Raelynn's Natural, Hospital Birth

I know it's been a long time since I've posted. Our lives have been extremely busy the past 5-6 months. My goal this week is to get it updated, but first is Raelynn's birth story. Many people have been asking about her birth so I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Raelynn’s birth story is a very beautiful one and I’m excited to share it with everyone. It was very unique and different from Quinn’s birth and it holds a special place in my heart.

Her story starts early. I had Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks before her birth, we also had concerns with her turning. She was in the breech position until I was 36 weeks. I know babies can still turn after that, but my midwives were going to do an ECV if she hadn’t flipped by 36 weeks, but Raelynn decided to flip.

The week before she was born, I could feel my body getting ready for her birth with more contractions each day. They weren’t very painful, but definitely annoying. Sunday, Nov. 27^th I was 38 wks 5 days along. We went about our day as usual. At church that afternoon I was having some pretty consistent contractions. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to get excited if it wasn’t the real thing. They continued through the evening, but died off when we went to bed. False alarm #1.

On Monday, the 28^th I had an appointment with my midwife. I was already 3- 4 cm dilated, but knew that this didn’t really mean much. I could stay that way for 2 more weeks. With Quinn I was 2 cm dilated for 4 weeks.

Tuesday/ Wednesday, my 39 week mark brought false alarm #2. That night at around 11pm I decided I wanted to take a nice hot bath after working all day to finish plans for the substitute during my maternity leave. I was pretty tired and wanted to relax. While in the tub I started having contractions about 3 minutes apart and these were hurting more than Braxton Hicks. I had contractions like this for about 2 hrs (it’s now 1am) and decided to call my doula- one of my closest friends, and my midwife. The midwife wanted me to head to the hospital because I was already 3-4 cm and they anticipated a quick labor with this being my 2^nd child. We only live about a block away from the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital and did all of the normal admittance stuff. They monitored me for 20min and said, “Yep, looks like you’re in labor.” I was very excited! Contractions at that point were about 5 minutes apart and starting to hurt a little more. I was about 4-5 cm now. Yay! We were making progress. I was already half way there. I decided to walk around the hospital hoping to make contractions more consistent and stronger. Hospitals are quiet at 2am. Then we tried the birth ball, then the Jacuzzi tub. The contractions weren’t very painful yet, just more uncomfortable. When I got into the Jacuzzi it was about 5am I think. I was getting very tired and even starting falling asleep. At that point I felt the contractions lessen and spread out. My body was just too exhausted. We went back to our room and I really wanted to rest. I actually fell asleep and my contractions pretty much stopped. My body knew that I was just too tired. Instead of trying to do anything to start contractions again, we decided to go home and sleep. We got home around 7am. Lawrence had to be to work in a few hours so he slept as much as he could. I napped on and off on the couch while Quinn played and watched his favorite show on Netflix.

Wednesday and Thursday passed. I spent those days resting. Friday morning arrived and we knew we were going to have a baby when my water broke around 7:30am, waking me up. I became very excited. I was going to get to see my little girl. I was also glad that the same midwife that delivered Quinn would deliver Raelynn. She’s my favorite midwife out of the 3 that I see. We went about our normal morning routine because contractions hadn’t started yet. It actually took a few hours to get them started.

Quinn seemed a little apprehensive. He could sense that his life was about to change. We had been preparing him for a while and he was excited for his sister to arrive, but when we told him that she was coming today, he told me he didn’t want a sister. We decided to try and get him excited about it so we took him to Wal-Mart and let him pick out a toy to give to his new sister. He was excited about this. We walked around Wal-Mart for a little while- knowing that walking helps with contractions a lot. I had a few while at the store, but nothing I couldn’t handle. After walking around Wal-Mart we decided to take Quinn over to our friend’s house. They had offered to watch Quinn for us. He was excited to stay at their house because he saw a huge Love Sac to play on when we got there.

After dropping Quinn off we decided to call the midwife and see if we could go into the office and she could check me there instead of having to go to the hospital. It’s much cheaper than going to the hospital. They told me just to go in and they’d fit me in. I was 5 cm. She stretched my cervix a little to try and get some contractions going.

We left the midwives office ready to do more walking. We walked around just about every large store in this small town for about 3 hours. It did help me gather some ideas for Christmas gifts though. Walking really helped the contractions get going. We went to Great Harvest for lunch and after eating they were really starting to hurt more. I was having to breathe and concentrate more. At this point I decided it was time to head to the hospital. I let my doula know and she met us there.

