Bennett’s birth story was a more positive experience for me than my first, which goes to show that every baby and every birth is different. Don’t be afraid the second time – everything could be different! Here’s our story:
Friday, September 7th, was already red letter day for the Conley family.
The Day Before
I’d just wanted to make it through to Friday. I’d made it through labor day, which lived up to it’s name. We hired movers, who carried all the boxes inside and set up one of the beds, but for most of the day, it was up to Brian and me to unpack and try to make the place functional. It was sunny and HUMID, and the old house we’re renting doesn’t have any air conditioning. I climbed up and down the exceptionally steep staircase dozens of times, thought I might die, and had contractions off an on the rest of the week.
Thursday especially, I had contractions all day – but never at consistent intervals, never consistent intensity. I had a doctor appointment that afternoon, so they checked to see if I was dilated. Nope, not even a centimeter. My due date wasn’t for ten more days, after all.
I felt relieved. First of all, Brian scheduled our POD with all our belongings to be delivered that day originally, but due to an error on POD’s part, we were able to move it up to September 1st (thank you Jesus!).
We’d succeeded in fixing up, packing up, listing, selling our house in Arizona, and moving across the country in three weeks. We searched for and found a house to rent, applied, were accepted, and now, moved in. I found a new group practice for prenatal care and had two appointments, and got to tour the hospital’s birth center. I found an orthodontist. I ordered a new couch. I found a preschool – I just needed to tour it and make sure it was a good fit.
We officially closed on our house on Thursday, and I slept well that night. Friday morning, I waddled my way slowly through the preschool tour, and to my great satisfaction, signed Edison up for classes starting Monday.
Around noon, the profits from the sale landed in our bank account. We paid off the SUV we’d bought right before our cross country move, and the credit card bill we’d racked up by the move. Finally, after eight years, we were completely debt free!
To celebrate, we had a delicious dinner at an old Italian restaurant. Since the restaurant used to be a train station, Edison got to see a train go by. To make life even more perfect, the engineer waved and blew the train whistle for him!
The celebration continued with a trip to the tractor supply store. Random? Yes. But that’s how Brian wanted to celebrate – something about the smell of wood shavings, the peeping of baby chicks, the racks of Carhartt overalls and flannel under the bright florescent lighting brings him joy. Because we were in a celebratory mood, we couldn’t resist some rain boots for Edison and cute Carhartt onesies for the baby.
We came home tired, full, and happy, and made plans for the next day: at 10 am, my Mother-in-law would drive down from the family farm to meet us at our house, and together we’d go visit a local cider mill.
And we all went to bed.
It Begins
At 1 am, I was just drifting off to sleep when I felt a stronger contraction. Strong enough that I wasn’t sleeping anymore. It was the first of many, roughly 10 – 12 minutes apart, but since this had happened several late nights before, I wasn’t concerned.
I scrolled Instagram and watched relaxing YouTube videos in hopes that I would drift off. After two hours, I began to wonder if I should wake up Brian. The hospital was 30 minutes away in Cooperstown. Brian’s dad had been born in the car on the way to that same hospital.
When the contractions averaged 6-7 minutes apart, Brian woke up, because I was no longer laying in bed, but sitting up, rocking back and forth and breathing loud Lamaze-style “Hooooh, Haaaah” breaths.
“It’s probably just Braxton Hicks contractions again,” I told him, gasping. “Taking a shower or bath might help them stop.”
He jumped up and started the bathwater for me. While he was out of the room, I grabbed some yoga pants and a tank top to change into, and threw my slippers into my waiting hospital bag. I need to stay calm and not freak Brian out, I thought. There’s no sense in alarming him when it could just be more Braxton Hicks.
“Oh babe … have you packed your hospital bag yet, by chance?” I tried to ask casually.
He hadn’t, and as I settled into the bathtub, I heard him racing back and forth from the closet to the dresser.
The warm water did make me feel better … but it didn’t stop the contractions. When the contractions averaged between five and three minutes apart, I decided I should probably get out of the tub before having a baby in it. I got dressed, and returned to the bedroom to find Brian dressed and finishing packing.
I remembered that at my appointment yesterday, the OB said to call the birth center if my contractions were five minutes apart and had lasted two hours. “They won’t admit you until you’re dilated to at least a four,” she’d said. With Edison, my contractions after my water broke felt super intense, but I’d only been dilated to a three when we were admitted. What if we drove the thirty minutes to the hospital, only to come one centimeter short?!
