Yep.. my second son is now days away from turning TWO and I’m just now writing his birth story.  No judging, please.  When we were originally told his estimated due date, (7/7/17) my husband was really holding out for a 4th of July baby. I just laughed, because our first son was born 2 weeks late, on Halloween of all days!  Well, whaddya know… baby Noah decided to start labor the morning of July 4th in the same fashion as his older brother, with my water breaking first thing in the morning on my way from bed to the bathroom.

Let’s back up a bit..  my husband works offshore for several weeks at a time and was set to return to the Gulf of Mexico just a few days after my estimated due date so, naturally I had an epic meltdown about feeling pressured  to get this baby  out BEFORE my due date. I spent a lot of time in prayer asking for (1) God to give me a sign that my body was definitely in labor and ready to go to the hospital (yay for water breaking!) (2) that Noah would be born in enough time so Brian could be home with us for 5-7 days before returning to work for 3 weeks (and my mom coming up to help).  The Lord is always so good and sweet.  Stay tuned to find out if this came true… muahaha…

So, on about July 3rd I had a big meltdown about baby’s arrival…. and I wake up around 6 am to use the bathroom on July 4th and my water breaks on the way (thank you sweet Jesus I didn’t ruin my favorite tempurpedic mattress with either labors!!).  Even though I’d been having contractions (for weeks), then IMMEDIATELY stopped once my water broke. Urrrghhh. So, I waited another hour or two before calling the midwives’ office. You may be asking yourself if I continued to go through my daily 20 min yoga stretches on my deck. Yep. I kept thinking “It’s gonna be a long time before I’m able to do this again in full health so I’m squeezing this in before we go to the hospital!” (Read: I had a ROUGH and LONG recovery after my first labor & literally didn’t leave the house for a walk for two weeks.)  After arranging with (two different sets of close friends to watch Brady over the next two days) we headed to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital around noon…. and still NO contractions. They didn’t even believe that my water had broken so they ran some tests and could (visually) see that it was still happening. Fun fact:  My “waters” tend to break over time in several gushes and trickles.  They finally checked me into my labor & delivery room (biggest one on the whole floor with incredible views of the Coastal Range out West of Portland)! You’ll come to find out later that Brian got to enjoy the “incredible views” of all the fireworks shows around town while I was in bed screaming  contracting.  A nurse who seemed totally cool got me in a bed and then started to insert an IV port into my ARM (I don’t cuss much, but WTF?!). I kindly suggested she insert it into the back of my hand, but she thought it’d be a fabulous idea to keep it “out of the way” higher up on my forearm.  THREE attempts (at murdering my arm) later, she called in a “IV specialist” who gently inserted it into the back of my hand with no problems.  So, my arm was incredibly beat up and bruised within hours. Cool, cool.

We REALLY wanted this baby to arrive on July 4th and with no contractions still at noon, we were pinched for time. BUT, I really didn’t want to augment my labor for “convenience” sake (read: meltdown the day before). However, Brian and I decided that if I wasn’t contracting on my own by 4 pm, they’d start me on some Pitocin to get me contracting and get the show on the road. Sigh. Apparently they put you on Pitocin 12 hours (I think?) after your water has broken if you’re not yet contracting anyway.   So, I ordered some lunch from my hospital bed (honestly, best part about laboring in a hospital -besides delivering a human,  is the “room service”… am I right?)  Lunch comes and goes and we approach 4 pm.

Not long after I’m started on Pitocin at 4 pm, the waves of intense contractions begin. I very much prefer to be active/mobile during my labor (I made Brian bring my huge yoga ball). They put me on intermittent  monitoring so I could roam the halls with my IV stand. Those two bands that wrap around your tight huge belly become a nuisance after a while, but oh well. I probably made more than 50 laps around that floor and kept going past my “boundaries” set by the nurses, but I was in a rhythm with my earbuds blasting whatever I had on my Birth Playlist. After a few hours of this and several cervical checks, I was finally contained to my bed because #Epidural.  My body also wasn’t getting rid of fluids like they wanted so they put in a catheter at some point.. but I don’t remember. Maybe it was after the baby came? The anesthesiologist who administered my epidural this time was not totally my favorite. I asked him straight up questions about how it should feel (confirming my current status, etc…) and he  would only give me vague goofy answers like “Yep… umm.. it’s possible!” and “I’m not totally sure…?” It was so strange.  And they gave me a little button that I could click to administer another dosage or something at certain time intervals, but I SWEAR it did not work.  Sure I was mostly numb, but I could feel SO much more this time ’round.  They kept saying “We want you to participate in the pushing process.” Which, at the time I just wanted to punch whoever was telling me that (and I am NOT a violent person).  In hind sight, it was pretty cool to know exactly when my body wanted me to push and to be in control of that aspect (in Dallas they shoot you up rilly good with the Epidural). It was pretty empowering.  At one point I could feel Noah pushing down through the “birth canal” and then he sucked back up and I was SO MAD, I yelled at the nurse just like in the movies “GET HIM OUT OF THERE!!!!” I think I only pushed for a little over an hour, which isn’t too bad.

I remember with my first labor I was VERY insistent on my doctor staying and delivering my miracle baby and not some rando who was on call. He was so sweet and stayed for my 30+ hour labor and even brought Brian dinner!  But after your first delivery  you’re all “meh, just someone catch the baby!” I met the midwife who delivered Noah in my labor and delivery room – hah! She was wonderful though!  I’ve been seriously blessed by amazing nurses and midwives in my experiences so far!  It also seems that both my babies like to stay snug in the SAME EXACT position in my uterus curled up on their side, head down, but not completely face down. In my previous delivery they used forceps among other things to maneuver baby out. YIKES. I made them promise they wouldn’t do that again. Instead, they put a peanut shaped yoga ball between my legs and had me lay on one side for 30 min and rotate several times to try to coax Noah into position. And guess what? Turns out the nurses/midwives were right that baby would correct himself on the way out, praise Jesus!  During my first labor, this amazing nurse rigged up this (what seemed to be a Civil War times set up) of knotted bed sheets wrapped around her arms and mine as she stood at the end of the bed and would pull as hard as she could during my contractions as I pushed (to help lurch me forward). It’s hard laboring in a bed!  So, about half way through laboring in the bed this time, I requested a similar set up, but this time it involved poles and a rope of some sort that I would pull on when I was pushing during a contraction. Man, it totally helps!

It’s funny how I showed up to my first pregnancy with a TYPED OUT birth plan and NOTHING went the way I imagined. My midwife kept asking what my birth plan was this time around and all I kept saying was “To have the baby with as little intervention as possible and then an epidural when I can’t physically stand any longer.”  So after laboring half the time with Pitocin roaming the halls death-gripping the railing whilst pushing my IV cart and then half the time laboring in bed with a LIGHT version of an epidural, Noah decided to arrive 1.5 hours AFTER July 4th.  Just doin’ his own thang.  Noah Brooks arrived at 1:30 am on July 5th

Should we just tell him his birthday is July 4th and roll with it?

***WARNING***: Some of these images are graphic and show my placenta (and props to my hubby for snapping those shots as I threw the big camera at him and said, “Here, snap some so I can see later!” as he looked at me with disgust lol.

Some iPhone Shots: