Only time will tell how similar or different Noah and Emily will be in terms of personality, looks, etc. But let me tell you from the very beginning little Emily was the exact opposite of her big brother in terms of how she made her entrance into this world.
The short version of Noah’s birth story is he was born via C-section after a long 20 hour labor including 2 hours of pushing.
Click here for a link to the full details of Noah’s birth. Now flash to Emily. The short version of her birth story is that she came after what was at most 2 hours of active labor. I was fully dilated when we arrived at the hospital and Emily was born after 13 minutes of pushing. Yes, thirteen. As in one-three, thirteen. It was a crazy, wild, mind blowing, fantastic labor and delivery. Seriously I don’t think we imagined in our wildest dreams that we’d end up with that kind of labor story with Emily. Especially after what we went through with Noah.
Now for the long version. If you don’t want the gory details stop reading here. You’ve gotten all the important parts. But for our family and for when Emily is older, I want to record every detail so I can tell her about the magnificent way she came into this world.
In order to get the full picture of how crazy her birth story is, it’s good to have some of the background info, so I’ll start there.
All along we had planned and hoped to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) with this birth. I switched OB’s to join a group of OB’s and midwives who were very supportive of this choice and also supportive of natural childbirth which was also something we were hoping to have. We also had hired a doula—a doula is a labor support person who is present all during labor and birth to help support mom and dad and especially helpful in natural childbirth and in having a successful VBAC.
All through my pregnancy there was talk of things we could do to help increase our chances of a successful VBAC-basically how could we change the circumstances of Noah’s birth so we’d have a better chance of avoiding a C-section again with Emily’s birth. With him, there really weren’t many circumstances we could change and the main thing we kept coming back to was hoping we’d have a smaller baby (he was 8lbs 13 oz) and getting this baby into a better position (he was born facing up instead of face down which makes for a tougher delivery). So I tried to watch my weight gain, stayed pretty active and tried to do different exercises to keep Emily in the best position for birth. The other thing we could do is try to get her to come early-if she came early she’d be more likely to be smaller and usually smaller babies are easier to deliver. Now, there’s really not much controlling that one but I did take some herbs and supplements to help get my body ready and continuing to be active helped with that also.
Somehow in all this talk ahead of time of
wanting her to come early, I think I’d convinced myself that she really
was going to come early. Now anyone that’s had a baby knows they really have a mind of their own and there’s really no controlling the time that they’ll come short of an actual induction. I really wanted her to come early—not because I was uncomfortable (I was, but only a little bit. Thankfully I’d felt really good almost all of my pregnancy) or because I was so tired of being pregnant. But just because I really wanted her to be smaller so we could end up with a better labor and delivery with her. I was ready for her to come at 37 weeks but ok with waiting till 38 weeks. At 38 weeks I was REALLY read for her to come and actually started to get a little discouraged to find myself still pregnant. What if she’s too big? What if like Noah she doesn’t fit and all this planning for her birth was really for nothing? What if I can’t do it? What if…What if…
At my 38 week check-up I was 3cm dilated and 70% effaced (to give you some perspective I was 3 cm with Noah at 37 weeks and stayed that way for 3 more weeks before going into labor with him). In other words my body was really ready for labor, we just needed little Emily to be ready. In hopes of getting things moving I asked our midwife to sweep my membranes. I fully expected to go into labor that weekend. I didn’t. Mike and I enjoyed a dinner and movie date night and as the weekend progressed and I got closer to 39 weeks I started to get more anxious. I prayed about it a lot. And ultimately kept coming back to this: God is faithful. He has been faithful to us in many different ways and situations over and over again. There is no reason He will not be faithful here—even if the timing of her birth is not when I expect it or if she is born in a way other than how I planned. He already knows when and how she will be born-He knew it before He even created her in me. So I kept praying and kept trying to trust Him.
On July 22 I was 39 weeks 2 days. For the previous 2-3 weeks I’d been having Braxton Hicks contractions every day. Sometimes they’d be more frequent than others. Rarely uncomfortable. In the day or two leading up to the 22nd I’d have a few here and there where I felt a little more discomfort in my back but nothing exciting. That morning I was having contractions that were a little more uncomfortable—basically just what felt like a menstrual cramp in my back. There was nothing regular about them. I’d have some that were 10 minutes apart then I’d go an hour with nothing. I didn’t think much of them other than noting that perhaps my body was starting to do some real pre-labor or even very early labor stuff.
