Baby K's birth

Baby K has been keeping me pretty busy these last 2 weeks so I haven't been able to write up the details of her birth yet. I finally have a free moment right now so I will hopefully be able to get this posted soon.

Thursday, April 3rd, I felt nauseous pretty much all day off and on so I was wondering if I would go into labor Thursday night/Friday morning. I was nauseous before the births of M&M & Luke so I thought that this might be a sign of the birth getting close. Friday came and went though without anything happening and Saturday was uneventful as well. I attended M&M & Luke's soccer games Saturday morning and listened to conference throughout the day. DH mentioned on Saturday that he wanted this baby to be born as far away from Kitty's birthday as possible (April 17th). I made comments to several people also that the thing I like least about childbirth is just not knowing when labor is going to kick in and when the baby will be born. Each night I would go to bed wondering if labor would start sometime that night...

(It turns out that it was a good think I didn't go into labor on Friday because my midwife had another client due at around the same time as me who had her baby Friday morning...)

Sunday morning (April 6th) I woke up around 2 a.m. and felt a gush of water and then a second gush. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on and then I realized that my water had broken (in bed). I quickly got up and hurried into the bathroom. DH woke up because of the noise I was making and he got the sheets changed on the bed. DH encouraged me to go back to bed and try to get as much sleep as I could before the contractions started. With Luke's labor my water broke in the middle of the night as well and then contractions started about 2 hours later. So I went back to bed and tried to sleep but wasn't very successful. So I went downstairs and put in a Jane Austen movie and laid out on the couch. When I left my bedroom Kitty called out from her room, "Mom!" I went into her room to look at her and she was sitting straight up in bed. I told her that she was going to probably have a new brother or sister born that day to which she quickly said, "A brother". I then patted her on the back and told her to lay back down and go to sleep & she did.

I started noticing contractions not long after that and they seemed to be somewhat regular. DH came downstairs not long after I did and got a little bit of sleep there on the couch. I decided to call my midwife, Hugs, around 6 a.m. and she said that she would be right up. The unfortunate thing was that we didn't have the birth pool from her yet and that takes a while to set up and get filled with hot water. I then called my parents around 7 a.m. to let them know that we would have to make a change in our plans for the day. Saturday had been my mom's birthday and we were going to have dinner & birthday cake at my parents' house after conference on Sunday. I was supposed to be making my mom a birthday cake. (I got the cake made Saturday night but I told her that she would have to frost it after she came over...)

Well, unfortunately after I called Hugs my contractions seemed to slow down. By the time she got to our house they were very infrequent and not very strong. Hugs & DH got the pool set up and started filling it while I laid down on the bed and tried to rest some. The kids eventually all got up and the excitement level was definitely high. Kitty asked if she could get her swimsuit on because she wanted to swim in the pool that we were setting up in my bedroom. My parents came over and then later on my sister and her fiance came over as well. Everyone went downstairs to watch conference while I stayed upstairs to rest and listen over the radio.

Between sessions Hugs came back up to see how things were going. She suggested that I eat something or try and take a walk. I tried getting in the pool for a little bit but that didn't seem to change anything. So we decided to all go for a walk since it was fairly nice weather outside. We walked around the block and I had to stop for about 2 contractions during the walk. When we got back to the house Hugs said that she was going to go back home and that we should call her when things picked up again. Hugs thought that the contractions might not pick up again until later that evening... :( I felt a little bit like when a woman arrives at the hospital in labor and gets sent home because she's not in active labor yet... (Unfortunately for Hugs this was the birthday of her 11 year old daughter and they had company that was going to be coming over for dinner - and Kitty was born on her wedding anniversary.) After Hugs left we took one more walk around the block and then everyone headed back downstairs again to watch the afternoon session of conference.

I went back up to my room and laid down on the bed to listen to conference again. At around 2:30 I started noticing that the contractions were picking up in intensity and they were coming closer together. I managed through them for about an hour and then I went downstairs to get DH because they were getting hard for me to manage on my own. DH was asleep on the couch so I had to wake him up and told him that I needed him upstairs. DH came up and timed the next few contractions and could tell that they were getting much stronger than they had been earlier in the day. I was trying to wait until conference was over before we called Hugs but we decided to call her about 10 minutes before it ended. She said that she had had just enough time to finish the preparations for her family's dinner and that she would be right up.

