Orion Daniel: His Birth

As with most birth stories, this doesn’t begin in a dramatic fashion with breaking water and rushing to the hospital like in the movies. Birth really is a process, and Orion’s birth story really starts several weeks before his actual birth day.

Side note: If you aren’t into birth details or bodily fluids, this blog post is not for you! Click away now 😉

Around 36 weeks, I began to experience extreme discomfort. Now, the end of pregnancy is not comfortable for anyone. There is heartburn and aches and pains, and of course carrying around 12+ extra pounds in one area is never easy. But this pregnancy was exceptionally difficult and painful at the end. I continued to teach through 39 weeks, but I was not feeling great at all. I noticed that I was slowing down in ALL areas of my life- both school and home. I was just really pretty miserable.

By 38 weeks, everyone who saw me in person said “WOW that baby is LOW”. and I couldn’t help but agree with them. He had dropped so low into my pelvis that I felt like I was walking around with him half falling out of me! It was hard to stand and walk and it was even harder to sit! Laying down was also uncomfortable. I was exhausted and just doing my best to keep up with teaching and parenting three kids by myself on the weekends (since Theo works weekends). I was mentally not ready for labor and really dreading it.

On Friday, March 3rd I was 39 weeks along and I felt like my body was really gearing up for labor. I even packed up all the kids and went and spent the weekend at my parents house. We were all SURE it was going to happen that weekend. I was very nervous for how I was going to manage to get the kids to my parents, Theo home from work, and me to the hospital all in the right amount of time. So staying at my parents house meant the kids were already in their spot, and I was a few minutes closer to the hospital. That was a hard weekend, though, because clearly nothing happened and I just felt like I was being watched by everyone.

The following week passed with the same level of pain, discomfort and feeling like my body could not possibly be pregnant for one more day. And then I would wake up each morning, still pregnant. I saw the midwife a few days before my due date, and she said she suspected she would be seeing me in the birth center within two days. It was the first time I had met with that particular midwife, and her first comment was “wow, that baby is SO LOW.” He was like entirely wedged into my pelvis by that point!

I met up with a friend who had the same due date as me and we walked the mall together. We even did stair lunges up the stairs multiple times. Still nothing. I went out and walked the curb. Still nothing. I ate spicy food and tried EVERY trick in the book. Still nothing.

(Side note- we had the same due date and we both managed to go 6 days overdue. Our boys have the same birthday! Also, our four year old sons have birthdays within 24 hours of each other!)

My due date came and we were filled with hope that maybe I would have a due date baby! But nope. One day overdue. Two days overdue. Three days overdue.

Finally, at three days overdue I woke up to strong contractions at 3am. They were coming every 10 minutes and I couldn’t really sleep through them. I woke Theo up at 4am, and we called my parents to come. I got up, showered, and Theo started a cozy fire in the fireplace. I bounced on the birth ball and listened to worship music and had like….two contractions. My parents arrived and that was that. Nothing else happened. So now I was super overdue pregnant, annoyed, exhausted, and I had gotten everyone up at 4 in the morning for nothing!

Four days overdue. AND I WAS SO OVER IT!!!!! My kids were so over it. They were so tired of seeing me pregnant every morning and being picked up at school by a pregnant Mom. WE ALL JUST WANTED THE BABY TO ARRIVE!!

At five days overdue, my friend Gabby (who is also a doula) texted me and said that she was going to take me to a local museum center/park to go for a walk. I did NOT want to go for a walk. I did not want to see a single living person. I did not want to talk about it. I was so OVER IT and never been in a worst mood in my life. But I dragged myself and the kids to the park with said friend and her kids and we walked around (they walked, I waddled and winced and moaned and groaned haha). After we had walked around a bit, we decided to try to climb the clock tower. It’s 127 steps up, and I tackled those steps like it was my absolute last chance to get this baby out. By this time I was fully convinced that I would be the first person in history to be pregnant for all of eternity.

That evening, I couldn’t even move. My hips and my pelvis and my round ligaments felt every single one of those 127 steps up and down.