I had a check-up that morning at 10:45 was checked and determined to be 4 cm and 90% effaced. I asked the OB to sweep my membranes again and she basically just said call if things pick up. We went home, had lunch, and just in case things did pick up, decided to take a nap. After I woke up, I decided to go for a walk, thinking if these contractions were real then maybe I could kick them in gear with a little activity. I left home around 4pm and did a 30 minute session on the treadmill. When I got home I decided I should start looking at the clock to see if there was any regularity to what I was feeling.
At this point it was about 5 pm. Mike had gone to take his turn at the gym. After timing a few contractions I realized we now had a regular pattern that was about 7 minutes apart. Still nothing more uncomfortable that what I would describe as menstrual cramps. Certainly nothing I was too excited about other than being happy to note that maybe we were actually on to something here.
We’d been planning to attend a wedding that night at Point of Grace. I showered and started getting ready for the wedding. I gave Mike an update when he got home and he asked if I still wanted to go to the wedding. My response: “Well, I can sit and time contractions at church just as well as I can at home. We might as well go, it will be good to keep my mind of things.” Again at this point I was only mildly uncomfortable. We all kept getting ready for the wedding. Then, just before 630 pm something changed.
I thought at the time maybe my water broke.
Something happened—maybe there was a small leak. I’m still not sure. Later at the hospital we found out my membranes were still intact so my water didn’t officially break but whatever had happened , it kicked everything into high gear. I went back and looked at the times in my phone to get the exact timeline from there.
I called my sister at 6:28 pm to tell her we thought my water broke so she should probably start making her way to our house. She was driving from College Station (about an hour and 45 min drive) to be with Noah while we went to the hospital. Mike quickly changed out of his wedding clothes and got a quick dinner for himself and Noah. Thankfully a little earlier he’d made contact with our friend Erin to find out that she was in town and available in case we needed her to come sit with Noah while we waited for family to get here. Meanwhile I was still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. I wasn’t sure my water had broken because it wasn’t a gush like I had with Noah. Just a small trickle but it didn’t keep going. So I started thinking maybe my water didn’t break. Regardless, pretty soon after I started having contractions that were now 3 minutes apart. These definitely felt “real” but still were very manageable.
I decided to go ahead and call the OB at 6:51 pm. She called back at 7:01 pm. Even though I’d only been having contractions that were that close together for about 20 min, she said to come on in to the hospital since this was my second baby and things could move quickly. Boy was that an understatement! I called the doula line at 7:04 and told them we were on the way to the hospital. At this point the contractions were more painful but I could still talk through them. We finished gathering our things, Erin and her family got here to watch Noah and just before 7:30 pm we left for the hospital. At this point the contractions were still 3 min apart but were now quite painful and I had to stop, breathe and focus in order to get through them. But I still felt like I was in control and doing a good job of managing by just breathing through them. In my mind there was nothing indicating that I would be delivering our baby in less than an hour!
On the way to the hospital Mike did a great job of trying to encourage me through contractions and asked me a few times if he needed to speed up to get there. I laughed him off and said we had plenty of time, just to get us there safely. We got to the hospital and got up to the L&D floor probably a little after 745 p.m. I’d stopped watching the clock at this point. We checked in and met the on call OB and were sent to one of the triage rooms so they could monitor me and make sure we needed to stay at the hospital. I was given a gown to change into and told to give a urine sample. Standard protocol type stuff.
We went into the bathroom to change, etc. but I couldn’t get off the toilet! Contractions were coming right on top of each other now and I kept asking Mike to put pressure on my back. We were probably like that for 3 or so contractions and then I tried to get up. I told Mike I felt like I had to go to the bathroom, you know, like
really go to the bathroom but I didn’t know if I could or really needed to. Then all of a sudden my body involuntarily started to push.
WHAT?!? I knew what I was feeling physically and I knew what this meant, but it didn’t match up logically with where I expected to be at this point. I’d been having painful contractions for maybe an hour—I expected to be checked and be around 5-6 cm and have at least a few more hours of labor. Mike joked on the way over we’d have the baby by midnight and at that point even a 4 hour labor sounded pretty fast to me.
