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| Trying out our new stroller on Feb 2. |
The night of February 7, 2020, Mason and I went to Zaxby's to celebrate making it to the end of the week. I got a club sandwich and it was delicious. We ate and it was great, and one of us remarked that this might be the last time we go out to eat before we had a baby! It was exciting but also very surreal and almost impossible to imagine.
That night we went to bed, and around midnight I got up to go potty and I lost my mucus plug (GROSS, btw). I went back to bed and started googling what it meant, and I read that I could either go into labor in a few hours or it could be as long as a few weeks!
Then I started to have some serious lower back pain,which happened all the time at the end of my pregnancy. I laid in bed trying to fall asleep for what seemed like forever, but it got to the point that I had to get up and move around. I walked around, did some stretches, and got on my knees and hugged the exercise ball. Around 2:15 am, I went back to bed. My back was still hurting, but it was a little better.
Then at 3:15 am, I started feeling like there was a GIANT knife in my pelvis. It hurt. The baby started moving like crazy! Then the stabbing feelings became more rhythmic, and I started to wonder if I could be in labor. I decided there was no way, because everyone had told me that first time moms always think they're in labor, so they go to the hospital and they usually aren't and they get sent home.
At 4 am, I went to the potty again and decided to wake Mason up. I told him I thought I might be having contractions. He was very sleepy but also super excited. We decided we should probably start some laundry in case we needed to go to the hospital later that day. We would have plenty of time, because this was my first baby and they always take forever to come, right? Plus, there was no way she'd be 5 days early, because first babies are usually late, right?
So we started the laundry and started watching an episode of Community and trying to time my contractions. We didn't get all the way through the episode before I asked Mason to give me a blessing. I was hurting pretty bad, and I wanted some comfort before it got much farther along. Mason gave me and blessing that was short and sweet, and exactly what I needed. He said I would be able to be calm as we got closer to meeting our baby, and that I would have the mental strength to have this baby the way I wanted to.
After that, I called Mom. I tried to tell her what had been going on, but in my exhausted state I think I accidentally told her that my contractions had only been coming for about an hour. I told her about how it felt like a knife in my tummy and she said to try to back to bed, and not to freak out. So I went back to bed, and tried my best to relax. After a while of laying there, I was about to drift off to sleep, when all of a sudden my water broke! I said MASON MY WATER BROKE and he rushed in and we both started freaking out. I started shaking like crazy and he helped me get up and calm down and breathe. Then he started flying around like crazy throwing random things into a suitcase to go to the hospital. (We ended up not using hardly ANYTHING we packed. We brought tons of clothes for me, and tons of clothes for Abby, and no clothes for Mason. And we brought like 100 diapers and wipes. And we forgot things like shampoo and soap. And we also forgot my wallet.) What's that you say, we should have packed our hospital bag earlier? Well, we thought she would be late! It never crossed our minds that she would actually be early!!!
I called Mom again and she told me to hurry out the door! The baby was already suuuuper low by this point, so standing up was a painful challenge, let alone putting on a new pair of pants! But I managed to have a different pair of sweatpants on by the time Mason finished packing the bag, and then we threw the bag in the car and he helped me walk very slowly to the car and get in. I'm not kidding when I say she was so low I thought she might just come out in the car. It was crazy! Luckily, after my water broke I didn't have any more contractions until we got to the hospital (about a 15 minute drive).
We got to the hospital and Mason was going to let me out close to the door. I opened the car door, got one leg out, and then had the biggest contraction yet! I couldn't move! And then a car pulled up behind us and was waiting for us to get out of the way! It was so stressful! Finally I just pulled my leg back into the car and told Mason to go, and we drove out of the guy's way with my car door still open (I had to sit up pretty far to be able to close the door, and that just wasn't going to happen.) Then we had to park like 100 miles away. Mason helped me to walk to the door at a snail's pace. Then we got into the hospital and I thought someone would run up to me with a wheelchair or something, and say something like, "Make way! This lady's having a baby!" as he rushed me through a bunch of hallways with double doors and whatnot. That didn't happen. Instead I had to continue to walk all the way up to the labor and delivery place, which was another 100 miles away and took foreverrrrr.
Finally we got there around 8:00 am and we got all admitted and everything and I got in my gown and they said they would check to see if my water had actually broken. All the nurses that helped me were SO nice. When one of them checked to see if my water was really broken, a TON more fluid came out and got everywhere and was so gross. Then they gave me an IV and wheeled me into the delivery room around 10. The nurse left us alone and we started working through the contractions together.
