Birth Story of Elaina Grace Jacobson

This pregnancy was a breeze (as far as pregnancies can be breezy) for the first two thirds. I was sick in the beginning, but not for as long as previous children. I ran until 30 weeks this time around (thanks in huge part to a wonderful running partner named Marissa Lee!) and kept up with the kickboxing class for quite a while before I started introducing more limiting modifications for myself. We went to Disneyland when I was 25 weeks along, and as long as I limited the amount I carried Asher (all 30 lbs of him all over the stinking park!) things went pretty well there too. I really started to feel limited about 30 weeks, but being pregnant with my fifth and now into my 30’s, pregnancy fatigue/pain/awfulness hit me like a freight train about six week from my due date. Just ask Doug, it was awful. I complained a lot. First I gave up running, then I gave up walking. It was just too painful! This baby carried LOW, and I felt every bump, elbow, kick and squirm in the most uncomfortable way. Around 37 weeks, the baby dropped even lower, so now instead of walking I was waddling. I figured since this had happened so early that I would have an early baby, like Asher. But no. Doug’s mom came out 2 weeks early for a mission farewell, and we prepped for baby. It was a no go, but we all assumed that I would progress enough to have the baby before she got back in 11 days. Nope. In good news though, I did not gain the normal 40 lbs that I usually gained with the other kids, I only gained 34lbs! Six pounds might not seem like a big difference, but it really does make a difference when it normally takes 1-2 months to lose 6 lbs post baby! At my last doctor’s appointment, I asked my doctor if he would check me to see how far dilated I was. He had checked me at 35 weeks because I was getting a strep B test done, and at that point I was 3 cm dilated, which was normal for me as well. This time at 38 weeks, I was 4+ cm and the baby’s head was really low, which caused my doctor to exclaim “Holy cow! How did you even walk down the hall?!” Yeah. He also offered to strip my membranes, and that was the hardest no answer I had to give! I really wanted the baby to come, but I also really wanted Susan to be here for the birth….luckily for Susan, she won out. She now owes me for life. J Finally, four days before my due date (so I shouldn’t really complain because I was still early) on the day Susan was scheduled to come down again, I went into labor.

                A huge storm system was moving in over Utah that morning, containing snow and high winds. It was one of the only snow storms of the whole winter, but it was a dousy of a system! I have always contracted with incoming changes in pressure or with big storm systems, but since the baby had dropped the contraction were much less noticeable. I don’t know if this storm put me into labor, but with the combination of it, a full moon, and the fact that this baby was so low I could probably have done my own vaginal exams to feel the head (only partially joking), things got moving around 9:00 am the morning of March 3^rd. Real contractions, the ones that are really low and really suck-your-teeth, this-is-real-pain kind, started to happen. I noticed a few and thought to myself, ok, don’t get your hopes up. I had plans to go to the store that morning because we had no gas, milk, cereal, and were almost out of bread, but in my shower I had another contraction and part of me thought you know what? I’m just going to stay home. Just in case. Because it would have been highly inconvenient and also extremely embarrassing to have to leave my cart in Wal-Mart to run out to have a baby, or even worse, have a baby in Wal-Mart. I would never have lived down the shame. So I stayed home and put some movies on for the boys, thinking it would either go away once the storm moved through, or things would get exciting really quickly! By 11:00 I was having contractions every 10 minutes, so I called Doug home. I thought for sure things would speed up now, because all of my other births had been so much faster. But no. Contractions stayed mostly consistent but varying in intensity every 10 minutes. Doug’s mom called as she was boarding the plane at 2:00, telling me to not wait for her if things went any faster, which I thought was funny because there was no way I was going to be able to slow things down one way or another. I had been texting my family all day to give them updates too, as well as Marissa to keep her abreast of the situation in case I needed emergency backup. My cousin Rachael left on her mission that morning to Spain, which seems like a big side note but it worked out to our advantage because instead of taking the train down to Orem, Marrianne was able to pick her up from the airport and bring her right to our house.

                When Susan got off the plane at 4:00 and texted me, she fully expected to see a picture of a baby on her phone, but surprisingly I was still at home, still in labor, and contractions were still 10 minutes apart! I was handling the pain just fine, and I had even managed a very long bath to help manage the back pain, which was not fun.

