Caleb’s Birth Story

I am so excited to sit down and write this story because it was such a sweet, joyful answer to all of our prayers about Caleb’s birth.  I am so grateful that he is healthy, I’m healthy, and that we got to experience a simple, natural birth with no complications.  If you love reading birth stories as much as I do, then enjoy! I will give the disclaimer that I’m sharing all the details of the birth, so maybe skip this post and read all the other cute posts about pregnancy if medical stuff makes you a little grossed out! Anyway, without further ado…

Caleb’s Birth Story

When we went in for our 36.5 week appointment, I had my first cervical check and was already 90% effaced and 1.5 cm dilated.  I’d been feeling tons of pressure and discomfort that weekend before, so we weren’t surprised to see I was so effaced! The doctor told us that this didn’t necessarily mean things would happen right away, but that when they did happen, labor could progress very quickly.  We left excited and curious to see when our little man would make an appearance!

For that whole next week, I had a handful of symptoms that made me think things might be progressing (I’ll spare you the yucky details on that part). I woke up Friday morning feeling super crampy and by mid-morning was starting to feel pretty distinct tightenings in my lower abdomen (which I now realize were contractions).  They were happening about 2-3 times per 45 minute class period but I kept on teaching and leading my students in a rowdy game of group Telephone with our new vocabulary, all the while thinking the crazy thought that this might be my last day of teaching for quite a while.

By mid-afternoon Friday the contractions were consistent and pretty uncomfortable.  We already had my 37.5/38 week appointment scheduled at the OB for that afternoon, so he did a check and found that I was 100% effaced and 2 cm dilated.  He laughed and said that he had a feeling we were going to have a baby that weekend! It was so encouraging to hear that I wasn’t somehow imagining all of the contractions and yuckiness and we headed home to pack our bags (after stopping for some Chick Fil-A for the hubby – I didn’t want a lightheaded hungry bear of a husband for the birth!).

For the next couple hours we laid on the couch watching TV and timing the contractions which by that point were about 5-6 minutes apart.  Since I still felt pretty calm and didn’t have crazy dramatic pain like the movies made us expect, we weren’t all that panicked.  The contractions felt like strong menstrual cramps that I was able to breathe and pray through, and since they hadn’t escalated, we headed to bed around 10:30 to try to get some sleep.

After an hour or two of lying in bed, I started to get annoyed and wanting things to either move forward or stall a bit so I could get some sleep.  At about 1 AM, I felt a big POP in my belly in the middle of a contraction and something in my mind switched gears (I now know that was my water breaking but since there was no big rush of fluids, I didn’t realize it then).

At this point, things sped up real fast.  The contractions immediately got much, much stronger, and I woke Jordan up to come downstairs and help me through them.  They were about two minutes apart and extremely uncomfortable and our birthing ball, different positions, and moving around weren’t helping at all.  All of a sudden I got super nauseous and started shaking and throwing up, and a little voice in my head told me this might mean I was in transition and we should probably get our butts to the hospital ASAP.

As we started scrambling to grab any last minute things and called our doula, I started feeling a strong urge to push.  I tried to take short little breaths like we’d learned but the urge to push was so strong that I found myself dropping to the floor in our kitchen (Beyonce style) and fighting the urge to push little man out then and there! This made Jordan a little nervous (he wasn’t trying to deliver a baby in our kitchen) but he did a great job running around and grabbing things to make sure we were good to go.

The car ride over was rough and I did lots of quick breathing to stop from pushing.  When we walked into the labor and delivery wing, the nurses seemed a bit skeptical as I frantically said I needed to get on the table and take my clothes off because I needed to PUSH.  But a quick cervical check revealed that I was dilated to a TEN! In other words, I had gone through all of the first part of labor, including transition, at home!

The doctors and nurses rushed in, laughing and praising me on making it that far with no pain meds.  My goal was to have an unmedicated birth, and we did that almost without even realizing! Within five minutes of getting there I was on the bed pushing, and after about an hour of pushing, our sweet boy made his entrance into the world! He entered the world screaming, peeing all over his daddy, and with an epic cone head that has fortunately gone away.  He weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and measured 20 inches long, or long and lean just like his daddy.

The whole experience was so different than I had expected.  For the most part, I felt incredibly calm during the whole process (minus a few panicked minutes while I was in transition).  The pushing was actually really peaceful and not painful, and I felt such a sense of joy and peace as I waited in between contractions and pushing.  Unlike the movies that make labor seem so dramatic and crazy (which I know it can be at times), our labor with Caleb was generally calm, peaceful, and sweet, even without any pain meds.

I am so grateful for how the whole journey turned out.  Jordan was an incredible support, our doula was wonderful, and we had such a great experience at the hospital where we delivered.  We wouldn’t change a thing about the whole experience and are loving the (somewhat sleepy) process of learning to be parents.

I hope to share more soon about how these first few weeks have been, but for now, suffice it to say we are overjoyed to have a healthy baby boy, a healthy mama, and a birth story that brings us a whole lot of joy.