Mike went out to get help and the room was quickly full of hospital staff. They told me to get off the toilet and I said I can’t. I was helped off the toilet and into the bed as the doctor was saying “you have to get up, you can’t have your baby on the toilet or the floor”. I was still thinking yeah, right—this baby is not coming out yet. Well sure enough my body knew what it was doing even if I hadn’t figured it out yet. I was officially checked at 8:03 pm and determined to be complete with my water still intact. The doctor told me if I could try to relax and not push (yeah right!) we could get moved from the triage room into a delivery room where there was a warmer for the baby and the equipment needed to help deliver her. They rushed me from the triage room to the delivery room and according to hospital records I started pushing at 8:05 pm. After thirteen minutes of pushing (probably a few of which were spent trying NOT to push), Emily Marie came into the world at 8:18 p.m.
Emily was delivered so quickly that we both had some small issues right after she was born. She didn’t get squeezed out because she came through the birth canal so quickly so had swallowed a lot of fluid and had a little trouble breathing. She went to the nursery for a short stay and after suctioning out an amount of fluid that was twice the capacity of her little stomach, she was breathing perfectly! Meanwhile I was having some issues with bleeding which was eventually controlled. We were both determined to be healthy and were reunited by about 10 p.m.
Ame, one of the doula’s from our
Get Babied! Doula collective, joined us just after Emily was born. Our labor and delivery had happened so quickly that she didn’t even make it there for the birth which was a first for them! We’re so thankful for her presence though because it allowed Mike to go be with Emily in the nursery while Ame stayed with me while they were trying to fix me up. That was not a fun process, honestly it was as painful if not more painful than delivery, and it was great to have a hand to hold while going through that and also be able to get updates from Mike (gotta love cell phones!) on Emily’s progress in the nursery. I’ll admit there was a teeny tiny part of me that was a tiny bit disappointed that we didn’t get to have Ame help us with labor support and have the whole doula experience, but I’m much more thankful for the super short labor instead!
It took me several hours to recover mentally from the shock of all that had just happened. I said over and over that I was just in disbelief and shock that
seriously, that just happened TO ME! We had hoped and prayed for a better outcome with this labor and delivery but never in our wildest dreams did we expect what we got. Wow! This verse which we’ve used often at Point of Grace comes to mind: Ephesians 3:20-21 “20 Now to him who is able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” This was certainly more than we asked or imagined for the birth of our daughter!
The conversations that took place with the on-call OB and hospital staff after Emily’s birth were pretty amusing. The OB asked some more details about what my contractions had been like earlier in the day. I really got the impression that she thought we labored at home and purposefully waited to come to the hospital until the last minute. She said at one point she thought I’d been in labor all along and I was just denying it a little bit. Uh, no. That’s not it. I wanted to be in labor! It just didn’t feel like it. Plus, if you look at the instructions they give you on when to call the OB and start thinking about going to the hospital (when contractions are 5 minutes apart, lasting at least 60 seconds, for at least an hour), I called way before we got to that point—I’d only been having close contractions for 15-20 minutes when I called. If I’d waited till I’d followed their directions Emily would’ve been born at home or somewhere along Mopac en route to the hospital. Oh, and since she was the on-call doctor she didn’t know my history. Somehow, even though they’d been sent twice, my medical records weren’t at the hospital. She didn’t find out until after Emily was born that I’d had a prior C-section. She asked my some question (I forget the details) about my first birth and my response was “My son was born by C-section”. She stopped what she was doing and stared at me. “What? You didn’t mention that on the phone!” I repeated myself. “Oh wow, I’m glad you called when you did I don’t usually like VBAC mom’s to labor at home very long.” Yes, and again—we called as soon as things started happening. And answering all the admission questions—Do you consent for treatment? Here are your options for anesthesia. Did you have a birth plan you were going to give us? Etc. Etc. All hilariously moot points when you’re answering questions and being informed of your options
AFTER the baby has been born.
So, that’s our story of how little Emily came into our family. It was a whirlwind and though we are SO thankful for the way she entered our world, we are even more thankful that she is here, she is healthy, and she is ours. Welcome Emily! We already love you so much and are so glad you are here!
Here are some more pictures from Emily's birth
