elliott's birth

I must say, I thought for sure B2 would only be a few days late like Addy. Once we all recovered from our stomach bug I started to get pretty antsy. We celebrated Addy's second birthday on Monday and by Tuesday, after two nights of waking at 3am, I was ready. All signs pointed in the direction of B2 coming soon, but I thought I'd help him along. A couple of long walks, uphill, to the park to enjoy the warmer weather and some swinging helped and Tuesday afternoon I scheduled a prenatal massage with the hopes that a little work on the key pressure points might let B2 know that we were ready! Surely enough, by the time I got home for dinner on Tuesday with Jason and Addy early labor had begun. Since Addy's labor was so long I didn't really expect things to move as quickly as they did. By the time Jason was getting Addy down for the night I was having contractions that I had to breathe through! When Jason came downstairs I let him know he wouldn’t be going to work in the morning! A huge grin spread across his face, in excitement and disbelief! We cleaned up dinner dishes and got all of our birth supplies together, called our doula, Caryn, and midwife, Amanda, and went upstairs to try to get some rest. Ok, we really watched our one TV obsession, Fringe, then we tried to get some rest but by then, 10pm, my contractions had become strong and frequent enough that I couldn't rest comfortably in bed, nor be quiet enough for sleeping Addy, and so we moved downstairs, accidentally waking Addy up!

I continued my pacing around the house and working through my contractions while Jason eased Addy back to sleep one more time. By 11:30 we decided it was time to call our friend Anj, to come over and help with Addy. Jason called our doula to update her around midnight. I was feeling like things were moving fast but I didn't want to have her come prematurely. She suggested I get in the bathtub to maybe slow things down so I could get some rest. The thought of being stationary in the tub was not appealing but I tried it anyway, and it ended up being just what I needed to work through my increasingly strong and frequent contractions. Labor was not slowing down. In fact I was starting to feel like my contractions were leading to pushing. This took me by surprise. Everyone said a second labor would go faster but I didn't really believe them, not to mention faster for me could be anything less than 40 hours! Jason didn’t believe it either. I had to push him into getting the pool ready and calling our midwife and doula to come over. He admits he was dilly-dallying. At one point I exclaimed, after bossing Jason around, "I'm mean already. Why am I mean already?" I skipped right over the light-hearted, joke telling, phase of labor and went right to my mean phase! I still didn’t really believe that I was close to pushing B2 out!

Amanda and Caryn arrived as I was transitioning from the bathtub to the pool, 1:30am. I exclaimed that I was feeling like I needed to push and Amanda, based on how I was looking and sounding said, "Go with it!" This also took me by surprise because in the hospital, even with the Certified Nurse Midwives, each stage of my labor was monitored by them, not me. As soon as I got into the pool my contractions definitely ended with a push! I was in transition, the hardest part of labor, and pushing at the same time. Kate, Amanda's assistant, local doula, and massage therapist I saw earlier that day, arrived at 1:50am. My water broke in the pool and I continued having pushing contractions, but Amanda couldn’t hear B2’s heartbeat. I got out of the pool so she could get a better listen, in a different position. It was nice and strong and found very low. By this point, though, contractions were right on top of each other and moving (the operative word) back into the pool was not sounding good. B2 was ready to come out and so I got as cozy as one can get on the edge of our futon (protected with a sheet and plastic covering, no worries for future guests!). In two pushes I felt his head crowning, and in two more B2 was out and on my chest. Laughter, out of complete disbelief, filled the room. He was beautiful, pink, warm, and crying! His umbilical cord looked amazing still pulsing and full.

Throughout my pregnancy I never had a clear feeling if we were having a boy or girl like I did with Addy. I had many a dream where B2 was born one sex and then changed to the other later in the dream. I guess I always imagined myself with two girls so I wasn’t letting the boy vibe in. When I lifted the blanket a few minutes after B2 was born I was surprised to announce that we had a BOY! I continued to check on his little penis throughout the early morning hours just to be sure it was still there!

I delivered the placenta about an hour later, which by the way is a pretty amazing organ, Jason cut the cord (see first post about Elliott’s birth) and Addy came in to meet her new little brother. She was amazing, loving, and exhausted, as she had woken up right when Elliott was born. My dad drove over to meet his new grandson at 3 am. We ordered a celebratory pizza and enjoyed brownies while Amanda and Kate did their magic in the house, cleaning up, preparing a bath for Elliott and me and getting our room ready to snuggle up and sleep which included emptying the pool. By 5:30 am they were out the door and we were in bed trying to rest. Addy, as you can imagine had a hard time settling down, so by 7:00 am we sent my dad, Anj, and Addy to our favorite spot in Ypsi, Beezy’s, for breakfast.

Elliott was born at 2:01 am on February 11, at home after four short and fast hours of labor. It was the most unbelievable, perfect, peaceful and hard labor, I could have imagined and while I even think I’m a little crazy, I do kind of wish it had lasted a little longer to let each stage sink in a bit. Yet, it was perfect and incredibly healing for me. A sense of wholeness, completeness came over me in the hours after Elliott’s birth. This entire pregnancy I was worried about the timing of Adeline’s birth and mom’s illness, of her passing and this baby’s due date. But, in the most beautiful way I felt my mom there with me, in the blue room of our house. She was there filling it up with her beautiful energy and love for us. This, I believe, could not have happened anywhere but home.