The Birth of the Blog

Instagram and the visuals are great, but do ya ever feel like you have more you could say?! Since I don’t want to bore my husband too much more with my yoga & birthy talk, Keepin’ it Light with Holly has officially been BORN! And what better way to kick off the birth of a pregnancy, birth and postpartum blog than with a birth story?

Let me share the birth story of the one that started it all, Mr. Clayton James. I have only really verbally told snippets of this and wrote down some notes in his baby book so I am excited to actually take some time (even though it is nearly 6 years later) to capture my take of his entrance into the world.

My pregnancy overall was very smooth, outside of some good ol’ nausea in the very beginning and pretty wicked cramping at first, there was nothing to write home about with this one. I was able to stay fairly active, walk A LOT, attend prenatal yoga classes once a week, and do other light workouts. Textbook pregnancy you could say, which is something I expected as my mom had always told me that she had been told that she was just ‘made to have babies’ so naturally, I should follow suit.

On Friday, April 21st, I had just hit the 37-week mark. I was excited to be there as that meant if I were to go into labor now I should be able to deliver in Family Beginnings, which is the natural birth center labor and delivery area within our local hospital. In other excitement that morning, I started noticing a decent amount of mucus when I had wiped after going to the bathroom. I believe I did the first thing most people would do in that situation and texted my best friend to alert her of the new development.

What could this mean? Was I going to go into labor? Did I just feel a contraction?!

The rest of the day went on quite normally, I, of course, took it upon myself to walk extra to see if I could kick-start anything and my husband and I thought we’d order a chicken mariachi pizza from Donatos for dinner to see if some spicy jalapenos may help do the trick. To our avail, it was mostly quiet on the labor front that night and I tried to silence my excitement with articles that point to it being possible to regrow your mucus plug even after you lose it.

The next morning started like most other Saturdays that time of year, my husband headed out to his baseball park to run a tournament or whatever other event was going on that day and I began cleaning around the house. Now the next part, I ,unfortunately, do not remember the exact chain of events, however, at some point around 8 or 9 am that morning I noticed what I thought may be my bag of waters was leaking. Nothing like a movie scene gush or something very obvious, but enough for me to think hmmm this could be something I should pay a little attention to. So again I did the obvious thing and started texting my BFF and we were like two giggly school girls wondering if this may really be labor coming. I was skeptical because physically, I was not noticing anything that I would perceive as labor. I was feeling the effects of being 37 weeks pregnant but outside of that, I didn’t notice a thing. After an hour or two, I decided that maybe I should call my midwives and see if they have any thoughts about my lost mucus plug and possible leaking waters, fully assuming they were going to probably tell me I’m crazy and not in labor. Instead, I was told well it may not be, but it is probably best to head into triage for a swab to see if it is indeed amniotic fluid leaking. After packing my hospital bag and waffling around a little longer my Mother-in-Law and I headed into the hospital around 1:30 pm. I had told my husband, “oh don’t bother coming yet, they are probably just going to send me home, I’m not in labor, you can stay at work” (his work is only about 10 minutes away from the hospital). Once there, they hooked me up to the fetal monitors and swabbed me to check if it truly was amniotic fluid and not just urine. Sure enough, they came back shortly and advised me of two things, 1. that I was having contractions (which I was unaware were occurring the whole time I was hooked up) and 2. that my water was leaking.

So many thoughts and feelings at once…excitement, “wow I’m going to have my baby soon!”, “man if I’m having contractions now and can’t feel them, surely this is going to be easy”, “I am going to rock this thing!” and “oh, crap we are about to have a baby!”

At this point, it is about 4:30 pm and the nurses explain that they would like to admit me since my water is broken as they would like to have the baby within 24 hours of the water breaking due to the risk of infection. Okkkkkkk guess we are staying here. The fun begins!

Here comes disappointment #1, I’m only 1-2 (2 being very generous) centimeters dilated. Fantastic. But hey, that’s okay, I’m going to keep moving and that’s going to help labor along, I got this! They get me over to a regular L&D room, not in the birth center, as I’m not far enough along yet. They let me know I could still potentially birth there if I progress enough on my own.

Ahhhh disappointment #2. Although I had read all the books, and prepared well, generally speaking, walking in tiny circles on a labor and delivery floor and doing random squats in my room wasn’t getting the job done to kick-start this labor and I didn’t have any other ideas at the time to try. At this point, the midwife advised that if I was not to 5cm by 8 pm they would need to start pitocin to kickstart labor. I was still contracting (per the monitor) but not anything substantial. So after 8 pm came and went without me making any natural progress, the pitocin was set up and got turned on at 9 pm. For the next few hours, I felt like I was handling it well, I had a few visitors, was talking and having a good time. My husband was there at this point by the way, he had gotten there close to after I got admitted. We finally got all the visitors to leave and at about 12:30 am they came in to check how I was doing.

Still minimal progress, only 1-2 centimeters dilated. UGH.

