Jonas’ Birth Story

This preg­nancy was dif­fer­ent than my other two.  I know that every preg­nancy is dif­fer­ent, and I thought that my first and sec­ond preg­nan­cies were dif­fer­ent.  But, num­ber three was WAY dif­fer­ent for me.  I had heard from many peo­ple that there’s “some­thing about num­ber three.”  No one really had a con­crete expla­na­tion for what that meant, but I thought about it every. sin­gle. day.  I was pretty sure it had to be bad.  My pre­vi­ous labors had been mostly good expe­ri­ences for me.  That meant that num­ber three would be harder.  I was pretty sure that’s what it meant anyway.

As I got to the end of my preg­nancy, I noticed that Jonas was on the right side of my abdomen as opposed to the left side where most babies set­tle toward the end of preg­nancy.  I was pretty sure that was it.  The fact that he was on the right side was what was going to lead to the dif­fi­cul­ties I was sure to expe­ri­ence dur­ing labor.  I was sure of it.  Thank­fully, my friend, Rhonda, was con­fi­dent in my abil­ity to birth this baby.  I, how­ever, was not.  Start­ing around my 34th week of preg­nancy, I began to expe­ri­ence a sig­nif­i­cant increase in con­trac­tions.  I woke up in the mid­dle of the night at one point with con­trac­tions that were com­ing every 5 min­utes and were uncom­fort­able, verg­ing on painful.  Noth­ing came of that bout of con­trac­tions.  How­ever, it hap­pened sev­eral other times as I approached my due date.  By the time the week before my due date arrived, I had con­vinced myself that Jonas’ posi­tion was “bad,” that my labor was going to be long and dif­fi­cult, and that I may not go into labor on my own at any point.  Look­ing back I’m not sure how I man­aged to let my wor­ries and hor­mones get to this point, but I did.

On Thurs­day after­noon, the day before Jonas was born, I had a visit from Rhonda.  She gave me a pep talk and reit­er­ated to me that I was capa­ble of birthing my baby and that hav­ing the baby was what my body was meant to do.  I man­aged to relax a bit.  Later that evening, I went to Tar­get to pick up a few items and while I was there I couldn’t believe that with all the irreg­u­lar con­trac­tions I was hav­ing along with the pres­sure I felt that I wasn’t in labor.  I called a friend to firm up plans for child­care just in case I went into labor dur­ing the weekend.

Fri­day morn­ing, I woke up at a lit­tle after 5 with a con­trac­tion.  It was strong enough that I felt like I should check the clock and see if there was any sort of pat­tern.  There wasn’t.  My next con­trac­tion was some­thing like 13 min­utes later, then 6 min­utes, then 10.  At that point, I knew I was hav­ing enough con­trac­tions and it was my due date, so I woke Jason to tell him I was in labor.  I also told him to go back to bed (not sure what I was think­ing).  He didn’t lis­ten to me.  He knew bet­ter.  After a cou­ple more con­trac­tions, I took him my phone and told him to call our friend to watch Kael and Asa so we could go to the hos­pi­tal.  He also called labor & deliv­ery to let them know we’d be com­ing.  It was 5:50.

Once our friend arrived, we left for the hos­pi­tal.  Luck­ily for me, it was a very short (5ish min­utes) drive.  When we got upstairs to L&D, the nurse who met us said, “We saw your last labor was 40 min­utes, so we’re ready for you.”  I went into my room.  The nurses offered me a hos­pi­tal gown, and I said, “No thanks.  I don’t care if my clothes get dirty, but I don’t want to wear one of those.”  They asked if I would lay down so they could check to see how far dilated I was.  I intended to lay on the bed, but the con­trac­tions were so intense I couldn’t do it.  I told them they should prob­a­bly call my doc­tor.  They said they would call my res­i­dent (I had a doc­tor and a res­i­dent, because I go to a clinic which is affil­i­ated with a med school and trains fam­ily prac­tice res­i­dents).  They explained the res­i­dent usu­ally comes in to assess the patient and relays the sit­u­a­tion to the doc­tor.  I told them to call my res­i­dent and my doc­tor.  One of the nurses left to go get some­thing.  The other asked if I wanted a birth ball to sit on.  I told her that I prob­a­bly wouldn’t sit on it, but I might lean on it.  She made a flip­pant com­ment like, “You’re not going to have a baby while I’m gone are you?”  I said, “I can’t promise any­thing.”  She said, “Are you hav­ing pres­sure?”  I think I said some­thing very well-mannered like, “Well, yeah!”  She said, “I’ll have some­one else get the ball for you.”

Just a cou­ple min­utes after that con­ver­sa­tion, I said, “I have to push!”  I hadn’t been checked.  There was no doc­tor there or any­where near, and I was still stand­ing next to the bed.  Appar­ently Jonas didn’t care.  I started push­ing.  My water broke after a push or two, and I heard the nurse say, “Where’s the doc­tor?”  “That’s a head!”  “Is the doc­tor com­ing????”  Because I was still stand­ing, the nurses started throw­ing pil­lows and other absorbent and soft items on the floor between my feet.  Jonas was born a short time later at 6:22.  The nurse caught him.  He was 22.5 inches long and 9 lbs 11.5 oz.

The res­i­dent on call arrived a few min­utes later.  My doc­tor arrived about 5 min­utes after him, and my res­i­dent arrived about 5 min­utes after that.  He latched on soon after birth, and he is breast­feed­ing well.  I am writ­ing this 2 weeks and 2 days after his birth, and accord­ing to my unof­fi­cial weight check in our bath­room, he’s some­where around 12.5 lbs.