Tuppence a Bag: A Star Is Born

Introducing...

Thomas Wesley

Born December 1^st, 2015

8 lbs 1 oz, 20.75 inches long

Practically perfect in every way

He came with a pretty good story.

38 weeks and ready to pop!

Little Baby Thomas was due to arrive on November 28^th. On November 14^th I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. They were mild (compared to what I knew was coming – if this was my first baby I would have gone to the hospital!), but very consistent. I assumed I was in early labor and woke Jacob up to time the contractions. Every three to four minutes, lasting at least one minute each. This is it! we thought.

We were so excited. I tried to suggest that we should get some sleep while we still could, but that felt impossible. I was antsy and eager for things to get going.

Forty-five minutes later, the contractions stopped.

I was a little surprised and disappointed, but still assumed that labor must be hours, or maybe a couple of days, away. We went back to sleep. I waited anxiously for labor to start again. A few days later, it did. Again the contractions came every three to four minutes, again they lasted for a minute each, and again they were mild (though stronger than before). I alerted Jacob at work, and my parents who were to come watch Abigail during labor. The contractions lasted three hours and then stopped. Again.

This pattern continued for over two weeks.

What’s going on?!? I asked my midwives. Am I having this baby or not?!?!?

You get all these crazy ideas at the end of pregnancy. At least I do. It’s difficult enough during a typical pregnancy, but having false alarm after false alarm was exhausting and not helping my anxiety. I started worrying that I would be the only woman, ever, to not actually deliver my baby. “I’m going to be pregnant for the rest of my life!” I groaned to Jacob one night. I wasn’t being dramatic, I really believed it! And then this gnawing fear started up that I wasn’t pregnant at all, but that there had been some sort of horrible misunderstanding.

Don’t worry, the midwives assured me. The baby is going to come when the baby is ready to come.

The good news was that progress was being made. Dilation, effacement, and station were all moving along nicely. At least the contractions were doing something.

But I worried about when I was supposed to go to the hospital. The 5-1-1 rule didn’t seem to apply to me anymore.

“As soon as the contractions are strong enough that you can’t talk through them, go to the hospital,” the midwives said. “This baby is probably going to come quickly. Don’t wait until the contractions are coming every five minutes.”

On November 22^nd the contractions finally started picking up. We called my parents in the afternoon, hoping to avoid calling them in the middle of the night. They came and picked up Abigail. She was so excited to spend the night with her grandparents. I cried when they left. I realized that I had never spent a night away from her before. I missed her the second they walked out the door.

Hours later, the contractions stopped again. The next day they picked up. Then they stopped. The next day they picked up. Then they stopped. I was so frustrated. I missed my daughter! When was this baby going to come?!?! Every day I called my parents on FaceTime. I watched Abby playing. I tried not to cry.

On the 25^th, the day before Thanksgiving, Jacob worked a half day. He came home and found me lying on the floor, sobbing. “I want to see Abby again!” I kept saying. “Well, let’s go!” he replied. No, no, no! I thought. I knew it wasn’t logical to travel so far when labor could be starting any minute. I wanted to stay as close to the hospital as possible, especially with holiday traffic. But I could not stop crying. I just wanted to hold my little girl again. Finally, we went. We picked up Abby and brought her home.

My in-laws arrived on Thanksgiving Day. To everyone’s surprise, including my own, I cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal that day (I had told them, repeatedly, that we would love to have them come for Thanksgiving, but that I was not cooking.) I was just crazy enough to make the stuffing, cranberry sauce, and all desserts from scratch. It was a delicious meal. I waited to go into labor. I didn’t.

All weekend long the contractions continued, all weekend long they never picked up enough. My mother-in-law eyed me suspiciously. “I really think you should go to the hospital,” she kept saying.

“They’ll take one look at me and send me home,” I replied.

My due date came and went.

On the 30^th my in-laws flew back to Utah. Still no baby! I couldn’t believe it. I felt terrible that they had come out here for nothing (besides a fabulous Thanksgiving feast and fantastic company, of course.)

