Motherhood: a birth story pt 1

I wrote most of this at 6 months postpartum but it has now been 1 year since I had my baby, Finn. I feel as if I blinked and now I'm here. The last 365 days have flown by and I can't help but look back at photos and ask myself where that precious time went. It's also strange because I can't even imagine what life used to be like without him.

At 36 weeks, the week before I actually gave birth, I had thought I was in labor after thinking my water broke (fun false alarm, you can guess what happened ha ha) and after arriving at the doctors I realized it wasn't labor. My doctor told me if this happens again, just to put on new underwear. I told my husband (Ryan) that she said that and we both laughed about it. I kind of just blew it off and figured the next time would hopefully be go time.

At just around 37 weeks, Ryan had just finished refinishing the hardwood floors upstairs so we could finally work on the nursery. We decided when we were laying in bed one night that we just needed to do it because it was weighing on us knowing our baby could come any day and we didn't have a room for him. So, we got out of bed at 9P that night, on a work night and started/finished the nursery around 11:30P.

A few hours after finally falling asleep and finishing the nursery, I woke up with cramps and just figured it was normal so I went back to sleep. An hour later, my cat Olive was snuggled up to me like she did throughout my pregnancy but I woke up in a lot of pain and in a puddle. I realized at that point that I was probably having contractions and that this was the real deal. I woke up my husband and he told me it was probably nothing, and said: "put on new underwear and to go back to sleep" and he rolled over and started falling asleep again. I yelled at him to get up and to get ready to go to the hospital. It wasn't as funny then as it is now, haha. So we gathered our things, took showers, poured a bunch of cat food onto a baking sheet and water into a mixing bowl for them and off we went to the hospital.

When we got there at 6A we still expected that we would be going back home and that it was just another false alarm. They did the examination and saw that I had a slight water break so I was admitted, they stuck the IV (worst pain ever) and we knew Finn would be with us soon!

A few hours passed and I hadn't dilated (literally 0 cm dilated) so they started me on Pitocin (a drug to induce labor). It all happened very quickly, the contractions came more frequently and so strong. I have scoliosis and was having terrible back labor. I'll never forget how prideful I was when I said I wanted to go to the bathroom my myself, not with assistance and the contractions were so bad that I was laying on the floor crying. Our nurse, Claire, asked if I would like a medicine to help with the pain since it had been another hour and I was only 2 cm dilated so I took her up on that offer. That helped but barely, my back was still killing me. I wasn't dilating any further but still asked for the epidural which was tricky due to my scoliosis, they explained it may not work or it may only be effective on one side of my body. By the time the anesthesiologist got to the room, it had been about an hour and it was almost 12P.

Thank goodness I didn't feel the epidural between the most awful contractions and throwing up from the pain. But, Ryan almost passed out. The nurse ran and got him a chair and got him orange juice and try to keep him awake. Again, wasn't funny then but I think its hilarious looking back on it! After it was over the anesthesiologist said you both did a great job! Yeah, good job Ryan LOL.

It was around 12:45P by the time that was all over with, I felt the contractions start to calm down a bit and I asked the nurse if she thought Finn would be coming that day. She said possibly but she's doubting it because I wasn't progressing much, only at 4cm now. She said this is the time you both need to get some rest and that labor may slow down due to the epidural.

Like they warned, I felt that the epidural was only working on one side of my body. Claire had mentioned she could come in and help turn me to my other side if I felt that it wasn't working as much as it should so 20 minutes after she left I called her back to help me turn. She wanted to check and see if I had been progressing in the last 20 minutes and I don't think any of us were ready for what happened next.

"I NEED A DOCTOR IN HERE NOW." She yelled out into the hall. She said "Sarah you're about to have this baby!" Ryan was still asleep on the couch and I remember he jumped up still asleep trying to put his boots on haha. I was nearly in shock and just kept saying "Seriously, NOW?!" I had Finn at a university hospital so before I knew it, nearly 10 students were in the delivery room. Before going to the hospital I told my husband I didn't want any students in the room but when it came down to it, I didn't care, I was just ready to meet our little guy. But before that could happen, my husband had my phone and someone was calling me. He for some reason answered it and just started listening to whoever was talking to him. I yelled at him to hang up the phone and he said "Oh, yeah. What am I even doing?" I think we were both just as confused that he answered a telemarketer when everyone was standing there anticipating me having a baby and him literally holding my leg up. Again, the things that weren't so funny are just hilarious memorable things now.

I pushed for about 20 minutes or less and then before I knew it, the doctor was holding the baby I had always dreamt about. Finnick Ryan H was born at 1:59P on February 13th, 2019. I felt a rush of emotions. All the emotions you could possibly feel. I was scared that he wasn't as protected as he was before he entered the world. I was so happy he appeared healthy and was crying. I was so in love with him and his bright blonde hair. They laid him on my chest and he stopped crying immediately. You truly never know how much you love someone until you see your child thats a perfect mix of your husband and yourself.. just a little puffier and kind of alien looking.

Also, just to add.. I was still pretty drugged up after I had him and I wanted to post to my “close friends” stories on Instagram that Finn was born because I still didn’t know if I wanted to share photos of him on my

page. Well, I accidentally shared to my actual stories to around 15K people at the time and my inbox was blowing up with over 100 messages before I noticed what I had done and people were sharing the story and whatnot and I was full blown panicking. Silly and funny to look back on but man was I freaking out then LOL!

The month or two (Fourth Trimester) after I had him were a whirlwind of a emotions for me and quite honestly it was the best most wonderful and also darkest and hardest time of my life. I'll go into more detail on that in my next post as this is a two part type of series on my birth story and motherhood.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading, I appreciate you and hopefully 100% other posts will be much shorter because I just wrote a book!

Xo, Sarah