Immediately upon finding out that my due date was Christmas Day, I knew there was a chance that I could have this baby on my birthday (December 17th), but I knew that chance was really small. I mean, what are the odds? Buuuuut how cool would that be??
The plan with my OB was always to try to get the baby out before Christmas, primarily because figuring out who Hudson would be with while we were at the hospital during a pandemic (with no family nearby) was already complicated enough…but if it was on a major holiday I truly didn’t know what we would do. Plus I would be super sad to not be with him on Christmas. My doc has a really high success rate with sweeping membranes, so she said she would do that at my 39 week appointment, which I strategically scheduled on my birthday 🙂 If that didn’t work, she could request an elective induction, but not until I was officially 39 weeks, which was December 18th. Hudson was a few days early and with this being my 2nd, we felt pretty good about not going all the way to 40 weeks.
My body started progressing leading up to that – I was about 1.5 cm dilated at 37 weeks and then almost 3 cm at 38 weeks, so my doctor felt pretty confident that we would meet our sweet girl before her due date.
I woke up around 2 am on my birthday for one of my many middle-of-the-night bathroom trips and when I stood up, I felt a bit of a gush of water. I immediately knew it could be my water breaking, but it was kind of hard to tell. It wasn’t a huge gush like you see on TV where it’s really obvious. So I got back in bed, and of course couldn’t sleep at all, and just laid there waiting for something to happen. But I didn’t really have any contractions. I’d always been stressed about the idea of labor starting in the middle of the night, things progressing quickly because it’s not my 1st baby, and needing to rush to the hospital but not being able to reach anyone to come stay with Hudson. But, nothing was really happening so I just waited it out.
Once the doctor’s office opened in the morning I called to see if I could move my appointment earlier (it was scheduled for 11:30 am) so they could check to see if my water did, in fact, break. They recommended just going to the hospital. So we got ourselves and Hudson all packed up and took him to my friend’s house for the morning (school was already out for the holiday break and the nanny doesn’t come until the afternoon), and then we headed into the hospital.
We got to triage at about 9:30 am and they did the normal test to see if my water broke, but it was inconclusive. So they had the doctor on call from my practice come and check and still inconclusive. So they did another test that gets sent to the lab to test for a specific enzyme found in amniotic fluid and finally it was positive. They said most likely my water partly broke, but not fully. This whole ordeal had taken about an hour and a half and I was anxious to now get this show on the road in hopes that we would actually have a shared birthday. But unfortunately, during that time all of the rooms had filled up, so we now had to wait in triage.
We ended up waiting in in triage for SIX hours. Yep. It was pretty miserable. Luckily, labor wasn’t progressing so I wasn’t in pain, but we were in a tiny and very uncomfortable room and they wouldn’t let me eat. It was clear I would need Pitocin to get things moving with labor and that it might not be quick, so I saw the window for the shared birthday closing. I was a bit bummed, but just trusted that it would work out how it was meant to.
Finally at 3:30 pm they had a room for us! We were so excited to finally get this show on the road! We were settled into our room and pitocin started around 4 pm. I was all ready for things to really start progressing quickly at this point because everyone says that’s how it goes when it’s not your first. I started feeling some contractions, which was a good sign. One thing that was a bit weird was that they hadn’t checked me to see how dilated I was the entire time I’d been there. I guess this doctor doesn’t like to check a lot once your water has broken due to the increased risk of infection. I was so curious as to where I was though. Finally around 6 pm they checked me and said I was 3 cm. WHAT?! I was so discouraged! That’s basically the same as a week before at my doctor’s appointment!
The contractions continued and picked up in intensity a little, and I got an epidural around 7 or 8 pm. That’s always my least favorite part, but it’s so worth it once it’s over. Both times I’ve had really great epidurals and pretty much felt nothing after. Our anesthesiologist this time was…interesting. He seemed to really enjoy telling us how many COVID positive patients he’d treated in the past week…really not what you want to hear while he’s sticking a needle in your spine.
Once the epidural kicked in, the doctor came and fully broke my water (since it hadn’t fully ruptured on its own). They thought for sure that would really get things moving. They checked me again around 9 pm and said maybe 4 cm now. So I had barely progressed. I was beyond discouraged and gave up all hope of her being born on my birthday. So I decided to take a nap since I figured I had a long night ahead of me.
I napped from about 9:30-11 pm and woke up feeling a ton of pressure. I told Luke and we rang the nurse who came in and checked me and reported I was at 10 cm! I couldn’t believe it! I went from 4 to 10 cm in 1.5 hours while sleeping! I wish someone had told me to just go to sleep to get things moving a lot earlier on!
I actually should have known to try this since I had a pretty similar experience with Hudson. With him, my water partially broke on it’s own but not fully, and things were progressing really slowly. I was at about 6 cm and had the epidural and they suggested I rest up for a long night. So I took a nap and progressed to 9 cm while sleeping.
Back to this birth, so the nurse called the doctor to let her know and also told me they’d have to figure out next steps because her other patient next door just got to 10 cm and didn’t have an epidural, so they definitely had to move forward and deliver her quickly. I think normally they would have just had me wait a bit since I had an epidural and wasn’t in pain or really uncomfortable, but everyone was excited about the idea of her being born on my birthday. The doctor said she’d never had that happen before. So she actually went out and found another nurse to come assist her so we could start pushing. They started setting up around 11:30 pm and I remember thinking this was a lot of pressure for me to deliver her quickly so it would be before midnight! I only pushed for about 20 minutes with Hudson though, so maybe it was possible!
They told me to go ahead and push, and then push again, and then the doctor said “OK you can relax.” I was so confused…we just started pushing, why would I relax? I asked her “What do you mean relax?” and she held up my sweet girl for me to see and said “She’s here!”
My beautiful Bailey Scout was born at 11:41 pm on December 17th, 2020 weighing 6 lbs 6 oz and 19 inches long. I guess she decided she did want to share a birthday with her mama after all!
I remember just feeling so shocked – everything happened so quickly (after being so slow the entire day) and I’d just woken up. It almost felt like I was dreaming!
They quickly put her on my chest and I held her there, skin to skin, for an hour or 2. Luke and I were just marveling at how tiny and perfect she was. I just couldn’t believe my Bailey girl that I’d dreamed of for 18 years was really here. I had a daughter.
I still can’t believe she was actually born on my birthday. Truth be told, I’ve always hated my birthday and swore I’d never have a baby in December. And then I got a nice reminder that we don’t always get to choose 😉 The silver lining is I think I’ll always find my birthday (and hers) so special now and will make sure we always celebrate it right!
Nothing can ever fully replace the hole left by losing my own mother, but having a mother/daughter bond again instantly made that hole much smaller.
Xo,
Shannon
