This is it. Don't get scared now.
Our official due date was June 19th, and while I knew babies don’t typically come on their due date, I was pretty sure ours would. After all, I’m a '15 minutes early is on time’ kind of gal, so why wouldn’t my baby follow suit? (Insert laughter at my pre-parent naivety here). My midwife practice does routine stretch and sweeps from 38 weeks if mom agrees, so I endured the ‘hey how ya’ experience 3 times already by my due date. I was comfortably at 2 cms, but still hadn’t seen any plug (thank god, because Google ruined it for me). I hadn’t felt any Braxton Hicks at all through my pregnancy either. So basically, I was over-analyzing every twinge and sensation, eating all the spicy Thai papaya salad, and trying to seduce my husband with the ‘well you got me into this situation, so get me out of it’ (it did not work). I knew our baby would be born when he or she was ready, but damn it, I was ready to meet this little person!
June 19th was a Sunday, Father’s Day, which we spent floating in my parents' pool. I stayed in the pool, supported by a flotilla of noodles, while family brought me drinks and watermelon…and pretended not to notice that I hadn’t gotten out of the pool in a long time. It was a relaxing, yet non-birth day. We got home that night, sun-kissed and waterlogged, and I had a bit of cry. I wanted to meet my baby!
Sometime around 1:30 am or so I woke up to my dog gagging and puking her in crate, awesome. I called for Matt, who had escaped from my furnace body to sleep in the guest room, to come help. Just then, I realized, whoa, what is that feeling?! I laid still and sure enough, it came again. Excitedly, I told Matt while he was elbow deep in dog puke that this is probably and definitely it. By some miracle, I managed to fall back asleep and by morning, my contractions had become regular, about 10-15 minutes apart. Early yet, but strong enough that I told Matt not to go to work.
We spent the day hanging out on the birth ball, watching Grace and Frankie, walking in our neighbourhood, where we were met with sympathetic smiles form older ladies and yelps of encouragement from younger families. HOLY SHIT THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING! Meanwhile, our poor doggy had been sent out to grandmas house for some TLC. We aren’t sure what happened, but she ended up quite sick that day and the following days.
Since our plan was to labour at home as long as possible, we just hung out as a family of 2 for the last time. I got in and out of the bath countless times, and tried to eat whenever I could. My contractions were getting stronger and more regular, and by about 9:00pm they had reached the magic number of 4 minutes apart, 1 minute long, for at least 1 hour. It was time to call Angela, the midwife. She showed up around 9:30, checked me and sadly, I was only 3 cms. Oh shit, after all that and only one centimetre of progress? This was going to be a longer journey than I thought. Angela told me to eat something, go for a walk and try to sleep. She left Matt with the instructions to call her if anything changes or my waters break. With that advice, we walked approximately 4 blocks before I got too hot, turned around and came home. Matt fed me a grilled cheese sandwich and I curled up on my pregnancy pillow to sleep. Just then, I felt the strangest internal pop after a contraction...which was soon followed by a gush. I started laughing maniacally, because IT WOULD.NOT. STOP! I called to Matt to phone Angela, which he did, while staring at me in horror/wonder. While he was on the phone with her, the laughter quickly ceased as I started vomiting and moaning, this was getting real really quick.
Angela heard me labouring in the background and by the sounds of it, she said to meet at the hospital. It was only a 4 block drive, but it felt endless. For anyone who has delivered at St. Joe’s, that walk over the bridge took us an eternity because I could no longer walk or talk through my contractions. An hour after she had left our house, we met again in a triage room. I had progressed from 3 cms to 8 cms, and was now demanding an epidural, despite the Bradley Method techniques I had been practicing until that point.
Once we settled into a room, the glorious epidural in place, I had a 3 hour nap while Matt watched my every breath to make sure I was still alive. He describes this part of the birth as incredibly scary to witness. I had gone from writhing in pain to fast asleep in minutes. I was in heaven, he was in purgatory. When I woke up, Angela checked me again and I was complete! I ate the most glorious orange popsicle for an energy boost, and then it was time for the big show! Angela had moved my epidural booster button away while I was sleeping, so I couldn’t dose myself (brilliant, yet sneaky). In the moment, I was a bit miffed, but turns out, it makes for some pretty effective pushing when you can feel what’s happening!
I climbed up on the birth stool (basically a tiny milk maid stool with an opening). This position really shortened the distance from womb to outside world and baby was coming fast and furious! After a few practice pushes with Matt at my side, the midwives had me climb back onto the bed. The next few pushes were a blur. I was really focused on crossing that threshold to meet my baby. As she came out it was the most overwhelmingly intense feeling of pain and then relief. As they placed her on my chest, there was the most fleeting moment where I felt empty of her weight but then felt her weight on the outside of my body for the first time.
I could tell there was a flurry of activity happening around me, but all I could do was look down at her incredibly hairy and wet little head. Since we didn’t know the gender beforehand, Matt excitedly said, “It’s a boy!” to which the midwives laughed and asked him to look again. He blamed it on the position of the cord, but I think he was just blinded by his tears. Despite earlier hesitation, he expertly cut the cord and we did some skin to skin while they performed her APGARs. Sweet Finley Elle was born at 7:36 am weighing 7lbs 13 ozs.
Since she came into the world so fast and furious, she still had some mucous stuck in her lungs which required a bit of extra suction over on the warming station. Matt accompanied our new daughter while I delivered the placenta and they assessed the downstairs situation. Turns out, a fast delivery left me with pretty gnarly tear, for which an OB had to be called in. Her handy work took longer than the delivery! What felt like hours later, we were able to move down into our room and cuddle our sweet baby.
We were scared to speak loudly, or move to quickly, or even touch her. I had very limited experience with babies before Finley. So limited in fact that I had never changed a diaper, or even dressed a baby. Add breastfeeding and healing your banged up body into the mix and suddenly we realized we were staring at a huge mountain. The learning curve was steep, we had great support in our lactation consultant at St. Joe's and our Midwives, not to mention our own family.