We arrived at the hospital and quickly got checked in around 4pm. I was ready to have this baby, but I knew I still had some work ahead of me. At this point I was 6-7 cm. Contractions were coming. They weren’t too consistent, but they were getting stronger. I used the birth ball a lot. That’s what felt good to me. With this labor my back was hurting a lot. My midwife recommended heat and luckily we had brought my rice sock. The heat did wonders for me. Lawrence, my doula, or midwife constantly held heat on my back. It made my contractions a lot easier to handle. Through the afternoon/evening I changed positions every once in a while moving from the birth ball to sitting on the bed, to laying down, to sitting again. In my mind I was hoping to have her around 8pm. To me that sounded like a good time. 8pm came and went. I wasn’t too disappointed because I knew I was getting close. Contractions were close and I had to breathe and concentrate hard to get through each contraction. I think it was at about 8:15pm when I started to feel the urge to push.

The hustle and bustle began as the midwife and nurses prepared. I was allowed to push when I was ready and as my body directed me to. That’s what I love about natural, intervention-free births; I am able to listen to my body. For both births now, I’ve pushed laying on my side. To me, that is what is most comfortable. When I started to push, it was more of my body doing the work. I kind of felt like I had forgotten how, but it took about 2 contractions to figure it out again. As Raelynn got closer and closer I wanted to push as hard as I could to get her out as quickly as possible, but my midwife knew that I wanted to do everything possible to avoid tearing. As Realynn’s head started to crown and come out, my midwife had me stop pushing and breathe to allow her head to slowly come out. This would allow my body the chance to stretch more instead of tear. I think this was the hardest part of the whole thing. At 8:36 Raelynn Catherine was born!

She was immediately placed on my chest where she cried a little, but was actually very calm. We enjoyed our time cuddling and getting to know each other. We could tell immediately that she had red hair. It looked curly at the time, but it’s straight as can be. The nurses did all of the tests/checking while she was on my chest. It didn’t take long for her to want to nurse. She latched on pretty easily and we enjoyed that first breastfeeding together.

I only needed a few stitches and after that was done we were left to enjoy our time together; mom, dad, and baby. We are now enjoying life as a family of 4.

Pictures to come soon!

Ultrasound Pictures

Here are a few ultrasound pictures. Currently Baby Girl weighs about 13 oz and is measuring right on track for everything. We couldn't get a good profile picture of her face because my placenta was in the way and she likes to keep her knees up near her forehead. She is a squirmer though. Every time she tried to take a 3D image, she would move and the picture would blur. We had no problem seeing that she was a girl though. We are very excited for her to join our family. We're hoping the next 20 weeks fly by.

Big News!!!!

For those of you that haven't heard yet..........we will be having a baby girl! I'm due December 6th. We just had our ultrasound today. I'll try to get pictures up soon. We are SUPER excited and already working to get ready for her arrival.

Sorry no pictures yet.....but a quick update.

Well, the beginning of this year has been quite eventful, stressful, exciting, busy, crazy, etc. etc..........Let me explain.

After moving down to our new apartment we were getting everything moved in and organized. We love having more space and Quinn loves having his own room again. His room is bigger than he's ever had and he's got tons of room for all of his toys and room to run around. One Sunday, not sure which one, but right about the middle of January, we had some friends over for dinner. While Quinn was playing with his friend Lili I went in his room to check on him and as I walked into the bedroom to check on them, water came through the carpet and pooled around my foot. OH NO! I immediately called for help and quickly learned that Quinn's room was filling with water, it was just getting absorbed into the carpet and padding beneath it. So our wonderful friends helped us to get everything out of Quinn's room and the guys worked on getting the water out and figuring out where the water came from. We ended up pulling up all the padding and getting the carpet treated and because water quit coming in we couldn't be certain where it was coming from or what to do so we just laid the carpet down waiting for more to come in so we could find the problem and fix it. So we started putting our lives back together and things were getting back to normal when...........