This is the very detailed version of the story. If you want to get the watered down version, there are 2 videos at the end that we sent to our families after she was born.
In the beginning, I was having contractions so the doctor said not to start pitocin yet. Our nurse said, "I'm so glad she said not to start pitocin. Pitocin makes it hurt so bad." Then like 15 minutes later the same nurse came in and said it was time to start pitocin! I was so afraid because of what she had said. But they started me off on a very small dose (she said it was smaller than they normally give people) and they gradually increased it from there.
I started off in the bed, then sat on a birthing ball for a while and Mason fed me orange jello, which was delicious. He was amazing the entire time. Each time I had a contraction he would stand in front of me and I would wrap my arms around him and hold on to his belt loops until it was over. Then I threw up my frosted flakes I had eaten for breakfast in a trash can, and Mason got really mad that the nurses didn't come in when that happened. And then later the nurse brought in a rocking chair that was amazing. I tried standing up and leaning on the bed, but standing up put SO much pressure deep in my pelvis that I thought I would die, so I sat down most of the time.
When we first got to the hospital and they checked my cervix, I was at 2 cm and 90% effaced. Then after I had been in the delivery room having super painful contractions for about 3 hours (around 1 pm), they came in and checked me. The nurse said she could hear me through the walls and she offered me something for the pain. I said I thought I'd try to hold out a little longer. Then she checked me and said I was only at 2 1/2 cm, (and 100% effaced)! It was the worst news ever! I felt so defeated and like this was going to take FOREVER to dilate to a 10 and like I could not handle that. The nurse asked if there was anything she could do for me and I started sobbing and I said, "Isn't there something we can do to dilate faster?" She said not really, it would kind of just happen when it happened. But she was very sympathetic and kept telling me what an amazing job I was doing, which I really appreciated.
The whole time I was there, people kept saying how low the baby was. They were like, "You're only this dilated, but she's super low, and your cervix is super thin!"
Then more time went by, I bounced around on the birthing ball, then they checked and I was at a 4. The contractions were getting way worse, and the pitocin kept going up, and the nurses kept saying that my contractions were really close together and I wasn't getting much of a break in between them. The contractions got so bad I told Mason I thought I needed to try the nitrous oxide (which was my plan B. Plan A was to go all natural. And plan C was to get an epidural.) I called the nurse in, and it was a different one than the one who had been there the whole time. I told her I thought I was ready to try the nitrous oxide, and she told me she had her kids naturally and maybe I should try this other position, and that worked really well for a little bit! (I can't remember what the thing was that she suggested.) I am so glad she is the nurse that came in, because if it had been our normal nurse she would have just given me the nitrous. But this nurse told me I could do it, to just breathe and get as much oxygen in as I could, and to relax all the way down to my bottom each time a contraction came. She was a HUGE blessing!
Then after a while I got back in bed with the peanut ball. They checked me again and I had gone up to about 6 cm... I was progressing much more quickly now! At this point I think I was in so much pain and so exhausted that my brain just stopped processing everything because I don't really remember much else that happened until the baby was born. So everything now is coming from Mason's memory. Here's what he said in the Marco Polo video we sent to our families:
"Bri was in the bed with the peanut ball between her legs, and every once in a while when she had a contraction the baby's heart rate would drop. So they were like, "uh, let's do something else!" And Bri says she didn't realize what was going on. I was watching the monitor and things, and I could hear them talking, but Bri was having contractions and so I was like AH. So they had her get on her hands and knees in the bed. They also gave her an oxygen mask. So she stayed like that for a little while and the baby's heart rate stopped dropping when she was having contractions, and they kept checking it.
"So she was doing all of that and they would check her every once in a while and they'd be like, "Oh, it's really moving along really fast!" So then we were getting there, and the nurse that had been with us all day was like, "Oh, she's almost ready to start pushing!" and the doctor lady that was there today was not in the room! She was with some other lady! And so all the nurses were whispering, "Ah I think she's ready to push but the doctor isn't here!" and Bri wasn't aware of any of it, because Bri was doing her thing, but I was like, AAAAAHH OH NO THE DUMB DOCTOR ISN'T COMING AND THIS IS GOING TO BE THE WORST." (Can I just say at this point, that Mason gave me no indication that he was freaking out! He just stood by the bed and every time I had a contraction I would say "Mason!" and feel really scared, but then he would give me his hand and I'd squeeze it and it would make me feel so much better. He was there for every single contraction.)
