A gorgeous, perfect.........................
BOY!!Yep, it turns out that the wiggly little being in my belly these past months was another boy. My fourth boy in a row. haha!
My husband & I have shared a few laughs over this. I think we both figured that,
odds are, this one would be a girl. But no. :)
My oldest, my only girl, is 18 & has moved out of the house. It's just me & this herd of boys around here now.
We don't post our kids names online anymore which is a bummer, I wish I could share! But instead, I'll share the details of how he came to be here cozied up on my lap and not cozied up on my bladder anymore.
The short version:Perfect baby boy.
Born at 2:05am, Monday October 12th after a 5 hour labor that began with no warning!
He was 8lbs, 13oz, 21 inches long -
exactly the same as 2 of his older brothers! What are the chances?! Of my 4 boys, 3 of them have been born exactly the same size, and the 4th was a behemoth at 10lbs, 6oz.
We are both healthy & fine. We had a fantastic homebirth, I wouldn't change a thing. His dad caught him. His older siblings were all there, though one was asleep. ;)
I am euphoric!
(Me & my 3 youngest, about 2 hours after birth)
And, my long, juicy, detailed birth story. Full of love, blood & mucous. Y'know, the stuff that births are made of. I have to add a word of caution here. This story ended up very, very long. But I wanted to get all the details out on paper before I forget them. And I'm writing this out more for me than anyone else. I will print this very blog entry out to put in my baby journal. So, I apologize if you were hoping for something more succint & to the point.
Our new boy took up life in my belly back in January & my due date was October 18th. My pregnancy was pretty fantastic. I suffered the usual symptoms- overwhelming fatigue in the 1st trimester, pelvic aches & pains in the last. But I sure loved feeling that wee person wiggling & waggling around in there. I always savor my pregnancies, & spend plenty of time writing in my pregnancy journal. I treasure those journals!
I couldn't wait to meet him or her, and to learn whether it was a
him or
her! I was getting impatient and excited in the last weeks before my due date, to get this show on the road. But I wasn't having many signs that labor was approaching anytime soon. I had several obvious signs in the days & hours leading up to every one of my other kid's births. I'd been obsessively watching for my usual signs of impending labor this time, knowing that I'd be seeing some any day now.... But instead, this is how my labor began:
I was watching a Netflix movie online. I had zero expectations that I'd find myself in labor that night. It was 9pm on Sunday, Oct. 11th, 7 days before my due date. I took a quick phone call from my ex-husband. During our chat, I had one strong contraction. I sat back down to watch my movie. Three minutes later, I had another very strong contraction.... and another one 3 minutes after that. I pause the movie & tell my husband that I'm going to jump in the shower. That will always slow or stop my contractions if they're not the real thing.
So, I'm in the shower. Every 3 minutes I have a very strong & painful contraction. And it hits me! "OMG, I think I'm in labor!"
And after all those weeks of feeling anxious & excited & impatient for labor to begin, do I jump for joy? No, I start crying & shaking with fear & nervousness because, OMG, I'm in labor! haha.
I spent about 15 mins. feeling terrified, realizing how much pain I was soon going to be in & how hard I was going to be working in the coming hours. Then I looked down at my belly & felt the the baby's knobby heels poking out at me. I switched my thoughts to him/her. I was going to meet my baby! At last! And I said out loud, "Okay baby... here we go." And I took a deep breath & stopped crying.
I realized this was going to be one of the last times I was going to look down & see my enormous pregnant belly full of this baby, and watch his knobby body parts push my skin out in lumps & bumps. I took a mental picture right then that I don't think I'll ever forget.
I filled the tub, sat down & contracted every 3 minutes. My husband & my 11 yr old son came into check on me & ask what they should do, who they should call. Finally, I told them to call everybody. Husband called the midwives, my 11yo had the fun job of calling my mom & his 18 yo sister. That was pretty exciting for him, and me. :) It was all really happening!
Very soon my contractions were 2 minutes apart. And that's where they stayed for hours.