Fast forward about 3 or 4 weeks. I get a phone call from one of the girls that lives above us saying that a pipe is leaking in the laundry room that is over mine and Lawrence's bedroom. In my mind I'm thinking, "A small leak, no big deal, Lawrence can fix it when he gets home from class." Five minutes later the assistant manager knocks on my door and tells me a pipe is busted and water is spray EVERYWHERE! Unfortunately both of our husbands are in class and we're trying to figure out how to turn the water off while water is coming down and filling my apartment with water. No joke! By the time we got the water turned off and the pipe fixed my bedroom, Quinn's room, the bathroom, hallway, and kitchen were flooded. The only place that didn't flood was our living room because it's elevated from the rest of the apartment. We immediately made a call to have the professionals deal with this mess. They came and got all of the water out and left who knows how many fans and 2 large dehumidifiers to dry everything up. It took about a week and half to get it dry. Because of this, we've been staying in a hotel for about 2 weeks now. They have had to rip out all the carpet, the bathroom floor and some of the cabinets in the kitchen. They've replaced the cabinets and counter top, the bathroom floor, and they patched a large whole in the wall they had to make. Things are slowly getting taken care of and we should be back in our apartment by the end of the week. I got to pick out a paint color for Quinn's room and they're going to paint it for us and they will be coming tomorrow (Tuesday) to move all of our stuff out and the new carpet will be here on Wednesday I'm so excited for it to all be done and to be sleeping in my own bed again. Also in the middle of all of this Quinn's room flooded again where it flooded the first time so Lawrence had to dig up our drive way next to the foundation to find out where the water was coming from and the weather has kept him from patching it up and finishing that up. So things around here have been a bit crazy..........

In other news...Lawrence is some how keeping up with his school work through all of this. He's been a great sport about it all. I've been keeping myself busy with Quinn and my doula training. Quinn is such a bundle of fun right now. He's starting to talk more. His favorite words are hi, ball, dog, nose, etc. He's still learning sign language too. I'm about half way done with my doula training. I passed all of my tests with flying colors and right now I'm working on a reflection paper I have to write. I was able to attend my friend's labor and count it as one of my certifying births and now I just have to attend one more birth and write a few book reviews and I'll be done. I'm really excited to finish and I'm probably going to start a business with it. Well that's about all for now. I'll try to get some pictures up once we get our house back in order.

New Year!

Well it's about time I update everyone on what's going on in the Hauptly household. We're all wonderful.

Quinn is 15 months now! He's growing so fast. He's a ton of fun, loves to play, and is very vocal. He's not really talking yet, but he's learning to communicate. He's learning sign language and he knows probably 20 + signs. He knows the sign for baby, mommy, daddy, eat, drink, please, thank you, ball, doll, car, coat, shoes, hat, banana, more, socks, milk, cup, help, sleep, bath, blanket, cold, hot, dog, all done, etc. etc. etc. He also gets in these very silly moods and he just makes us laugh so much. He also loves the snow. He loves to walk in it and get it all over his shoes. He's also learned what dogs are and he loves them. He hasn't seen a real one, but if he sees a picture of one or one on the tv, he gets really excited. I'm so lucky to have such a fun, happy boy.

As for me, my biggest news is that I started training to become a certified labor/ birth doula. I'm really excited for this! I've wanted to do it since Quinn was born and we had a doula present then. I've thought about it a few times and I decided to finally start it. To be certified I have to be the main doula at 2 different births and then I have a lot of other work to do online and lots of studying to do. I'm also going to start shadowing a doula here in town to gain as much experience as I can. I'm really excited for the possibilities and opportunities this will bring to me and my family. For my first two births that I need to be certified I'm offering my services for free so if you know of anyone that's pregnant that would like a doula, please let me know or you can give them my contact info.

Lawrence started a new semester and he's excited to get into more of his major classes. He's pretty much done with his generals now so everything goes towards his major/minor. He's also busy with the property. He's the main guy that does the snow removal, other than the assistant managers that we hired that help out. With all of the snow that we get up here in Rexburg, that keeps him busy.

Well that's a short update for now. We had a great holiday, even though it consisted of moving a few days before Christmas. Luckily it was only down to the basement of the same house we were already in, but we made it through and we're almost done unpacking. We hope this message finds everyone well.

Quinn's 1st Birthday!

Here are pictures from Quinn's 1st birthday. We had ssssssoooooo much fun. We were blessed to have lots of family come to visit and we made many great memories. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Sorry, they aren't in any order really.

Quinn got his car at 1, not 16.

Quinn's other big present, his wagon.

Quinn and his best friend, Lili.

The "Eye Spy" quilt I made for Quinn.

Grandma and Grandpa Hauptly came to visit.

Quinn wasn't sure how to open his presents, but he got the hang of it.

Quinn had to take a bath after eating his cake.

Quinn and his friend, Sara.

Quinn's presents. Boy, was he spoiled.

Quinn's cake.

He loves to climb on chairs.

Silly face.

He wasn't sure of what to think of his cake either. By the end of it he was completely covered in icing.

Family Pictures