Another strong contraction convinced me to go ahead and call, just to see if they wanted me to come in. It was a short conversation. Yes, they wanted me to come in. Brian called his mom to let her know it was time to go.
“She’ll be here in half an hour,” he told me as he hung up.
The reality dawned on me: the drive to the Birth Center was ALSO half an hour. “It’s going to be AN HOUR before we get there!?” I fought back panicky tears.
“We’re going to make it – don’t worry,” Brian assured me. But the way he was rushing around the house was not reassuring – looking for things, dashing upstairs for a towel, filling water bottles, and leaving the front door wide open – luckily Sirius didn’t want to brave the rain and stayed inside.
“I need you to take some deep breaths,” I told him, and also myself, when he came inside and discovered the open door. Thankfully, he complied, and I brewed myself a big mug of tea. Holding the warm mug and wrapping up in a sweatshirt seemed to help quell the spasms of uncontrollable shaking. I wasn’t timing the contractions anymore, but I knew they were getting stronger.
Then I remembered that Edison’s preschool started on Monday. What if we weren’t back from the hospital?! I grabbed a sheet of notebook paper and started writing down instructions for my mother-in-law. I wrote down all the lingering to-do’s that kept rattling in my head – there’s laundry in the dryer. The baby book for the new baby I ordered on Amazon should be delivered today (of course!) as well as a couple of presents for Edison that were going to be from his baby brother.
At last, my mother-in-law arrived. Brian helped me down the front steps into the rain, into the towel-wrapped passenger seat of the car. I brought my tea along, and cradling my mug in my lap, we started the 30 minute drive to the hospital. At least, it’s normally 30 minutes. I couldn’t see the speedometer, but I could tell Brian was driving plenty fast down the narrow winding, wet mountain roads.
“This must be the real thing, right?” I said finally. “If not, at least it’s a good fire-drill. It won’t be a total waste of our time … right?!”
“Yes Emily,” Brian said. “It’s the real thing. You’re having the baby today.”
I let that sink in for a moment, before I started sobbing.
“Babe, you can do this!” Brian reached over and squeezed my shoulder “You…”
“But I forgot to say good-bye to Edison!” I wept.
“Oh! It’s okay babe! It’s okay,” his voice caught. We both thought about our first baby, sleeping away at home.
Finally, I calmed down. “I suppose I might have woken him up … it’s probably better …” and with a few more contractions, I focused my mind from the past to the present.
In a natural birth story I watched on YouTube, I learned to get through each contraction, it helps to have a mantra to repeat to stay focused and relaxed. I kept mentally repeating: “I trust my body, I trust my baby.” And I visualized each contraction as a wave – riding it up, and then down the other side. This seemed to help me manage the pain of the contractions. I wasn’t freaking out each time one came, I was concentrating on letting my body do what it needed to do.
I’m not really sure how long the drive was, but I suspect it was less than 30 minutes!
I’d toured the birthing center at my first prenatal appointment, so I knew to go inside the emergency doors, to the elevators on the left, and up to the third floor. They buzzed us right in, and a nurse was waiting for me at the desk. “We’ve been expecting you!” she said.
I knew because I’d tested positive for Group B Strep, I’d have to have an IV for the antibiotics. Brian and I told the nurse about the trauma of last time, and I recited my familiar list of things that help: needing to lay down, using the right arm inner elbow, the smallest needle possible.
But I was nervous. What if they got an IV in me and I wasn’t dilated to a four?! Finally, I asked the nurse if the doctor could check me first.
“She’s not convinced shes in labor yet,” Brian explained.
The nurse smiled. “We can wait for the Dr. to get here so he can check you first, but the sooner we can start the antibiotic, the better. And …” I had a spasm of violent shaking. “From what I’ve seen, you’re definitely in labor. Happy birth day!”
As it would turn out, I wasn’t dilated to a four – I was at six!
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. My birth plan with Edison just to get to a six before getting an epidural, and that got thrown out the window after I was poked six times for the IV. This time, I’d made it as far as I wanted to go. If they got the IV going, I could get the epidural started already!
At last, the nurse picked a vein to try in the back of my hand. With my other hand, I had a death grip on Brian, while trying to consciously relax my other hand and arm. I normally stared at the ceiling, but I looked up and realized the florescent light right above me, because it was turned off, acted like a mirror, showing me exactly what was happening below! I focused on a spot at the other end of the room instead.
Success! She inserted the IV on the first poke, got my blood samples, and taped everything down.
