Our Birth Story: Blake's Grand Arrival

The photos included in this post were done by Sarah Schwartz Photography.

Giving birth was definitely different than I had ever expected. The morning of October 16th, 2019, I started to feel contractions. I struggled with the word “contractions'“ because I had no idea what I was feeling and I didn’t even know if what I was feeling were contractions. Everyone would just say, you’ll know when you feel them. I absolutely hated hearing this because it gave no description whatsoever.

When I first started to feel my contractions, it was between 4 and 5 am. I had woken up to go to the bathroom and immediately started to feel them. They felt like a menstrual cramp at first. Nothing crazy, just some discomfort every couple of minutes. I was having them pretty consistently and Joe had decided to call the doctor to let them know that I was currently having contractions and to be prepared if we needed to come in. Let me remind you, I was already 3 centimeters dilated and 70% effaced so labor could have happened at any moment.

We decided to stay home from work that day (obviously we thought we were going to have a baby). And we decided not to tell either of our parents or family members (sorry mom and dad) because we were not sure exactly what was happening or how long it was going to take before we headed off to the hospital.

Around 9 am we had an acupuncturist come to our house to try and speed up the process. We have heard so many great things about acupuncturist doing their thing and then people having a baby within the next couple hours. Our doula had suggested someone that she worked with on so many different occasions. This was definitely something new for me. I had never seen an acupuncturist before and I was kind of nervous. I just vision all of these needles poking out of my skin and how that must feel. The acupuncturist explained me that I shouldn’t feel the needles besides a little poke as they are going in and then I would forget that they are even there. I was on the floor kneeling and leaning over the couch. She put the needles in my low back, ankles and hands. You do feel a little poke as they go in but you really don’t feel them after that. I was super surprised by this! I could feel the pressure with the ones in my hands though. I stayed in that position for about an hour. After the hour was up, she took the needles out and massaged the points where the needles were. My back and feet didn’t feel quite the pressure that my hands had. My hands were sore after. I am not sure if it was a psychological thing because I could actually see the needles in my hands versus the ones in my back and feet but I felt like I needed to continue to massage my hands after she left. It was such a cool feeling having someone come to our house and to experience acupuncture. From there, things really started to speed up.

As the day went along, we went for walks around our apartment complex. Hunter really enjoyed this day because we spent most of it outside with him versus him being cooped up all day while we were at work. I was starting to feel stronger contractions as we walked around more. I would constantly have to take breaks from walking to experience a contraction. I would just squat and breathe through each one as they got stronger and more consistent. We used an app to track the contractions so we would know when it would be time to have our doula come over or head to the hospital.

Around 5pm, we decided to have our doula come to our house because contractions were getting stronger and closer together. At this point, I had been using a pregnancy ball to get through my contractions. It felt way better to sit on the ball than it did anywhere else at the time. Our doula, Jill, was helping me with my breathing at each contraction. It was so nice to have someone additional to Joe to help focus on my breathing versus forgetting to breathe through each contraction. And that really does happen. You forget to breathe because the pain is so rough.

Now off to the hospital! We arrived at the emergency room and I walked in with our doula Jill while Joe parked the car. We checked in with the lady at the front desk, who was pretty awesome. She asked “who is checking in?” and I told her “I am having a baby!” and she said “OMG I didn’t even see you belly because you’re so small. I thought one of you was hurt and just needed to see the doctor!” We all got a good kick out of our conversation. She was super helpful and quick with getting someone to take us up to labor and delivery.

Once up in labor and delivery, they put us in a pretty tiny room to assess if I was actually in labor. If you have ever been to the Castle Rock Adventist hospital and in the labor and delivery, then you know the rooms are pretty big. They pride themselves on the size of their rooms and the views of the mountains from those rooms. They have a few rooms that have bathtubs with jets in them, sadly we did not get one of those rooms. They checked vitals and did a cervix exam to see how far I was dilated and we were at 4.5 centimeters and 90% effaced. I totally thought I should’ve been further along after contracting all day, but I guess I’ll trust the nurses on what they say.

They moved us into one of their fancy rooms now and things moved along pretty quickly once we were settled into our room and the contractions continued. I went from 4.5-9 centimeters pretty quickly (like a couple hours) and they went pretty smooth.

I opted out of the epidural. I wanted to see if I could go through with a natural birth. I wanted to test my body and see what it could do. Also the idea of a needle in my spine scared the crap out of me. The main reason was when I was working in San Diego, I had met a lady that had 4 beautiful daughters but had become paralyzed due to the epidural. And that scared me even more. I did not want to take that chance after hearing her story. I have nothing against women who do get the epidural. Everyone has the choice to do what they want to do and I won’t judge one for doing what is best for them.

So cruising right along, once we hit 9 centimeters, we hit a wall. My cervix took FOREVER to open from here on out. I think it took 3-4 hours to go from 9 centimeters to 10 centimeters where I could push but honestly I can’t remember. Apparently there was a small corner of my cervix that wasn’t able to dilate fully because of Blake’s position. This was the hardest few hours of my life. The contractions were so strong that I cried, yelled, and wanted to give up… a lot

Joe was my biggest supporter. Constantly telling me that I could do it and literally letting me crush his hand while I was have contractions. I did get the nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to help ease the pain. This was a great option for us because the nitrous doesn’t effect the baby at all since it doesn’t cross the placenta and only stayed in my lungs for about 30 seconds and then was gone. The nitrous doesn’t take away the pain, but it does help you forget about the pain. It also gets you “high” for about 30 seconds with each puff. The doctors really pushed for me to get the epidural, but I had made it this far, that I was going to push through the last centimeter. Obviously at this time, I did not realize that it was going to take me a few more hours to get to that 10th centimeter. The laughing gas really did help with that last centimeter. I would inhale it during contractions and it gave me something to really focus on.

So the doctors say that nitrous oxide doesn’t work and that people use it for 30 seconds and then opt for the epidural. You have to remember that it doesn’t take the pain away. You can still feel everything during those contractions but you just forget that you're in pain and can focus on something else. They also say women get it too early. If you’re getting nitrous oxide at 3 centimeters then you will probably hate it. This is because your body adjusts to having it and does not help for the rest of those 7 centimeters. I am obviously not a doctor, but this is what I have read and learned about the nitrous oxide option. So if you are considering using nitrous, wait as long as you can before using it so it works better for you.

I am very thankful for the nitrous option. I do think it helped me get through that last centimeter. From what the doctors said, Blake was turned the wrong way and that is why it took so long for my cervix to open up that last centimeter.

I pushed with Blake for almost two hours. I was exhausted by the time the pushing part came. I had been up for over 24 hours and in pain most of the day.

Baby boy finally made his appearance at 9:51 am on 10/17/19. It was beautiful and I love the little boy. He was 6lbs 15oz and 21 inches long. We immediately did skin to skin and I was grateful for the experience I went through to meet our little man. Joe got him adjusted within that first hour to help Blake adapt to this new world and we just held him and loved him for the rest of the time. He was so worth all of the pain during labor and is everything we could have wished for.