I woke up at 1:15am on June 6th with painful contractions. The contractions came at regular 10 minute intervals but did not speed up nor increase in severity…so I knew I needed to just sit pretty and wait. I was somewhat bummed that I was missing out on what would be my last good night of sleep as the contractions were so painful I couldn’t sleep through them. At 4:30am I got up and put together the hospital bag. I noticed the birds started chirping that early and it was going to be a sunny, warm day.
The irony of my body starting contractions on it’s own was that June 6th was my scheduled induction day. I had actually prayed that my body would go into labor on it’s own and it seemed Heavenly Father was answering my prayer. And that we were also going to go through with our scheduled induction. At 6am I called Labor and Delivery at St. Mark’s hospital to find out when they would have me come in. When I called, they said they were really busy and I needed to call again at 8. By that time in the morning I was tired enough that I was able to doze until 7:30am. At 7:45 Labor and Delivery called me and asked if I could come in by 8:30.
We packed up, gave last minute instructions to Grammy, and I quickly made a bagel with peanut butter and we were off! Once we got the hospital, my contractions had increased to about every 7 minutes but I could still talk through them. The nurse checked my cervix and I was 4cm dilated and 70% effaced. They hooked me up to an IV and after a bag of saline, added Pitocin to increase the frequency and intensity of my contractions. Man, this is when it really started to hurt! I kept asking Chad to come and massage my back through each contraction as I had back labor this time. I tried to put off an epidural for a little bit because I know epidurals can slow down labor. I tried using the labor ball but it wasn’t super helpful. Pretty soon I was done being in intense pain, especially as the contractions came more and more quickly. I asked for my epidural but the anesthesiologist was in the middle of a c-section. The nurse informed him to come give me my epidural next but as soon as he finished that c-section, he was off to another! So I had to labor about two more hours without my epidural! I was in intense pain and the nurse suggested I take a dose of Phentinol for the pain while I was waiting. This made Chad and I nervous as back in October they gave me Phentinol when I was in the hospital with my ectopic pregnancy and crashed. We knew logically that I went into shock because my tube burst and I was losing blood but it still made us a little nervous. But I was in so much pain at this point, I was willing to try. As a compromise I asked for half a dose. That did the trick and I was able to endure another 45 minutes of labor waiting for my epidural.
Side note, Chad is an anxious person when it comes to labor! He was super vigilant watching baby’s heart rate on the monitor the whole time. Anytime baby’s heart rate dropped at all he’d tell me to shift positions.
Finally the anesthesiologist came and proceeded to set me up for my epidural. This was probably the scariest moment of labor because based on how the anesthesiologist placed me, baby’s heart rate dropped into the 90s. They gave me oxygen and then had me position myself a different way and baby did fine. I felt really great after having my epidural. My pain was gone and my mood quickly improved too. The only thing I wished was different was I wish he hadn’t given me so much as when I became complete, I couldn’t tell it was time to push.
With my epidural on board, Dr. Watts came in and broke my water and they turned the Pitosin up to full throttle to move things along. I could barely feel a thing and baby’s heart rate stayed great through that. Not too much time later, the nurse came in and asked if I felt any urges to push. I didn’t, but asked that she check me anyway. She checked and exclaimed, “You are complete and a +2! Don’t push! We want to get the doctor here!” Within minutes Dr. Watts was back in the room and I started pushing. They had a hard time tracking baby’s heart rate during this part of labor so they put a pulse monitor in his scalp as I was pushing. It only took about 4 contractions worth of pushing and baby was here! He arrived at 2:28pm.
After sucking out his mouth, he quickly started crying. Chad immediately started crying and forgot to take photos. I had to prompt him several times to start taking photos. They put baby on my stomach and I felt it warm, sticky body as he squirmed and cried. I started crying too.
Baby weighed in as our biggest baby: 7lbs 8oz. He was 19 inches long. His APGAR scores were 8 and 9. When they gave him back to me, I immediately started breastfeeding him. He latched like a total champ! I was really impressed. He ate for over half an hour within his first hour of life!
Baby and I stayed at the hospital for two nights. I was feeling great and ready to go home the next day but they recommended a little extra monitoring for our baby. He failed his first hearing test and if we stayed a second night they could just run the second test the next morning. It was nice to take advantage of the nursery services so I could get some stretches of sleep. Baby struggled both nights with the middle of the night feeding. He had a sour stomach and it took 3 hours each time to get him to eat. When he did eat, he ate well. I felt bad for his sour little stomach.
The second day, Chad and I pushed ourselves to decide a name. We went back and forth between Everett and Liam. Finally, we decided on Liam. We like the meaning of Liam: Strong willed warrior and protector. We also like that it’s Irish. Ireland has a special place in our hearts as it was on a vacation there, over 8 years ago, that Chad and I decided to start our family. It feels fitting that our “Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow” has an Irish name and is the completion of our family. We always knew his middle name would be Charles, after his angel big brother. It’s a way to honor Charlie and also acknowledge Charlie’s impact in our family and the reality, on the very existence of Liam. If Charlie were here today, we would not have had Liam. I also strongly believe that Charlie will protect and watch over Liam so I love having Charlie’s name be part of Liam’s name.
Liam’s sisters love their little brother! Cami was a bit scared of the baby at first and didn’t want to touch him. But very quickly she warmed up to baby and both girls are eager to hold him and love on him. Hailee was over the moon to meet him and is so thrilled to have him.
We are home now and it’s nice to be back in our house. It’s also hard. Last night was our first night home and I got VERY LITTLE sleep. The owlet wasn’t working quite right so we didn’t have a monitor on him. As a result I was an anxious mess, trying to stay awake to hear him breathing all night. By the time morning came, I was a tearful mess. I predicted this, as this happened with Cami. It’s so hard having a newborn, and then obviously even harder with our history of loss. I pray sweet Liam gets to stay in our family and we can raise him with his sisters. I feel hopeful that will be the case. But I am also scared, naturally. I’m not letting that fear interfere with the lovely moments of cuddling my sweet newborn and enjoying breastfeeding him and kissing his fuzzy soft head. We are definitely smitten with our little “golden boy!”
My Charlie angel 