It’s hard to believe that she is finally here!

Our Daphne Christine.

While we had an induction planned, everything about this birth story was not planned. But what birth story is?

A couple weeks ago, my doctor scheduled our induction for Saturday, May 20th, because he didn’t want me to go a day past 37 weeks. Last Wednesday (May 17th), I went in for my final check up. Knowing we only had a couple days, we got everything squared away at the house, and I had everything done that I needed to do at work before I headed to this appointment. That day was also Tom’s last day at work before he started his paternity leave, so we felt good about the finality of this pregnancy. I even brought my hospital bag with me that day wanting to be more prepared.

I just had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be leaving that appointment without a baby.

And sure enough, Daphne and I both didn’t pass our tests that day. She didn’t practice breathing during the ultrasound, and my blood pressure was too high for my doctor to let us go even two more days until our induction. So I checked into Labor and Delivery, and Tom met me there within the hour after securing George plans with his parents.

We got to our room at 5pm, and I was calm about the whole ordeal at this point. We were having a baby!

They started hooking me up with the IV. They checked my cervix, and I was already dilated to a 3, which is awesome that I was already there naturally. Because of my blood pressure, I was being put on magnesium again. I was really hoping to avoid this because of the bad and awful reactions I had with George. And because of the magnesium, I had to have a catheter. Ugh…

My in-laws brought George by after picking him up from the sitter’s. When he walked in the door, he said, “Mommy hurt?” So many emotions right there. It just hit me that my little baby boy was all grown up.

Soon after they left around 7pm, they put me on pitocin and got the party started. I started having contractions coming together almost immediately. I was also really feeling the magnesium. I was freezing out Tom because I was burning up so much and kept asking for the air to be turned down. The weird thing about magnesium though is that it was just my face that was on fire.

Since I was not allowed to walk around, at 11 pm I decided to get an epidural. It just seems silly to have to deal with all that pain to be able to do it more naturally when nothing about magnesium is normal. The only reason I wanted to try naturally was so I could walk around during labor, and that just wasn’t an option. Give me the drugs then! This time was a lot harder for me to get the epidural. It was much more painful of a process. Tom was in there this time though so that was nice to be able to hold his hand.

At 12:30, they came and checked my cervix again and broke my water. I was only at a 4. I was a little upset that I wasn’t progressing faster, but I embraced where we were at.

I started shaking uncontrollably at this point. It was like I was cold, but I was hot from the magnesium. I just remember repeating to Tom, “I can’t make it stop.” I shook like this well after the birth was over. This was awful to not feel in control of your body at all.

The nurse had me flipping sides every few minutes in between contractions to help activate Daphne. Every time I had a contraction, her heartbeat went way low. They thought that the umbilical cord may be wrapped around her neck.  I just remember being exhausted after every flip because it was so hard to move my legs due to the epidural it was taking all my strength to rotate. At one point they had me on all fours to help alleviate some of the contraction pain. The thing that they don’t tell you about epidurals is that it doesn’t take away all the contractions like one may think, and you still feel ALL the pressure.

I was having contractions every few minutes and some severe pressure in my hooha. Finally at 3:00 am, the doctor came back in to check on my progress.

It was no wonder I was feeling pressure, because Daphne was crowning and her head was making it’s way out! Her heart rate was going down during contractions not because of the umbilical cord, but because my vagina was wrapped around her neck. So they got everyone into position quickly, including my legs into stirrups.

Seven minutes and 6 pushes after they said let’s start this, Daphne Christine was born at 3:20am and laid on my chest.

They waited a couple minutes to cut the umbilical cord while she laid on my chest. It as so magical to have this moment. We never got this with George since he was whisked away to the NICU so quickly after birth, so this was amazing to have it this time around.

Once Tom cut the literal cord, they took her over to do her tests while they did finished cleaning and stitching me up.

They did struggle to get the placenta out. And when it did come out, it was very apparent why I needed to have this baby early. It was in shreds. Tom said it looked nothing like when I had George.

But soon it was over and Daphne was back on my chest avoiding the NICU completely as a pre-term baby at 36 weeks and 4 days. Here she was already passing her brother on tests. She weighed 6 lbs and 6 oz, and every bit was beautiful.

I remember dozing off a little bit before the sun rose, but after that I was trying to nurse her every hour or so. Tom and I also admitted that it was so very weird to have her in the room. People kept commenting that it was easy for us since it was our second time and knew what to expect, but we both were like uh no the last baby I didn’t get to see for almost two days after he was born. I don’t know how to do these first few hours of life business!

So after about  7 hours of labor, our precious baby girl made her debut into this world.

While she is now born, the story does not end here. The next couple of days were just as eventful and every part of this birth story. Before this week, I had contemplated having a third kid, but one particular part event of last week has me saying there will never ever be any more kids in our future.

But you will have to come back for that part of the story. For now you can enjoy those baby cheeks!