ELLIE'S BIRTH STORY: PART 2

I thought for sure we'd be meeting our third baby on Jan 23rd (a day early!) when I woke up to mild, but regular contractions. I stayed in bed as long as I could, but between the excitement and contractions every 5 minutes, I wasn't sleeping! So I picked up the living room, cleaned the bathroom, and was doing the dishes when Dan woke up. After sending him to the grocery (at 5am!) I called my midwife and my mom. 

When my mom arrived a few hours later ready to see Caleb off to school and spend the morning with Abel, contractions had all but stopped! They were now irregular and anywhere from 10-20 mins apart. Total defeat set in. Dan decided to work from home and I went back to bed, though I didn't really sleep.

Around noon, I talked with my midwife and we both figured it just wasn't time. I took a bath, drank a glass of wine, and crashed on the couch for a few hours.  My mom decided to take the boys home with her, to allow us more time to just relax, should baby decide to come. 

Early evening the contractions returned and built with some intensity. At roughly 10 minutes apart I once again was hopeful that this was it, but not overly optimistic.

By midnight the contractions we're every 8 minutes, but intense enough that we weren't sleeping. My sweet hubby suggested that we get up and move around the house to try to speed things up.  After two hours of endless laps around our tiny house, contractions were now every 2-3 minutes! We called our midwife and she headed right over. Things were finally moving along.

I labored for what felt like days, walking laps, taking a shower, catching catnaps literally in every room of our house. I could not get comfortable and felt that little progress was happening. 

Finally at about 8am, while my midwife was administering a second dose of antibiotics for GBS (which I had tested positive for), we talked about what to do next. She offered to check me and see if she could break my waters which might help speed things up. No sooner than I had agreed with her, my water broke (at 8:07am) on its own - while she's still pushing in the antibiotics!  She quickly finished up the antibiotics and  I sat back to let the nurse check that the waters were clear and she immediately noticed that baby was descending. I thought I'd just lay down to rest for a minute while my midwife switched places with the nurse (knowing the hard part of pushing was ahead of me)...as I did, my body completely took over and literally pushed Ellie out on it's own! I can remember looking at my midwife, saying "I can't stop, I'm not pushing."  

It was less than a minute from the time her head emerged to her snuggling on my chest! She was born just 5 minutes after my water broke at 8:12am, on her due date, January 24th!!!

Sweet Eleanor June, rocked our world the moment she arrived! I spent weeks in shock that I had a daughter.  Still today, I sometimes look at her and marvel over the fact that I get to be the mama of this sweet GIRL! She brings so much JOY and LIFE to our lives.

{Read part one of Ellie's birth story here. }