Warning: This will be LONG!
I fully planned on blogging about all things pregnancy while I was pregnant—from how I curated a capsule maternity wardrobe, to how I prepared for an unmedicated birth. Alas, pregnancy got the best of me. I spent the first 20-something weeks sick as a dog with severe nausea and lethargy. The first time I ate anything green while pregnant felt like a small miracle. All that to say, I do still hope to write about my pregnancy, as well as how getting pregnant didn’t exactly go as planned, and also my wild breastfeeding journey—eventually. But in honor of Ellis’s first birthday this week, it seemed like a good time to write about her birth story! So here goes…
I want to preface this story by saying that from the very beginning I anticipated that Ellis would come after her due date. Why, you ask? Research shows the typical gestational age for a first pregnancy is somewhere between 40-41 weeks. Also, the Birth Center of Baton Rouge (where I did all my prenatal care) allows you to go up to 42 weeks gestation before you have to be induced. My due date was October 28th and we told everyone (and even put on our birth announcement) that Baby Fitzgerald was due in November. Jokes on me, y’all…
On Sunday, October 7, 2018, I hit 37 weeks gestation. My darling husband decided a couple days before this that he would lovingly share his head cold with me. So while I would normally be at church on Sunday morning, that day I decided to sleep in to allow my body to recover. I woke up around noon (be jealous!) and can only describe the experience as feeling as if I peed my pants but KNOWING without a doubt that I did not. I actually went back to bed for a little bit because I figured it wasn’t a big deal. Once I woke up again, I didn’t immediately think that my water had broken, but I went through the mental list of late pregnancy reasons that would explain what I felt (extra cervical fluid, mucus plug….my WATER BREAKING). After convincing myself that it was going to be okay, I finally got up and went to the bathroom and realized that the likelihood that my water had broken was pretty high at this point. I CRIED. Like cried-cried, y’all. Then I called Tye (who was volunteering at church that morning) absolutely hysterical. He headed home and agreed to call the midwife on call at Birth Center of Baton Rouge because I was in no state to be making phone calls. Wendy was the midwife on call and she told us to come in to get checked, but that there was no rush since I wasn’t having contractions. Needless to say, I took my time and did a lot of things to bring my anxiety down (did I mention that I was certain that Ellis would come past her due date?!). We finally arrived at the birth center around 2:30p.m.
Although I think all the midwives at the Birth Center are amazing, I only had a couple of appointments with Wendy the whole time I was pregnant, and felt a little nervous about the fact that I didn’t know her very well. Soon after we arrived to determine if I was truly in labor, we started talking about inner city ministry (Tye used to volunteer at the Baton Rouge Dream Center and I would occasionally help out when I wasn’t serving in another capacity). During this conversation, we learned that Wendy and her husband pastor an inner city ministry in New Orleans. This commonality felt like a little God wink that everything would be just fine.
After confirming that I was in fact leaking amniotic fluid (i.e., my water broke), I agreed to a cervical exam to see how much I was dilated. Wendy determined I was only 1-2 cm dilated at this point. We discussed how per birth center policy if I hadn’t given birth/made significant progress within 24 hours of my water breaking that I would have to be transferred to the hospital to give birth. As someone who has a lot of anxiety about hospitals (that’s a whole other story folks), it was always my goal to avoid the hospital unless it was absolutely necessary. Because I found out a week beforehand that I was Group B Strep positive (ugh), and because my water broke at 37 weeks and before I was very far into labor, we decided to do IV antibiotics while I was in labor (because at this point I was still giving birth at the Birth Center, I was allowed to labor at home, but would have to return every 4 hours for another round of antibiotics—this was notably one of the most annoying parts of the whole process for me).
We completed the first round of antibiotics, and I realized I was starving, so we headed to Izzo’s for my favorite salad (and chips & salsa of course). We weren’t originally planning on telling anyone when I went into labor, but due to the circumstances, we reached out to immediate family and a couple friends and asked them to pray that labor would progress and that I would be able to have a safe delivery at the birth center. Once we arrived home, we went into high gear trying to get labor to progress and get everything ready to bring a baby home within the next day or so. I grabbed all the newborn hand-me-downs from my sister and took all the tags off the newborn clothes we were gifted (because I was only 37 weeks, I felt confident she wouldn’t be too big for newborn clothes) and threw all of it in the washing machine. Tye scrambled to get the car seat installed in the car (it was still in the box…bahaha). By the time 7p.m. rolled around and it was time to go back for the second round of antibiotics, I was still not feeling any contractions.
At this point we asked Wendy if she had any additional suggestions for getting labor going naturally. I’m not sure how I forgot about this one, but she reminded me I could take castor oil. So after I got another round of antibiotics, we headed out again, but this time we stopped at Whole Foods to buy some labor snacks (unlike the hospital, you are actually encouraged to eat during labor at the Birth Center), look for some geranium oil to diffuse, and search for castor oil. At this point Tye took the last picture that exists of me pregnant with Ellis. It is anything but “Instagram-worthy.” lol Once we got home, not only was I continuing to do ALL THE THINGS to get labor going, but I was also trying to calm my anxiety about the fact that our girl was coming three weeks earlier than I ever anticipated and prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the labor that was inevitably in my VERY near future. Sometime in the next few hours I started to maybe feel contractions. As weird as it may sound, it was hard for me to tell at this point, because I’d been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks/months and they never fazed me. I can’t recall if it was before or after we went for the next round of antibiotics, but sometime between 11p.m. and 12a.m. I finally gave in and took the castor oil (I added it to pineapple juice and drank it like a shot. haha).
To Be Continued…
The infamous Whole Foods picture…HOTT.