WARNING: BIRTH STORY AHEAD!!! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!
11/13/12: Tuesday night. Around midnight I have one contraction. When I report this to Aaron and my mom the next day they are excited. I am not, because my babies do not come out early.
11/14/12: Wednesday night my mom and I decide she should leave early (supposed to stay until Saturday) because this baby will probably never come out and she has another trip back planned for after Thanksgiving. Later it turns out we are both right when there is no baby by Saturday.
11/16/12: Friday evening. For the first time I lie in bed while Aaron bathes and gets the kids ready for bed. I don't tuck them in because I am hurting. Mostly round ligament pain, but sore belly too.
11/17/12: Saturday, due date!! I help put the kids to bed but then am having the worst round ligament pain ever. It is like all the other times combined. I can hardly move. Additionally the downward pressure of the giant baby girl in my belly hurts pretty bad too. I have a pretty much horrible night and make Aaron help me get up to go to the bathroom most times.
11/18/12: I invoke the right of 4th trimester church inactivity. Aaron takes the kids to church while I lie in bed and whine to myself about how horrible I feel.
11/22/12: Since there is no baby coming out of me I cook a turkey and we have a great Thanksgiving. Around midnight the contractions start. Apparently I ate enough to push baby girl out.
11/23/12: By morning contractions have settled into a 15-20 minute apart pattern which lets up only a few times during the day with a 45 or hour long break. By afternoon I am frustrated because things don't seem to be getting closer together, but on the plus side my mom has managed to catch her scheduled flight and arrives at my house just past 2pm. After the kids go to bed around 8:30 or so, my contractions start to get stronger and a bit closer together, but I am still thinking I have a terribly long road ahead of me. At 10:30 my midwife texts me to tell me she is going to bed, so call her whenever I am ready. I think this will probably be never, but by 11pm my contractions are 5-10 minutes apart and hurting pretty badly. I have made Aaron set up the tub and by 11:30 he calls Rebecca the midwife to come on over. I get in the tub and ask whose terrible idea it was to have another baby and Aaron says it was mine and I complain about how stupid I am. It hurts. I labor in the tub for an hour and Rebecca arrives. It hurts horribly and I make Aaron push on my back for each contraction. I do good breathing or whatever and mostly keep it in control, my past midwife's voice (Sammy's midwife) is in my head saying "keep it together Kelsey, you can do this" and that helps a lot. When Rebecca arrives she helps the situation by pouring water on my back during each contraction. This is surprisingly effective as my brain has to think about what is going on on my back and think less about the death pain going on elsewhere. At some point I throw up 3 or so times. Rebecca doesn't check to see how far I am, because I am very afraid that she will tell me 8 or anything lower and I don't want to hear it. After a bit she tells me that soon I will have to get out of the tub if a baby doesn't come out of me and I am not happy to hear this. The reasoning is that after a few hours it can slow you down, so I get out of the tub to go to the bathroom to see if that won't help speed things up. I hate getting out. Worst ever. I have one contraction out of the tub and wonder why why why am I so stupid. I get back in the tub and can feel the baby coming down. I start to do some preliminary pushing. It is awful. I think about how I don't want the baby to come out anymore. Too much pain. How do ladies have babies on tables with no drugs? I can't fathom it. I start pushing and screaming, and am reminded by Rebecca to scream in low tones. I somehow manage to do that. After what Aaron claims is only 4 contractions worth of pushing (I think it was a few more but I wasn't yelling on the first two, but then again, not like I was super coherent) I announce that here comes the baby. And then she does. In her amniotic sac!
In the past my water has been broken (by the midwife) while I was in labor, a little earlier with Harmon, and Sammy while she was crowning. Now Allison can have the distinct pleasure of knowing that she is lucky, has a 6th sense, and all sorts of other interesting folklore as explained on wikipedia. Apparently it is pretty rare, so cool I guess!
She was born at 1:25am on the 24th.
