All four of my kiddos came right on or a few days after 39weeks. Not sure how all four ended up always delivering then, but I guess my body was just like, ok PEACE OUT! No way your staying until 40 or 40 plus weeks! But I’m the kind of person who loves being pregnant, yes I complained….a lot. Mostly being uncomfortable or about pain from kidney stones. YUP I got kidney stones every pregnancy or after baby was born, lovely right? Well besides all that my pregnancies were easy ones and I really loved it! And I also love going through labor and giving birth. It’s just so empowering and truly amazing what women’s bodies are capable of. If my sanity could handle it, I would probably be pregnant with my fifth kiddo right now (Insert husband’s eye roll, and laugh) haha. Well, even though my babes weren’t born on their due dates, I think it is pretty cool when babies do arrive on their’s. Research says that one in twenty five babies are born on their exact due date. So every time I am on call for a birth, I am always curious who will be going in on their DD and/or who will actually be born on it!
I haven’t had any due date babies until February of this year when little Adeline was born, and honestly I was super excited! Her mama was a CHAMP, let me tell ya! She worked so hard and did absolutely amazing bringing her little miss into her arms.
From Adeline’s Mama (Aurora):
After years of adventures with our two fur babies my husband, Brian, and I decided it was time for our biggest adventure yet, adding a little one to our family to share in the fun. After a missed period I took a home pregnancy test and was pleasantly surprised to see a positive result. I yelled to Brian (who was still sleeping) from the bathroom about the exciting news. So I called my midwife and we patiently awaited our appointment to confirm that there was a bun in the oven! At around 8 weeks things got real when we told our parents and siblings. This was when the evening sickness and serious motion sickness kicked in and stuck around until 20 weeks. The nausea was accompanied by some serious rib pain that made me think I had a broken rib until our bundle finally dropped but the relief was short lived with hip pain that would wake me out of a sound sleep on the rare occasion I was getting sound sleep. The excitement of not knowing if we were having a boy or a girl and the feeling of all the hiccups, kicks and full body rolls made those unpleasant side effects all worthwhile. We were days away from 40 weeks and were more than ready to meet our little human. After some serious internal debate we decided to give our little one a nudge at 39 weeks and 6 days. We went to the hospital so I could receive prostaglandin to see if it would move things along. We got home at around 8 pm ate some dinner and went to bed to try and sneak in one last full night of sleep anticipating that sometime the next day I’d start having contractions. As luck would have it my contractions started around 10:30 pm and were about 12 minutes apart. I labored through them at home in bed while Brian slept until about 1:30 am when he woke up to me breathing through a contraction. He asked me how far apart they were and when he heard 5 minutes he jumped out of bed in a panic and started racing around the house, letting the dogs out (he wanted to take them to boarding before we went into triage for the prostaglandin, but I told him we’d have time the next day, I was wrong), packing the car and texting Angela! We got to the hospital and back into triage, I was 95% effaced and 5 cm so the nurse moved us to our labor and delivery room and called my midwife.
I went into this pregnancy with the desire to keep it as natural as possible, but shortly after settling into our labor and delivery room I knew I would need some help with pain management. I opted to use nitrous through my contractions which helped take the edge off. Around 6:00 am (if I remember correctly) my midwife broke my water and we found out our little one had pooped in utero and we’d need to have a few extra people in the room for the delivery. This really got things moving and my contractions became even more intense. At 10:00 am after an hour of actively pushing I had no energy left, my midwife told me that a sliver of my cervix was causing our baby to recede back into the birth canal every time I stopped pushing. At this point I thought I was bound for a c-section, but my midwife reassured me we were a long way from that. With my contractions coming on back to back and then nitrous no longer offering relief we decided it was best for me to get an epidural and labor down and let my body work its magic. It seemed like it took forever to get my epidural but once the anesthetist worked his magic the relief was almost immediate. The next several hours I spent napping and rotating from my right side to my left side. Brian had been drinking coffee since he wee hours of the morning, so while I napped he snuck away to get some food other than the snacks we packed since he couldn’t sleep. Finally my body started telling me it was time to push! With some coaching from my midwife and 2 sets of 3 full pushes and 3 sets of 3 half pushes Brian was announcing to the room that we had a beautiful baby girl. It was 4:41 pm on February 24th and she was perfect!
She came out screaming and was placed on my chest, while the nurses checked her over and my midwife finished up the delivery Brian and I just stared at our little one in awe. Everything seemed perfect, she was doing great, she latched like a champ and we cuddled. After sometime it was Brian’s turn to hold her while we waited for the nursery nurse to come and finish our girl’s assessment. The labor and delivery staff and nursery staff were very busy with 5 births in the span of 20 minutes. When the nursery nurse finally arrived she started to become concerned and requested a NICU nurse and respiratory nurse. The three nursed decided our little lady wasn’t getting enough oxygen and need to pay the NICU a visit. Brian followed our girl the NICU while I waited to be transferred to our postpartum room. Once in our room I was introduced to my night nurse, who quickly gave me the rundown of what to expect during my stay and kindly took me down to the NICU to be reunited with Brian and our baby girl. By the time I got there she had an IV in her head, oxygen in her nose and lots of monitor wires connected to her. After the NICU nurse and Brian went through the initial plan for our baby girl we snuck a few extra kisses and headed back up to our postpartum room to finally get dinner. The next several days were filled with lots of questions, little sleep, hospital food, pumping every 3 hours after nursing, many elevator rides, meetings with lactation consultants and of course lots of kisses, cuddles and love. Finally after four very emotional and anxiety filled days we were able to bring our sweet girl home to meet her fur siblings and ready to take on the world!