                Susan and Marrianne showed up at the house around 4:45. We chatted for a while, and then Marrianne left and we all started dinner (or briner as it’s called in our house when we have pancakes and eggs and such). Kristen and Riley showed up to babysit for us because things started to speed up real quick. We started to time the contractions as we cooked. In the space of 45 minutes (5:15 to 6:00) the contractions went from every 10 minutes to every 7, then 4, then 3. At this point, although I was still handling the pain just fine, Doug was adamant that we leave for the hospital. Apparently this baby just needed grandma in order to decide to finally come. In the car, Doug asked me how fast we needed to get to the hospital, and I was pretty sure everything would be fine so I advised against reckless driving but encouraged purposeful driving. I didn’t look at the speedometer, but I’m sure we could have legitimately been pulled over if we had been caught. Upon arriving at the hospital and getting to the front desk to check in, I was seriously contracting every few minutes, causing me to stop and breathe through a few contractions just to get from the car to the front desk. The lady behind the desk took me seriously this time (unlike when I came in with Asher) upon telling her that not only was I in serious labor, that this was baby number five and I tended to labor quickly. They got me in that door ASAP and into a room to check me. The nurse who examined me was pretty surprised. I believe her comment was “Whoa! Hello head! And you’re at a 7!” So thankfully they let me stay.
 Another crazy thing was that my doctor, Dr. McCarter, had managed to stay a little later than normal to take care of a patient and some paper work, and so he caught me coming in when he was on his way out to do night shift at Utah Valley Hospital. Knowing my history with fast deliveries, he decided to stay, which I was grateful for. He hasn’t been my doctor for very long since Dr. Baxter passed away, but I liked him and he was familiar, which is comforting. Before they moved me to my permanent room, the nurse asked if I wanted an epidural. I in turn asked Doug if I wanted an epidural. He reminded me (a little panicky I noticed) that I had told him a while ago that I wouldn’t do one this time because there was little point with how quickly I delivered, and so I sighed and declined one. I always regret that decision in some ways, but I am also so grateful that I labor so quickly that I don’t really need one because the recovery process seems so much easier in some ways without one. Upon getting into my room and up into the bed, Dr. McCarter offered to break my water since we both knew that once that happened, baby would be here in a matter of minutes. So we broke it, and he left the room (because in his words, if he waited around with me, nothing would happen, so he went outside the door to wait) and we waited. It seemed to me that the contractions almost stopped for a few minutes right after it was broken. Susan and Doug started making jokes and doing (very bad) impressions of Chummy from Call the Midwife while I got the battery of questions from the nurses. Then came the freight train of delivery pain. I told Doug and Susan that there job was to tell me I was doing great and remind me that I had done this before and I could do it again and it would be over soon. Doug’s other job was to let me squeeze the living daylights out of his hand as often as I felt like I needed to. They were my light at the end of the tunnel people. The nurses kept me calm and reminded me to breath certain ways so I didn’t hyper ventilate. There was a time in all this where I started to feel really sick, and I thought I would throw up, which would have been an awful thing to do while having a baby, so I’m very very very glad I didn’t (chalk it up to will power, because I was close). Dr. McCarter came back in to check on me, and had me lean back more because I was too far inclined and it was preventing the baby from descending the rest of the way. He then gave me a local shot in the cervix to help with the pain, and I must say that although it did absolutely NOTHING during the delivery, it made a huge difference afterwards. He told me that I was at a 9, almost a 10, but the baby was stuck slightly on the anterior lip, but if I started pushing now it would open up and the baby would come out. He then asked me if I remembered how to push. I think I looked at him like he was crazy. How is that ever something you forget in a natural birth situation? I did tell him that I knew when to push with Michael, but I didn’t with Asher, but part of that was because Asher just kind of shot out all at one time. As I began pushing though, I remember thinking this is way harder than the boys were! Michael only took two good pushes and he was out, Asher took barely one. It must have been because of that anterior lip, but this kid took several good pushes, with me making some pushing adjustments to push even lower and harder to get the baby out. It also seemed like I felt every boney shoulder, elbow and knee on its way out, while with the boys they just slipped right out. All in all I’m sure it wasn’t more than a few minutes, but that felt like the longest delivery I had had. I had my eyes closed for a lot of this part at the end, though I don’t know why. So when they told me to look at the baby GIRL I had just produced, it took me long seconds to open my eyes to confirm it. But there she was! She came out screaming, which didn’t surprise me at all. She was born at 7:22 pm, so less than an hour from when I walked into the hospital (which I think was right around 6:30 pm). She weighed in right in between her brothers at 7 lbs 2 oz and 20 inches long, and with hair, surprise surprise! Grandma went on picture duty while I anxiously waited for my placenta to detach. That feeling once the placenta comes out and your whole body finally relaxes is amazingly wonderful. Dr. McCarter checked me out and said I barely tore at all, and I only need one tiny stitch. It was really nice not to have that issue to deal with this time! The shot I got earlier came in handy now. Not only did I not feel the stitching (which I unfortunately had in other deliveries) but I didn’t mind the cleanup they do nearly as much as in times past.

                People ask if I knew it was a girl before the delivery. Truth be told, I had the inkling she was a she for a few weeks before delivery, but I chalk it up to the fact that we had so many girl names circling around that we kept coming back to in an effort to narrow down the field, but it never worked, so I constantly had girl on the brain. After the delivery stuff wound down, we settled in the hash out name options. Surprisingly we narrowed the field down to four very quickly, and then the next morning when Doug called me he said he had one name, and I said I did too, and miraculously it was the same name! Currently we are calling her Elaina, Lainy, Lainy Grace and Laina. We’ll see which one sticks the longest!