The Trauma
Here’s where you should stop reading if you get queasy about needles. You can just pretend that the IV lived happily ever after in my hand until after Bennett was born, instead of what happened next.
And yes, this is still a positive birth story – it get’s better!
As the nurse turned to take away the blood samples, she tripped on the IV cord, ripping it out of my hand, tape and all. I screamed and started hyperventilating, but didn’t dare look at my hand because I was too afraid of what I’d see. I’m paranoid about a needle getting sucked into my bloodstream. I’m not even sure that’s possible, but that was the only thought in my mind.
I held onto Brian, who was leaning over me, trying to comfort me while also on the verge of tears. Weirdly, seeing Brian close to losing it was what I needed for my logical brain to kick in. “Calm down, calm down, calm down,” I said out loud to myself, forcing my breathing to slow, while the nurse was cleaning up my hand. “Did it come out?” I asked finally.
“Yes, it’s out,” she said.
A wave of nausea hit. She handed me a bucket just in time.
Later she told me that she had never tripped on a line before, and she couldn’t believe it happened to me, knowing I was already super nervous about the IV. She brought in a different nurse to try the IV next, so that I wouldn’t be too traumatized.
That nurse tried my left hand … twice. Now I started to panic … if they couldn’t get the IV in, I might be having an unmedicated birth. And I also wouldn’t get the antibiotics the baby needed.
The shift changed at 7 am, and a third nurse tried my right arm, my prime IV spot, where it always works, and still couldn’t get it. She decided to try my right hand again in almost the same place as the first time. By this time I was praying out-loud, just breathing “Please, please, please” under my breath. The fifth time was the charm!
Epidural At Last
I immediately asked for the epidural. With each contraction, I gasped to Brian, “I can’t do another one!” I was trying to focus, but I was struggling.
And where was the epidural person?! We asked every few minutes, timed with my contractions. He’s coming. They said. He’s on his way, they said. He’ll be here any second, they said. I might have said a few choice words in my head. Don’t pretend like you’ve never done that!
An hour later, he arrived. And I quickly realized why it took so long. As he prepped for the epidural, he was extremely meticulous and slow. A desirable quality in someone who is about to stick a giant needle into your spine, I admit.
The nurse started taking my blood pressure, but it had plummeted so low that the cuff just kept squeezing tighter and tighter. Sobbing, I begged the nurse to take it off. My arm had gone numb! It took two more tries to get the baseline number they needed before starting the epidural.
Now, the first time I had an epidural, I’d read that it can take 15 minutes to put in. When I had Edison, it took about 15 seconds. This time, not so much. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to hunch as much as I could, resting my head on Brian’s chest. As the epidural guy fished around in my back for minute after extremely uncomfortable minute, I felt Brian start swaying.
“Are you okay babe?” I asked, trying not to move a muscle.
“Nope,” Brian replied. The nurse quickly swooped in and got him to a chair. “That was a close call,” Brian said a few minutes later.
Finally, the epidural was in. Sweet relief flooded me as my legs started floating away, and the nurse helped me lay back on the bed.
“Now for the easy part: just pushing out the baby,” I said to the nurse.
She laughed, “Said no one ever!”
Yay, epidural!
Baby by Lunch
For the next couple hours, I dozed, and occasionally asked for more snacks.The six popsicles and two jellos I ate were not cutting it! I started feeling some pressure around 11:30 am, and thought, I better get going on pushing out this baby, so I can eat lunch!
I called the nurse, and since the doctor was no longer there, she called the midwife on duty. (The irony in that, you may remember in my blog post about what I was doing differently with this pregnancy, was that I debated going with a midwife instead of an OB. I got the best of both worlds, as it turns out – a midwife AND an epidural!) I was fully dilated and effaced. My bag of waters was still there and ready to pop, so she asked if it was okay with me if she went ahead popped it. Baby by lunch time, I thought, and agreed. It gushed out, and then I really felt the pressure! The midwife checked again, and Bennett had moved far down into the birth canal.
I was amazed to see she put on the blue protective coat and gloves right away, and nurses started bustling around. I realized it was really time – he was coming NOW!
Unlike last time, I didn’t feel any pain as I was pushing (that epidural guy really did a good job!) but I felt frustrated – it seemed like nothing was happening. Was I even pushing at all?!
“Do you want to touch the baby’s head?” The midwife asked. He was RIGHT THERE! I looked up in the reflection on the ceiling.
