The two weeks before Darcy's birth were filled with false labor contractions. I even downloaded an app to help me time contractions. They would be very consistent and then just trail off at the end of the day. They were definitely in my back though, not just braxton hicks contractions. The main problem with those (besides making us a little jumpy about not knowing when to expect the baby) was that they made my back so sore. I had a hard time falling asleep because of my sore back (you're really not supposed to take any medicine if possible during your third trimester).
My internal temperature felt about 5 to 10 degrees warmer than normal. I was addicted to fans, and I made John reprogram the thermostat to be a degree or two cooler than we normally keep it in the summer.
Even though it didn't feel real that we were going to actually have a baby, we knew she was coming. We made plans with two families in the ward to take the kids while we were at the hospital, and we talked to the kids about what to do if we had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night.
On Sunday June 14th, I started having contractions like normal about lunch time. They started getting consistent and painful, but this was old news by this time. I did end up timing them for a while in the afternoon. We didn't tell the kids because we didn't want them getting too excited and asking if we were going to the hospital every 5 minutes. They didn't slow down as much as normal so we kept timing him through the evening. They kept up during a movie (a hallmark movie about a meteorologist that I'll never forget). After that we went on a little walk around the neighborhood at about midnight. But this didn't actually make the contractions increase in intensity or frequency. So we got ready for bed and went to bed. I woke up at about 1:30 with a big woosh of warm liquid between my legs. I thought it was me wetting the bed. But I quickly decided it was my water breaking.
After a pointless shower (turns out fluid just keeps pouring down my legs with every contraction), I stay confined to the bathroom while John gets the last few things packed, write a note for the kids, and loads the car. It takes us about an hour to get ready to go.
So far the contractions aren't too bad. But as we are going to the hospital they got worse and worse. We were able to get into triage right away, but then things went so so slow.
I had to answer the same questions at least three times it feels like. They kept asking me how much weight I'd gained which was kind of annoying. They wanted all of my medical history even though I'd already filled all that out online. They wanted to dotests on the fluid that was leaking out of me to make sure it was actually my amniotic fluid and that my water had actually broken. That took forever. Once they decided I actually was in labor, they started me on an IV, which is easier said than done. They had a nurse in training try to put my IV in on my right hand. They ended up looking like an injury with blood all over the floor and the trainee wiggling a needle around in my arm while I'm having a contraction. It was just awful. The experience nurse took over and put an IV on my left hand right away.
Then they drew some blood because they had to do a blood test before they could give me an epidural for some reason. They also had to do some other kind of test on me or which I can't quite remember before the epidural could happen. And then I swear they had to ask me the exact same set of questions again from a different nurse. It was so aggravating. My contractions kept getting harder and harder. Eventually they took me to the delivery room. The nurse there had to ask me an entire set of questions again. By this time my contractions were nearly unendurable. And we were just waiting and waiting for the blood results to come back so they could call the anesthesiologist to give me my epidural. We waited for so long but it was probably only 45 minutes. The nurse called twice and eventually found out that my blood had coagulated and was unusable to test. This was indescribably frustrating to me. She called the anesthesiologist and told him that this is my fourth baby and I've never had a problem with anesthesia before and could he come please do it without the blood test. It took him a few minutes to come but eventually he did. By now the contractions were so hard that the socks that they gave me to wear had big holes in the heels from me rubbing my feet on the bed during the contraction. I still am proud of myself for not crying or screaming though. I swear it hurt more than the full labor and delivery with Holland's birth.
I talked to Patti about this later. And she said that her friend who is a labor and delivery nurse says that if a woman water breaks that the contractions are substantially more painful and harder than laboring without the water breaking. So this makes me feel justified in saying how much harder it was this time. Although I know it was so hard with Holland's birth too.
The anesthesiologist could clearly see I was suffering and so in addition to giving me the epidural he gave me some other medicine that was faster acting. He gave me two doses of that because my pain was so intense. Holding still while he was putting the needle in my back during a contraction was unbelievably difficult. I was really glad to have some immediate relief though. Although it really wasn't much compared to that epidural.
Thankfully in about 15 minutes I was really starting to feel the epidural. When I talk to Patti later about this and I had to laugh at what she said. She said she had never been so happy in her entire life or maybe she used the word euphoric as when that epidural starts to work. There's literally nothing that makes you happier than getting that incredibly intense pain taken away. I just fell overjoyed. We took a little video to talk about what had happened so far and then laid down with a big blow up type oblong ball between my legs. I'm not really sure what that was for. I thought they used those for people who wanted to have a vaginal birth after a C-section. Anyway they told me it would be a while before I was ready to actually deliver. This surprised me because I was already feeling the baby before the epidural started to work. I could feel the pressure of her coming down. I was so surprised that they didn't even check how far dilated I was. But not surprisingly the nurse came in much more quickly than she anticipated because the baby's heart rate was showing that it was time to deliver. I guess the baby's heart rate doesn't remain steady when it's about that time because of the pressure or something?
