Anneli's Birth Story: Part 3

[photos by Alisha Hunsaker]

{{Part 1 here}}
{{Part 2 here}}

As each contraction continued to take over my body, I gripped the bars on the bed and screamed.
And not like a loud yell or groan.
A full on, high-pitched shriek like I was falling on a roller coaster.

"I want to PUUUUSSSHHH!!!"

With every contraction that rolled in, my body was desperate to push.
The pressure was so intense and it seemed like any relief lied in just pushing.that.baby.out.

But that was the one thing I was not allowed to do.
So instead all my energy went into screaming.
It was all I could do to hold that baby in.

[I swore to myself I wouldn't be a screamer. But you lose all sense of self at that point...]

Suddenly I heard Elijah start to cry.
I knew he was in the room somewhere with Adam but wasn't quite aware of what he was doing.
He kept asking, "What's wrong with Mommy??"



Adam kind of laughed and held him close.
He told him I was okay and that I was just kind of hurting because baby sister was coming.
They were standing off to the side a little behind the bed as the nurses were all surrounding me.

Another contraction and another scream escaped me.
One of the nurses got in my face and told me to breathe.
Breathe & relax.
But to me relaxing meant pushing so instead I screamed again.

I was trying to follow the advice of all the {tiny handful} of birthing books/articles I read to go with my body, move with the contractions, and follow its lead.
Which was telling me to push!
But the nurses were trying to make me stop everything that felt natural to me and I would tense up.

It felt like I was holding in a bowling ball that was about to bust through my behind.
I felt like my whole body was going to rip.
I was scared and anxious, I just wanted to get it over with.
I was in so much pain, felt so out of control, and yet I trusted my body completely.
I started to give up on the nurses...

Another scream.
I hear another cry from Elijah.
Adam laughed.
Then the nurse got close to me and said,
"You need to relax and stop screaming. You're scaring your son."

That snapped me back to reality.
I knew what I needed to do and I needed to help both of my babies right then.
I tried harder to focus and relax.
Which meant... I was going to push dang it! 

I didn't care what they were telling me, I was having that baby and they couldn't stop me.
Doctor or no doctor, this baby was coming now.

{And there was no doctor.}

I took a big breath and pushed.
The nurses looked surprised but went to work right away.
They were rushing to stretch & massage me which almost hurt as much as the contractions.
(TMI??)
I felt her head come out and saw the nurses reach to catch her and turn her.
One more push and her shoulders and rest of her body came out.

I immediately felt relief and exhilaration.
I couldn't believe what just happened.
First silence, a little gurgle, then I heard her small, chirpy cry pierce the tense air.
Clocked in at 4:07am.

I was in total awe that this little thing came so fast and furiously.
I just did that!

All of a sudden I heard a nurse yell, "She's peeing. She's peeing!"
Crap! My biggest fear came true.
But then I looked over and saw that the baby was, in fact, peeing on the table.
So crisis averted, the baby can deal with that embarrassment.

While I was watching them do their thing to get ready to hand her to me, another disagreement among the nurses ensued.
"You need to cut the cord here."
"No, I cut it here."
"No, that's not right. You need to cut it here!"
"I know what I'm doing!"

Adam and I exchanged glances.
What the heck was happening right now??
Then before either of the nurses cut, they asked Adam if he would like to do the honors.
{So you know, they can blame it on the dad if it got messed up...}

Once that got figured out... they handed her off to me and we got to finally get a good look at her.
Her hair was totally unexpected, a crazy matted down mess of brown curls. 

Her nose was a little crooked & smashed from the quick birth.

Her cheeks were full and soft.
She had a little dimple in her chin when she cried.

And she had these calm, tiny, puffy, almond eyes that just looked right at me. 

I couldn't stop saying, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh..."
It was so incredibly surreal.
She was absolutely opposite of how I expected her to look.
[mainly lots of hair!]
And even more beautiful & precious than I could have imagined.