That same day I'd happened to have read a birth story in which the mother said that during her labor she had loud & vibrant images & sounds from a computer game she'd played dancing through her mind. She asked why she should rely on drugs during birth to escape the pain when our brain is so capable of creating its own "drugs".
I thought of that story after I found my own mind doing something similar, making me feel druggy. During a contraction I'd lean my right ear into my outstretched right arm. And I'd tap the tips of my fingers into the side of the sink. This produced a nice solid "thud, thud, thud" heard in my ear. The thuds got harder over the hours as my pain intensified. My tapping increased to hitting & eventually punching the sides of the sink. All the while, my left ear took in the sound of the whirring bathroom ceiling fan. And my eyes were fixated on an image of a leaf printed on the green shower curtain on which I sat. This all produced a rather nice, repetitive, fuzzy, wavy noise inside my head. Those of you that have done nitrous or sat in the dentist chair on laughing gas know what whooshing, repetitive, wavy sound I mean. I felt pretty stony. And that green leaf will be burned into my mind for life. Hahaha!
(My 18yo daughter was our fabulous photographer again. Here she told me to look up immediately after a contraction. That is why I'm so happy. lol This is where I spent my 5 labor hours, the bathroom floor just off my bedroom. The lights were dim, candles were lit. It was a cozy cave to birth in.)
Finally, after 4 hours & 45 minutes of contraction after contraction & mentally begging my water to break so I could get a move on & end this labor, it finally broke. That was followed by a few blissful minutes of no pain, no pressure, nothing. I wanted to walk over to my bed & just go to sleep for the night. "This is the calm before the storm" I thought to myself.
And then the storm came. The urge to push overtook my being. Some women claim to enjoy the pushing stage. I am not one of them. I find that stage of childbirth to be the most torturous moments of my life. Unbearable! I feel like my skin, pelvis, vagina & my butt are being ripped in half. I repeated over & over to myself "the only way out is through.... the only way out is through...just push...just push...just push...the only way out is through.." and I pushed through the torture to escape. I was very loud, roaring & chanting things like "go out out out out".
And you know what's funny? All this whining & complaining about "torture" & "waa waa me" ? I only had to push for 13 minutes before he was born! Haha, yep, 13 minutes. I know, poor me.
I was in a kneel, my husband caught our baby from behind me. I looked over my shoulder & my eyes went straight to his crotch (the baby's not my husband's). I needed to know who'd been in there all this time, a girl or a boy??
"It's a boy! Another boy!" I said with a laugh.
A perfect, perfect boy.
I was instantly mesmerized by his face. Everything & everyone else disappeared. The only thing that existed in the universe was his perfect face.
(Minutes old. I'd agreed to having a hep-lock in my forearm just in case I had a severe hemorrhage afterwards that required IV fluids, etc)
(Perfect little newborn face)
I was temporarily brought out of my trance when one of my midwives handed me one of my herbal tinctures to help prevent a hemorrhage. I had armed myself with herbs, vitamins, supplements, knowledge & lists of my plans on how to deal with my expected post partum hemorrhage. I had even armed myself with midwives this time, specifically because of my worries over dealing with a hemorrhage on our own as we did with our last baby, an unassisted homebirth. The birth before that one, a midwife attended hospital birth, was also followed by a hemorrhage.
And then guess what? I didn't hemorrhage after this birth at all. But it's so weird, because I would have
thought I was, had my midwives not been there reassuring me that I wasn't. The blood was dripping & pooling, I was light headed, my ears were "ringy". These were all things I'd experienced during our last birth that I attributed to a hemorrhage. But my midwives (whom I trust) told me that this was not a hemorrhage at all & saw no reason to treat it as such. So they didn't (besides that 1st dose of blue cohosh I took before the placenta came, as was my plan). My bleeding lessened quickly, my light headedness was gone once I rested, and all was fine.
This makes me scratch my totally befuddled head! All this time I've pegged myself as "a bleeder", feeling fearful about the post partum hemorrhages I'm prone to have. "Once a bleeder always a bleeder" a midwife had told me. And now I question whether I've ever actually had one!
