The last three weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. A really happy whirlwind. I’ve been working on this birth story little by little, in the few free moments I can find in between all of the BUSY. I need to get it down before I start to forget some of the details. I still love going back to read Nora’s and Vivienne’s stories, so I know I’ll love coming back to Sean’s some day, too.
Warning: This is a birth story, so there are details and such that go along with that. If that’s not your cup of tea, you should probably stop reading now.
The story of Sean’s arrival kind of begins on Thursday, May 12. I had my 38-week appointment (a couple of days late) that morning. I had been feeling some inconsistent yet somewhat uncomfortable contractions in the days before, so when they gave me the option to have my cervix checked, I opted to do it. While the doctor was examining my belly, she said she could see my uterus contracting around the baby, confirming that I wasn’t nuts—my body really was doing something. And I was 2 cm and 60% effaced. Not too shabby, considering 2 cm was the most I ever dilated before going into labor with my previous pregnancies. Unfortunately, the cervical check caused me to bleed pretty good, which was new for me. I’ve had my doctor strip membranes and such in the past and I’ve never bled, and this was just a simple check—not as aggressive as a membrane strip. My doctor sent me home with reassurance that the bleeding was okay. She also casually mentioned that she would be on call on Monday, so hey, that might be a good day to have a baby…
I worked from home, dealing with the discomfort of whatever contractions I was having (real ones? Braxton Hicks? I wasn’t sure). A few hours later, a trip to the bathroom resulted in my losing my mucus plug. I’ll admit, after that? My hopes were kind of high that maybe I would be having a baby sooner rather than later. But as the day turned to night, nothing of note happened. And by the time I woke up on Friday morning, things seemed more quiet. I wasn’t feeling as much discomfort, and I hadn’t had any other signs of labor.
I cranked through work on Friday and got as much as possible done in case I wouldn’t be back. The weekend was productive. Michael and I got a bunch more stuff checked off of our “pre-baby to-do list,” including some deep cleaning, which felt really, really good. Still, as Saturday passed and we were living Sunday, I started to feel myself fall into a little bit of a funk. I was discouraged by the lack of activity, thinking that I was likely going to be pregnant for another week. Blah. The end of pregnancy is so hard—even though you KNOW it is going to be over so, so soon, it feels never-ending. Plus, the weather was so crappy on Sunday (like 40 degrees as the high, we had snow/hail… on May 15th!), which never helps my mood.
On Sunday afternoon, I decided to pull out the Clary Sage essential oil. I knew that it can supposedly help “induce” labor by encouraging/strengthening contractions. (So, let that be a warning to all of you pregnant ladies—stay far away from the Clary Sage until your baby is fully cooked!) I diffused it in our kitchen while I did some dinner prep work, and I’m not going to lie… I definitely felt some good tightening in the belly during that time. I took a shower, mixed a couple of drops of Clary Sage oil into my lotion, and rubbed it into my belly for good measure. Later, I diffused it a little longer in the kitchen, too.
When I headed to bed on Sunday night, I still felt some increasing tightening in the belly but nothing that was concrete or timeable. I decided to put a few drops of Clary Sage in the diffuser next to the bed and put it on interval for the night (20 minutes on, 20 minutes off, I think?). I figured it certainly couldn’t hurt. I woke up at maybe 1:30-2:00 a.m. to go to the bathroom and turned off the diffuser. I was kind of sick of the aroma, and also didn’t want to overdo it.
On Monday morning, May 16th, I heard Michael get up for the gym and leave the house shortly before 5:00 a.m. As I laid there, trying to drift back to sleep, I felt some cramping in my abdomen. I made note of it but continued to lie there. Sure enough, it came again. At some point, I pulled my phone off the nightstand and started using a contraction timer app. They were kind of all over the place—8 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes—and lasting varying lengths of time as well. I wasn’t feeling very sure that this was it. But around 6:00 a.m., I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. This was a bit suspicious to me because this is how my labor started with Nora (I’ve always told people that my initial contractions felt like diarrhea cramps!), but I had also had bouts of this in the days prior, so I was definitely not sold. I got back into bed afterward and expected that the cramps would likely be gone after the bathroom trip.