"So it went on like that for a long time, and then eventually Bri went back onto her side, and she had the peanut ball again, but everything was better by then, the baby's heart rate wasn't dropping. So by about 3, they were kind of like, "Oh, I think we're getting really close." That was when she was still on all fours. And then a little while later, the contractions were really strong, and they kept saying, "Do you feel like you need to push down? Do you feel like you need to push down?" But they just kept pushing back cuz the doctor wasn't getting there. Bri said she didn't feel like she didn't need to push down for a long time.
"So eventually the nurse that was there all day said, "Well, if you feel like you need to push down, then you can push down." and the other nurses were like, "Oh, okay, waaaah... this might happen without the doctor being here!" But then around 3:15 or 3:30 or something, the doctor finished what she was doing in the other room. But Bri had started pushing already, and so she got back down so she was laying on her back, and then a billion people came into the room! She started pushing when she was still on her side with the peanut ball, and she threw up again (more frosted flakes...) and the nurses were there and they gave her this cool little expandable cup thing to throw up in. I thought they were neat.
"Then what happened? Then you had a baby. Isn't that what happened Bri?
"Once everybody was in the room, they were like, "OKAY, PUSH!" and she would push and push and push and the head wasn't coming out. So she was pushing and she was screaming, because it hurt. And then there was this older Asian woman who was a nurse, and she said, "Don't holler when you're pushing. When you holler you don't push good. So hold your breath and push."
Okay here's one part I actually remember- I was pushing FOREVER and I still had on the oxygen mask, and I started to feel like she was never going to come out. Then Mason looked down there and ran back up to my side and said "Bri! I saw her head! She has hair!" and I said, "You saw it?!" And he said yes and I felt SO HAPPY and like we might actually have a baby soon. And I remember that asian lady too, telling me to quit hollering. She also kept saying, "Push like you need to have a bowel movement," in a robot voice over and over and over and it was sort of annoying but also sort of calming.
Anyway...
"Then after much pushing, and much laboring, the baby came out and she was just great! She kind of cried a little bit, but then she was just so happy. Once she was laying there she was just so happy. And she opened her eyes and she was looking around, and she's just a great baby. And she moves her hands a lot. When they were going to weigh her, she kicked her legs straight up into the air, and she's just a fun baby. And you probably already saw, but she was 15 pounds... no, 8 pounds 15 ounces... (Bri interjects--"SEVEN!") Oh, 7 pounds and 15 oz. 15.2 oz I think it was. I think she was 20 something inches long."
Also, they put her on my chest and she threw up a ton of green meconium and that was a little freaky.
Having her be in the outside world with us was so surreal. I felt like I was dreaming for hours afterward. She was perfect in every way, and so incredibly beautiful, and totally healthy. We felt (and still feel) so blessed to have her be a part of our family!!!
After that, I called Mom. I tried to tell her what had been going on, but in my exhausted state I think I accidentally told her that my contractions had only been coming for about an hour. I told her about how it felt like a knife in my tummy and she said to try to back to bed, and not to freak out. So I went back to bed, and tried my best to relax. After a while of laying there, I was about to drift off to sleep, when all of a sudden my water broke! I said MASON MY WATER BROKE and he rushed in and we both started freaking out. I started shaking like crazy and he helped me get up and calm down and breathe. Then he started flying around like crazy throwing random things into a suitcase to go to the hospital. (We ended up not using hardly ANYTHING we packed. We brought tons of clothes for me, and tons of clothes for Abby, and no clothes for Mason. And we brought like 100 diapers and wipes. And we forgot things like shampoo and soap. And we also forgot my wallet.) What's that you say, we should have packed our hospital bag earlier? Well, we thought she would be late! It never crossed our minds that she would actually be early!!!
I called Mom again and she told me to hurry out the door! The baby was already suuuuper low by this point, so standing up was a painful challenge, let alone putting on a new pair of pants! But I managed to have a different pair of sweatpants on by the time Mason finished packing the bag, and then we threw the bag in the car and he helped me walk very slowly to the car and get in. I'm not kidding when I say she was so low I thought she might just come out in the car. It was crazy! Luckily, after my water broke I didn't have any more contractions until we got to the hospital (about a 15 minute drive).
