The Simple Life: Birth Story

Emilia Carolyn Kimber

May 9, 2018 @ 1:52am

7lb 6oz

48.5cm long

Emilia's labor and delivery could not have gone better all things considered. It was textbook like Dom's, but about 12 hours faster, and much less stressful/traumatic for me!

On May 8 I was 40 weeks pregnant. I woke up that morning feeling defeated and DONE! I did some research about inducing labor and getting baby in the right position. This put me on a cleaning spree. I started by scrubbing the whole main floor on my hands and knees, cleaned a bathroom, cleaned the cupboards, vacuumed, and pretty much overdid it for my poor body.

After thoroughly exhausting myself, I did some further research online to see if a chiropractic adjustment might help get baby positioned properly. She'd been sunny-side up for some time, and it was making me nervous. I had acupuncture booked for May 9, and another sweep on May 10, so I just wanted to make sure baby would be good to go if either of those things worked to induce!

I booked a chiropractor appointment and spent the next few hours weeping and sulking and napping. I didn't feel good, I was sore from cleaning the whole house, and I must have had some hormones flowing through my system. David emergency texted my mom for some help with Dom so I could rest and take care of myself, so I went and got myself a Tim Horton's muffin and Iced Capp as a little treat. All. By. Myself!

Chiropractor was at 4:30 and Dr. Yvonne Mensah (who, by the way I HIGHLY recommend if anyone needs a chiropractor) spent a lot of time with me to adjust me giving baby the best chance of turning and engaging in my pelvis. She said if I hadn't had baby by the weekend to call her and she will come in on her day off to give me another adjustment just to make sure my body is primed for delivery. In the meantime though, go home and take a 20 minute walk and do some very light exercises to open up my pelvis and encourage baby to engage.

I don't know what kind of miracle worker she is, but her adjustment and advice did the trick for me. I'm convinced. We came home and did the recommended short walk, and I had some cramping and a trip to the bathroom afterwards, but that's not very uncommon after a walk at this point. I thought nothing of it.

Dave had lots of work to do, so I put Dom to bed as usual at 7pm, and then had a nice long hot shower. I came downstairs and grabbed a snack and the laptop so I could plunk down and watch some crap TV. At about 8:15pm I had a cramp that sort of caught me off guard. Huh... that was a little more painful than the other ones I've had. Anyway... back to life!

7 minutes later I had another cramp with a contraction that was also a different kind of pain. Hmm... I turned on the contraction timer app to see if things were going to be regular. By 9:00 I was getting contractions that lasted 45-60 seconds and were coming every 6ish minutes. David came up from working, and I guess I had a look on my face. He immediately knew something was up. We talked about what/how I was feeling, and decided we should make sure the car is packed and our parents are aware just in case. At this point I was not even convinced I was going into labor. Yes, I was having regular contractions. However, they were hardly bad enough for me to even pause what I was doing.

Getting up and moving around to make sure everything was ready to go put my contractions rapidly from every 6-7 minutes, to every 3-4 minutes. The pain was getting a little worse, but nothing terrible. I could still talk through them, and might just pause to make a little face and say, "Oh yes... this sucks... It's going to get so much worse."

At 9:30 we let my parents know that they are officially on stand-by, but I'm not ready to go to the hospital yet. They decide to go to bed just in case they're called back out to us in the middle of the night. My contractions started getting stronger, and we were pretty confident I was in labor by 10:10, so we called my parents. I still had some doubts about this being the real deal because my contractions would slow a lot if I wasn't moving around. I was in denial...

Mom & Dad were at our house by 10:30, and even they said I didn't look ready to go to the hospital. I was up and walking around through my contractions, and holding perfectly normal light conversations between them. By this time they were 40-50 seconds long and coming every 3-5 minutes depending on my activity level. We were told by the midwife that if they're coming every 5 minutes and lasting 1 minute it was time to go.

Fine... we'll go to the hospital at 11. As soon as we get in the car, my contractions all but stop. I had two the whole drive to the hospital. Seriously?! They're going to laugh at me when we get there. Give me morphine and gravol and send me home. What a wuss!

We got to the hospital and they got us into triage pretty quickly. Our midwife, Nargess, who had been seeing us through our whole pregnancy was the on-call midwife that night, so she was SO excited to see us in triage. I was checked at 1115pm and was 4cm dilated. They said they'd have a room ready for me in half an hour or so, so I can walk around or sit in triage or do what I want. I'm still feeling good at this point, so we get up to go for a walk around the maternity ward. Nargess said she'd come check on me again at 3am, so I was prepared for a long haul. We make it all of 10 minutes and they come tell us our room is ready, so we might as well go get settled in. Alrighty then! We went in and met our nurse, Stephanie, who would be our 1 to 1 nurse for the night.

Strutting around the hospital at 4cm dilated waiting for our room.

I was still light and airy and working really well through my contractions at this point. David was such a great help. I felt like we were a really good team the whole labor. He was able to read my cues pretty well when I couldn't say what I needed, and we had discussed ahead of time what the plan was (aka movement and hip squeezes), so he held up his end really well!

At about midnight, I could hear the woman in the room next to us laboring and moaning and groaning and I make a joke about how I am not looking forward to when it gets that bad. I wasn't even making noise through my contractions except saying, "Why does this have to suck so bad?" Well... about 30-45 minutes later that was me.

