Kaeden's Birth Story:

Born June 4th at 1:49 AM, Kaeden arrived after an odd-ish labour. He weighed 8 pounds 7 ounces, and is 22 inches long. I woke up with contractions at around 4AM on Monday morning, which came one or two every hour, sometimes longer. They were very strange because I didn't feel my tummy hardening with them at all, but rather I felt like my body was kind of bearing down inside of my pelvis. I wasn't sure if they were real contractions or if I might be coming down with an intestinal flu. They were very different from what I felt during the last two labours. During the day, they never got closer together, so I was almost certain that this wasn't true labour. However, I did notice that they were getting stronger, and quite painful. I phoned Labour and Delivery and they suspected I might be in early labour, but they told me not to come in until the contractions were 5 minutes apart for two hours.

At 8:30 that night suddenly the contractions shifted to 10 minutes apart. I decided to call my babysitter and put her on alert, but she thought it might be best that she come down and stay the night just in case. I didn't want to put her out, thinking that it might be a few more days yet, but she was insistent so I told her that it would be okay. That was a very smart move, because as soon as she got here the contractions were getting quite unbearable. I could however still walk and talk through them, though, and they were still only ten minutes apart. Once the babysitter got here, it wasn't more than half an hour before I picked up the phone out of the blue and called my ride to come and take us to the hospital. I didn't even bother telling anyone else I was calling -lol- they just overheard me. So off we went. I wasn't even sure I was in labour even at that point, but I knew that if I was sick and it hurt like that, that I needed to get to a doctor. My ride arrived at 10:30 and we got to the hospital shortly thereafter. Almost as soon as we walked in the doors, my contractions started to hit at around 2 minutes apart. I was trying to pass it off as five minutes apart, but MIL insisted they were 2 minutes apart :). We went up to L&D and got put in the Early Labour Assessment room. It wasn't long before I was checked out, but I grew increasingly more uncomfortable as I was being questioned by the nurse. They hooked me up to the monitor, and my contractions were barely even registering!! I was so disappointed, because I honestly thought I wasn't in real labour! If they hurt this bad and it was false labour, I was surely in for pure hell when the real thing came.

Dr. comes in to examine me and asks me a few questions. He examined me and says, 'You know what? I'm going to need two fingers for this!' So he switches to two and says, 'You're six, let's get this woman a room!' -LOL- I freaked out knowing I was a six already .. I couldn't believe I'd managed to do all the way up to six at home again. (I was that far along when I showed up to have my son as well) So they move me to a room and started to get me ready for the epidural, which I'd only recently decided I wanted. They got the IV in place (standard procedure), took some blood and got me settled in.

Minnie, my doula arrived shortly thereafter and so I had three great coaches helping me get through the contractions, which were getting quite strong. (I had my husband, MIL and Minnie there) I don't remember much at this point, because everything happened so quickly. The nurse who stayed in the room was excellent. She talked to me and tried to answer all of my questions, meantime the contractions were coming hard, though not really registering on the monitor. They never hardened up my belly like the conventional ones, but they were all right down into my pelvic floor and bottom. It ached inside un-like anything I've ever quite known before, even though I'd delivered twice before. Maybe this is what back labour is like? Anyhow, at this point instinct takes me over and I started doing this really cool guttural moaning through my contractions. I felt like an animal -lol- but it felt really good to control my breathing like that, even though I was worried about how much of an idiot I looked like .. :) ..

At around 12:15-12:30 (according to James) I got my epidural, which helped immensely because I had hit transition and I wasn't sure if I was able to handle anything more at that point. I started to shake very violently it seemed after that, though I didn't feel pain anymore, I still felt a lot of pressure. The epidural took a lot of the edge off and I was able to feel a little more in control, though not by much. As soon as the epidural was in place, the nurse checked me again, and said I was at 8 almost 9cm dilated. My water broke by itself during the next contraction. (what a weird feeling!) I started feeling a lot of pressure during the next contractions and they steadily checked me to see if I was ready to push, because of that. I got stuck at 9cm, and they had me push a little to see if that would stretch me to a 10, but for some reason the baby's head wouldn't come down far enough and my cervix seemed to thicken up when I pushed (?) So they had me wait a little longer.

Then the Fetal Heart rate started to drop and they started to scare me! They put an oxygen mask on me to try and raise it up. Talk about anxiety inducing! I swear I had so many panic attacks while I was lying there I'm surprised I didn't get up and try to run away ..hehe .. but I knew I had to try and calm down for the baby's sake, so I did my best to try and distract myself by talking to everyone and watched a little T.V. .. we put on classic Spider-Man cartoons .. hehe .. it was funny .. :)

The Dr. came in to check on me and he ended up staying because he thought that the placenta might be prematurely separating due to the amount of blood that was showing. Well that REALLY scared the heck out of me because all I could think of was that I was headed for a c-section if I didn't get this baby out of me! So I lied and said that I felt like I had to push when I really didn't. So after a few ineffective pushes they let me rest for a bit. All the time the doctor had his hand inside of me and was checking my progress. Again he commented on the blood loss and I just about cried, and said I'd like to try pushing again, so this time I did, and gave it everything I had. Apparently that did it because right afterwards the doctor was suiting up for delivery. I pushed so hard and I felt everything, in spite of the epidural. It was like being split in two as he made his way down. Then the real urge to push kicked in and I had no control over anything anymore, because my body pushed when it wanted to. It seemed to take a long time until the head popped out, but the rest of him came out rather quickly. What a HUGE relief it is to feel that gush and all the pain and pressure completely disappears! Nothing quite matches it. :)

So I was a little disappointed because they whisked him away quickly, I assume because of the heart rate thing. I didn't really get a look at him because I couldn't see into the bassinet, but when I did look they had a respirator thing on him and that was a little scary to see. It seemed like forever before I got to hold him, but of course as I'd planned I told them that James was the first to hold him. He was 8 pounds 7 ounces and his Apgar scores were 8 and 9. He was born at 1:49 AM on June 4th. He's very alert, and quiet .. he likes to take the time to look at everything and only cries if he's wet hungry or cold.