This is going to be a very long post including all of the events leading up to our daughter's birth. It will have of lots of gory TMI moments. I want to make sure I have the full details of Lauren's birth story written down somewhere, so I'm not holding anything back. If words like "mucous" and the mention of private parts bother you, feel free to stop here. You have been warned. :) Alternately, if you just came for the dramatic part, feel free to skip down several paragraphs.
Our sweet girl made her way into this world on the evening of Sunday, June 29th, 2014. Here is a bit of explanation about how we chose her name. Lauren was a name that Josh and I had both liked for a long time, and as the pregnancy went on it became even more of a favorite. Plus, I like my alliterative name, and now my daughter will share the double L's! Emily is actually the name that I had wanted for a daughter since before I was even married; Emily Grace is my great-grandmother, and I had always thought it was a beautiful name. However, it has become extremely popular in recent years, making it into the top ten baby names, and I just couldn't bear to give my daughter a name that she would share with five other classmates. I've always loved having a name that is unique but not unheard-of. So we kept the Emily, but made it her middle name instead.
To start with, I need to supply some of the details of my previous births so you can understand why I was so clueless regarding contractions. Before this pregnancy, I had never really even had much as far as Braxton-Hicks contractions. With all 3 boys, my water broke in the middle of the night, we went to the hospital, and then I made no progress for several hours. So then they'd start me on the pitocin, which produces artificially strong contractions, and I would have an epidural. Then I'd labor for a few hours fairly painlessly, push a few times, and they were here. I was hoping this labor would be different; I wanted to try to start naturally instead of having to be induced after my water broke, and I wanted to try doing it without an epidural. As you will see, I definitely got my wish, though not in the way I had planned!
On Thursday, June 26th, about 9:30 in the morning, I noticed that I was having fairly regular contractions. I started timing them as I went about my daily tasks, and they didn't go away as I went from sitting to walking to standing. They also started coming closer together, but were not increasing in intensity. Some of them were pretty uncomfortable, but I could still talk and walk through them. However, after contracting for most of the day, I felt like we ought to get it checked out just in case. I talked to my midwife about what was happening, and she agreed. So we packed our bags, dropped the boys off with a friend, and headed up to Orem Community Hospital, where we were planning on our birth happening.
I was really excited at the possibility of our baby coming that night. I was only 37 weeks 4 days, but my boys all came pretty early as well, so it wasn't completely unexpected. Imagine my disappointment when the nurse told me I was only dilated to a 2. She had us wait for an hour while my contractions showed up on the charts regularly. Then she checked again and found no change. That means getting sent home. Boo! I was tired from contracting all day and sad that it seemed to not be doing much to get baby here. The nurse told me that it definitely looked like true labor, but that they just wanted me to labor at home for a bit and come back when the contractions were stronger. She said she wouldn't be surprised to see us show up again the middle of the night ready to have a baby, so I felt a little encouraged.
We picked up the boys and headed home to try to get some rest. I was hoping that the contractions would start becoming more intense and that I wouldn't be able to sleep, so that we could go back to the hospital and get our baby here! Of course, I zonked right out. I woke up several times in the night, not because of pain, but because of the anticipation that something would start happening. Sometime in there I stopped contracting altogether.
I was feeling pretty down all the next day. I knew our baby would only be in there for a few more weeks at most, but as every woman who has ever been at this point knows, once you are term every day seems to last a week. I was trying to be patient, but not doing so well at it. :) Plus, on Friday evening I got in a car accident. It was very mild (basically our van and the other car exchanged little scrapes of the different paint colors) and no one was hurt, but the other driver was being a total jerk about it. I did run into his car, so it's understandable that he'd be a little upset, but I don't know how anyone can be so mean to an extremely apologetic, extremely pregnant woman who is sobbing hysterically. So basically the day just sucked and I was just so ready to be done. The only encouraging thing about the day was that in the evening, I noticed some discharge which I thought might be part of my mucous plug. But since that can come even when labor is still weeks away, I didn't give it much weight.
Still no luck with having a baby on Saturday or early Sunday, and my mood kept deteriorating. I got lots of comments at church like "Wow, why are you still here?" and "You're sure there's only one baby in there?" and so forth. I know nobody was trying to be annoying, but seriously, be extremely careful about anything you say to pregnant women. They are already having a hard time coping with everything emotionally, and your charming opinions on their advanced state are a little wearying. Stepping off the soapbox now. :)
I was now exactly 38 weeks along. While our kids were napping or otherwise occupied, Josh and I tried to help labor along, if you know what I mean, wink wink, and afterwards I noticed some brownish discharge and a little bit of blood which I thought might be more of the mucous plug. Again, encouraging, but I didn't think too much about it since that kind of activity can cause spotting anytime in pregnancy.