We got to the hospital and Mason was going to let me out close to the door. I opened the car door, got one leg out, and then had the biggest contraction yet! I couldn't move! And then a car pulled up behind us and was waiting for us to get out of the way! It was so stressful! Finally I just pulled my leg back into the car and told Mason to go, and we drove out of the guy's way with my car door still open (I had to sit up pretty far to be able to close the door, and that just wasn't going to happen.) Then we had to park like 100 miles away. Mason helped me to walk to the door at a snail's pace. Then we got into the hospital and I thought someone would run up to me with a wheelchair or something, and say something like, "Make way! This lady's having a baby!" as he rushed me through a bunch of hallways with double doors and whatnot. That didn't happen. Instead I had to continue to walk all the way up to the labor and delivery place, which was another 100 miles away and took foreverrrrr.
Finally we got there around 8:00 am and we got all admitted and everything and I got in my gown and they said they would check to see if my water had actually broken. All the nurses that helped me were SO nice. When one of them checked to see if my water was really broken, a TON more fluid came out and got everywhere and was so gross. Then they gave me an IV and wheeled me into the delivery room around 10. The nurse left us alone and we started working through the contractions together.
This is the very detailed version of the story. If you want to get the watered down version, there are 2 videos at the end that we sent to our families after she was born.
In the beginning, I was having contractions so the doctor said not to start pitocin yet. Our nurse said, "I'm so glad she said not to start pitocin. Pitocin makes it hurt so bad." Then like 15 minutes later the same nurse came in and said it was time to start pitocin! I was so afraid because of what she had said. But they started me off on a very small dose (she said it was smaller than they normally give people) and they gradually increased it from there.
I started off in the bed, then sat on a birthing ball for a while and Mason fed me orange jello, which was delicious. He was amazing the entire time. Each time I had a contraction he would stand in front of me and I would wrap my arms around him and hold on to his belt loops until it was over. Then I threw up my frosted flakes I had eaten for breakfast in a trash can, and Mason got really mad that the nurses didn't come in when that happened. And then later the nurse brought in a rocking chair that was amazing. I tried standing up and leaning on the bed, but standing up put SO much pressure deep in my pelvis that I thought I would die, so I sat down most of the time.
When we first got to the hospital and they checked my cervix, I was at 2 cm and 90% effaced. Then after I had been in the delivery room having super painful contractions for about 3 hours (around 1 pm), they came in and checked me. The nurse said she could hear me through the walls and she offered me something for the pain. I said I thought I'd try to hold out a little longer. Then she checked me and said I was only at 2 1/2 cm, (and 100% effaced)! It was the worst news ever! I felt so defeated and like this was going to take FOREVER to dilate to a 10 and like I could not handle that. The nurse asked if there was anything she could do for me and I started sobbing and I said, "Isn't there something we can do to dilate faster?" She said not really, it would kind of just happen when it happened. But she was very sympathetic and kept telling me what an amazing job I was doing, which I really appreciated.
The whole time I was there, people kept saying how low the baby was. They were like, "You're only this dilated, but she's super low, and your cervix is super thin!"
Then more time went by, I bounced around on the birthing ball, then they checked and I was at a 4. The contractions were getting way worse, and the pitocin kept going up, and the nurses kept saying that my contractions were really close together and I wasn't getting much of a break in between them. The contractions got so bad I told Mason I thought I needed to try the nitrous oxide (which was my plan B. Plan A was to go all natural. And plan C was to get an epidural.) I called the nurse in, and it was a different one than the one who had been there the whole time. I told her I thought I was ready to try the nitrous oxide, and she told me she had her kids naturally and maybe I should try this other position, and that worked really well for a little bit! (I can't remember what the thing was that she suggested.) I am so glad she is the nurse that came in, because if it had been our normal nurse she would have just given me the nitrous. But this nurse told me I could do it, to just breathe and get as much oxygen in as I could, and to relax all the way down to my bottom each time a contraction came. She was a HUGE blessing!
Then after a while I got back in bed with the peanut ball. They checked me again and I had gone up to about 6 cm... I was progressing much more quickly now! At this point I think I was in so much pain and so exhausted that my brain just stopped processing everything because I don't really remember much else that happened until the baby was born. So everything now is coming from Mason's memory. Here's what he said in the Marco Polo video we sent to our families:
"Bri was in the bed with the peanut ball between her legs, and every once in a while when she had a contraction the baby's heart rate would drop. So they were like, "uh, let's do something else!" And Bri says she didn't realize what was going on. I was watching the monitor and things, and I could hear them talking, but Bri was having contractions and so I was like AH. So they had her get on her hands and knees in the bed. They also gave her an oxygen mask. So she stayed like that for a little while and the baby's heart rate stopped dropping when she was having contractions, and they kept checking it.
