Birthday to Patrick.

Last, but not least, a BIG Thank You to my Mom who cared for our older three during our stay in the hospital, despite being sick all the while (which is why I don't have a picture of my Mom holding Patrick yet).  The kids love getting time with "Grancy" when Mommy and Daddy are away.  Thanks to my friend Rebecca and to Justin's mom for helping out as well!

And thanks to YOU for celebrating Patrick's arrival with us and taking interest in my story :).