Our third baby. Different than the first two in that we opted to bring this baby into this world at our home. Different in that we waited to find out the gender. And different because we had two older kids at home already.
We had done this twice. We knew the gig. Breathing is important, water is important and movement is important. But, we also knew baby #3 could totally surprise us and do things differently.
My whole pregnancy, I was so eager to birth this baby. To be able to do it in the comfort of my home and with a midwife who supported me and my wishes was so exciting. My two previous births were marked by friction between me and the hospital staff. As much as we tried to be peaceful, getting the birth you want (natural, without meds or even mention of meds) you have to get ready to be stern and “put up a fight.” It left some bittersweet memories from those two births. Needless to say, I was so excited to have a different experience. Now to the story.
Leading up to the day of baby #3’s birth around 37.5 weeks, I was having early, steady contractions starting the Thursday before she was born. Also happening was a terrible sickness making its way through our house. I told my midwife what was going on and her advice was to And also to load up on vitamin C to keep the sickness at bay. And to take an Epsom salt bath with lavender oil and to lay down and rub my belly with lavender. Every time, the contractions stopped. Thank God. In desperation, Eric called my mother in law to come early to help. She drove all the way out from Texas to be with us and help with the older kids. Which would later turn out to the the biggest blessing! All weekend long, even with not doing much more than laying around, the contractions continued.
Tuesday, November 13th was not an ordinary day to begin with. It was Joanna’s 2nd birthday. I had growth group at church in the morning then after naptime, grandparents were coming over for dinner, cake to celebrate, and a movie at the theater! We were all so excited.
Everything was going as planned that day. I woke up and got the kids ready to go for a morning with Grandma. Made breakfast. Made my coffee. I went to growth group at church; they went with grandma. I had some cramping that felt like period cramps but no contractions that morning. During growth group, I was sitting next to our leader. Typically, I take prayer requests and send them out to the group. I leaned over to her and quietly suggested that she take them down since I was feeling “off.” Sure enough, during the prayer I had a giant contraction. I took lavender out and rubbed it on my belly and it did nothing. I decided to head home promptly after the group ended. On the way, I called Eric. He was in a meeting at Starbucks. I said, “just a heads up, I might be in labor….” he yells out, “hey so and so, I’ve gotta go, my wife is having a baby!!!” I quickly talk him down…”no no noooo, I am just in labor, no need to rush, you’ve got plenty of time.” He says ok, finishes up his meeting and heads back to the office awaiting my call.
I got home, and hopped in an Epsom salt bath… contractions not missing a beat. I laid down and texted my mom, Eric, and the midwife giving them a heads up that things weren’t slowing down. Contractions were every 7 minutes apart. I text my mom and tell her I’m having some painful contractions but it would still be awhile and that I would text her.
The kids get home from being with grandma around noon. At this point I was still semi in denial that the baby would come any time soon. Charlie goes off to run an errand. I put the kids down for their nap.
Then I have a panic moment. I’m home alone, in labor, with the kids. What if I have this baby quickly. I call Eric and tell him to come home since the contractions were ramping up.
I hop in the shower as hot as I can stand it and rock back n forth with the water hitting my back. Then contractions get closer.
Eric gets home and starts asking tons of questions. I’m still in denial.
“Should I call the midwife?”
“Should I fill up the tub?”
“Should I boil hot water?”
“Should I call your mom?”
No. No. No. No.
All questions I should have said yes too. Ha!!
Thankfully Eric doesn’t listen to me and goes out into the living room and calls the midwife and texts my mom.
Lindsey, my midwife, shows up and starts getting to work. She helps get the tub blown up, all the supplies ready, etc.
I start feeling Iike I need to push. They get me into the tub and start filling it up. At this point, I’ve used all the hot water up. There is about 3 inches of lukewarm water. They have to shut the water off because I can’t deliver a baby in cold water.
(I may get this part mixed up as far as the timeline goes. It all gets a little blurry once I got into the tub.)
While in the tub, I kept wanting to sit down thinking that it would ease my pain, but goodness it made each contraction worse. I stood back up and braced against Eric. Then I decided to kneel against the wall of the tub. Just how I birthed Joanna. Sure enough, this was the position. I could bend over far enough to get relief and help in pushing.
Except nothing was happening when I had pushed. I kept saying nothing was happening. Lindsey said it probably felt that way because my bag of water hadn’t broken yet. She told me to reach up and feel. Sure enough, a squishy bag of water.
At this point, since I was pushing, I was really worried my mom wouldn’t make it. I kept asking for an update…where is she, is she gonna make it. She walked in while I was pushing. Thank God!
During each contraction and push, I really felt like I couldn’t do it. I kept saying, “I can’t do it!” With the bag of waters there, it really made it difficult to push and feel like it was accomplishing anything. While I was screaming that I couldn’t do it, Lindsey said to me, “yes you CAN! You are the only person in the world who can do this right now! Push into the contraction instead of fighting it!” That spoke straight to my soul. I pushed as hard as I could trying to target the right area instead of pulling back when the contraction would hit…and boom, my water broke! Except the bag of waters was still there, hanging out from my nether region! It was super annoying and distracting me. They told me to reach down and tear the bag off. What a weird experience, but super cool.