Around 5 pm on Sunday, I started having contractions again. They were pretty painful ones, but were only coming about every 15-20 minutes or so. We decided to just watch them and be patient, since there was no way I was going back to the hospital just to be sent home again. They started coming closer together, but were still not very regular (one would happen after 10 minutes, then 7, then 12, etc). I was having a harder time talking through them, but it was still doable. Josh and I decided that we'd get the kids to bed, see what happened, and if it kept up like this we'd call a babysitter and head over again. At 7:30, I decided to call my sister Lindsay and get her advice. I knew she had at least one baby that they almost didn't make it to the hospital for because she wasn't sure about when to go in. I told her what was going on, and she told me that I probably wanted to wait until they were more consistent and coming about every 5 minutes or less. She said it was good that I was having a hard time talking through them, though, since that was what gave her the indication that they needed to go to the hospital. I thanked her and said that hopefully I'd be calling later with some good news about her new niece!
Almost immediately after we hung up, around 7:40, the contractions started coming really fast. I'd get one about every two minutes, and they were lasting a minute or more and really hurting. I thought they'd been hurting before, but I was wrong. :) All I could do was bend over and moan loudly. I felt bad because we'd already put Scott in bed, and he started crying when he heard my moaning and Josh had to keep going in and comforting him. Nate also looked pretty freaked out. After about 5 or 6 of these contractions, I finally said, "Okay, Josh, I really think we really need to go. Let's call someone and they can finish putting the big boys to bed." So Josh started trying to find a neighbor that could come over and be with them. We'd had several offer to help when the time came, but nobody was answering their phone. I was getting more and more frantic because I could tell we needed to go NOW. Josh was trying really hard not to swear in front of our boys (that's a big deal for him; he almost never swears) as I kept gripping the arm of the couch and moaning. Finally we called a neighbor who was a last resort, because her family had been sick all week and she hadn't gotten any sleep taking care of them all. She sent her teenage son, who had babysat for us before, over, and I grabbed my purse and a towel in case my water broke. I headed out to the van, but for some reason Josh told me that we'd take the Jeep instead, which turned out to be a very good thing. As I was hobbling out there, I noticed our neighbor's son coming around the corner at a slow pace. Right then I had a really strong contraction and let out a ridiculously loud moan, and I noticed that he sped up quite a bit!
We took off in the Jeep right about 8:00, and before we'd even gone a couple of blocks, I was feeling the urge to push, which really freaked me out. The hospital was about 20 minutes away, and I knew we'd never make it. I told Josh (or rather, yelled hysterically at Josh) that I had to push and there was no way I could wait 20 minutes. I had no idea what to do, but Josh remembered that there was an Instacare facility in Springville, fairly close by, so we headed over there. I didn't know if they were equipped to deal with a birth, but they were going to have to be! We pulled up to the Instacare and then realized that it was not a 24-hour facility: they were closed! Josh pulled on the doors and knocked, but we knew it was no good.
"Okay, honey, you need to call 911, this is happening right now, it's too late to go anywhere else!" I was really scared and in a lot of pain, but I honestly felt really bad for Josh at this point. I'm pretty sure he never thought he'd have to deliver our baby. However, he was surprisingly level-headed as the emergency dispatcher talked him through what to do. He opened up the back of our Jeep, helped me move there, and stripped my lower half down (by the way, the back of the Jeep was facing a busy street with lots of cars...goodbye, any semblance of modesty or privacy!), and I laid down on the towel with my back propped up against the backpack we'd brought for the hospital stay. Then he checked to see what was going on, and sure enough, there was her head!
This was about 8:10, and I think it was only about one minute later that a police officer showed up to help, and Josh hung up with 911. Another minute and an ambulance pulled up with a team of fire and rescue workers from Springville city. One of them took charge and started directing me to push during contractions. They didn't think it would be safe to move me at this point, so they pulled out a bunch of sterile equipment and set up right there in the Jeep. I was lying there with my private parts exposed, screaming like crazy and sobbing while about 5 or 6 men crowded around helping, but of course by this point I couldn't have cared less. After several pushes and lots of yelling from me, my water broke. Then, I think around 8:20, a nurse showed up and got behind my head, telling me I was doing a great job and so forth, and much to my relief, held a couple of ice packs on my neck and helped me sip some water. A GP doctor showed up about the same time and took over. The doctor and the nurse actually came out of the Instacare; although it had been closed and locked up for the day, they were there finishing up and helping a man. They were only still around because they were having a hard time getting the man's IV to stay in. When they finished up, they came out and saw all that was going on and jumped in to help! The man they had been taking care of took some photos (nothing close up, fortunately), and gave his information to the nurse so he could email us the pictures if we wanted.