"So she was doing all of that and they would check her every once in a while and they'd be like, "Oh, it's really moving along really fast!" So then we were getting there, and the nurse that had been with us all day was like, "Oh, she's almost ready to start pushing!" and the doctor lady that was there today was not in the room! She was with some other lady! And so all the nurses were whispering, "Ah I think she's ready to push but the doctor isn't here!" and Bri wasn't aware of any of it, because Bri was doing her thing, but I was like, AAAAAHH OH NO THE DUMB DOCTOR ISN'T COMING AND THIS IS GOING TO BE THE WORST." (Can I just say at this point, that Mason gave me no indication that he was freaking out! He just stood by the bed and every time I had a contraction I would say "Mason!" and feel really scared, but then he would give me his hand and I'd squeeze it and it would make me feel so much better. He was there for every single contraction.)
"So it went on like that for a long time, and then eventually Bri went back onto her side, and she had the peanut ball again, but everything was better by then, the baby's heart rate wasn't dropping. So by about 3, they were kind of like, "Oh, I think we're getting really close." That was when she was still on all fours. And then a little while later, the contractions were really strong, and they kept saying, "Do you feel like you need to push down? Do you feel like you need to push down?" But they just kept pushing back cuz the doctor wasn't getting there. Bri said she didn't feel like she didn't need to push down for a long time.
"So eventually the nurse that was there all day said, "Well, if you feel like you need to push down, then you can push down." and the other nurses were like, "Oh, okay, waaaah... this might happen without the doctor being here!" But then around 3:15 or 3:30 or something, the doctor finished what she was doing in the other room. But Bri had started pushing already, and so she got back down so she was laying on her back, and then a billion people came into the room! She started pushing when she was still on her side with the peanut ball, and she threw up again (more frosted flakes...) and the nurses were there and they gave her this cool little expandable cup thing to throw up in. I thought they were neat.
"Then what happened? Then you had a baby. Isn't that what happened Bri?
"Once everybody was in the room, they were like, "OKAY, PUSH!" and she would push and push and push and the head wasn't coming out. So she was pushing and she was screaming, because it hurt. And then there was this older Asian woman who was a nurse, and she said, "Don't holler when you're pushing. When you holler you don't push good. So hold your breath and push."
Okay here's one part I actually remember- I was pushing FOREVER and I still had on the oxygen mask, and I started to feel like she was never going to come out. Then Mason looked down there and ran back up to my side and said "Bri! I saw her head! She has hair!" and I said, "You saw it?!" And he said yes and I felt SO HAPPY and like we might actually have a baby soon. And I remember that asian lady too, telling me to quit hollering. She also kept saying, "Push like you need to have a bowel movement," in a robot voice over and over and over and it was sort of annoying but also sort of calming.
Anyway...
"Then after much pushing, and much laboring, the baby came out and she was just great! She kind of cried a little bit, but then she was just so happy. Once she was laying there she was just so happy. And she opened her eyes and she was looking around, and she's just a great baby. And she moves her hands a lot. When they were going to weigh her, she kicked her legs straight up into the air, and she's just a fun baby. And you probably already saw, but she was 15 pounds... no, 8 pounds 15 ounces... (Bri interjects--"SEVEN!") Oh, 7 pounds and 15 oz. 15.2 oz I think it was. I think she was 20 something inches long."
Also, they put her on my chest and she threw up a ton of green meconium and that was a little freaky.
Having her be in the outside world with us was so surreal. I felt like I was dreaming for hours afterward. She was perfect in every way, and so incredibly beautiful, and totally healthy. We felt (and still feel) so blessed to have her be a part of our family!!!
Our first night in the hospital. This was the view from my bed.
The hospital gave Abigail a birthday cheesecake! She let us have it.
This is Allison, the best nurse on the planet. I cannot express how wonderful she is. Heavenly Father knew exactly who I needed to be my nurse, and I'm so grateful He sent her to me. She was so amazing!
Allison showing us how to bathe Abigail.
We've loved her from the start, and are loving having her at home. She's so great! We love you, Abby!
Here's the videos:
Part 1:
Part 2:
This is so beautiful!!! And I wish the comments had emoji options, because I just can't express without a face how proud I am of you, my beautiful, strong, amazing sister!
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