Tomorrow our baby girl will already be a month old. And here continues the saga of "where has the time gone"?!? I'd say we are far from having life figured out as a family of five, but it's surely time I got her story documented before my brain fails me.
I don't know if it's because I carried her while I was 30 or if it's because she was a girl. The COVID madness surely didn't help matters either, but this pregnancy was nothing like the boys! I loved being pregnant with them but this time I was thrown for a loop - many of them! I was beyond sick for the first 20 weeks. I guess in a way COVID was a blessing because it made Jeremy work from home which allowed him to be here for me and the boys. I'm not sure what life would have looked like had that not been the case. The aches and pains of pregnancy came quicker and as we got closer and closer to the end, boy did things get interesting!
With both of the boys we went to the hospital before it was actually time. Each baby has given us that "scare" just to let us know that it's almost time and we need to get our butts in gear. They both gave me early contractions that needed to be monitored/stopped and then life went on normal again until my water broke and it was go time. But with Kylie, we went three times. At 34 weeks my braxton hick contractions took a turn and became regular, consistent, much stronger contractions. So we headed to the hospital. I got two doses of medication which brought them down and we went home. One week later we were back again. This time I got three doses of medication and a bag of fluids before I was able to go home. Aaaaaand another week later we were back again - this time for a false alarm of my water breaking. Or so they said. At this point in the game of 36 weeks pregnant, contractions every day, every 10 minutes or less - I think you can all imagine how I was feeling. We stopped running to the hospital because we knew how the story would end. The contractions weren't actually doing anything so until they increased or we saw further signs that she was coming, we were going to camp out at home. Mind you - having this be baby #3 and having had Lucas come 2 weeks early, I never had any intentions of making it full term. But as time went on and she kept making things interesting, I kept hearing how normal this was for baby #3!
I found myself at my due date and although mentally and physically exhausted I had come to terms with the fact that I was just along for the ride and we needed to enjoy life with the boys before things changed forever. It was Friday when I "turned" 40 weeks and that weekend my Grandma was being moved up to her new house. My sister was coming into town for more help and they asked for Jeremy as well, so the boys and I went over to my moms on Saturday to hang out with the cousins while everyone else worked. That evening I could tell my contractions had changed but I was so over the false alarms I barely gave it any thought. My sister had made a comment about them and having the boys sleep over but I told her things had been this way for over a month so we didn't need to get excited. We left my parents around 10, got home and put the boys to bed and Jeremy and I watched a little TV to unwind. I remember sitting on my birthing ball wondering if something was happening, but Jeremy and I both figured we might as well just go to bed and get some rest. If something changed it would wake me up anyways.
I slept off and on and at 1:30am I got up and quickly realized I didn't need to go to the bathroom but that I was actually bleeding. I said Jeremy's name one time, without much panic or volume, and he was by my side in less than a second. I must have had the right tone. He grabbed my phone, I called my sister and the process began. A quick call to the hospital told us that it was time. Jeremy got us there in record time.....this is not how labor had started for us in the past so we had no clue what this bleeding meant. Since I had been sleeping off and on I had no idea when I last felt Kylie kick and I was feeling a lot of pressure as well.
When we got there they put us right in a room and Jeremy did not have to wait downstairs for them to prove I was in labor. After all of the admission questions were done I was COVID tested. Let's just say I'd get an epidural any day before having that done again. I will say that my nurse was terrible so I'm sure they aren't all like that, but I could not stop crying and had a bloody nose. Anyway...the doctor wasn't going to be in to see me until the morning shift and I was only 2 cm, so I opted to get the epidural and get some rest before things really took off. Thankfully at shift change I was given the most amazing nurse. We got to have her for labor and the duration of our stay. At shift change the doctor came in to break my water and start pitocin. Except when she went to break my water there was none. I'm 99.9% sure that my water broke when I was 36 weeks and went to the hospital. I remember countless times after that telling Jeremy that I HAD to be leaking fluid because this amount was just not normal. So, they started pitocin and within a couple hours I was starting to feel the contractions pretty heavily. I asked to be checked because I didn't want my epidural to be topped off if it was almost time to start pushing, but I had only gone from 2 - 4cm. They gave me another shot and just like with Seth, things moved very quickly. Within an hour I was feeling intense pressure and the nurse said I was 9-10cm. The doctor came in right behind her and I told her I really wanted to push and asked if it was time. She told me to go ahead. The next hour was the longest of my life and I did not think I was going to successfully birth her. Knowing that it was only an hour seems absolutely absurd to me. I give a shout out to every woman who has delivered a baby med-free because my epidural shut off and I unintentionally did just that. I guess I'm proud that I was able to? But would certainly never choose to do so again! I surprisingly remember almost every moment of it but most of all I remember telling myself that "if you don't do this you're going to have a c-section and since you don't want that you HAVE to do this"! I found out the next day while talking to my nurse that the doctor messed everything up when she told me it was okay to start pushing. I was only 9cm and still had a bit more dilating to go. Pushing through that got Kylie stuck in a position that she should not have been in. She also told me that she was presenting face up so along with everything else and my epidural shutting off, I had to get her to flip over. She told me that if I had been a first time mom, I would have ended up in the OR. I surely didn't feel good about myself for that hour of pushing, but after hearing that.....our bodies are amazing!
Words can not express what it felt like to finally have our girl. Not only had labor been long and the weeks leading up to it were long, the pregnancy was long and the loss we experienced before her was.......I was still in quite a bit of pain after delivering her and then we both took an amazing nap together, but my God she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. After pooping twice she weighed in at 7lbs 13oz and 20 inches long at 1:24PM on November 15th 2020! Daddy was very happy since the Buffalo Bills were playing at 4pm 😉