6 days overdue. Thursday, March 16. I woke up at 4am to a gush of water. I got out of bed as quickly as I could (which was like a whole 5 minute process) and went to the bathroom and there was a lot of bloody mucus. I was 100% sure it was my water breaking, because that was not pee. (Spoiler: my water hadn’t broken. I have no idea what that was all about). I laid back down and waited for the contractions to come, but not a single contraction or another gush of water happened. We went back to sleep, got up to send the kids off to school and I literally sat around just waiting for a single contraction to get this party started. I went for a walk. I sat on the birth ball. I laid down and read my book. I was getting super annoyed and also knew that if my water had indeed broken, I only had 24 hours to get the baby out. I finally called the birth center and they suggested that I get out a breast pump and pump a little bit to see if that would start contractions.

Around 11 am, I pulled out the breast pump and within 45 seconds of pumping had a STRONG contraction. Then the contractions started slamming into me with NO break in between. Literally, as I pumped I had a 3 minute contraction until I turned the pump off. Even with the pump off, the contractions came every 5-7 minutes and were STRONG. But after about an hour, they would just kind of wear off and then there would be nothing. Theo would drag out the pump again and I would start the cycle over again. Finally, on about round 4 of pumping, the contractions stayed and were not letting up at all.

Around 1pm, my friend Gabby stopped by with some tea and helped me work through some of my contractions. Theo ran out and did some of the animal chores because we knew that this was really labor and we would be gone that evening. I texted a couple people to let them know that they needed to pick up the kids/that I would be unavailable, that Tera couldn’t go to practice, etc. The contractions were SO strong and they were very consistent.

3pm- we hopped in the car and started the drive to the hospital. Since baby had been so low, he is my fourth delivery, and we were 30 minutes from the hospital, we didn’t want to cut it too close. I had many strong contractions in the car on the way there. Once we got there, they sent us into triage. I HATE triage. Usually, I have gone straight to the birth center and skipped triage, but for some reason this time they insisted I go to triage for a non stress test, to test to see if my water had broken, and to see how far my cervix was dilated. As soon as they got me strapped into the triage bed, my labor slowed way down. I knew I was too tense and that my body was going to regress, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at that point. They said I was about 5.5 centimeters dilated and that my water hadn’t broken and that I was indeed probably in “early labor” and they would go ahead and admit me. This was really discouraging to me, because I was pretty aware of my body and my labor and knew that I was further along than that before having to go into triage.

They finally got me to my room at the birth center, and things immediately started to pick up. The nurse and midwife started unpacking all the delivery items and were right there telling me that I was having significant contractions and that it wouldn’t be too long. They said the triage nurses were probably wrong and I was indeed further along than what they indicated.

5pm- I sat on the birth ball next to the bed and leaned my hands on the bed during each contraction. Theo sat behind me and applied counter pressure to my lower back. The contractions were coming very close together now and were very strong. Sometime in there my Mom also arrived as my secondary support person. Unfortunately, the doula that had been with me for all my other births had to have surgery that same week and wasn’t able to be at this birth.

After laboring like that for about an hour, the midwife encouraged me to get up and try a different position. This time I stood next to the bed and leaned on a birth ball on the bed. I tried so hard to sway my hips and work with each contraction, but it’s so hard to not tense up during each contraction! Things were strong and consistent and really there was only very small breaks between contractions.

After about another hour of that, the midwife had me change positions again and work through some contractions on the toilet. I really didn’t want to do this, but I complied and then actually found that I liked that position. By this point, everyone was whispering the word “transition” as I started to have major meltdowns during and after each contraction. Things like “I CAN’T DO THIS, I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS, THIS IS TOO HARD, I’M DONE.”

The midwife once again said it was time to move and kept asking me if I was ready to push. Everyone in the room kept saying “You are doing SUCH a great job” and I would glare at them directly and say “Well, I don’t want to be doing a great job because I don’t want to be doing this AT ALL!” In my mind, I wondered if they said that to all laboring women, as if they would ever say, “well, you are doing a terrible job.” to someone haha.

At one point, I changed out of my pants and shirt into a birth gown that someone had given me. We slipped the birth gown on and I said “oooooh, it has pockets” and everyone started laughing. That was so random but it actually made me smile.

