Happy Birthday, Saylor!

It’s been about a month since Saylor made her way into the world, so I figured it was about time to share a bit about her birth story! Whew. I feel like those first few days were such a whirlwind!

I woke up around 1am on Sunday May 9th (Mother’s Day!) with my first “real” contractions. I say “real” because I think I had some mild Braxton Hicks the week leading up, but I still kept thinking I would have some spontaneous contractions before the real deal.. but nope. They just all came at once! Actually, let me back up a second. A few days before I went into labor, I just had a feeling something would be happening soon. I had a lot of low pressure, back pain, and overall just feeling off. I actually had a gut feeling she would arrive on the 8th! But I had went to sleep around 11pm with no signs of contractions thinking I was wrong. As I slept, I started to have dreams about having contractions and telling people it was time to go to the hospital. So when I woke up around 1am, at first I was like “wait are these real or am I still dreaming ?!” Well, they were definitely real and very consistent!

I started tracking the contractions on my app, and saw they were consistently happening about 5-8 minutes apart & roughly 45 seconds long. I was logging them as “mild” since they were bearable, but I still wasn’t able to go back to sleep. So I watched a lot of modern family (😂) and then got up around 3am to tidy the house to distract myself and keep busy. Around 4am, the contractions were still consistent (around 3-5 minutes apart now) and getting stronger. But it still didn’t feel like it was “time” to go to the hospital.

Honestly, part of me was worried about going to the hospital too early and then being sent home or just having to have a long labor in the hospital as opposed to being able to cope in the comfort of my own home. I was also worried if we went in, then the contractions would spontaneously stop… so I just wanted to make sure everything was really happening before we went in.

Josh got up around 5am, and went to get us breakfast. The contractions were still consistent, so we knew this was the real deal, but I still wanted to wait until the right time to go in. The contractions were painful, but still “bearable” at this point. Around 7am we took Hazel for a short walk, then Josh finished cleaning up the house & packed the car while I tried to relax a bit. We let family & friends know what was going on, so my mom came to pick hazel up. Hazey was super excited to go visit my parent’s dogs (:

By 8:45 am I was still in good spirits, but thinking it was time to go soon. I decided to take a quick shower, and suddenly things started progressing very quickly. The contractions became much stronger & it was more difficult to breath through them. The pain was also almost completely in my back, which was something I didn’t expect! (But also a hint about how baby was positioned 😬)

By 9:15 am, I was for sure ready to go, so we made our way to the hospital by close to 10am. I got checked into triage, and at this point was in a lot of pain with close contractions. At 10:15am they checked my cervix and said I was at 6cm! Definitely progressed enough to be admitted 😂 I wasn’t sure how many more hours of labor I would have, so I asked for an epidural.

Around 10:45am the nurses got me transferred to labor & delivery, and took my blood sample to start the process of getting an epidural. Our l&d nurse was so amazing and kept advocating for me the whole process. Because of feeling the pain in my back, they had a feeling that she was positioned OP (occiput posterior). Which pretty much means that she was head down, but face up towards my belly button as opposed to face down towards my spine. Nothing major, just not the norm. But it meant the back of her head was putting pressure on my spine, which explained all the back pain!

A little after 11am I was at 9cm, and then completely dilated by 11:23am (just over an hour after checking in to triage). At this point the nurse recommended that we just start pushing without the epidural, because I would be in wayyy more pain waiting for the anesthesiologist to get there (and who knows how long that would take!). Honestly, I had been open minded about getting an epi or not, so since I was through the active labor stage, I was okay with this. Surprisingly, pushing without an epi wasn’t as painful as I expected. I did have some numbing shots which I’m sure helped, but if anything it felt like a relief from the contractions.

That being said, the duration of pushing was SO exhausting! Due to her positioning, she was pretty stuck in there and I felt like I was pushing foreverrr with her barely budging. After about an hour and a half, the doctor started attempting interventions to help get her out. I’ll spare you the tmi details, but just saying recovery was rough 😞 (thankfully feeling better now!). BUT that’s what was needed, because all of a sudden Saylor James arrived at 1:07pm! Pretty much exactly 12 hours after my first contraction (: She was 7lbs 14 oz, and 19.5 inches long!

The hours after that were a total blur with getting us transferred to post partum, all the tests & vitals checks, and just transitioning into parenthood! I honestly can’t say enough good things about our experience at tower health reading hospital. The nurses (and all the staff) were SO helpful, friendly, and accommodating. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was honestly such a great experience. And of course I have to give a huge thank you to Josh. He seems to have taken on the new dad role so smoothly and has had such a positive attitude about it all (even when Saylor poops in the diaper he just changed 😜). But seriously, those first few weeks he helped so much with the baby, but also taking care of me as I recovered. Caring for a newborn is a lot of work, and I couldn’t imagine doing it without him ❤️ so thankful for our little family!