At this point the midwife offered to do a membrane sweep and break my waters, which we did, and they upped the pitocin and left us to rest. Well the rest did not last long as one of the two or the combination of all the things definitely upped the contractions and I could not lay down or rest. The contractions were constant and intense, right on top of each other. Not to mention I had the pleasure of the lovely monitors that need to be adjusted constantly being strapped around my belly. That in combination with the pitocin IV really was cramping the whole freedom of movement laboring idea I had.

The nurse suggested I could try to get in the tub (a small normal sized bathtub as I did not get to be in the birth center with the big tubs since I had to use pitocin) and I did, however, it was too small to provide much relief. I eventually got out and they checked me again, which felt worse than the contractions, and I still had hardly made any progress. Feeling defeated and pretty wore out, the lovely nurses offered to bring in a full sized inflatable tub as I had planned to try to labor and possibly birth in the water in the birth center rooms. They brought that in and filled it up and that was JUST what I needed apparently as I began to actually make progress.

At this point, we were into the wee hours of the morning and my husband and I were both exhausted. I was falling asleep on the edge of the pool in between contractions. They had finally turned off the pitocin but the intensity and timing of the contractions remained. After begging for an epidural that was totally not in my birth plan, in what I would guess was transition, I finally got to the pushing phase and at 5:46am roared that baby into the water. I was so relieved I made it through and to be done. The nurses helped me get out of the tub and onto the bed to deliver the placenta while my husband got some skin to skin time before handing him back to me. And that is when he captured just the loveliest picture there ever was of a first time mom holding her brand new baby. Unfortunately, the picture I believe got lost in the midst of changing phones and let me tell you what a shame I cannot share that gem with you today. Let’s just say I was not some glowing mother just in love and in awe of her baby at that moment. It was more of a, what just happened, can you all please just leave me alone now look.

We spent just over 24 hours in the hospital after he was born, we were dying to get out of the tiny postpartum room and get home. The whole being up 24 hours, having a baby in the wee hours of the morning and then just running on adrenaline thing caught up to us pretty fast and that first night of trying to figure out how to take care of a crying baby was ROUGH. I begrudgingly agreed to let him spend a few hours in the nursery that night so we could get just a couple hours of uninterrupted rest, feeling like I was already failing my first mom test (spoiler alert: I wasn’t). Once we got home, although it did not necessarily get easier, we settled into our own routine of this new life. I will say looking back I think I did struggle a bit with postpartum anxiety some. There was definitely a time where I dreaded night time, not knowing what it would bring and how much we’d be up. I think the only other thing postpartum that I didn’t feel prepared for was how lonely it can feel at times. My husband was in the middle of his busy season at work at the time of his birth and although he was around as much as possible, I think it is a hard feeling when it seems everyone else’s lives continue as normal and yours is completely changed, everything revolving around taking care of this new baby. It is something that got easier as I adjusted to motherhood and eventually got back to work but it has definitely been something that I notice each immediate postpartum period with my babies.

There you have it, the birth of my first baby and the birth of a new mama! Was it perfect and everything I had planned? No. Could it have been a bit better? Sure! Using my Doula knowledge I have now as well as having a couple more babies under my belt, there are a few things I would have tried or done a little differently. Maybe they would have made a difference, maybe not but maybe they will be something that you will think of now if you get in that situation!

1. Waited longer to go to the hospital. Even with my water leaking, I definitely feel based on the evidence out there about risks involved in that, I could have managed at home longer and possibly allowed my body a better chance to start things on its own that way. Something about getting in the labor zone confined to a hospital room that just doesn’t quite hit the same as being comfy at home.

2. Try more natural induction methods outside of walking and random squatting and bouncing on the birth ball such as nipple stimulation, the miles circuit, maybe acupressure or just more intentional with my movement.

3. Pushed to wait longer to start pitocin or maybe explored the other medical induction options first. Being at the hospital definitely puts you on a clock, whether that clock is totally evidence based or not is the question and I could have maybe bought myself a bit more time.

4. Stop allowing visitors or cut off visitors much sooner than we did. By the time we settled in to rest, labor ramped up and that ended up with both my husband and I being EXHAUSTED by the time Clay was born. Definitely wish we would have tried to squeeze in a nap before that.

5. Lower my expectations of newborn life/sleep and then lower them again. I knew it wasn’t necessarily going to be easy, but I don’t think I really was prepared for how hard it felt at times. Newborn life the 2nd and 3rd time around definitely felt a lot more manageable and I think the right mindset and expectations plays a huge role in that.

6. Plan, plan, plan for postpartum and different support options you may need or feel may help you most. Maybe that’s just someone to come sit and chat with you, finding mom groups to join, utilizing a postpartum doula. I definitely wish I spoke up and asked for some more help and support at times and I even had a decent amount (in most people’s eyes) already.

Thanks for reading! I will see you next week on Keepin’ it Light with Holly! ☀️