At my 1st supposed hemorrhage at the hospital with baby #3, I told the nurse I felt faint as I was walking to the bathroom (after an intense 90min birth). The midwife immediately turned to the Pitocin & gave me a shot. I've never thought to question until now, "Was I actually
hemorrhaging? Or just adjusting after a very precipitous delivery??" Geez, who knows!
But, here's another crazy thing I have to include in my story:
The whole reason I'd decided to have midwives at this birth in the 1st place was due to my concerns over the expected hemorrhage. I didn't have one, but what I had instead was a lot of bleeding
during my labor. I've never experienced that during any of my labors before. It seemed like a lot of blood to me, so 4 different times during my labor I asked my midwife to come in & tell me if it was normal or not (otherwise the midwives stayed in another room as I had asked them for a "hands off birth". I really just wanted to spend my laboring time with my husband. They totally respected that. It was awesome). Each time the midwife reassured me my bleeding was within normal limits.
Now, if I hadn't followed my intuition that was telling me to have midwives at this birth, and had been birthing unassisted again, this bleeding would have freaked me out. In a worst case scenario, heavy bleeding during labor could be caused by placental abruption - the placenta coming unattached before the baby is born. Since the placenta supplies all the baby's oxygen, a complete placental abruption would be fatal to the baby.
If we'd been home alone, I'm pretty sure I would have been so scared of a possible abruption that would have called 911 or gone straight to a hospital. Then I would have dealt with who knows what unnecessary interventions, under bright lights with complete strangers! My awesome homebirth would have never happened.
So, I'm grateful that I'd gone with my gut feeling & my midwives were there.
And so, I've finally come to the end of the very long story of my labor & bleeding. :p If anyone actually read this entire novel length thing I'm not sure whether to say thank you or tell you you're goofy for wasting so much time! heehee. But like I said, this detailed story is more for me than anyone.
So, our new son has joined us. So far, at 8 days old, he is the mellowest little guy you ever did see. He puts up with a lot of poking & petting from his older brothers. And slept right through their pushing his bed across the floor tonight. I'm still mesmerized by his face and ridiculously adorable body parts. He has the sweetest bony little chicken legs & the cutest tiny fuzzy butt you've ever seen. There has never been a second when I didn't love him completely, from the moment I looked over my shoulder to see what soul had been sent through my body to join our family here on earth.
(Within an hour of birth I was in my own bed cuddled up with my new baby. Ya gotta love homebirth. ;) This picture is a perfect example of why I adore having lots of pictures of my births - I have no memories of the time I spent here in my bed except for the baby's face. This is a picture of me, mesmerized. I didn't know my daughter was taking pictures of me, I didn't know my toddler was in bed next to me. There are pictures of my husband cuddled up behind me, I don't remember that either. But I remember how my baby's face looked there, cuddled up & breastfeeding.)
(Less than 2 hours old. I braided the umbilical cord tie for him during my pregnancy, my husband tied it on after birth. It just fell off today at 8 days old. I'll save that little tie forever.)
(About 15 hours old, in the lap of his very cute 3 yr old brother)
(And then into the arms of his 21 month old brother, who is also very cute ;) )
(Couple days old, gape mouthed in the arms of his dad)
(And in the arms of grandma, who has been visiting since birth day & has kept us all very well fed! :) )
(Three days old)
(Little inky foot for his baby book. He has a bandaid on his heel from his blood draw for the metabolic test taken earlier that day. The midwife chuckled when she opened the bandaid after taking his blood. It's a Hannah Montana bandaid. haha)
(Very handsome profile)
(Two days old)
(Two days old)
(My pile of boys. This is one of my favorite pictures. The only thing missing here is my daughter! She was behind the camera so much recently, or running out for classes & work... next time she slows down I'll have to snap some photos!)
I'm so incredibly happy that this is my life. Why I have been so blessed I will never comprehend, but I thank my lucky stars everyday! And I'm not just saying that because I'm in that euphoric, post-birth high stage. :)
Stay tuned for pictures of the pretty things we made with our bits of nature. :)
