The Berry Bunch: The Arrival of Baby 3: A Birth Story

I need to get the story of lil' munchkin's birth down before I forget. Sure... It's been only about 15 days later, just 2 weeks since we were released! I'm sure some of my memory has gone.

I love birth stories.

Just like her brother and sister, our lil' munchkin was evicted... Induced... At 41 weeks we decided to get her out. We could have left her in longer, she probably would have benefited from staying in longer. But, that would have meant Non Stress Tests and those are expensive. Having a baby is costly enough. I don't like saying this because it's like we had no place to be bringing another child into the world, but we really couldn't afford to have NSTs every other day. We couldn't really afford to have one. So we decided to induce at the last day.

As seems to be the way with scheduled inductions, it is super early in the morning. Our appointment was at 5:30am. You arrive, get the paper work in and then sit around and wait for an hour.

I was feeling sick to my stomach with nerves. Why?!? I had done this, not just once, but twice before! But still. The night before I had difficulty eating dinner, that morning for breakfast I had nothing. I couldn't stomach the food. I had food poisoning or something a few weeks before and had difficulty eating since. I even lost several pounds from that to delivery.

We hoped that breaking the water would start labor. At 7:45am they broke it (I was 5 cm, 90% effaced and she was at a -1 station). Contractions were there, just not consistent or with enough intensity. They decided to give about 2 hours and then we would start pitocin.

Around 9:25am we started the pitocin. It seemed like it took a while for anything to start happening. I love how time gets sucked after this! It's like being in a time vortex once things started moving along. At one point they checked and I was about 7cm but no change in anything else.

Then, contractions started kicking in. We had been back and forth with my Mom-In-Law, giving updates about how things were going and give a heads up on when to bring the kids to see their baby sister. I had been standing and rocking, but it was like I couldn't get comfortable. I remember telling Husband to send his mom a message to let her know that they were getting more intense and she should probably head over. Of course, he responded with "are you sure?"... Which irritated me a bit. I didn't know for sure. Now when I look back on it, I feel a little silly. I settled on a yes. Sure, why not? I couldn't keep my eyes open during the contractions. My hips were starting to feel cramped. She was coming and was going to come fast...

It seemed like no time at all and the incredible urge to push came. I remember telling Husband that, but it felt too soon! Ha! I should know better! He ran and got the nurse. She did a quick check and sure enough, it was time!

The resident doctor and my doctor came in, set up. Husband at one leg, the nurse on the other. The urge to push came and goodness me I gave it what I could! The nurse told me I could stop, I'm sure someone else repeated it. But there was no stopping. Lil' munchkin was there in one push at 11:57am. A whirlwind of a labor, Done and over before we knew it! Mom-in-law arrived shortly after little girl did. My mom got off work and was there too, but I honestly couldn't tell you when she got there!

Precious baby munchkin was 6lbs 11oz, 19 inches (though she might have been longer at the doctor 4 days later she was 19.75 inches). Her APGAR was 8/9. When it was time to go, her bilirubin level was 0.0!

And I can't get over her dark hair. So much hair!

And, I did it all with no epidural or pain meds! Third one with no epidural or pain meds!
This was labor 3 without an epidural or pain meds! I was mostly blown away/impressed/kind of confused, that our hospital no longer takes the baby to the nursery for 2 hours after birth. I guess the change happened not that long ago, and I kind of wish it were that way with the other two. It was so nice! Baby's first bath wasn't until after 12 hours. The food delivery was much more than it was before! Though the night nurse was still a stickler about nursing every 2/3 hours (all we wanted to do was sleep! all of us) and the day nurse was super awesome! They even put a tracker/alarm thing on her ankle!