Millie’s Birth Story
It’s crazy how you can go through an experience several times and still be surprised by it. That’s what Millie’s birth was for me.
The weeks leading up to her birthday my body was getting ready. I could feel it. The subtle contractions. Feeling her drop low.
The day before she was born I had my 39 week doctors appt. They checked me and confirmed those contractions had been doing something! I was close to 3 cm dilated and she was low and ready. I got home and worked for a little bit in the studio while the kids were all at school. Around noon I took a bath and caught up on This is Us.
In the afternoon while Selah napped, we all hung out in the backyard. We decided over the weekend to start a big landscaping project. We’re crazy, I know. I mostly sat in the sun and watched the kids play while my mom and Jeffrey cut down some trees and moved dirt around.
My mom made us chicken spaghetti squash boats from Defined Dish (SO YUM) and I doused the thing with hot sauce.
We put the kids down early that night and I was quick to follow.
Around 10pm I woke up uncomfortable. I tossed and turned for an hour, not unusual this stage of pregnancy. But then I started actually paying attention to my body. How it felt. What exactly felt uncomfortable. And that’s when I felt them. Small, but definitely waves of contractions coming in. It was so exciting!! I practically willed the next one to come so I could feel my body progressing towards labor, towards meeting my girl.
This went on and off throughout the morning. I thought about waking Jeffrey up, but I also had a feeling this wasn’t the real “pack up and go to the hospital” moment. It was my body preparing. So I just laid on my side, feeling each wave as it came in. Praying over our girl and imagining the moment I would meet her earth side. It was a long night, but a sweet one.
Around 3:30am I woke up again to painful contractions. After a few rounds, I pulled out my phone to time them. 8 minutes. Then 10. Then 7. I knew to wait until they were five minutes apart for at least an hour. I didn’t even wake Jeffrey up at this point, even though I was definitely making some loud noise through the contractions. He sleeps like a baby 😉
At 5am, they still hadn’t gotten closer together so I decided to get up and take a shower. I sort of assumed that when I got out of bed, they would stop completely.
They didn’t. I got out of the shower and got dressed. By this time Jeffrey was up and in the studio working. I updated him on the night and how I wasn’t sure, but this could be “it”.
For the next hour I walked in circles around our studio listening to our birth playlist, telling Jeffrey when each contraction started and stopped, while he timed them + worked away, finishing up some last minute projects (like our taxes 🙈😂).
Finally, the contractions reached a point where I felt like it was hard to breathe through them. We called the hospital and told them we were coming in. We woke my mom up, grabbed our bags, and made a last minute decision to leave our car at the house so my mom could still take the kids to school and keep their routine (we're currently a single car fam!). We had borrowed Jeffrey’s family’s 1993 GMC pickup truck over the weekend to haul branches and trees. It had just gotten a flat tire the day before during a run to the dump + the bed was loaded with 2 tons of debris from our backyard. To say I was nervous about driving this car 30 minutes to the hospital is an understatement. But Jeffrey assured me it would be fine so I hopped in and buckled up. Just as the sun was coming up over the mountains, we headed out to meet our girl!!
On the ride over I was completely silent. Jeffrey must’ve thought I was nervous about the truck, but really — it was the fact that my contractions had completely stopped. I’m not sure if it was the bumpy ride or what, but since getting in the truck I had no contractions for thirty minutes. I started to run through the scenario of getting to the hospital with all our overnight bags and hopes and dreams, and them taking a look at me and saying, “you’re not in labor. go home.”
We got to the hospital and I jumped out of the truck, convinced it stopped by labor. We walked to labor and delivery and I started feeling small waves of contractions come and go. They checked us in and took us to triage. After changing into the gown and answering some intake questions, they hooked me up to the monitor, and checked to see how I was progressing. The moment of truth.
“You’re about a 6...maybe a 7.”
Whaaat. I was not expecting THAT. I mean, I wasn’t even in pain the last hour. How could that be?? Is this the gift of the fourth time around?! 😂
They quickly admitted and moved me into our delivery room, a bright airy room. We were introduced to our team of nurses and our midwife who were the coolest. The midwife was the same one that delivered Selah!
They hooked me up to antibiotics since I was strep b positive and told me it would take about two hours to administer it all. In those two hours, we texted some updates to our families and settled in. I still wasn’t in any pain, so I decided to listen to a an episode of What The Mother podcast and Jeffrey finished up some last minute work things.
We had decided after Selah’s birth experience that we would do an epidural again. It was just such a peaceful experience compared to my other two, that it felt right to do it again this time around. I felt torn on when I should get the epidural. I was a 7... but still not in pain. I was worried that if I waited too long I would be in transition and it would be too late to get one. So we called for the anesthesiologist. She walked in and looked at me and said “are you the one who wants the epidural?! You look too calm.” 😂 I feel like my response that entire day was to shrug and say, “fourth baby."
My last experience getting the epidural was a little traumatic. I didn’t get how to “arch my back like a cat” and the anesthesiologist was like a drill sergeant which just made me more nervous and freeze up.
This time around the gal was so great and was able to get set the epidural within ten minutes. By 10am, I was starting to feel my legs get heavy and knew we were just in the waiting game now.
Every other labor we’ve always gotten to the hospital in the middle of the night. This time it was morning and broad daylight. It felt so different. We had no idea what to do to pass the time! I tried sleeping (but was too excited). I turned on the last episode of The Voice (but was too excited). I tried to read a book but kept reading the same page over and over again (I was just TOO excited!). Finally I just gave up. I just prayed over our girl and visualized meeting her. What she would look like, who she would be.
Around noon they decided to break my water with the hopes that would get me fully dilated. We ended up talking with our nurses about their kiddos and twenty minutes later I felt a pressure to push. They called the midwife and baby girl was crowning!
At this point they noticed that baby girl’s heart rate had dropped. They said it’s normal when the baby passes through the birth canal but to be safe, they wanted me to start pushing.
I pushed once and she started to come out. The midwife said “the cords wrapped around her neck...twice.” I pulled her up onto my chest and she was so blue. For about ten seconds the nurse was suctioning and rubbing her back, trying to get her to breathe. Ten seconds seems quick but to me it felt like forever. Finally she let out a big cry and we all exhaled. Within a few minutes she pinked up and was taken to be weighed and measured.
They brought her back to me and we did skin-to-skin. She latched on right away, like she had done it a million times. Like this was our routine. She felt like she belonged right there on my chest, so calm + at peace.
The next few hours we just got to hold and marvel at her while the nurses all moved around us, cleaning up and checking on me. Within the hour, my epidural wore off and I was able to get up and move around. They moved us to our postpartum room and we settled in.
I turned to Jeffrey and said “Do you want to do In-N-Out for dinner tonight?” I couldn’t think of anything better than that to have after giving birth. Plus, In-N-Out is always weaved into our moments of celebration. We had In-N-Out trucks at our wedding. It’s our family's favorite take out. We’ve gotten it on several anniversaries. It’s just special.
We decided to have Jeffrey head home for the night to be with the kids, and then come back in the morning rested. (We also couldn’t bring our brand new baby home in that single cab truck loaded to the brim. I do have limits.)
It was the first time I’d slept alone in the hospital with a newborn (fourth child 😉). She was a champ. She ate so well and just wanted to sleep on my chest. It was a sweet night, despite being awaken up by the nurses every few hours. The next day was more of the same, but we got discharged in the afternoon, 24 hours after Millie Kate was born, and headed home to introduce her to our big kids.
It’s still so surreal that she’s here. It’s not even her due date yet as I write this! She was my hardest pregnancy, but my sweetest labor. What a gift. She was worth it all.