so baby girl ava is here! she is a week old and adjusting to life outside the womb, haha. we are all doing well and settling in. she is delightful, and i am soaking it all in, everything about this newborn stage. everything seems much more enjoyable this time around. probably because i am more experienced, and also because little A has been an easy baby thus far. almost everything about her and her arrival has been much easier this time around. so, her birth story. it begins on thursday, the thursday of my 40 week update. that day i was feeling fatigued and having braxton hicks like i had been for awhile, and was lumbering around all huge and uncomfortable, but didn't feel much different. we had dinner, i put z to sleep, wrote my blog post with the 40 week update, had my bedtime snacks and while i was sitting on the couch i had a braxton hicks that felt more like a contraction as it was a little bit painful and my back was aching. i was a little bummed that it was my due date and i still hadn't gone into labor because i was completely sure that she was coming early. anyway, i decided to go upstairs to lie down and read a little bit. hubs came up a short while later and started to fall asleep. around 11pm or so, while i was reading, i had an actual contraction and during the contraction, my water broke! i could not believe it, i was in total shock. just earlier that day i had placed a waterproof pad on my side of the bed just in case. i didn't think that my water would break at home at all, so that was unexpected. when it happened i kind of jumped and said "oh!", hubs woke up with a jolt and i said "i think my water just broke!!!" so he ran to grab me a towel and i wrapped it around myself, dripping my way to the bathroom. i kind of stood there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. i changed, hubs ran to get my mother in law. we decided to call the midwife/nurse line to see what they think we should do. the hospital that we were going to is about a 40 minute drive with no traffic and maybe an hour or hour and a half through seattle with traffic. luckily it was late at night, so we didn't have to worry about traffic. but i was thinking that i would labor at home for awhile before going to the hospital. but the nurse thought it would be best if we just went to the hospital right then since labor could progress really quickly. so since we had most everything packed and ready to go, hubs just grabbed some last minute things like our chargers and some extra towels and a pillow. luckily, z was already asleep. but i was a little sad and nervous to leave him since we have never been away from him overnight before. i knew he would be fine with his grandma, i was just sad to leave him for some reason. so anyway, we grabbed our stuff, hubs packed the car and we took off. i had been shaking with adrenaline and nerves ever since my water broke. i sent my parents a text to let them know we were headed to the hospital. by this time it was after 11:30pm. the drive was peaceful, hubs and i could not believe that it was finally happening but also really excited. i was trying to steel myself for the journey ahead. i had a couple contractions during the drive, but they were still pretty mild. the moon looked so awesome that night, it was a half moon, but it was huge and yellow and there was some fog/clouds that was kind of covering part of it, it was giving off lots of light. so during the contractions, i would open the window a little bit for some air, and concentrate on the moon, tapping my foot in a rhythm to help me keep my breathing focused and intentional. we got to the hospital, parked, and when i got out of the car, amniotic fluid gushed out all over, ahhhhhh! so i wrapped a towel around myself and waddled into the hospital. we checked into triage where they monitored me for maybe an hour or so. in this time my parents arrived. i had several contractions while being monitored but they were manageable and i was able to breathe through them with no problems. the midwife came and checked on how we were doing, and then checked me and told me i was 3-4 cm dilated. baby's heart rate was strong and my contractions were becoming a little closer together and getting a little bit stronger. they got us into a l/d room and we met our nurse. she got us all set up, and inserted my heplock, which is basically like a port that they can insert an iv into if needed. they had some wireless monitors on my belly to watch the baby's heart rate and my contractions. after about 20 minutes or so of monitoring they were removed and the nurse said we would just do intermittent monitoring. the nurse asked what kinds of things i wanted to do to make laboring easier and i told her bouncing on the yoga ball was helpful last time as well as soaking in the tub. i wanted to try to get a little sleep, so i curled up on the bed, but after about 3 contractions on the bed i decided that i could not lay down anymore, the contractions were getting more intense and i could not lay down through them. at some point i remember looking at the clock and i think we got in the room around 2:30 am and by the time i needed to get out of the bed, it was about 3:30 am or so. also at this time the midwife, who had checked in with me, said she was going to lay down for 30 minutes or so and asked the nurse to page her as soon as something changed. she said she was sure that when the labor started to pick up and intensify, it would progress really quickly. i started bouncing on the ball towards the end of the bed and in between contractions i would lay my head down on the edge of the bed to try and rest. the contractions started getting even more intense. while i was on the ball i think i only had maybe 5 contractions and the last two were pretty intense and i told the nurse that i wanted to get into the tub. the tub was great, not super long, but very deep, and just like last time it felt extremely soothing. i had one contraction that i really had to focus through and for