They let us hold her and stare at her for a while before they finally took her to get her stats.
A couple of the nurses looked at me with big smiles, gave my arms a squeeze, & told me good job.
After all the chaos & absolute craziness, it was such a relief to hear those words and hold my new baby.

[do you see how the gown was barely on me? it was just hastily thrown on me. all part of the mass hysteria.]

Adam took Elijah to go see her get weighed and he was all smiles.
When they gave her her shots, Elijah got really protective of her and got mad at the nurses.
"Why are you giving her pokes? You made her red & bleeding!"
And about an hour later when they came back in to check her vitals again, he went to stand by the baby and made sure they didn't hurt her again.
Already playing his part as older brother well!

{In fact, the next morning the nursery nurses were still talking about how funny his reaction was.}

[Before they gave the baby her shots, they were asking for my consent especially since there wasn't time before to sign all the paperwork. At that point though I was pretty tired & confused because so many different nurses were asking me a bajillion questions and telling me to sign stuff plus I was really starting to feel the pain of after birth. Adam was standing there telling the nurse yes, yes, yes but she wouldn't listen to him, it had to be from me I guess. Kind of added to the craziness of the whole situation...]

About 10 minutes after she was born & they were cleaning her up, the on-call doctor finally came in.
She shuffled in there, eyes half-open, hair in tangles around her face, looking like she obviously just rolled out of bed, and mumbly asked the nurses where the gown and suture kit were.
Adam and I just looked at each other... who was this girl??
(And I mean girl. She looked younger than all the nurses.)
She hardly said a word to us, no congratulations or sorry she missed it.
She just told me she was going to deliver the after-birth and then see if I needed stitches.
{just one small stitch!}
While she was making her stitch, another nurse came in to tell her she was needed down the hall for another delivery.
She kind of snapped back that she was busy and would be there in a minute.
Then she finished and she was gone.
We never saw or talked to her again.
Weirdest part of the night.

After everything was done, all the nurses left us to enjoy our new family of 4.
It was quiet & low-key, a total 180 from what just happened minutes earlier.



My aunt, who we had called to come watch Elijah, arrived about 30 minutes later.
She walked in, totally shocked, and just started laughing.
"Megan! You already had the baby!?"
Adam was holding the baby and I was sitting up in bed signing forms while Elijah went to go get some cookies with one of the nurses.
[The nurse that was telling me to take my pants off took him. She redeemed herself ;)]
I apologized for making her drive all the way there when I ended up having her before she got there.
As we recounted the whole series of events, we asked a nurse how long it took to have the baby.
She looked at my file on the computer and said,
"Well, you had her at 4:07am... from the time you checked in.... about 10 minutes."

10 minutes!  

The most crazy, insane, mind-blowing 10 minutes of my entire life!

I still can't even believe what happened that very early morning.
If I didn't have a baby to hold as proof I would feel like it was all a dream.

As every wonderful thing in my life, nothing went as planned & I felt {literally} pushed to my limits.
But after much stress & anguish came a beautiful, perfect little blessing.
And it was all much much better than I would have ever chosen for myself.

[The one thing I do regret about the whole experience is how little involved Adam was. He would peek over to see the baby crowning and come out but made sure to hold Elijah back as much as he could. But he really couldn't get much closer anyways because of all the nurses in the way and just the sheer insanity of it all kept him off to the side. I wish he could've been right by my side more but I am grateful he got to do some small things like cut her cord and that everything turned out well anyways. Though we joke that Adam should've just delivered her himself since apparently the stress really got to some of the nurses.... Maybe next time ;)]

This little, tiny, piece of heaven has already changed our lives.
Mainly has made me utterly exhausted.
But has also filled our home & hearts with more love than we could even imagine.



{I just really hope her crazy entrance into this world isn't a preview of what our future holds...}

THE END 

[Thanks for sticking with me through this crazy birth story! It might not interest everyone but it's good for me to write it all down so I can remember all these little details for posterity's sake. There's still some stuff that I left out but I tried to condense ;) So thank you for humoring me with all these posts :)]