Sadie's Birth Story - Part I

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!