i have been waiting to sit down and write this birth story for a while now; there are few spare minutes i have in a day now 🙂 our sweet poppy has arrived and we are so in love with her. i literally can’t not stop kissing her lips. the adjustment of 1-2 kids has not been too bad. there is a lot more timing that has to go on, but overall we are surviving and taking it day by day!
the morning of bastian’s birthday i woke up to some light contractions around 2am. panic set in;Â my fear of having kids with the same birthday might be a reality. i was able to go back to sleep and would wake up to more contractions throughout the early morning, so i wasn’t positive that labor was actually taking place. then around 6am i felt a weird sensation down there and went to the bathroom to see i lost my mucus plug (i hate that word…). well, i thought to myself, this is it!
i was so excited to finally meet our daughter but so sad that bastian may not have the third birthday i was hoping for. excitement and sadness consumed me. i wanted to at least make bastian’s birthday feel special, so i went downstairs and started decorating the house with streamers and presents. i knew that if we could just get a birthday breakfast in of mickey mouse chocolate chip pancakes and present opening done before things got tough, it could be somewhat of a birthday for bastian.
i went upstairs to tell brian the news, and brian was somewhat taken back but not overly shocked. around 7:15 we heard the birthday boy awake in his bed and went in to tell him happy birthday. he was so excited, i can still see his face when he asked if his friends were here yet and looked out the window. at that moment, my heart broke and i could have just cried right there. i knew we had to try to give him a real birthday party. we went downstairs and started cooking breakfast. my contractions were mild and about 15 min. apart so i made the decision to move bastian’s birthday party up to 11am. we called our family and told them the news. everyone was pretty excited and thought it would be extra convenient for them to have two birthdays knocked out in one party haha. brian and i both had our moments of tears filling our eyes knowing that our sweet boy was soon going to be a big brother and no longer the only child.
we had our family over and luckily my mother-in-law and mom brought all the food because otherwise it would have been cheese and crackers haha! bastian had a ton of fun and got tons of great gifts and attention. my contractions were mild still and only 15 minutes apart, so i was able to be present at his party. at about 2pm i started getting tired so i snuck upstairs to take a little nap. i managed to get about 20 minutes of sleep before i woke up to my sweet birthday boy not be such a sweet sleeper. i went into his room to settle him down and read him a book.
once he was down, i went downstairs and everyone had left. i was a little upset that things weren’t going any quicker at that point. with bastian’s birth, things were intense right from the get go, and this labor had dragged on all day. i started to wonder if this baby really was coming today. i had wrapped my mind around the idea that they were sharing birthdays and now who knew! i did know that poppy was sunny side up, and my guess was that was why the labor was not progressing. i texted my doula at 3pm to ask what she thought i should do. she told me to try two exercises that might help the baby flip for the next hour and then let her know how it was going. the first exercise was to lay sideways on the edge of a bed and take your top leg hanging off. the contractions started to progress to 9-12 mins. apart. then all of a sudden i felt a “clunk” in my belly. i wasn’t sure if i imagined it or if maybe that was the baby flipping.
after about 30 min of lying like that i started in on the next exercise; walking the curb. my mom stayed inside while bastian slept and brian and i walked the curb of our street. i am sure the neighbors thought we were crazy! haha, good thing we all like each other! things really started to progress. with these contractions i had to really breathe through. i leaned against brian and felt them coming on quicker, about every 4 mins. or so. i totally felt in control and was geared up for the challenge of giving birth. i texted my doula at 4pm and told her things were progressing. she told me to go inside, lay down and see if the contractions would continue to come. once i laid down on the couch, things really picked up. i went into my zone and i barely knew what’s going on around me. i just focused on the next contraction and resting with my eyes closed in between each contraction. i could sense my mom and brian starting to worry that things were heating up! haha. i texted the doula around 4:30pm that she needed to come over.
i was now really making some noise but again, totally felt in control. i don’t think i moved for the next 30 mins. haha. around 5pm the doula arrived and bastian had woken up from his nap. he was really terrified of the noises i was making and didn’t want to come too close, poor guy haha. my mother-in-law took bastian and my doula sat next to me, comforting me and assessing the situation. brian was running around the house packing the car and trying to keep himself busy. again, my mom was in panic mode that we needed to go to the hospital. i stayed in my zone, not letting anyone bother me. when i get to a certain point during labor, i am not able to talk or make decisions. so after an intense contraction that brought sweat to my face, kelly my doula, said it was time to head to the hospital. it was 5:20 when we started making our way to the car. now mind you, when you are in active labor, you can’t just jump up off the couch and walk to the car. you have to time them with your contractions, and then the second you move another contraction comes on. so, slowly we made our way to the car.
kelly sat in the back seat with me and thank god she did! the drive was around 20 mins. to get to the hospital. i wasn’t really sure how far along i was in the labor process but i knew that once i got to the hospital i wanted to be in the tub. i told brian and kelly that i hope this baby doesn’t take too long to come out! well, little did i know…
we pull up to the hospital and we start slowly making our way inside around 5:45pm. in the lobby i had a big contraction, like one on top of the other. i stayed so calm, i kind of surprised myself with how well i was handling it! maybe i wasn’t that far along i thought. we made our way to the elevator and then the labor and delivery floor. the gal at the front desk told brian he needed to fill out some paper work and bam! i had a real big contraction leaning up against the wall and i shouted that i was going to go to the bathroom in my pants. my doula was like, that’s the baby! haha. i think every nurse on the floor must have heard that last contraction because the doors opened and they all ushered me into my room. i was waddling down the hall with my hands “holding in” what i thought was a number 2. the second i got into the room i opened the bathroom door, pulled down my pants and WHOOSH my water broke.
i had a big contraction and pushed really hard (i had no control over that push) and thank god there was a nurse in there because she saw poppy’s head and sternly told me i was not having my baby in the bathroom. she guided me over to the bed and told me i had to breathe through the next few contractions before the doctor came in. ahhh, please don’t make me hold off pushing! well luckily the doctor was right there. she gloved up and two pushes later, at 5:52pm our sweet poppy was born. she was born a couple minutes before we were even checked into the hospital 🙂
seeing her for the first time was amazing. she was so sweet, i was instantly so in love with her. everything about her was perfect and i was in motherly bliss. brian had to sit down because he thought he might pass out because of how fast everything went. we stared at our baby for the next hour, told the nurses how sorry we were that we didn’t come sooner! i swore that i had no idea i was that far along. kelly told me that she thinks i must have gone through transition at home. well, i certainly didn’t have a clue that things would go that fast. about 10 mins. after arriving at the hospital we had poppy. the nurses i think liked the excitement 🙂
poppy’s birth is something i will never forget. i wouldn’t change a thing about it. she is so perfect and everyone is doing pretty well adjusting to life as a family of four. i can’t even tell you how much i love this little girl. she is such a good little baby and i can’t stop kissing her sweet lips. poppy, you are my perfect little girl and i love you more than you know!
amalia misc. 