At 2 a.m. Monday morning, April 1st, Sky came into our room during one of his regular night time waking's {still happening at age 3…}. After getting him back to bed, Josh and I lied there awake, feeling frustrated, and wondering if we were ever going to get a full nights sleep again. Josh muttered “I would just like 3 solid nights of sleep before this baby arrives”, and I quickly agreed.
A few minutes later, I felt a “pop”.
OH MY GOD. I think my water just broke.
I laid there frozen, worried at what I had just felt. I was only 37 weeks, 6 days. The nursery wasn’t finished! My bag wasn’t packed! The house was still dirty! I hadn’t had time to get a pedicure yet! I was supposed to work for 2 more weeks!
I decided to sit up to check my suspicion and knew instantly by the amount of fluid that was gushing out of me. This was the real deal. I called my midwife, who suggested I stay at home until morning unless my contractions started coming on heavy. I was nervous that it was only a matter of time before we’d have to leave so I quickly showered, packed, and starting frantically organizing the house to make sure everything was in order. By 4:30 a.m., still not much was happening so I went to sleep until 7 a.m.. By 8 a.m., I was back on the phone with the midwife and we both agreed I’d stay home a little longer and wait for labor to begin but if there still wasn’t action by 1 p.m., I would come into the office to get checked. I was assured I could safely go for at least 12 hours with broken water but they still wanted to make sure Ben was okay and not under stress.
The remainder of the morning was spent getting ready, eating a huge breakfast, and freaking out. It was April fools day so I sent an email to work and a few friends only to get handful of responses about me joking. Not so! Soon, we left for our appointment, car fully packed and ready to go…realizing we might not be returning home empty handed. I was scared and felt a little sad that I hadn’t been able to snuggle and hold Sky much that morning because we were so busy getting ready. Little did I know that bedtime on Easter was my last cuddle session alone with him as my only boy.
At my appointment, it was confirmed I was leaking amniotic fluid and I found out I was 2cm dilated. Because of the heightened risk of infection, we elected to admit me and get started on a very low dose of pitocin to move things along. I was a little weary because of the many horror stories I’d heard about pitocin but in this case, the it was the right choice to get this baby out sooner rather than later.
While we were waiting to be assigned a room, they monitored me in triage and discovered there was some cord compression happening somewhere {turns out later the cord was wrapped loosely around his neck, eeeeeek!}. Because Ben was recovering differently with every contraction, they decided to monitor me for a while before starting the Pitocin.
Around 3:30/4ish, I got the lowest dose possible and that was all it took.
By 5:30, contractions were regular, strong, and painful. Josh had left to go grab some dinner prior to things really heating up and when he returned, he found me hunched over in the rocking chair, breathing and rocking with each wave.
It was very important to me to have a natural, un-medicated birth in terms of pain management. I had an epidural with Sky and I didn’t want another one. I wanted to see what it felt like with nothing. I wanted to know how bad it would get. I wanted to be able to feel everything and see if I could really handle it.
Each contraction was stronger than the next and between Josh, the midwife, and the doula, we tried a lot of different positions and tactics. Slow dancing with Josh and rocking in the rocker with lots of pillows underneath me were the best. All the others were uncomfortable and seemed to cause more pain.
After a few hours of this, I started to wonder where I was at. The pain was getting really intense and although I wasn’t completely exhausted, I could tell that my body was weakening and I hoped so bad I only had a few more hours left. Around 9 p.m., I was 7 cm dilated. Ok, not much longer, I thought….I can do this.
Progressing from 7-10 was BY FAR the worst. The pain was so powerful I don’t remember looking at anyone or making eye contact. All I could do was grip onto the sides of the bed and moan through each contraction. By that point, I was sure that people in the next room could hear me. I was so sweaty and everything just felt like a complete blur.
A little after 10 p.m., I started feeling a lot of pressure and was sure this was the “urge to push” that everyone talks about. I don’t really remember much after that. I know people were giving me instructions and I followed along but it was really one of those things where you kind of go inside your body and everything around you becomes muffled sounds and movement.
I could feel that my midwife wasn’t in the room and she had been missing for some time. Turns out, the one other patient she was tending to went into labor at the same time! A few other doctors came into the room, introduced themselves, and said they were going to take over in the event my midwife couldn’t make it in time. It was a little bit of a let down but about 10 minutes later, she came running in just in the nick of time!!!!
All of a sudden, I was ready to push and felt a huge wave of relief knowing that everything was almost over! I pushed for a total of 14 minutes and while it was definitely painful, it actually felt more natural and relaxing to be focusing on pushing than it did trying to muster my way through the hard contractions. They were directing me on where to push and I could easily follow along because I could FEEL IT.
At 10:27pm, baby Benjamin joined us. Perfectly pink and tiny at 6 pounds, 8 ounces. It felt so surreal. They kept him attached to the cord for a few minutes and that was a crazy sensation – he was out of me, but everything else was still inside. It’s just so amazing what our bodies can do!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to avoid tearing this time around but it was much more manageable than I had with Sky. While I was being fixed up, we ooooh’d and aahhhh’d at how cute Ben was with his fuzzy blonde hair.
We finally got to bed around 1 am and slept a little bit…off and on. The next morning we welcomed visitors! Family and friends and my sweet boy Sky who brought me a flower and a picture he colored. He was hesitant to touch the baby at first but overall, he did so well during his visit. I could tell that he was on the verge of a breakdown a few times so while Ben was being held by others, I spent some time snuggling with Sky. He crawled up in my bed and also fed me yogurt. He is such a love!
Overall, this birth experience was SO MUCH BETTER in every aspect. Other than coming earlier than expected, it was exactly what I had hoped for and I’m proud of myself that I made it through. In a way, I feel like it was healing for me to have this type of birth…to know that it can be better than what I had with Sky and that it is possible to manage without drugs or too much intervention.
He’s just delicious. I think we’ll keep him! 
}, just released a new book: 
. It’s 282 pages packed with tips on how to create a beautiful garden, even if you are limited on time – right up my alley! I especially love the focus on picking easy, low maintenance plants that are adapted well for your area and having healthy soil and mulch that will ultimately do much of the babysitting for you. Plus, the last half of the book is filled with a master list of “easy to care for” plants that are low maintenance and require little up-keep. *I should note that the book is focused on the western region of the United States so if you live elsewhere, “low maintenance” plants may differ for you.