“I can see him! I’m going to push some more!” I said. And in three more pushes, wet and wriggly Bennett was on my stomach and screaming healthily! Brian and I were laughing and crying, Brian clipped the cord, and they moved Bennett to my chest so we could cuddle while I was stitched up.
He weighed 7 lbs and one ounce, and I could tell right away that his head was smaller than his brother’s was. Thanks to that, the midwife gave me two stitches – only two!
The total pushing time was 17 minutes – and it was 12:07 pm. With my first, I pushed for an hour and a half, and then the doctor had to spend considerable time stitching me back up! This time, it really just felt like my body did what it needed to do – almost like it was giving birth by itself, with no conscious effort on my part. I trusted my body, and it did it’s thing.
After Bennett went to be weighed and measured, the first thing I did was order ALL THE THINGS for a big lunch!
Nursing Deja Vu
Our hospital experience this time was so different. The nurses and doctors were much more relaxed – they let us hold the baby as long as we wanted, order food, eat our food, and stay in the labor and delivery room with no rush to move. They didn’t come in every few minutes to check on us, and they kept everyone else from bothering us too. With Edison, I didn’t sleep for 48 hours straight, because every half hour someone was coming in to check my blood pressure or have us sign paperwork or examine Edison. At this hospital, they almost swung the other way, in that I learned I needed to push the call button at least 15-30 minutes in advance, or just have Brian run out to the hallway to flag down the nurse. Still, I loved being able to actually rest and enjoy peace and quiet.
While the nurses were doing Bennett’s APGAR test, they discovered that just like his big brother, he was lip and tongue tied. I decided to give nursing a try again. Immediately, I knew it wasn’t working. I had the same stabbing pain that I’d had last time, despite Bennett getting a good latch.
I then tried pumping, but nothing was coming – not even a drop of colostrum. Every noise he made sent a jolt of fear through me – was he hungry? What would I feed him?! As much as I’d read about removing the stigma against formula, and the “fed is best” campaigns on Instagram, I still feared that somehow giving him formula would make me a bad mom. It still felt like a failure – or at least, a disappointment that I couldn’t be like other moms and do this breastfeeding thing.
After I tried nursing a second time, I knew: it wasn’t going to work. Nurse Liz was helping me at 2 am, and after 45 minutes of Bennett nursing, I admitted that it felt like a needle stabbing my nipple the whole time. She confirmed that that was not ordinary pain, and asked me what I wanted to do. When I told her I thought I’d need to give him formula until my milk came in, and then pump for him, I think she sensed my anxiety.
“He’s going to be fed. It’s okay,” she told me. “You’re a good mom. You’re going to feed your baby. He has two parents who love him and are taking care of him; that’s all he needs. He’s going to be just fine. You need to take care of yourself, and you will take care of him. He’s going to be okay.”
She said more, but at that early in the morning, my memory isn’t the best. I remember thinking, I need to record everything she’s saying and listen to it on repeat every day, when the mom-guilt crops up. It soothed my fears, and for the first couple of days before my milk came in, we gave Bennett formula, and he did just fine.
All of the nurses and the midwife were supportive and understanding. When I explained that he was tongue and lip tied, and I had inverted nipples, they all confirmed that that was a very difficult combination. No one made me feel guilty or judged in the slightest.
We also decided not to pursue getting Bennett’s lip-tie and tongue-tie fixed. With Edison, it was such a long, traumatizing ordeal, and in the end, it didn’t make any difference. I suspect that my inverted nipples may be more of the issue than the lip and tongue ties, but who knows. If Bennett has speech or dental issues down the road, we’ll address it then. Our pediatrician is fully on board with this plan, and it’s such a relief.
Going Home
That night, my mother-in-law brought Edison for a visit. I heard the pitter-patter of his feet coming down the hallway, and I felt both worry and excitement. How would he take this?
As soon as he came in, he was happy and excited to see me – and couldn’t wait to see his “baby brudder.” He was a little confused that the baby had a name that wasn’t “baby brudder,” but he quickly caught on to “Bennett.” He cuddled up next to me on the bed, and held Bennett, and was fascinated by everything about him.
I had a hard time saying good-bye to Edison. I couldn’t wait to get home! We only needed one night in the hospital, just long enough for Bennett’s 24 hour tests. We were packed and ready, and discharged at 2 pm.
I had the vague sense of not remembering what to do to take care of a newborn. But also, it didn’t worry me. Now, I had confidence in my mom-tuition I didn’t have the first time. I knew we would figure it out … one day at a time.
