That Time I Had a 9 Pound Baby: Beckett's Birth Story

Beckett's birthday was absolutely perfect.  It was different than we expected, but it was completely perfect!

I want to document his birth story before I start to forget any of the details.  It was such a special day for us.

I had been having some signs of labor for a couple of weeks, particularly several bouts of contractions and false labor, so we knew I would go into labor soon.  But then again, "soon" didn't mean much to us because of course I would go into labor "soon"... I was past my due date and we knew he couldn't stay in there forever!  We were just biding our time hoping every night that it would be the night.  We were doing everything we could to bring on labor.  We walked 2-3 miles every evening.  Most nights ended with a dance party in our living room to Vanilla Ice's Ninja Rap.  We were so ready to meet our son!

I woke up on Saturday morning (Dec. 8) around 2 a.m. with fairly strong contractions.  I didn't make much of it because this had happened three times before.  I did what I had previously done and what they tell you to do... try to ignore it, then take a bath to see if it makes the contractions stop.  The contractions didn't stop and started getting a little stronger, so I woke Kolby up at 4 a.m. to tell him what was going on and that I was going to take another bath.

The next couple of hours are a bit of a blur, but we started timing the contractions and by 6 a.m. they were very, very painful and coming about every 2-3 minutes.  We loaded up and headed to the hospital.

I had three contractions in the very short walk from the car to the L&D check-in desk.  I was that crazy lady in slippers crouched on the floor, gripping the side rail and groaning as people walked by and stared :).  But we made it to our room and got settled in with our midwife and sweet nurse.

To back up a little, Kolby and I prepared for a natural childbirth.  To say we planned on one is too strong; we knew better than to plan much of anything.  Our objective was simply a safe delivery.  But our hope was to labor naturally as long as possible, if not the whole time, although we were open to getting some help if needed.  

Well, two words stood between us and the birth experience we had planned for.  Back labor.  I knew nothing about it, but a quick Google search just now defines it as, "Intense lower back pain that some laboring women feel during contractions. A few women even feel it between contractions."  At some point early on at the hospital, all of the pain moved to my lower back and it never let up.  I couldn't even tell when I was having a contraction because the back pain was much more intense than the pain from the contractions, and it was essentially constant.  I've never felt anything like it.

I was able to handle the pain thanks to a lot of help from Kolby, my mom, our midwife, and our nurse.  They helped me stay focused with my breathing and also massaged my legs and arms to help keep my body relaxed so that the baby could keep making his way south.  But after over four hours of relentless pain I can't even describe, I had essentially made zero progress.  Our midwife thought the problem might be that the involuntary muscle tightness in my lower back was keeping the baby from descending.  She suggested an epidural, which would allow that tension to release.  Knowing she is very pro natural childbirth, we knew she wouldn't recommend this step lightly.  We took her advice and I got an epidural at 10:30 a.m.

Oh.my.word.

That epidural was the most amazing thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.

I instantly became myself again.  It hit me that we would meet our son that day and I just started crying.  I got to experience all of the joy and excitement that I had been way too zoned out to realize before.  And even better, I made more progress in the next 30 minutes than I had made in the first 8+ hours of labor.

My labor progressed pretty normally from there.  The only notable thing was that when my water broke there was meconium in the amniotic fluid, which is just a formal way of saying that the baby had pooped in utero.  This isn't too uncommon, especially in babies past their due date, and just meant that there would be a NICU team present at birth that would whisk him away to another part of the room to clear all the fluid from his airways to keep the meconium from getting into his lungs.  I was disappointed that the baby wouldn’t be placed directly on my chest like we had hoped, but we had kept open minds about how everything would go and were just thankful that everyone was still healthy thus far.  

Our midwife telling us it was time to start pushing was definitely the most surreal part of the whole experience.  I can’t describe it.  It was time, we were ready, and the moment we’d waited so so long for was about to happen.  We were about to meet our son!

Let me pause for a second to say that we were expecting a 7.5 pound baby, maybe 8.  We didn't have any sonograms in the second half of our pregnancy so we really had no idea about his size, but my belly had always measured exactly on track and suggested a very average-size baby.  In hindsight, there were a few signs that he was big.  In the last several weeks my belly was extraordinarily hard all around; the baby was balled up and filling every square inch of space I had.  Also, he moved lower into my pelvis pretty early on but was somehow still able to kick me in the ribs :).  Expecting a 7.5 pound baby was one of the biggest blessings of our birth experience.  If we knew he was as big as he was, I think I would have had a lot of fear about his birth.  I also think it would have made for a much more high-stress environment from our midwife and nurse.

Thankfully, the delivery was fairly smooth.  I think there was a moment when our midwife realized he was big (or at least had a huge noggin); things got a little tense and she gave me really firm directions about how I needed to work harder to get him out.  At one point I heard the nurse whisper to her that “we may need to go in and get him” and that’s when I found a whole new level of effort.  Beckett was born just a few minutes later.

I didn’t really get a good glimpse of him before the NICU team took him, and then the next couple of hours were a bit of a blur to me.  Things post delivery didn’t go great for me (I’ll spare the details) and I quickly felt really lifeless and totally out of it.  I remember Kolby talking really loud to Beckett as the NICU team was working on him, and then I remember someone announcing that he weighed a whopping nine pounds.  Some time later they finally brought Beckett over to me and laid him on my chest.  (Note how small the hospital hat is on that 95+ percentile head!)

Kolby was there and we had the sweetest time as a new family.  We had a playlist of hymns going during delivery but I hadn’t been able to hear them the whole time.  As Kolby and I had our heads leaned together and were staring at our sweet little boy, Great is Thy Faithfulness came on and I could hear it as clear as can be.  I don’t mind that I didn’t get to hold him right away or that I became too anemic to have hardly any memories of his birth—that moment was everything I was wanting and so much more.  It was what I had dreamed about for years.

Here are a few more pictures from his birth day.

Our little fatty:

Proud dad (again notice the too-small hat, cracks me up!):

First picture as a new family:

Our sweet bundle of joy:

It was an amazing day that ended with us snuggling the most amazing little boy we have ever laid eyes on.  We are blessed beyond measure to get to be his parents!

***

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
  Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
    Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!