The nurse coached me through how to push. I'm glad they gave me a refresher, because even though I've done this before it's amazing what you forget. For example, that was a lot more effective to push when I was not holding my breath for some reason? We waited for the contractions and I pushed at that point. I only had to push two times and all the sudden there was a little baby. It happened so fast! They immediately just laid her on my stomach, kind of wiped her off, and wrapped her up.
Basically what happened was that I worked with her and another nurse tried to help, for 45 minutes without much success. Eventually the labor and delivery nurse helped with it, which got her sucking, but it turns out she hadn't latched on properly and left a big bruise on me. I felt embarrassed that it was taking so long and that they wouldn't clean her off really, or weigh her or measure her, or anything until after I had got her latched. I felt like everyone was waiting for me, and I just couldn't get her to do it. With that kind of false latch though, we were able to get her measured after and wiped off better.
Side note here, all of these photos without masks on me and John were taken when there were no other people in the room. I went through all of the labor and delivery with a mask on. I can't believe I really did that. I guess all things considered, it was the least of my worries.
Darcy Taylor was born at 5:42 a.m. . She weighed 6 lb 10 oz and was 21 in long. This puts her at an average for my kiddos. My biggest was 7 lb and my smallest was 6 lb 5 oz. And they've all been about 21 in long. Of course we didn't know her name was Darcy at first. We had been deliberating for quite some time between the name Darcy and Clara. Eventually we just had to pick one. Sometimes it still feels weird to call her by her name, but I'm sure it'll feel more natural as time moves on.
That first day is kind of a blur. It was kind of a rush to meet the baby and see her, get transferred to a different part of the hospital try unsuccessfully to nurse her, and send out a bunch of texts to our kiddos who are being taken care of by friends and to family to announce the baby. But eventually we just wanted to sleep because we hadn't slept at all the night before.
Distance breastfeeding has been such an ordeal this time, I have a lot of mixed feelings about trying to get that going in the hospital. For a while I really regretted not pumping more or doing more to get my supply up better. Or at least making use of an in-person lactation consultant to try to get a better latch from Darcy. But honestly I don't know if either of those things would have helped. I don't really know what we could have done to avoid all of this pain and ordeal. When I'm writing this she's about 2 months old and she's just kind of pulling through all of the initial pain of breastfeeding issues. I'm so so grateful that we are getting past this massive hurdle.
It's hard to think about these early days with Darcy because of how hard this has all been. But really it was a beautiful time with the brand new sweet newborn. We did lots of skin on skin. And we thoroughly enjoyed those newborn snuggles.
One thing that was kind of fun was that they left a mini bottle of sparkling cider little plant plastic champagne glasses for us to celebrate with.
At one point we got out our camera and did some nice photos. Such a beautiful baby.
They almost didn't let us go home on time because she lost so much weight. I was pretty unconcerned. I knew my milk hadn't come in yet, So how could they have expected her to not lose a bunch of weight with all of her wet and poopy diapers? I don't remember the exact numbers now, but it was enough that they were concerned but not quite enough to make us stay in the hospital.
The pediatrician there also kind of danced around the issue of supplementing her. But I was not interested in that. I'm not a professional, but in my opinion there are lots of babies who survive until their mother's milk comes in and they're just fine. We were the same.
I think they ended up deciding to let us go and because her bilirubin count wasn't that high? Even though we were anxious to go home to our other girls, this was a tender time with just the three of us.
Little tiny baby ready to go home in the car seat! Oh and obviously we did decide on a name eventually. Although I think our other girls were a little disappointed, at least Holland was.
They asked me previously if I wanted to breastfeed, and of course I did. I didn't realize that at this hospital there they have a much stricter approach to getting that first feeding in. It was kind of awesome, just unexpected. Unfortunately, I am not very well equipped to breastfeed naturally. I'm just kind of flat and inverted on my nipples, which makes it really hard for the babies to latch. It's been a struggle with all of the babies. With Eliza I just used the nipple shield the whole time because I didn't really think there was another option. Miriam was much more of an aggressive eater, So although I had to start out with the nipple shield, she was able to progress past it quickly and learn how to latch. Holland also learned how to nurse without the shield although it took maybe two weeks? I will have to get into my breastfeeding experience with Darcy on another post, but it hasn't been easy. And the initial hospital latching experience might have been an indicator of this.
We were able to take a bit of a nap. But there were lots of doctors and nurses coming in and out. They were concerned about how much weight Darcy was losing. But she kept having these huge bowel movements, so it didn't surprise me she was the losing weight.
I love to see the new baby in her coming home outfit that we picked out so long before. We're just enchanted with her.