Once Hugs got there around 4:30 I was definitely in active labor. Unfortunately we kept having interruptions from the kids wanting to know when I was going to have the baby because no one wanted to miss it. My mom got dinner on the table for everyone while DH & Hugs were upstairs with me trying to manage the labor. This was one of my more intense labors and I had a hard time at the end managing through the contractions. I had back labor and the pain was very intense. Probably at around 5:30 I got into the pool again and I had some really intense contractions while I was in there. We kept getting interruptions every now and then from the kids and DH finally had to lock the bedroom door because he could tell that the interruptions were distracting me too much. With each contraction I was holding onto DH & Hugs and trying to just get through them.

I finally turned towards the outside of the pool and was on my knees with my arms holding onto DH at the edge of the pool. Hugs told me to push whenever I felt like it and I finally just bore down & said, "I'm pushing" and gave a great big push. Hugs quickly checked me and said that the head was out! so I needed to slow down and let my body stretch so that I wouldn't tear. Hugs told me to wait until the next contraction before I pushed again and then she told DH that he had about 3 seconds to get anyone into the room that wanted to see the birth.

DH quickly ran to the the bedroom door and called down the stairs that it was time!! The kids and my mom and sister quickly hurried into the room when I felt the next contraction coming on and before I knew it the baby was out! When Hugs said that she was bringing the baby up between my legs and then I needed to grab it I couldn't believe that I had done it! That was an awesome feeling! I quickly picked up the baby in my arms and sat back against the side of the pool. Hugs wrapped a towel around it and the baby had no problems whatsoever breathing right away. I lifted up the towel and saw that it was another girl - and she was completely covered in vernix (a white "cheesy" substance found on the skin of infants which usually decreases as the baby reaches gestation). This baby had the most vernix that I have ever seen on a baby before and Hugs said that it is usually thicker on babies that are born early. By the measurements and observations that Hugs took later on the baby she said that she measured closer to 36 weeks gestation than the 38 1/2 weeks that we had calculated.


I sat in the pool relaxing for a little bit and then I delivered the placenta in the pool. We then let Luke cut the umbilical cord (M&M got to do it with Kitty) and then I got out of the pool and moved over to the bed. Luckily my uterus clamped down pretty quickly and I didn't have to endure too much uterine massage by my midwife. :) DH took the baby as I got out of the pool and then he let each of the kids take a turn holding her. After Hugs took all of her measurements and my mom dressed her I tried nursing her for the first time and then I took a quick shower while everyone took turns holding her downstairs.

It took us a while to decide on a name but I think that K Anne is definitely fitting her now. She was born at 6:15 p.m. and was 8 lbs 0 ozs and 19 1/2" long. It was definitely weird having her in the evening - Hugs didn't end up leaving until around 9 o'clock that night. I was starving after the birth and ate quite a bit of food after my shower (plus some birthday cake). I can't say that I got too much out of the conference sessions that day but I do remember hearing Elder Ballard's talk on mothers and President Monson's talk where he mentioned his wife being in a coma (both of these were as my labor was getting more intense).

I think the thing that threw me the most with this birth was that it was nothing like my other labors. I think we were all anticipating the birth to take place sometime in the morning and then we would have the rest of the day to relax and recover. Unfortunately for the kids they were very antsy the whole day because we didn't know when the birth would take place. Then when things finally kicked into gear they got very intense pretty quickly and I had a hard time managing the contractions. All in all my active labor time was only about 3 1/2 hours which was less than half the time of any of my other labors. DH was an awesome support to me the whole time and I really needed him to help me get through the contractions. I informed both DH and Hugs towards the end of the labor that there was no way I wanted to have any more kids after this one. I am now not so set on that decision - it's a good thing that babies come out so cute because the end result is definitely worth the pain & effort! I have felt great following the birth and I think my recovery was easier and quicker than with any of the other kids. I definitely think that part of the reason for this was the aerobics that I had been doing regularly up until the birth.