I was wrong.
Michael came home shortly after 6:00 to find me awake in bed. I told him that I was feeling like something could be up, but wasn’t sure. He showered and laid back down into bed for a while. I had continued to time contractions and by 6:30, they seemed to be getting more regular and more uncomfortable. I was pretty sure this was the real deal, and I told Michael as much. I got up to get in the shower and Michael started to wake the girls and get them ready so we could leave for the hospital. I made arrangements for Nora to go over to our neighbor friends’ house to catch the bus with their son. I also texted my mom, who was due to drive to Connecticut that morning for a business trip. Her travel schedule is typically not flexible, but given she was driving, I wondered if she might be able to hold off. She said she didn’t have any appointments in Connecticut to get to—Monday was strictly a travel day for her. As such, she decided to postpone leaving and come to the hospital instead.
After showering, I got dressed and quickly packed a bag. I went downstairs to be with the girls for a little bit while we finished getting things together. Vivienne was eating some dry cereal out of a cup (no time to sit them down for breakfast!) and I had just sent Nora upstairs to get herself some socks. I was standing at the end of our kitchen counter, texting my dad with an update when I felt the first small gush.
(Notice the time stamps on the texts about not hitting the road yet, and getting the girls to school and daycare? I sent those to him at 7:32 a.m. Literally as soon as I pressed send, my water broke. That next one—”okay and my water just broke”—was at 7:33 a.m. LOL.)
“UH OH,” I said aloud.
“What happened?” Vivienne asked.
I yelled out to Michael (who was also upstairs), “MY WATER JUST BROKE!”
I took two steps backward from the counter and began to feel water soaking through my pants and dripping down my legs. Crap. “BRING TOWELS!” I yelled to Michael again. He came down the stairs quickly with an armful of towels and thank god, because the amount of water was INSANE.
Third pregnancy, but this is the first time this had ever happened to me. With Nora, my water broke in my bed in the hospital, so I never really realized how much water came out. With Vivienne, my water spontaneously broke at home—it was what marked the beginning of my labor—but come to find out later that it was a “slow leak,” since they had to break it as I was pushing her out. So the massive, gushing water? I had never experienced that before. I later told my mom and Michael that if I had known how much water there really was, I would’ve started carrying around towels and extra clothes weeks ago. I mean, if that had happened at work, or in public? I don’t even know what I would have done.
I threw the towels down at my feet and stood on top of them as the water just kept coming. Every time I thought it was going to stop, I would move a muscle and it would come pouring out again. I started to panic a little bit because with Nora, once my water broke, she was born very shortly after. I wanted to leave for the hospital NOW, but I also didn’t know what the heck to do with all of the fluid. I stood just waiting for it to stop. Michael took the girls out to the car. Finally, I stripped off my wet pants and put a dry towel between my legs as I waddled upstairs to grab a pair of clean, dry pajama pants. I managed to get out to the car without too much more leakage, and I brought more towels to sit on for the ride.
The L&D ward was quiet, which was something else new for me. My previous two times, it was a madhouse. In fact, with Vivienne, they didn’t have beds in triage or in L&D so I had to labor for a while in an “overflow room” on the high-risk ward. Anyway, it was quiet, and that was nice. I got checked into triage at 8:45 a.m. and they hooked me up to the monitors. My contractions had grown more intense but I was still managing just fine. They took my blood pressure and observed that it was high—unusual for me, as my whole pregnancy I was hanging out in the 100-105/65-70 range. They asked me questions to screen for other potential pre-eclampsia symptoms but aside from the blood pressure, I was fine.
My sister-in-law arrived at 9:00 a.m., as we had asked her to join us again to take photos (like she did with Vivienne).