That night we went to bed, as usual. I woke up at 3:50 a.m. with an incredibly strong contraction. I got up and walked around a little. It was agony. I tried to lie back down. That was agony, too. Ah yes, I thought to myself. This is the real thing.

I tried to wake up Jacob but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move. It just hurt so badly. I lied in bed, clutching my abdomen and moaned until he woke up. “Contraction?” he asked. I moaned in response. “Help me into the shower,” I gasped when it was over. “And call everyone.”

I labored through the contractions in the shower while we waited for my parents to arrive. Jacob ran around calling the midwives and packing our last-minute items. The warm water of the shower was soothing, but the pain was unbelievable. I didn’t need to time the contractions to know that I was really far along. At first I panicked. I had envisioned laboring with my husband and midwife by my side – here I was, instead, alone and still at home. How was I supposed to do this?!?! Then I remembered all the practicing Jacob and I had done. I could remember him telling me that I needed to find my rhythm. The intensity of the next contraction knocked me down, and I let it. I knelt in the tub under the stream of water, started the breathing techniques, and rocked my body to the rhythm of the breathing. The relief was instant. As the contraction ended I took a cleansing breath and allowed myself to relax. At the start of the next one I focused again, rocking and breathing my way through it. On and on.

The contractions were coming on so fast. It started to feel like I was hardly getting a break in-between. That was when I realized that I must be in transition. That was a scary thought! I was still at home! But the force of the contractions and the pain was so intense that I couldn’t dwell on that thought long. I just had to focus on getting through each contraction, one at a time.

When everything was packed up and we knew my parents must be close, Jacob tried unsuccessfully to get me out of the shower. I couldn’t move. He tried for several minutes before there was finally a break in the contractions. I moved at fast as I could, but it was slow going with how strong the contractions were. I realized later that I must have been complete at this point, and that’s why I was finally getting some time in-between contractions. My parents arrived. Jacob and my dad helped me down our four flights of stairs and into the car. I couldn’t sit down. I knelt on the front seat, facing backwards and clinging to the seat. My dad buckled me in as well as he could. There was a light, misty rain and I knew Jacob would drive fast. I worried that I wouldn’t survive a car accident.

I missed the warm shower, and I missed having enough room to move. I rocked from side to side in the car, clutching the car seat. I wasn’t sure that we were going to make it to the hospital in time. I said a lot of prayers. It felt like a miracle when I saw the hospital parking lot. Jacob pulled up to the door and helped me out. All of my limbs were asleep from sitting in that ridiculous position, so Jacob had to help me walk. I had a contraction while getting out of the car, and another one by the time we made it to the second set of doors at the entrance. Up to this point I had been very composed, but now I let myself scream and scream. I was trying to get some attention, hoping someone would come help! When the contraction ended Jacob helped himself to a wheelchair by the entrance. He sat me in it and we flew into the labor and delivery wing. Finally, a nurse showed up.

“You think you’re in labor? How close are the contractions?” she asked in a sugary-sweet voice. I tried to just block her out. I knew Jacob would answer for me. They wheeled me into a room. Another contraction hit. I could not sit anymore. I jumped out of the moving wheelchair and knelt on the ground, rocking again. I must have looked like a lunatic.

“Are you interested in an epidural?” the nurse asked sweetly. If I hadn’t been battling with death myself, I would have killed her. Really. I wanted to shake her and scream, “There is about to be a baby born right here on the floor! I need help!” But instead I just focused on getting through the pain.

“I need you to get undressed,” she said when the contraction ended. I was undressed and on the bed before she finished her sentence. I realized later that they hadn’t even closed the curtain yet – everyone in the hall could see me. Another nurse came in and checked me. I saw her eyes grow wide. “I think she’s complete,” she whispered to the other nurses.

Everyone started moving really fast then. I was so relieved that I was finally being taken seriously. They broke down the bed and wheeled me into a labor and delivery room. We met the midwife on the way. The nurses updated her. She said to me, “I am going to break your water and you are having this baby right now.”

