I will start again with a little bit of back story. In the fall of 2018, I had a car accident because of a fainting spell that had no medical answer. To keep my driver’s license, I had to be evaluated by multiple doctors and specialists to be sure it wouldn’t happen again. Everyone kept telling me that everything appeared to be normal with me. For one such appointment, I went to a free clinic that had a different doctor, and I was hoping he would find something the others didn’t. They drew blood and did an EKG. He came into the room and said, “Well, I think we know the reason you fainted, it’s probably because you are pregnant.” My eyes went wide and I am pretty sure a buffering symbol appeared on my forehead. He looked up from his paperwork, “Did you not know?” I told him that no, I did not. He told me to go about my pregnancy as normal and follow up with my OB-GYN. I left the office in shock. When I saw my midwife for the first time and we estimated dates, we realized that I would have been extremely early in pregnancy at that appointment. It likely had nothing to do with the blackout, but that clinic doctor wanted to get me out of there to move on to the next patient. Regardless, we watched my pregnancy carefully to be sure I was in good health. I haven’t had any episodes like that since. We still are unsure of the cause.
We had already had two kids in this tiny little trailer so after finding out I was pregnant we started to look for a bigger rental. After months of searching and one deal falling through while we were packing, we decided to stay at the trailer until after I had the baby.
Her due date was June 4th and I was experiencing some Braxton hicks but not the week of prodromal labor like I had experienced before. Her due date came and went. I was having some contractions the evening of June 13th (9 days past), but they stalled when I went to bed. I could tell it was more like labor, but I knew I needed to rest and didn’t put much stock in it. They were very real contractions, but I wasn’t dilating or effacing.
The morning of the 14th we started off the day finding lice on the kids. We spent the day cleansing the kids’ hair and every linen in my house. That evening Samuel made a trip to the emergency room, a pain in his knee was making him limp. They prescribed antibiotics to take care of a suspected infection.
My contractions held off all day but then came back ten minutes apart all evening. I went to bed and did my best to once again sleep it off. At 1:20am (on the 15th, 11 days past) I woke up to an intense contraction and my water breaking. After waiting for quite some time, the contractions slowed. I put a depends on and I went back to bed to rest while my contractions picked back up. I woke periodically to the contractions but tried to stay drowsy in bed to be as rested as possible. I remembered how tired I was after #2’s 14-hour labor. They slowly got back to 10 minutes apart and around 4:20am I texted my midwife. I told her I was no longer resting in between but the contractions were still pretty far apart. About 15 minutes later, I had 3 contractions all within 5 minutes of each other that were very intense. I updated her and my mom, and they both headed my way. My mom came first and my midwife came not long after at 5:20am. I was pacing through my bathroom and bedroom, just like my labor with #2. By 6:00am the intensity sent me to my hands and knees on my bed. It had felt like everyone had just got there and suddenly things were moving fast. Through a grunt I said, “I am pushing, is it too soon?!” My midwife reassured me that I was good to go while she put on her gloves. I paced myself pushing through the contractions.
This time Sam knew a little bit more about what to expect so he washed up and he stayed close behind me. I had told him ahead of time that I am so zoned in during pushing that I don’t want to be worried about trying to catch them, I wanted him to be the first one to hold her. So, he was ready. At 6:20am she was born into Samuel’s hands behind me on the bed and then passed between my knees. He told me afterwards how meaningful that was to him and that he was so glad to have a closer role with this birth. He decided that from that point he wanted to catch every single one of our other babies. #3 was 8lbs 8oz and 20.25 in long.
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