12:45 pm and I'm still for some reason timing every one of my contractions on my app, and using the Tens machine (thank you Amy!) religiously. My contractions hurt hurt now. We have the bed raised up with my blanket on it at standing height. When I get a contraction I find it best to hold onto the bed, and squat all the way to the floor. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a ball on the cold floor, but when I sat down on it I just muttered how disgusting hospital floors are and got back up. At 1am the contractions are lasting over a minute and coming every 2-3 minutes. I had laughing gas, but I was using it very sparingly because it made me so sick with Dom. It didn't really help much. It just made me feel sleepy between contractions.

David was behind me supporting me (physically and mentally/emotionally), and reminding me what Joc, our doula from Dom's labor, said about how to properly breathe through the contractions. I guess he got annoying at one point. As I was in a deep squat he was reminding me by mimicking the proper breathing (humming/groaning as you take really deep breaths), and I couldn't say "stop" mid-contraction, so I just reached back and smacked him in the face. I could hear him and the nurse have a little chuckle at that. He got the idea.

At 1:15 I had decided that this hurt way too much. I remarked that I still had almost 2 hours to go until Nargess was coming to check my progress. I asked the nurse if she could come check me now. If I wasn't past 6cm I was pulling the chute, calling Batman (code word), and getting an epidural. I just figured it shouldn't be hurting this bad and I couldn't do this for another 4 cm. I also said at one point that nobody is allowed to promise me meds and a nap if they don't plan on delivering on that promise.

Nargess came in at 1:35 or so and checked me out. She said, "Ah! You're 8cm! Let's break your water!" I stopped her and said I wanted Fentanyl first. I want to make sure we get this pain under control. She hummed and hawed, and said something to the effect of, "Well... Here are your options right now. 1. We get you hooked up to the IV and get some fentanyl, and I come back and break your water in an hour and you have your baby then. OR 2. I break your water now, you skip the meds and you have your baby now." Oh... she means business!

I opted for option 2. Let's meet this baby girl. Nargess broke my water (oh how I HATE that feeling) at 1:40am. She checked my cervix again and said, "6cm. Good." I got mad and told her she lied to me. She said I was 8! Apparently it's normal for the cervix to un-dilate (is that a word?) a bit once the water has broken because there's less pressure stretching it. Makes sense I suppose.

Once my water was broken I had IMMEDIATE pushing contractions and immediate excruciating pain. Ahhh yes... there's the screaming Renee I remember from the first labor. Nargess had me lay on my side right on the edge of the bed. I thought I was going to fall off. She got on a stool at the end of the bed, and periodically lifted the blanket to check me out. There were two contractions where she peeked and said, "Nope. Not yet. Nope. Not yet." The third contraction was, "Yup. There's baby!" They rolled me onto my back and asked me to push. One push and her head was half out (can you say Ring of Fire?!). I'm really upset by this ring of fire pain until David says, "RENEE! She has hair!!" That was enough motivation for me! Second push, her head was all the way out. Third push her body came out. Three minutes. Three minutes of pushing and she was out and crying on my chest. They didn't even have time to take off the end of the bed, or get the pushing bar. My body just took over and had that baby.

The sound of that cry was perfect and beautiful. They let the cord pulse out and David got to cut the cord. With Dom he did as well, but it was a bit of a rush because I was bleeding a lot so they had to get it done right away. This time everything was just so calm and routine.

From water breaking (1:40am) to baby arriving was 12 minutes. At 1:52am our little Emilia came into the world.

First moments. I was admiring the fact that she had hair.

Already showing how relaxed she is. Didn't even cry with the stethoscope

Emilia, myself, and our beloved midwife, Nargess. This is less than an hour after giving birth. I can't believe I still had the energy to smile for pictures.

Nargess said I didn't even have first degree tearing, and for a first time mom she wouldn't have done any stitches. However, since I have Dom at home, she gave me three stitches just to be safe. Honestly people... get the epidural just for the stitches part. It sucks! You've done all this hard work and you have your baby to show for it, and now they stab you where it hurts.

Within 30 minutes of Emilia being born, I had her nursing and she did a good "feed" (nothing to eat, but she was on there nursing) for an hour! I was running on adrenaline and still had all sorts of energy after the quick labor. I was taking notes in my phone, cracking jokes (apparently I do that a lot...), and taking pictures (or asking Dave to).

When I had Dom, they moved us to a different room shortly after delivery, but they've changed that practice now, and we remained in one room the whole time. I got to sit on the bed and hang out with Em & talk to Dave while we waited for the "clean-up crew". It was nice to have a little rinse off and crawl back into a warm bed with my pillow, blanket and baby! And then the familiar feeling... they leave you with this baby in the clear box beside your bed. Wait... what do I do again?!

When the nurse left, David went down to get our pillows and bags from the car. He carried it up past the front desk and the ladies there said, "WHAT?! You had your baby already?! You just got here!" Yes. yes we did. It was alarming for them because I was clearly in early-active labor when I arrived. I still had a long ways to go.

I am so grateful that most of the newborn drill has come back to me fairly naturally. There are still a lot of questions (thank you Google), and stress and sleep deprivation and raging hormones, but I am finding myself MUCH more relaxed this time around.

Fun Fact: Did you know that in Holland after you have a baby you get government help for 8 days?! They send someone to your house to do all your cooking, cleaning, etc. I'd pay ridiculous taxes for something like that!