Emilee's Birth Story

Millie's birth was my hardest and longest so far. At about 6:00 Tuesday night I decided that I was probably going into labor that night. I had some strong contractions but they were irregular, still, it seemed that it was a little different than days before. At 8:00 my contractions were at about 3 minutes apart and my Mom took my kids over to a friend's house to spend the night. Once she left, the contractions went to more like 20 minutes apart. We went for a walk to try and get them going again and they started coming more regularly. I told Derek and my Mom to try and get some sleep while they could. They napped for about 2 hours while I tried to relax through the contractions. Right around midnight I woke Derek up and told him we might as well go to the hospital since they were back to 3 minutes apart.

When we got there, my contractions went back down to every 20 minutes or so and I was only dilated to a 5. I think my body sort of shut down because I was in an unfamiliar place. I was in a VERY bad mood and just wanted to go home. After we did all the checking in, I tried to get comfortable in the hospital room so that I could labor, but the floor was so hard and the rocking chair didn't have a pad on it, and I didn't want to be stuck in the hospital bed, etc. The only place I could go to "escape" the hospital was in the shower. Unfortunately, the nurse came in every 30 minutes to monitor me and the baby. They didn't have a portable/hand held monitor so I'd have to get out of the shower and sit on the bed each time I was monitored. It really "threw off my groove." Which made me much grouchier.

At the point when I was transitioning, I was supposed to get a 20 minute stretch of reading from the monitor (my arch nemesis) but it had to be a perfect stretch so I was hooked up to the darn thing for close to an hour during the hardest part of labor. I couldn't get comfortable and didn't have the presence of mind to rip off the monitors and get back in the shower so that I could take care of myself.

Finally, right before 7am I was ready to push. From the time I started pushing to the time that she was completely born was less than a minute. I had notions of pushing in a slow and controlled manner to help prevent tearing, but to no avail. The pain was fierce enough that I couldn't help but push with all my might so that the whole thing could be over and I could hold a baby. Emilee was born at 6:57am on July 30th. I had never been so happy to see a baby before. I had waited 5 extra days and worked for over 13 hours of labor in order for her to get here.

Unfortunately, I tore a small amount and it just so happened that the tear went right into an artery. Which caused me to lose about a liter of blood by the time they figured out what had happened and were able to sew me up. My blood pressure dropped to about 70/40 and I passed out for a second. They had to pump 3 bags of fluids in me to get my blood pressure back to normal, but luckily I was able to avoid a transfusion. There were 4 times in the hospital where I came close to passing out, but other than that, I felt like a million bucks.

It made for a longer recovery. I'll be anemic for a while and I was told to take it easy and stay in bed for about 2 weeks. Fortunately, I've had TONS of help from people in my ward who have had my older kids all morning for me the entire week and Derek came home early from work to take over in the afternoons. I'm already feeling much better and don't get lightheaded or weak when I'm up now.

Ryan keeps telling me "I'm so happy that you had Millie. I love her." and I would have to agree completely. She has been a wonderful baby. She eats really well, has good periods of awake time and sometimes smiles at me, and she is a very reasonable sleeper. She will sleep for 2 or 3 hour stretches and all she needs is to be swaddled and then I hold her really close and she'll doze off. We haven't had a "witching hour" or "cranky baby hour" yet, and I don't lose any sleep at night. Life has been grand.

I had a hard time accepting Emilee's birth. I wanted it to be as wonderful as Katie's birth, but it just wasn't to be. I didn't look back on it and feel super happy - I wanted to cry when I'd think about it. But, I've come to realize that I am not entitled to a perfect birth just because I want it. All experiences are different and unique and I will have to be prayerful about each birth in the future. I think that if this one was a home birth, I probably would've been an ambulance call. That would NOT have been ideal at all. I have come to accept that this birth was good to have at the hospital - but I hope that my next one will be born back at home.