Just before 9:30 a.m., a doctor came in to check me. I expected to be 4-5 cm but was surprised when they said I was already at 6 cm! Woohoo! But also OHMYGOD because with my previous two labors, moving from 6-10 cm has been the fastest part of labor for me (less than an hour). I was just so grateful to be at the hospital, as one of my fears for both my second and third deliveries was that I wouldn’t make it. Once they told me I was 6 cm, I said to them, “Just so you’re aware, I’ve gone from 6-10 cm VERY quickly in the past.” I texted my mom to tell her to get a freakin’ move on as well. The nurses and doctors said, “No worries, we’re going to move you to a room right away!” And they did. They packed me up and wheeled me down into an L&D room where I was now free to move about. My IV was started, and they took some blood samples. I met my first nurse, Ashley, who was only with me for an hour (and also my LPN, Sarah, who was with us until the end). Ashley was excited that our baby’s sex was a surprise and asked me to deliver quickly so she could find out what it would be. Haha! Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be.
Things were relaxed. I was again allowed to labor on my feet, which is my favorite. My mom arrived sometime after 10:00 a.m. and we just… hung out. I dealt with contractions, which were very uncomfortable but manageable, especially since they were still a good 3 minutes apart and lasting only about 45-60 seconds. In other words, I got good “breaks” in between. Since I was laboring on a “mobile” basis, I was not continuously monitored—my nurse just held the heart rate monitor up to my belly every 10 minutes or so to take a quick listen. Therefore, I was also not on a contraction monitor. Instead, I was timing my contractions via my app on my phone (which is why you see me holding and/or looking at my phone in so many of these photos—I was not on Facebook, I was just constantly hitting “start” or “stop” on my contraction app!).
The nurses soon did a shift change, and I bid farewell to Ashley and met my new nurse, Cate. Everyone who attended to me was really nice, I loved everyone. In fact, the nurse who had taken care of me during my brief time in triage stopped in a few times just to see how things were going for us. While I was working through a contraction, I heard her chatting with Cate about how they had been “shocked” when I was 6 cm in triage. “She was too happy to be a 6!” she joked.
As I mentioned in the beginning, my OB was scheduled to be on call on Monday, and well, here I was in L&D on Monday morning. So fun that the stars aligned for her to deliver our third child! She stopped in periodically to visit me once I was in my L&D room. Around 11:30 a.m., she came in to check on me, saying she had to go down to the operating room to perform a procedure on another patient but that she would be back upstairs within an hour or so. Out of curiosity, she wanted to check my cervix to see where we were at, so I agreed to that. I was kind of disappointed to find out I was only 7 cm. Only one centimeter of progress in about two hours? Whaaaat? This was not how my past labors went at all. My OB asked my nurse to keep her posted if things progressed to the point of pushing.
I just continued to labor, hunched over the bed for contractions. I did try the birthing ball for a couple stretches of time as well. They offered me the tub—part of me wanted to get in, thinking maybe it would speed things up the way it did for Vivienne’s birth, but I was also apprehensive to do so since it had caused a bit of panic among everyone during her delivery. I decided to stick it out “on dry land.” :)
Around noon, we saw (and I felt!) a shift in my contractions to longer, more intense contractions, and sometimes a bit closer together, too. Now, they were lasting at least a minute.
My brother, Trevor, is actually in the accelerated nursing program at the same hospital/university at which I delivered. He had lecture that day, right across the street, so he actually came over on his lunch break to visit. The five of us—Michael, my mom, Marie, Trevor, and me—all just chatted to pass the time. I had to withdraw from conversation every couple of minutes to work through contractions but all in all, it was a good time. They had me laughing and joking, which helped a lot.
Trevor had to get back to class so he left. A little before 1:00 p.m., it had been a while since I had felt that shift in intensity of contractions and now I was feeling some additional pressure. I commented to my nurse that something felt like it had changed, so she requested another cervix check. Only 8 cm. Sigh. Things were definitely going slow (for me, anyway), but Cate was concerned about me continuing to stand, as she said that it was very possible that I would feel the urge to push and then the baby would basically slide right out as I was trying to get into bed. She urged me not to wait too long to get into the bed, but I also REALLY didn’t want to labor in the bed… so we were at a little bit of an impasse. I promised to really listen to my body and be in tune with what I was feeling, hopefully giving myself enough time to at least climb into the bed!