The doctor said I needed to get my feet up for a little better positioning, but of course we had no stirrups. So we put my feet up on Josh's and one of the EMT's chests and I pushed against them. Then came the hardest part. The baby was crowning, and the doctor told me that I needed to stop yelling and instead, hold my breath and focus all of that energy on pushing as hard as I could. I don't know why it was so difficult for me to not scream through the contractions, but it took everything I had in me. If I'd so much as whimper, he'd remind me to not make noise, to hold my breath when a contraction came, and I'm pretty sure I broke down and said something like "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't even tell if I'm pushing when I hold my breath, I can't do this!" But everyone kept reminding me that I could do it, and I realized that I pretty much had no other option but to do it! So on the next contraction, I held my breath and pushed with all my might, and then...THEN...I felt the worst, worst pain I have ever felt in my life, like something was trying to push it's way out of me through a hole that was way too small (which, of course, was exactly what was happening, but in the moment all I could picture was a freaky-looking little alien with sharp, pointy appendages emerging from a hole it had ripped in my body) and I remember yelling "WHAT IS THAT?!" But no one answered me, because, duh, it's your baby, Launi. :) I really didn't think I could handle it for one more second, so even though I wasn't contracting, I held my breath and pushed. Her head came out, quickly followed by the rest of her body, and oh, sweet blessed relief! I really didn't feel any pain at all, despite what had just happened. I just felt totally exhausted and so happy that it was done. She was born at 8:29 PM, just one hour after I had called my sister to get advice about when to go the hospital!
The doctor got her nose and mouth suctioned out and cut the cord, and then they wrapped her in a clean blanket and handed her up to me. She had been crying, but was completely calm in my arms. She was all wrinkled and still totally covered in the white cheesy stuff that protects their skin in utero, but she was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. We got the placenta out, and then they gave our baby to Josh for a minute while they got me onto a gurney. He had to hand her back pretty quickly, though, because we didn't want her to be out in the wind. We both got loaded into the ambulance, and Josh followed in the Jeep so he would have a way to get home to the boys eventually! The EMTs kept asking how I was doing, and I must have seemed pretty out of it, because they put an oxygen mask on me. I kept pulling it off to take sips from my water bottle, and they'd put it back on me. I think I was really dazed by what had just happened. And so tired.
The ambulance took us to UVRMC because that was the closest hospital. They called in my midwife, Jen, and I told her I was sorry I didn't invite her to the party. :) I was a little worried because the doctor at the Instacare had said I had a 4th-degree tear (meaning it goes all the way back to your rectum), but when Jen checked me out it turns out it was only a 2nd-degree tear. Whew! I still needed to be stitched up, of course, and I had no medication in me. So Jen gave me a few local shots of Lidocaine, and that was the second-worst pain I had been in that day. Seriously didn't hold a candle to pushing out my baby, but having needles stuck in the most tender part of your body after it's already sore is definitely not pleasant. I can only hope that it was better than having to feel the stitching up would have been.
After I was all taken care of, Josh went down to watch Lauren have her bath. I called Lindsay to tell her what had happened. She was totally flabbergasted and even felt guilty, like she should have told me to go to the hospital right then. But really, how was she supposed to know what was going to happen? And if I had gone right then, we wouldn't have nearly so cool a story. :) I then called my other sister, Leslie, because she had been planning on coming down for the birth and I was gonna have to disappoint her. She was totally shocked about the whole thing as well, and both of my sisters insisted that Mom was literally not going to believe me, that she'd think I was making it up. (My parents had been out of the country on vacation for several weeks. They had no email access for a few days, and they weren't getting my texts or phone calls. So they didn't even find out about Lauren's birth until a couple of days after the fact).
Josh asked me, if we were to have another child, would I want the epidural or would I go naturally again? (Not like I did this time, hopefully, but in a hospital)! And honestly, I'm not sure. Obviously it was scary and really hurt a lot, but it happened so fast. And my healing has been remarkably faster and easier this time around. With my boys, I was really sore in my feminine parts and took Percocet for several days. This time, I have hardly even noticed anything down there, I've just been really sore and crampy in my abdominal region. All I've taken is extra-strength Motrin. They told me I could have Lortab if I wanted it, but I never really felt the need. Also, I remember with Alex, the first time I tried to get up after giving birth I was dizzy and falling over and needed lots of help for the first few days. This time, when I had to get up to go to the bathroom a few hours after giving birth, I got right up and was totally fine by myself. So with going naturally, I had about an hour of really difficult contractions and a few minutes of terrible pain, in exchange for feeling great and healing quickly in the days after. With an epidural, I didn't have to feel all the pain of labor and delivery, but I was sore and really uncomfortable in the weeks following. I really don't know which I'd go with. The natural way seems to be almost a no-brainer, because who'd rather be in pain for a week or more as compared to a few minutes or an hour? But the intensity of that pain is still very fresh in my mind, and I'm pretty sure I never want to feel that way again. Maybe a few years will dull the memory! Or maybe we will just be done having kids and I'll never have to make the choice. :)
Either way, we are really happy to have our baby girl here! It's crazy to have four kids, but it's going well so far. Lauren is everything wonderful wrapped up in a sweet, tiny package and we are all totally smitten with her. We're enjoying these few weeks when she's still just a newborn, as I know they will pass so quickly. If you need to find me, I'll probably be on my couch snuggling with my daughter!