Anyway. As she came out in her sac my midwife popped it because it is much easier to grab a slippery baby with arms than a slippery ball with a baby inside, and someone grabbed her. I think maybe Aaron, but I was grabbing around too, and had to flip over (I was on my knees) because I could tell her cord was kind of short. I got to hold her and was just so happy!!! There is really no way to explain how happy you are to hold your new baby, and how happy you are to be not pushing that baby out anymore. We sat in the tub for a few minutes and then I handed her off to Aaron so I could deliver the placenta. I did that in the shower and then went to my very own bed.
11/24/12, The aftermath: I held Allison for a little while more and nursed her, but I was not feeling right and I knew it. I asked someone else to take her so I could just rest. I hadn't really felt this terrible after either other birth and although I felt bad having to give her away so soon, but I just wasn't right. I felt like I was going to pass out, or throw up, or who knows what. This happened several times, with me asking for the bowl, being really dizzy, and thinking I was going to pass out. Later Rebecca took me to the bathroom and it felt awful standing/walking/being up and I was sure I was going to faint. By 5am Rebecca had checked all my vitals and I was stable, even though not feeling well, and she left. By 6am(ish?) I had asked Aaron or my mom to help me walk to the bathroom. I remember sitting up and feeling dizzy/like I was going to throw up or pass out or both. I laid back down and then tried to sit up again. It was decided (by me) that we should go quickly to the bathroom. I don't remember entering the bathroom until I sat down on the toilet. Then I remember waking up (still sitting on the toilet) to my mom and Aaron, and my mom saying "call Rebecca, then we need to call 911". That is always great... Apparently I had passed out twice, once for 30 seconds, and had woken up flailing, my skin has been reported as green by my mom and yellow by Aaron, but by all accounts I was not doing well. They carried me back to bed at which point someone was on the phone with Rebecca and I was trying to convince everyone that I was now lucid and did not need to go in any ambulances! I think that everyone decided I could stay home and "wait and see". Meanwhile Rebecca got back in her car (she lives almost an hour away) and came back. She was concerned that it may be too much blood loss and felt better about coming back than not, as she has never had a mother who was worse getting up the second time out of bed than the first. She checked me out and decided to give me an iv fluid drip with a dose of pitocin to "clamp down" my uterus to make sure there was not too much bleeding/remnants of placenta. This was highly awful, as now I was having cramping/contractions and no baby was coming at the end of them. It was a slow drip and I was happy when the ibprofun kicked in because it felt like an eternity. Rebecca also took some of my blood to take to the lab to check my blood levels, which along with how I was doing after the fluids and pitocin would be an indication of if I was going to be taken to the hospital to receive blood... It was pretty scary, and I was grateful for the many people who were praying for me at that time.
After the fluids and pitocin I started to feel better. Rebecca took me to the bathroom and although I felt dizzy I didn't feel throw up/pass out style like I did before. This was a good sign and after checking all my vitals she left to take my blood to the lab. Later she called to tell me the good news, my levels were good, meaning I didn't have extreme blood loss and was ok. This was a relief to everyone, and meant that I just needed to rest and eat and drink lots and lots. I was happy that through all this Allison was a champion, very well behaved and nursed well. I felt bad that I wasn't able to snuggle her and love on her as much as possible, but I was glad to be getting better. When Rebecca came back to check me and Allison again for our two-day check, she explained that likely the cause of my fainting and extreme dizziness was hormones. She explained my blood results were actually really good (originally she just told me the number and that I was fine and that was good enough for me). As soon as my placenta was delivered my body experienced an extreme drop in hormones, and made my body go super crazy. I asked Rebecca what she thought could be done (if she had known, for future hypothetical pregnancies, etc.) and she said treating with progesterone.
So now we are just hanging out. Allison is lovely and sleeps a lot, but likes to be awake in the night like all babies. I am feeling a lot better and trying to take it easy so I can recover quickly. I feel quite blessed that I wasn't bleeding too much/dying and that everything was ok! I had really felt quite good and safe about having the baby at home, although there are always risks, but I still feel blessed about how everything turned out.
Miss Allison Kate Evans, born at home in the sac, 7 days late, 7lbs 11oz, 19 3/4", smaller than all her older siblings!! We adore her!