Around 1:30 p.m., I felt it. I started to feel that familiar, horrible pressure with a teeny urge to push as well. Cate suggested I get up into the bed on all fours, then lean over a little ball on the back of the bed. And then I had this long break between contractions—five minutes! I said something about how long it had been, and Cate said, “That usually means a BIG one is coming.” (Side note: Good to know! The same exact thing happened to me with Vivienne, when I was in the tub. I thought contractions had “stopped,” and then all of a sudden they returned with a vengeance and I was involuntarily pushing!)
And, well, Cate was right. When that next contraction finally hit, I started groaning loudly from the pain and pressure, and I definitely felt the urge to push now. My OB came in and managed to check my cervix in the position I was in. She said I was 9.5 cm with just a little cervix left that she could “hold back” while I started to push. The pain at this point was horrendous.
When I had a break in contractions, I flipped over for pushing. With that next contraction, I pushed, pushed, pushed. I wanted the baby out NOW because I knew that was the only way I was going to feel any relief from the pain I was feeling. Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but pushing seemed to hurt way worse this time than it did with Vivienne. It reminded me more of Nora’s delivery, when I was convinced I was going to die. Of course, this time I knew that this was par for the course, but still, OUCH. It hurt so bad, and seemed like it was taking forever. I was begging the doctors, “Get it out! Get it out!”
I pushed as hard as I could and then at one point they told me to try to slow down to “grunty pushes.” I wasn’t even certain what that meant but I obliged best I could, which apparently helped. The pressure was unreal and I was definitely letting out little screams between pushes. GET.IT.OUT. was really the extent of all of my thoughts.
And then they were telling me to look down, because the head was out, and here comes baby. Another big push or two and out came the shoulders, followed quickly by the rest of the baby. I looked down, and just like Vivienne, I had a perfect view of the area between baby’s legs. Apparently everyone else did, too, though, because we all seemingly yelled at the same time, “IT’S A BOY!!”
Sean Sebastian was born at 1:47 p.m., apparently after only six minutes of pushing. Six minutes that felt like an eternity, I assure you. I give major props to ladies who have to push for hours. I have no idea how you do it, honestly.
I was seriously so shocked to have a boy. Even though I had thought for a good part of my pregnancy that he was a boy, I guess I had convinced myself toward the end that it was likely a girl… and I just had this feeling like WOW, it’s ACTUALLY a boy!
They put him right up on my chest and I got to keep him there for a good long while. Michael cut the cord. I cried while they gave me a couple of stitches, just because the experience was (rightfully!) so emotional.
For inquiring minds, Sean has always been our boy name. Nora would’ve been Sean if she had been a boy. Sebastian is after Michael’s grandfather, Poppy, whom we lost in 2012. He played a really special role in Michael’s life and during our years together, he became really special to me as well. We really wanted to give the baby his name to honor him.
Sean nursed for a bit and we just snuggled. Took photos, basked in the happiness of our new baby boy.
When they did finally take Sean to examine him, we found out he weighed in at 6 lbs., 15 oz. Very similar to Nora and Vivienne (Nora was 6 lbs., 10 oz. and Vivienne was 6 lbs., 11 oz.) but my biggest baby. He was 8 days early, too! (Nora was 7 days early, Vivienne only 4 days early.) My body does seem to like “cooking” this size baby, though. So funny.