a second i thought, oh man i can't do this! i had another contraction that came on really quick and strong and i felt like i needed to push already! so i told hubs and the nurse, and the nurse asked hubs to help get me out of the tub. she paged the midwife and had an urgency to her voice that hubs didn't understand. he was remembering last time, i felt like pushing and actually pushed through several contractions while i was in transition. but i knew, and the nurse knew that this time it was different, i was ready to push the baby out. so we made our way to the bed, i really didn't think i was going to make it because as soon as i stood up i felt like the baby was going to come out right there in the middle of the bathroom floor. i shuffled myself to the bed and fell across it, pushing through the next contraction. hubs helped me get up onto the bed on my side, and i had another contraction that i pushed through. i could really feel her coming down, and the nurse and midwife helped me pull my legs back, to push during the contractions. the urge to push this baby out was so incredibly strong that i felt like pushing even between the contractions. the midwife asked me to try not to push in between, just push during the contractions. after a few contractions i could feel her head starting to crown. i think after about 2-3 contractions her head was out, and then i had to push out her shoulders. that was actually hard, it took one contraction and several pushes for her shoulders to come out, which was different with z, once his head was out his shoulders easily followed. but then she was born and i reached down and brought her up to my belly. haha! we could not believe it! i think i only pushed for about 20-25 minutes, which was much much easier than with z, where i pushed for a little over 3 hours. the first thought when i saw her was that she looked so much like z, and then my second thought was "wow!" i said "holy shit!" haha i could not believe that happened so quickly! the whole labor from when my water broke to when the baby was born was about 5.5 hours! my labor with z was about 14 hours. so the midwife got me all cleaned up and fixed up and then we started to breastfeed. it took a little while to get her latched on, but then she fed for an hour and a half. we got moved to a recovery room and just held her and took in the whole experience, and let family and friends know. an interesting thing----with z's labor, my mom and my mother in law were both present while he was born, and this time neither of them were. my mother in law stayed with z and although my mom was at the hospital, she was in the waiting room and we were going to text her when i started to push so that she could be there. but because it happened so quickly we didn't have time to text her. but my folks came back and saw her after the birth. anyway, we spent the next day and a half in the hospital getting acquainted and trying to get breast feeding established. the baby was born at 4:26am on friday, and later that afternoon hubs went and picked up z and my mother in law and brought them to the hospital. z walked in the room first and looked a little hesitant. then he ran over and gave me hugs and kisses and then checked out baby sister. he was very interested in her and wanted to give her kisses on her head. they stayed around for about 5 hours before hubs drove them back home. he was sad and didn't want to go back home, crying the whole car ride. me and ava didn't get any sleep friday night because the nurse was coming in all the time to check our vitals or to check her blood sugar before every feeding. we were having problems nursing, she wasn't latching well and she is kind of a lazy eater, she will take a couple of sucks and then stop, or fall asleep. so the night and the next day were dedicated to trying to get breastfeeding established. also, she was a little hypoglycemic, because of the gestational diabetes, so we needed to have 3 good readings of her blood sugar before we could go home. anyway, we got home saturday evening and z was excited to see us, and kept saying that baby sister was so cute. anyway, i'll write another post about z's reaction and behavior towards his new baby sister soon, he is such a sweetheart. so---that's how ava was brought into this world! everything about her arrival was wonderful, from the timing of the beginning of labor, the fact that my mother in law was there to be with z, the duration of labor. i felt like it was short, but not too short that it was overwhelmingly intense. the pushing phase was intense because it happened so quick, but it wasn't so much so that i couldn't handle it. i felt like i was breathing well through the contractions, and was using some of the hypnobirthing visualization techniques to get through the tough ones. i still did the tapping of my foot or hand to keep a rhythm to my breathing. when i felt pain i chanted in my head that it was just pressure. i visualized my body opening up and i thought about what my baby girl would look like. all of these things helped me get through the labor without any medications or interventions. ava is such a mellow baby, easy to soothe and calm down, she really only cries when she is hungry or about to poop, haha, or when we change her clothes and diaper. she sleeps a lot, she is just a very different newborn than z. the only difficulty has been breastfeeding, which i will write about in another post. she is nursing well enough now, but we struggled a little in the beginning, and she is still hard to keep awake and sucking well while we are nursing. but she is a joy, and i feel so so lucky that we have our sweet little baby girl, and our awesome big boy. i feel like after the arrival of the baby, i love z so much more, which seems strange to say, but i have so much more love for this boy! it's amazing. anyway, this is a long post, so i'll end it, but this was such an amazing experience and i feel so blessed.
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