Calvin's Birth Story

It’s hard for me to believe that Calvin is already almost 3 weeks old. It’s amazing how fast time goes! So far I have been amazed how well we have all settled into life with two kids. I am looking forward to getting longer stretches of sleep, but other than that I can’t complain. As long as I go to bed by about 9 all seems to be well and my accumulated sleep number gets me through the day smiling (mostly).

Anyways, I’ve been meaning to post a more detailed account of Calvin’s birth, so here goes for anyone that’s interested.

On Thursday morning, October 22, at around 2:30am I woke up with contractions around 10 min apart. I knew this was it; but I think I wasn’t quite ready to face the reality of what I thought was approaching. So I stayed in bed and amazingly fell asleep between contractions, each time waking up a little startled and looking at the clock. By 4ish the contractions were around 8 min apart. At 7 David figured that enough was enough and we should call Donna (Sarah’s baby sitter) to come over. I thought that was ridiculous as the birth was surely quite a ways away and I was coping fine at home, after all I didn’t want to be sent home from the hospital.

I listened to my wise husband as I wasn’t in a state to argue and Donna arrived by around 7:30. By the time we were in the car the contractions were about 4 min apart. We got to the hospital at 8am. When we got in the door the nurse just looked at me and said “can I help you?” So I told her I was in labour, she looked at me sceptically so I explained that I had just had a contraction in the car so I was fine at the moment. She told me that she would examine me and see where we were at. Turned out that I was 8 cm and 80%. The nurse called the doctor and told us we were having this baby in the very near future!

The nurse asked me if I thought I wanted an epideral but I said I was coping just fine for now so I would pass. I asked if I could get a morphine shot to dull the pain, but it just made me feel a little dozy (and didn’t kick in until about 10 min before Calvin was born). I spent the hour just laying down, resting between contractions and breathing through the pain.

The nurse came in to check how we were doing at that point and asked me if I was starting to feel any pressure yet. I suddenly was and nodded to indicate so. She said she would check me in a moment and that I should resist pushing if that was the case. Well... seconds later (literally) I told her I had to push. She ran over, checked me out and told us we were about to meet our baby. She frantically called the doctor to come immediately and began ripping open the bags of medical supplies, towels for baby, etc, as they weren’t set up at all. David actually helped with this, since she was panicking and it was all going really fast all the sudden.

The doctor arrived and the nurse told me that I would have this baby out within 2-3 pushes. I didn’t believe her at all. With Sarah the pushing time was 45 minutes, and that seemed good by the stories that I’d heard. Well, by the second push little Calvin entered the world at 9:26 am. Don’t get me wrong, that last push was BRUTAL, but at least it was just a total of 4 minutes of very bad and not hours. I’m not sure if I was more surprised by the fact we had a boy or by how fast he arrived. I just know that I looked at his tiny precious face feeling pretty stunned that it was all over already.

I asked the doctor if he was going to stitch me up and he laughed saying it wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t believe it, a fast labour without tearing; music to my ears. However, the doctor manually pushed on my stomach to push the placenta out, this felt terrible and lasted longer than pushing the baby out. Once that was all over I was excited to call our family and spread the news.

I am happy to say that my experience the second time around was indeed better and faster than the first. We will have more kids! Well, at least one more.

What was much worse were the uterus contractions after the birth while nursing and in between. Yikes, nobody warned me of this! BRUTAL, I felt like I was giving birth all over again, over and over again, this lasted for about 72 hours after the birth. The nurses and friends with 2 or more kids have all said this is normal and it gets worse the more kids you have, can’t imagine!