Also, when Cate brought him back to me, she removed his little hat and showed me the top of his head. He had a little indent/ridge on the top, and some bruising on his crown. She said that based on that, it looked like he had been hung up a little bit in the birth canal—perhaps on the pelvic bone—which she said is very likely what slowed him down, resulting in the extra hours of labor. She said it’s likely his head was not in the exact correct position to pass down through, and we had to wait for him to move/adjust. Really interesting. She also warned us that the bruising put him at higher risk for jaundice—which we did deal with. (Thankfully, my milk came in while I was still in the hospital and Sean proved to be a champion eater/pooper so we were still able to go home on time, and after a follow-up bilirubin blood draw and appointment with our pediatrician the next day, he was cleared.)
In the end, I had another great experience. It is true what they say, though, that every labor and delivery is different. I am proof of that. I was so concerned about potentially giving birth to my third baby on the side of the road, yet it turned out he took the longest to come out of the three! If I’m ranking birth experiences, Vivienne’s would still be 1st… it was the most ideal, relaxed, and still quick. Sean’s would be second, and Nora’s would be my least favorite, just because of how out of control I felt due to the circumstances and not knowing what was happening since she was my first. Plus, breaking my tailbone during Nora’s delivery was no bueno.
Shortly after he was born (and getting a chance to hold him briefly), my mom set out for her drive to Connecticut for work. We all couldn’t believe the timing worked out again that she was able to be there. My kids (and my body) are so crazy accommodating to her schedule. ;)
A few hours later, Michael left to go pick up the girls to tell them the news of their baby BROTHER. I was a little worried that Nora was going to be disappointed. She had been saying the entire pregnancy that she wanted another sister. I did everything I could to prepare her for the possibility of a brother—even reviewed reasons why having a brother would be fun—but I wasn’t sure how she would take the news. Thankfully, she reacted wonderfully and has been nothing but happy about it. She’s told me numerous times in the past few weeks that she’s “so glad it turned out to be a brother.” Phew! Vivienne has been great as well (in the video, she’s just being her typical moody self, LOL).
Welcome, Sean Sebastian!
9 Responses to Meeting Sean
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About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
Congratulations! I love reading birth stories they always make me tear up. I love Nora’s reaction when Michael told her baby is a boy.
I broke my tailbone with one of my deliveries too…does it still bother you? Did it give you problems with either of your subsequent deliveries?
Hi Jennifer! Sorry you broke your tailbone, too… it sucks so bad since it takes so long to heal! Mine doesn’t bother me anymore, but it did for a long time. It got better over the course of my maternity leave (12 weeks), but then it was many more months until I could sit down on hard surfaces (like the floor or a wooden chair) without any pain. I’d have to sit down “wrong” for it to hurt, but it still happened often enough to notice. I haven’t noticed any pain from it in a few years now, at least, so it did ultimately heal up completely. I was really afraid of breaking it again during both subsequent pregnancies, but thankfully, it didn’t happen. After Sean’s birth, I did have a lot of discomfort in my butt (LOL), so I did think for the first couple of days afterward that I MAYBE broke it again, but thankfully, it was just normal soreness/bruising.
Oh this made me both laugh and cry. What a wonderful birth experience. My babies (2) came pretty quickly as well. My second I stayed on all fours and delivered her that way. Much easier pushing experience than with my first on my back.
He’s so beautiful and the picture of him holding your finger is making my ovaries cry out lol
Congratulations again!
I’ve heard that about pushing on all fours… but it felt like a really awkward position to me. When I started feeling the pressure to push in that position, it felt like I couldn’t really do it—though I’m sure I could have. That pic of him, so fresh and new, holding my finger… that could convince me to have a million babies. Sigh.
Thank you!
You are SUCH a fantastic writer! I both laughed and cried reading this. Congratulations! I’m really so very happy for you and your family!
Hi! Would you be open to sharing you choice of name if Sean happened to be a girl? I love your other girl name choices (Nora & Vivienne), and I am expecting a girl and due in September. I just wanted to know what you thought! Thanks an congratulations – he is precious!
If the baby had been a girl, her name would’ve been Ruby. :)
Thank you! That is adorable!
Thank you for sharing Sean’s birth story–and what great pictures, capturing all the emotions of your special day. You have really adorable children! Wishing you and your family the very best in the days ahead!