I've been wanting to sit down and write Sadie's birth story for a
while now, but I just can't seem to put her down long enough to get
anything done! I mean, she is so snuggly and this newborn stage is so
short - I just want to hold her and nurse her and smell her sweet little
smell and soak in these moments while I can...
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So,
the above paragraph was first written on April 11th. It is now April
22nd and I am literally just sitting down once again to try to type up
Sadie's birth story! See! I wasn't kidding about never wanting to put
this precious little girl down. I literally never seem to have my hands
free and even now, as I type, she's sound asleep on my chest. Oh, I
just love this newborn stage. The little sighs in her sleep, the little
noises she makes while nursing, how she snuggles up so close to me to
fall asleep every night. Sadie really is such a good baby. Camden had
that witching hour where he would cry every night from about 7:00-9:00,
but Sadie never really has prolonged periods of crying like that! She
is content, happy to be held and loved and snuggled. Obviously she does
cry, but we're usually able to calm her down relatively quickly and
then she's back to her happy self. I'm just soaking up these days -
she's already changing so rapidly and growing so fast (and she's not
even three weeks old yet)!
Anyways, back to the point of
this post. I want to write down Sadie's birth story while it's still
fresh in my mind. I have to admit, as much as I love all three of my
babies, and love being a Mom, I dread childbirth. It doesn't help that
Camden's birth
was one of those horrible experiences (21+ hours of active back labor
and 5 hours of pushing (he was stuck)...I swear I had a little
post-traumatic stress disorder following that experience.
Micah's birth was much more manageable, but I still had back labor with him (apparently, that's just how my body carries pain - and it is
horrible)
so I knew heading into this delivery that I was going to be in for
another challenging, and painful (!!!), experience. I worried
throughout my pregnancy about all of this and spoke to my midwives and
just hoped I would find the courage and stamina to survive this ordeal
one last time! (I know you're sitting there thinking to yourself that I
should have just gotten an epidural and then I wouldn't have to worry
about this stuff, but I was pretty set on
not having one for a
variety of reasons - especially after having two natural births already -
so I was just hoping that my body and my mind would be strong enough to
handle it all!) Obviously, I survived...but it wasn't easy!
Sadie
was due on March 25th, which happened to by my Dad's birthday. I
thought it was so special that they shared this date, and after losing
his battle with cancer just a couple short months ago on January 31st, I
wanted SOOO badly for my little girl to be born on his birthday. Or,
if that wasn't possible, maybe I'd be lucky enough to go into labor a
week or so early! But no...the days ticked by and the 25th came and
went. I was very emotional on that day. Part of me felt like after
everything I'd been through with my Dad, couldn't God just give me this
one little gift and let my daughter share this special day with her
grandfather?!? I walked up the biggest hill in town, hoping to get
things moving, but evening came and no signs of labor. I was very
disappointed, but knew that I just had to be patient. Apparently, I had
to be
really patient, because Sadie was happy where she was until 8 days later when she finally made her appearance!
I
woke up in the early morning hours on April 2. I had been having
nearly constant braxton hicks contractions for weeks by this time, but I
finally felt that these contractions might be a little bit different. I
tried to go back to sleep and was restless for a couple of hours until I
finally woke Scott up around 4:00am. I knew it was only early labor,
but I was very hopeful that it was the real deal. Scott ended up
running into his office down the road from about 5:00-6:00am just to
make sure that all his lesson plans were ready to go for whoever was
going to take over his classes. I continued to time contractions and
they were consistent and painful, but not too close together yet (6-8
minutes apart). We called our midwife around 7:00am and she suggested
that even though it sounded like the early stages of labor we should
make our way to the hospital sooner rather than later. It would have
been challenging to labor for too long at home since we have two other
kids to take care of and with a third pregnancy you just never know when
or how quickly you might shift from early labor to really active
labor. Since the hospital is 45 minutes away we all agreed that it
would be best to play it safe so we gathered our things and got ready to
leave.
My
Mom came down to the house and we said our goodbyes to the boys. I was
definitely sad to say goodbye, knowing that life would never be the
same again, but at the same time I was so relieved that this day had
finally arrived and I was very ready to get this little girl out of me!
We had a relatively uneventful ride to the hospital, and I was just
hoping and praying that my labor would pick up and not stall. After
being sent home from the hospital with false labor with Micah, I was
fearful that that would happen again. We arrived around 8:30am, got
settled into our room, got checked by the midwife (I was about 4cm -
though I had been almost 3cm for a couple weeks by this point) and we
started the process of trying to get things really moving and get the
baby to drop even more. We walked the halls of the hospital, did
squats, walked up and down stairwells (Scott was in a funny mood and
kept dropping and doing push-ups everywhere. At this point we were
still enjoying our time and not in too much pain...but that didn't last
forever)!
Part II (the exciting/good part) coming soon!
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