8 pm- At this point, I was so done. I was so exhausted. The contractions had almost no break in between and were SO STRONG. Theo said that he was pushing against my back and I was pressing against him so hard I was almost knocking him over! The next day my lower back felt bruised from how hard I was pushing against Theo’s pressure. I was absolutely over it. I didn’t feel any urge to push and I felt like I was working SO hard and there was no progress happening. Everyone could see that I had reached the absolute end of myself, but not the end of labor.

The midwife looked at me at this point and said she could try to help me make progress by checking my cervix and breaking my water. At that point, I think I would have done anything to get to the end faster. She had me climb up on the bed and she checked me to find that I was 9cm. At that point, she broke my water and it GUSHED everywhere. I still don’t know what the first initial 4am gush was, because *this* was for sure my water breaking. She warned me that the contractions would probably start to get much stronger and that things would move fast, but I honestly didn’t notice much of a difference. The contractions before and after were both SO strong and came so close together. Unfortunately, there was also meconium in the water and the nurse + midwife were a bit concerned about being able to monitor baby’s heart rate.

The sweet midwife looked me in the eyes and said, gently but firmly, “you need to get this baby out in 30 minutes or we are going to have to transfer you so we can monitor the baby better”. I stood by the bed again and labored for about 20 more minutes, and by that point my contractions were starting to turn into strong pushes. I knew that this was good and I was happy about being able to push while standing. However, I did that for a few contractions and I just knew that something was a little off. I looked around the room and said something like “I feel like he’s stuck. I feel like he’s not moving when I push”. Again, I know that I’m no professional, but when it comes to my body I’m usually fairly aware of what is happening. And something just felt off.

The midwife immediately asked me to climb on the bed and lay on my right side. I did NOT want to do this, because the same thing had happened with Ezra and I had to deliver in that position. I had felt like a beetle stuck on my back, and I didn’t want to feel like that again. But it was the best position for the midwife to monitor Ori’s heart rate and help me get him out, and I had enough presence of mind to realize that there was a safety issue for the baby here, and I lay down on the bed.

She went to check me one more time to see if he really was stuck, and she said, “NOPE! He’s crowning! Here we go!” and that was when they all started encouraging me to push very hard. My Mom was at my head, Theo and the midwife and nurse were holding my legs and monitoring the heartbeat. With a few pushes, I pushed his head out- finally!!

Usually, pushing out the head is the hardest part. Then baby kind of corkscrews his or her shoulders out and the rest of birth just kind of happens. But not Orion. Once his head was born, nothing else happened. That boys shoulders were STUCK. Stuck shoulders can happen in a normal birth, and it can unfortunately lead to a serious emergency called shoulder dystocia, so at this point everyone was a little bit alarmed. They remained calm but I could tell that I needed to make this birth happen *now*, and the midwife was going to help me by reaching her hand in and trying to pull out a shoulder. She did warn me that it would hurt, and it did. But thankfully within 4 contractions we got his shoulders unstuck and then he was quickly and easily born- at 8:56pm, just 4 minutes left in my window of time before I would need to be transferred ;).

He immediately cried and they put him right on my chest. I was also sobbing with complete relief that it was OVER. FINALLY OVER. I couldn’t even move or think or talk or anything- just total relief.

Somehow, even with how stuck Orion was, I didn’t have any tearing and all the after delivery stuff went really well. The birth center gave us about two hours to cuddle and bond and get cleaned up before they weighed and measured him and he ended up weighing 8lb 7oz. The first night at the birth center was rough since they had to come in and check on us every two hours, and those post birth uterine contractions are no fun. But I was so, so, so glad to not be pregnant anymore. It’s such a relief to not have any nausea after 10 months of being sick every day!

My parents brought the kids by the next morning to meet their baby brother, and it was the SWEETEST! (Kiah had a cough, which is why he is wearing a mask). That after birth high is like nothing else, let me tell ya! We also had a visit from Corinne later that afternoon. We were constantly interrupted all day long and Theo and I were both about to be climbing the walls from being stuck in that room for 36 hours! We were able to leave Saturday morning and head home and begin our life as a family of six.

And that was Orion’s birth! It was honestly my longest and most difficult birth, which kind of threw me off since I was expecting it to be much quicker and easier, especially considering how low he was! Still, I am thankful for the health and safety of both of us, and for my incredibly supportive birth team that was with me all the way through!