birth story

It's been a month since my last post, and oddly, our sweet baby Owen is now 4 weeks old! My doctor kept saying that if I delivered at 38 weeks with the first one, that likely the second would come at a similar time. He was right! This labor was much better than the first....and more normal, just like I had prayed for.

I woke up on Saturday morning around 8:30 a.m. which was generally when Lewis wakes up. I had breakfast and everything seemed normal. Around 9, I passed some blood during a routine potty break. It occurred to me that this could be the beginning of labor, OR it could be the sign of something bad like my placenta pulling away from the uterine wall or something awful like that.

At 9:15 or so, I started noticing contractions. These were slightly more uncomfortable than the Braxton Hicks contractions I'd been having for months. After having several, I jumped in the bathtub and then called my doctor to get his opinion. Since my first labor was all back pain, I had no idea how long this "early" labor might last. But knowing my history with Group B strep, Dr. Gass sent me on to the hospital to have the nurses take a look. My friend, Mandy, came to sit with Lewis so that Justin and I could head out. We got to the hospital at 11 a.m.

My doctor had called and warned the nurses we were coming, so they quickly took care of us and after determining I was in "early" labor, they called the pharmacy to get my antibiotics ordered. The drugs did not arrive until 12:30 p.m., and so I was prepared to labor all afternoon to get six hours of them in my system. Thankfully we didn't have to wait that long. After several innings of Reds baseball, my contractions were getting harder, and I was getting very dilated. When I arrived I was around 5 cm, and remembering to breathe deeply helped me to keep things moving along!

I was nervous about being in a different hospital to deliver this baby, but the nurse I had was sooo helpful and let me get up and move around even with my IV.

With my first labor, I had a half dose of IV narcotics to get me through the whole experience of giving birth. But when the contractions hit, they were just as painful. So this time I figured that I could make it without anything, and I did, but at their peak I could tell a difference between the contractions with drugs and the ones without! Mainly, there wasn't much of a break between them because the pain lingered for me. With the Nubain I could almost sleep in between contractions. Thankfully, once it got really bad I had less than an hour to endure the bad stuff. On the plus side, I was VERY MOTIVATED to push that baby out. Without pain meds I could feel everything as the baby made his way to freedom. The drugs definitely take the edge off, but there are positives and negatives either way.

Just before 3 p.m. I was feeling pressure to push, and so I never got the next round of antibiotics (they had told me I would get more at 4:30 p.m.). In the end I was so focused on pushing that they had to tell me to open my eyes when the baby came out. My doctor went on and on about how pink and healthy Owen looked.

I felt great after delivery, and despite the fact that Owen was at risk for contracting GBS, they let me nurse right away and hold him for the first hour. He was pretty slimy! I didn't get to do that with Lewis, so it felt so nice to be able to bond immediately after all that hard work. The nurses took him to run their tests, and he turned out to be perfectly healthy with no apparent problems. That was a huge relief!

Giving birth is so empowering. You feel like you could conquer the world. I immediately felt the relief of not being pregnant anymore. It had become exhausting for me, and I can't imagine going a full 40 weeks after having both of mine early.

Since then, we have been adjusting to life with two kids. The baby stuff has been easier overall. Breastfeeding has been much better with Owen. I definitely feel much more confident in my ability in that area. The first time around you just feel so clueless, but Owen and I have had a smooth transition there (though the first few days were still tough). The hard part is just being able to entertain another child while nursing. So far so good.

Owen sleeps as well as Lewis, but we are more tired because we have to get up in the morning and we can't sleep when the baby does unless it is during Lewis' naptime. That part has been much harder. But otherwise we are back into the swing of life already whereas with Lewis I felt knocked out for a couple of months almost.

Hopefully I'll get caught up on sleep soon so and inspired to share more about life with two kids.

Here's picture. He was born 6/21/08 at 3:41 p.m. He was 7 lbs. 12 oz. and 20 1/2 inches long.