After the water broke, it was a whole new ballgame!! I could feel baby moving. I was only seconds away from meeting our sweet new baby. A little tricky part of pushing, I couldn’t sit in the water because the tub wasn’t full. With only a few inches of water, if the baby hit air before water, it could aspirate and we’d have a problem. So think water (in the womb) to water (in the pool) versus water to air to water. No bueno. So both of the midwives had to catch the baby and make sure it didn’t go into the water. A few pushes and the baby was here! We maneuvered the baby around and up to my chest. I sat down in the tub. Baby was covered in vernix, which is the white wax-like substance that covers the baby while in the womb. Typically it comes off mostly before birth. It didn’t. It was everyyyyywhere! Baby got cleaned up and we had to check. What was it…a boy or girl?? Sure enough, it was a girl. Opposite of what I had thought my whole pregnancy. A sweet girl! She was so quiet. She didn’t cry. Just came out peacefully. My midwife even said, “well she’s breathing fine….” It was so weird not having her come out screaming, but also very fitting for the whole experience…peaceful! Soon after she was born, my sister arrived!!
The next part of the experience was the best and worst part.
Being able to be at home. Lay on my own couch and snuggle my sweet baby girl. Wait for my placenta to come out while the midwife massages my legs with cypress oil. Bliss. Seriously, I was on cloud nine. What an amazing experience! Jackson wakes up from his nap and walks out. He is so shocked. “The baby came out!?” He was the sweetest and so excited! A moment we had been prepping him for the last 8 months! Joanna wakes up shortly after. She is still so sleepy but excited to meet her new sister. Baby Jenelle!! A birthday surprise that none of us were expecting! Jenelle is officially “my baby” as labeled by Jojo.
Then, my placenta is not coming out. It had been a while. If you get queasy, skip past this part….My midwife checks and my placenta is stuck up under/behind my cervix. The next part is excruciating painful. Way worse than birth. She has to basically stick her whole hand up my whoooo-haaaa, wrap her finger around the cord and stab her finger into the placenta and pull it out while I pushed. It felt like labor but worse because there isn’t a baby at the end of it all and the rush of adrenaline and endorphins. Thankfully she was able to get the placenta out without any further complications. And thankfully I didn’t have nurses pushing on my belly every few hours after either. Such a different experience than the hospital. I imagine this whole portion of my story might have looked different if I had been in the hospital. I’m thankful that God orchestrated it the way he did!
The rest of the evening was spent with the family. They quickly cleaned up the pool and the birthing mess. We all looked in wonder at this sweet baby born so quick and unexpectedly early!! My dad arrived with my grandma, my mother in law, my sister, and my mom all there in my living room with the sweetest gift for my Joanna on her birthday.
We ate the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had (don’t want to toot my own horn, but it was amazing)!! Sang happy birthday, and recovered!
It took me probably a full week to catch up with reality. My mom has gone back home that Monday afternoon and since I was planning on going to growth group the next day, she was just going to sleep at her house then drive back after working a half day.
Then the morning of Jenelle’s one week birthday, I woke up with her next to me around 12:30am and she was burning up! I took her temp and she was 102.7°! I googled, consulted webMD, called my mom, texted my midwife. We took her warm PJs off and unswaddled her hoping it was just too many layers. Prayed a lot!! But our peaceful baby from birth was so fussy and definitely not herself. Everything was saying to take her into the ER… so we did. My mother in law got to the house and off we went. My mom met us at the emergency room at CHOC.
My midwife called ahead and when we got there, we went straight back into a room where a doctor came in right away and gave us the rundown.
“Because she was only a week old, we have to evaluate her a little more seriously. We will do a spinal tap, a blood draw, and a urine sample to see what it is that is causing her fever.”
Quickly after we got there, they did the spinal tap, inserted an IV inter her tiny tiny vein on her tiny tiny foot, and inserted catheter to get a urine sample.
Then we get moved to the pediatric intensive care unit – PICU.
In the picu, God did some amazing things. First thing when we got up there, one of the PICU nurses was a friend from high school who was a couple grades below me. It was great to catch up with her and see her! We had the sweetest nurse for the first shift that was super helpful!
They hooked her up to antibiotics first thing when we got there. Their main concern was that she had bacterial meningitis. Which if that was the case, the quicker you can attack it, the better. We were there at minimum 48 hours from when they took the initial tests at 9am on Tuesday morning. They wanted to go through the complete dosage of antibiotics and get the cultures back from their tests after the 48 hour window. That put us at Thursday at 9am.
At 1pm that same day, test results came back conclusive as viral meningitis. Specifically enterovirus (the common cold) on her spine. She was still spiking a fever and pretty miserable.
They got the okay to give her Tylenol which helped tremendously. She finally was able to fall asleep and the fussiness went away almost completely!
Moving forward, it was a waiting game. Wait the 48 hours and wait for her to be fever free!
That evening, we had a male nurse. He was such a nice guy… very helpful. And very good with Jenelle. I just felt uncomfortable nursing with him in the room. Which made things interesting. I didn’t shy away from nursing or cover up, but I just felt funny. That night I prayed hard for a sweet female nurse.
And boy, did God deliver!!
The next morning they were doing shift changes and this short girl with a cute blonde bun stops in and is going over Jenelle’s chart. All the nurses come in with a mask on since Jenelle has a virus. It isn’t until she is talking with my mom that we recognize her. At the same time they recognize each other. Growing up, my family was very close to another family. We’d spend holidays together, birthdays, bbqs just because, etc. The boys were like brothers to me. Well, our nurse, Katelyn, was married to the youngest of those brothers, Andrew.
So crazy! Something that really could only be orchestrated by God. Such a small little detail that he was so kind to answer!
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