Ellie’s Birth Story

Full disclosure: If you don’t want the full details of her delivery, this post may be a pass for you. 

This post is long overdue given that our sweet girl is already 4 1/2 months old but I am here to give you the full rundown on Ellie’s arrival! 

My birth experience with Ellie was completely different than with Liam (you can read more about that here) since I was induced. I honestly had a lot of anxiety leading up to my delivery. You would think that having already had one baby I would have been much more prepared but knowing that I was going to be induced and have a different labor experience gave me so much anxiety. While I have had some situational anxiety at certain times in my life, I’ve never really struggled with it and didn’t fully know the signs. I was having difficulty breathing and my heart rate was all over the place. After telling Tyler my symptoms, he told me he thought I was having anxiety and I was like, “No, not me!”. But after I thought about it, I thought he might be right. I told my mom about it and admitted I thought I did have anxiety around not being able to be in control of the situation or going into labor spontaneously as I had before, it completely went away! It was the strangest thing. It was like as soon as I accepted it my body was completely fine. But let’s get into the real reason you’re here, shall we?

Our morning on September 4, 2018 started at the crack of dawn as we had to be at the hospital by 7:00. We kissed Liam goodbye and headed off to the hospital to meet our girl! Much to my surprise, we had to wait for a good 15-20 minutes in the lobby before being called back into L&D.

Once back in L&D we got settled in our room and my nurse got me all hooked up and then my doctor came in and checked me. I was only 1cm dilated which was the same as I had been at my last appointment so she went ahead and started me on Pitocin to get things rolling. I was amazed at how quickly that stuff got my contractions going and amped up the intensity of the contractions I had been feeling up until that point.

Around 11:00am or so I had been laying on my side and was feeling some major discomfort despite being only like 3cm dilated. I went ahead and had them call the anesthesiologist thinking it may take a while for them to come by. Little did I know, he would come in within like 5 minutes. Once propped up, my contractions were so minor I remember telling Tyler I felt silly even getting the epidural since my contractions were so manageable after changing positions. But alas, they were already there so why not, right?

My previous experience with an epidural was pretty straightforward and to the point and my water had already broken and I was having intense contractions so I don’t even remember much of it. This experience was the complete opposite. The doctor was talking to us and took what felt like forever getting set up. Before he had even inserted the needle for the epidural he numbed me up and I started to not feel so great. My blood pressure dropped into the 60s over 30s and I started telling the nurse I was hot, my vision was blurry and they all sounded super far away. I really thought I was going to pass out. They quickly got the nurse anesthetist in there and he put some miracle concoction in my IV and my blood pressure went back up to 70s over 40s and then finally started coming back up. I cannot tell you how exhausted I felt after that. Who knew a drop in blood pressure could effect you like that? Meanwhile, I started to notice a bulge on my right wrist and initially thought I was having some weird allergic reaction. I mentioned it to the nurse and she called in another nurse to come in and help get my IV reinserted in my other arm since she was busy holding me up for my epidural. Turns out I had an infiltrated vein and the bulge went down after a few minutes but still. If you’re counting, I had 2 nurses, a nurse anesthetist and the anesthesiologist in there. Oh and my OB came in towards the end so I was a serious problem child there for a little bit.

Once my epidural was inserted (which, again, felt like forever) and I was able to lay down I took a quick 30ish minute cat nap and felt so much better. It’s crazy how much all of that took out of me!

The rest of my labor was fairly uneventful as we just waited for things to start progressing and it was really just a waiting game. My doctor unfortunately had a family emergency and had to leave and more than likely wouldn’t be able to deliver me that day so she asked if I was ok with having one of the midwives look over me and they could pull in one of the on call doctors from my practice if needed. I said sure why not and went with it. This turned out to be one of the greatest things for my labor experience!

The first midwife who was caring for me was super soft spoken and a little reserved for my taste and a total 180 from my OB so I was like hmmm I don’t know about this. But during the shift change a different midwife came in, Lois, and I knew I was in good hands. She asked me what I wanted out of my labor experience and I told her a little about my labor with Liam and my concerns with certain techniques, etc. She then began to ask Tyler and I a few more questions about delivery specifically. Did Tyler want to cut the cord? Yes. Did Tyler want to play catcher a help deliver the baby? A firm no from him. Should they pull out the mirror? Gross. Did I want to pull out the baby? A “ehhhh probably not” from me.

After she walked out after introducing herself and discussing what I wanted from my labor and delivery experience Tyler was like, “I can tell you already really like her.” And he was right. I just felt at ease with her. So at this point I was about 5-6cm and they went ahead and broke my water to get things moving. I have to tell you, the thing they broke it with legit looked like a wand from Harry Potter. My nurse was also a Harry Potter fan and Harry Potter conveniently happened to be on in my room coincidentally so we all got a good chuckle out of that. I’ve previously heard that having your water broken hurt and I don’t recall it hurting. Maybe a little uncomfortable but not painful. After that, I knew my contractions would get more intense and I think this was the point when my body really started to get the picture that it was go-time.

I had some slow progression and was checked at 10:45pm and was still 6cm dilated. I recall Lois saying she might be able to say I was 7cm so I took that as a win. After being checked, the midwife said she estimated we’d have a baby around 3:00am-4:00am. I wanted to get the show on the road and apparently so did my body because things started to get real after this.

My Mom and Step-Dad were in the room with Tyler and me so my Mom and Tyler both tried to lay down to get some rest while my Step-Dad sat next to the bed amazed I couldn’t feel the massive contractions he was watching on the machine. As they were trying to fall asleep, I became more and more uncomfortable. Thankfully, my Step-Dad just offered his hand and I happily squeezed it and the bedrail until I finally knew it was time to call the nurse because I felt some seriously intense pressure and had was shivering like crazy.

She came in and I think she honestly didn’t believe me at first and left the room after dismissing my sense of urgency. I finally was so frustrated and knew it was time that I told Tyler he needed to get up and call the nurse or Lois to get in here to check me NOW because it was go time. My parents got up to head to the waiting room and to give us some privacy. The nurse came back in and said she would check me and immediately said the baby’s head was right there and it was baby time! Things started moving very quickly after this.

The room filled with more nurses and more equipment, Lois came in and they broke down the bed for delivery. Lois even said, “You’re going to make a liar out of me! We’re going to have this baby today.” If you’re keeping track, I went from 6-7cm to 10 in 45 minutes. So once Ellie was ready she was READY! She’s much like her Momma that way. 🙂

But remember when I said Lois had asked me if I wanted to pull her out? She asked me as Ellie was almost all the way out and, in the moment, I felt so empowered that I knew I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. After her shoulders were out, Lois told me to reach down and grab my baby so I did. As I pulled her on to me I immediately felt a huge rush of emotion. I helped deliver my own baby! I mean obviously I did all the work anyway but I can’t begin to describe to you how happy I am that she asked me again if I wanted to do that because it was an amazing experience.

I only had to push for roughly 15 minutes before she made her grand debut at 11:56pm on September 4, 2018. The 4th happens to be my MeeMaw’s birthday and my late uncle’s birthday so we were happy she decided to make her arrival on the 4th so she could share her birthday with them.

We are so in love with our sweet Ellie Bee and hardly remember life without her!