I kind-of lost it then. Maybe it was because up until that point I had been relying on my own strength and now I was finally receiving help, but suddenly I felt totally overwhelmed and out of control. “You need to push!” the midwife commanded. I just couldn’t. There were so many people in the room, and everyone was rushing around in a panic. It was so loud and so bright. All my visions of a peaceful, quiet birth were gone. And the pain was so intense. I couldn’t figure out where Jacob had gone. There were so many nurses around me that they had pushed him out of the way. He battled to get near again and they kept pushing him out again.

“I just can’t, I just can’t,” I sobbed over and over again. The contraction ended. Everyone looked very serious and scared. A nurse tried to find the baby’s heartbeat and couldn’t find it. The midwife took over. There was an eternally long, silent pause while she tried to find it. That jolted me. I was so focused on the pain that this was the first time I realized my baby might be in trouble. Finally we heard the heartbeat, but it was slower than normal and still dropping.

The midwife looked at me gravely. “You have to push this baby out,” she said. “You have to do it right now.” So I did. I pushed one time, and Thomas came screaming into the world. “It’s a boy!” one of the nurses exclaimed. Then, embarrassed, she added, “I don’t know if you already knew that.”

He was like a lion. Abigail, so sweet and lady-like, gave the cutest kitten-like squeaks when she was born. She looked around eagerly, immediately curious, wanting to take everything in. But Thomas roared and refused to be comforted. They put him on my stomach and I took him all in, admiring his incredibly thick hair and long fingers.

I felt like a superhero. I couldn’t believe I had successfully had a natural birth. Several times over the next few days I whispered to Jacob, “Psst, I birthed our baby naturally!” For weeks I reminded myself of that whenever things got hard. I felt like I could take on the world.

Nurse: "I just don't know what to think. New babies usually love taking a bath."
And with that one sentence, she summed Thomas up perfectly.

He was born at 6:05 a.m., just two hours and fifteen minutes after the first contraction, thirty-five minutes after we arrived at the hospital, and thirteen minutes after they wheeled me into the labor and delivery room. It was a whirlwind. It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized how lucky we were. So many things could have gone wrong. Even after the birth a lot of things could have gone wrong, the after-effects of having such a fast delivery. But he was healthy, through and through. We felt so blessed.

Thomas cried a lot until he was about six weeks old. The boy was born hungry. At birth he had open wounds all over his arms – called sucking sores – because in the womb he sucked on his arms so hard that the skin came off. That was a very bad omen for what was coming. For the first three weeks, nursing was absolute agony. And he was always hungry! I never had a break! And then he got an incredibly bad diaper rash, and every ointment we tried made it worse. Poor, poor baby. He howled all day and all night. Then, at six weeks, he was mysteriously and amazingly content. He’s been very pleasant ever since. He still cries really loudly and escalates quickly, but at least I’m not terrified to take him into public anymore.

Thomas' first night at home, Abigail picked out pink pajamas for him so they would match.

He has the sweetest smile. He loves us all and gives us smiles aplenty, but he adores his big sister. She gets the most smiles of all. And she loves him. When we brought him home from the hospital, she brought all of her toys out to show him. She couldn’t understand why he didn’t seem interested in anything she offered him. I reassure her, constantly, that Thomas will grow bigger and someday will play with her.

Good night, little babies.

I love being a family of four. I was scared of it – the transition from one child to two seemed overwhelming – but really, it’s been so fun. It’s helped me see things with fresh eyes: first of all, how big Abigail is! How quickly babies grow up! How amazing it is that they learn so many things in such a short time! And how precious this time is. During the first six weeks, when I never got more than three hours of sleep at a time (and even that was interrupted sleep), I kept thinking of Abigail and how quickly her first year went by. The baby years are hard, but once they are over, they are over, and you never, ever get them back. I don’t want to regret a single moment of my babies’ years. I love my little baby boy, so loud and tall and opinionated and handsome and sweet. And I love my little [still-a-baby-to-me] girl, so wild and smart and curious and beautiful. They are the best.

I love being their mama.