I am here. Present! (My HBAC)

I am back. It has been a while.

We have a new member of the family. Here is how he arrived, his birth story, which I wrote the same day he arrived in this world.

Alexander’s Arrival

I had just finished my last full week at work, and Jim and Tommy had both finished recuperating from the flu on Friday night. After I arrived home, I had a good nap, woke up, hung out with Jim for a while (Tommy had already gone to bed) and then went to have a relaxing bath at around midnight.

Finally ended up in bed at around 1:00 a.m., Sat, Jan 17. At about 2:30 a.m., I poked Jim and told him to get a towel, as it felt like my waters were about to break. I had felt a little bit of a trickle, but couldn’t be sure if it was just excessive fluid or not.

We got up, went to the bathroom and determined that yup, my waters were breaking. Not gushing, but definitely breaking. Called our doula & m/w to give them the head’s-up. There weren’t any contractions and if this birth experience was anything like Tommy’s, they likely wouldn’t start for a few hours. On m/w’s instructions, headed back to bed to try to get a few more hours of precious sleep.

We laid down and I noticed a few short, light contractions beginning. Told Jim that I was going to squeeze his hand so we both would know what was going on as far as regularity & intensity. This went on fine for 10 or 15 minutes, then all of a sudden the contractions really started to intensify and I couldn’t stay in bed anymore.

Got out of bed and tried a bunch of different things, but standing was really all that was getting me through them at this point. Called both our doula and m/w again at around 3:15 a.m. M/w said she would be there in around 45 minutes and okayed my request to run a bath to try to help with the pain. We had actually been scheduled to pick up a birth pool later on that day, so thought that at least some form of water might help. But nope, there was naught to be done…as soon as I was off my feet, things were much harder.

So back on my feet I went. I found that leaning on a long dresser in the bedroom helped. I was having some trouble breathing through the contractions at this point. They were intense and extremely close together, so whenever I managed to get through one, I could take one or two breaths as it was subsiding and then the next would hit. So I started some crazy vocalizations, just low to med Oh’ing and Ah’ing. This helped with the breathing and also was a good cue for Jim to know when things were starting and ending.

At 4:10 a.m., the m/w arrived. She saw right away that things were far along and reminded me about the breathing. Checked fetal heart rate, which was good. Tried to get me to lie down for a quick check to see how far I was, but I refused, so she checked me standing up. It was about at this point that I started saying that the baby was coming and going to be here soon. She said she couldn’t feel the front of the cervix at all, but wasn’t sure about the back, so was calling it at about 7 c.m. Suggested that I try sitting on the toilet to get the back of the cervix out of the way, so I headed there while she called the student m/w and backup and told them to get here fast.

As soon as I sat on the toilet, I had one contraction that ended with an involuntary push. She quickly got me off the toilet and I went to the room. I was now leaning on the bed with my arms, holding on to one of Jim‘s hands for dear life. The contractions had changed from just intense contractions to pushes. Baby was soon going to be here! However, I had a really hard time squatting or spreading apart my legs in any manner, as it intensified the pain. Soon the backup m/w and student m/w arrived, and after a few more fetal heart rate checks and one internal, I was called fully dilated at 4:58 a.m.

I don’t know how he did it, but somehow Jim coaxed me on to the birthing stool from my standing position. At this point, I had no idea really what was going on and was just getting washed away with the labour. I had gone from vocalization to full-out screams at some point. (Our poor neighbours, I remember thinking.) Our m/w really pushed me to turn those screams into more grunts and to really start to push now, when my body told me to. I had Jim beside me, where I was mangling his hand, and he was helping support my back, another m/w behind me, giving me more back support because I needed to lean back, and another m/w catching the baby at the front, while another one was taking notes.

The pushes started coming and again, went very fast. By 5:10, baby had crowned. Tried to hold back as much as I could on the next one to avoid tearing. Within the next few pushes, baby was fully out by 5:12 and by 5:20 the placenta was out.

We did it!! It felt very surreal, but there was our baby! We basked for a bit and then Jim checked the sex -- another boy! Very cute and chubby and all-around amazing.

Then our doula arrived! She came up to the room, ready to help, not noticing that baby was there already. When we told her, we did it, she was completely shocked that everything was over so quickly. Although she missed the birth, I was so happy for her support after.

Then the hardest (or perhaps least rewarding) part came -- checking for tears. I had 2nd degree tears, although not too horribly bad. However, baby was born with his hand up by his head and had really scratched my internal labia coming out. I was still bleeding quite a bit and they had to keep soaking up the blood, but every time they touched me on the internal spots to soak up the blood, I almost died.

Finally, that was done. I had an extremely hard time peeing afterward, so after several times, I chose to get catheterized just to relieve the pressure from the bladder. When that was done, everyone packed up and went home, except for us -- we were already there!

It feels so unreal at this point. We are all seriously in love with our little Alexander, and Tommy is being the best big brother ever. Jim has been amazing and my in-laws came to visit, which helped out a lot, too.

We’re still sorting out middle name(s), but had settled on Alexander a few months ago. He’s feeding very well (was also in a hurry to nurse right away). He was born 7 lb 15 oz -- Tommy was 7 lb 15.5 oz. I swear, my uterus must have some sort of timer on it to eject before 8 lbs, for which I’m grateful!

Our little family is just right where I want to be.


And, for the first time in my blogging history, here are a few pictures of the last couple of months.


Lex's birthday




























Brothers





































Happy baby






























Life with 2 kids is busy, but I just saw someone else's blog who has had twins and she is doing a great job of updating, which reminds me of how I should be doing it...and of how amazing it is to actually have those times to look back on. So the next couple of posts may be a combination of past, present and future ponderings.