Welcoming Conway

Conway is here! 

Well, technically he’s been with us for almost 3 weeks already. We’re exhausted but oh so in love. It’s really amazing how little we remember from Ruby’s time as a newborn. It seems that we completely blocked out the sleepless nights, how tiny and fragile she was, how often she ate, and how much she slept. And now that we’re in it again, it worried us a little at first. At least until I went back to watch videos of Ruby from her first few weeks. I’m glad I have them. It’s good to get a reminder that the potato phase is normal. 

As similar as he has been to her in her first few weeks, however, his arrival could not have been more different. I wrote about Ruby’s birth story in a previous two-part blog, but the gist of it is that I had to be induced early with her because I developed preeclampsia at 37 weeks. I spent 4 days in labor but we managed to get her earth side without a c-section by the skin of our teeth. It took another 4 days after she was born to get my blood pressure under control. I spent a total of 8 days in the hospital and was only released then on very specific conditions. Ruby’s birth would technically rank on the milder side compared to what could have happened, but it left me feeling fairly traumatized and very nervous when the time came to do it all again.

This time around my induction was scheduled in advance. I had been on blood pressure meds since the second trimester to help manage what was diagnosed as gestational hypertension, and my doctors didn’t want to take any chances by letting me go the full 40 weeks. So, the night before the induction, I was a nervous wreck. Plenty of people – including my doctors – had tried reassuring me that the second time around is always easier than the first, but I understand that I’ve never been one of God’s favorites when it comes to medical procedures, so I just couldn’t let myself believe it could be that simple. I truly felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders that night. I just knew I was going to be in labor for days again. I was terrified and fully expected something to go horribly wrong. 

But the next morning when we got checked in to our room and all ready to go, my doctor said I was already 2cm dilated. It was a good sign and the beginning of what turned out to be a great day. 

They started Pitocin at 9am and gave my body a chance to do its thing for a while. A couple hours later (I believe) they came in to check on things. My memory is a little foggy on the details here, but I think I was still about 3cm at this point and the baby hadn’t moved down into my pelvis at all. This meant there was no pressure to encourage my cervix to open like it was supposed to. So they decided to break my water to speed things up a bit. Without the amniotic fluid keeping him floating, we were confident he would move on down into position. So we spent the next couple of hours ramping up the Pitocin. Every 30 minutes, they increased the dose, which meant every 30 minutes the contractions became more forceful and more painful. 

My plan, again, was to try to go unmedicated. I had done some research on how to move, breathe and relax my body through contractions, and it actually worked for a long while. Through some trial and error, I learned that sitting or lying still on the bed through a contraction is so much worse than standing and moving around. Hip circles or figure eights on a medicine ball also worked wonders up to a certain point. We even tried some counter pressure techniques that helped for a hot second. But eventually I made it to a point where even those things weren’t helping. The only thing I could do was bend over the bed and moan through the pain like a wounded animal. At this point I couldn’t stand to be touched so the counter pressure was off the table. I couldn’t even stand anyone talking during the contractions. I continued trying to relax through each one, but that was becoming increasingly difficult and the pain became more and more unbearable. Around hour 6, I got to a point that I really didn’t know how much longer I could hang. 

I needed something to be happening, but I felt like things had stalled. Where I knew I should’ve been feeling pressure increasing, I wasn’t feeling any at all. When the doctor came back in to check on things, I told her my fears, and she confirmed that I had stalled at 7cm dilated (to be clear: progress had stalled, not the contractions). 

Ultrasound told us that Conway was actually lying diagonal to my pelvis and sunny side up – two things that would resolve with time and some position changes, but no one could say how much time it would take. It could be 1 hour, it could have been 4. At this point the contractions were so painful, and had been for so long, that I had to give in. I knew I couldn’t stand them for another 4 hours. So I asked for the epidural, not sure I’d even be able to sit still for it through this pain. 

When the doctor arrived, I swear he had that epidural inserted within 30 seconds. Thank the good Lord above, because I had been super worried I would move and paralyze myself (the intrusive thoughts really ramped themselves up with this birth). However, did you know that the longer you wait to get an epidural the longer it takes to actually kick in?! I didn’t know that. So we waited and waited and waited. The anesthesiologist waited with us. He said it would take 20 minutes to work. So for 20 minutes, the anesthesiologist, my two labor and delivery nurses, Matthew, and I waited with bated breath for each contraction to come and go. But as each one came and went, I was still having unbelievable pain. And this time, because of the epidural, I couldn’t stand up to lighten the pain even slightly. But the doctor was wonderful and told me he wouldn’t leave until I was pain free. Eventually he pushed a stronger drug which he warned would make me weak for pushing, but only for about an hour and a half. After that it would act more like the regular epidural. I wasn’t worried. I assumed I had another 3-4 hours before baby would be in the right spot anyway. 

Boy was I was wrong. 

Once the pain was managed, the nurses put in a catheter – a necessity when your legs are too numb to walk. And sometime between the epidural and the emptying of the bladder, Conway moved into position and all of a sudden I was completely dilated. Within minutes of the catheter going in, it came right back out. It was time to start pushing! 

All of a sudden an entire team of nurses, a midwife, and my doctor all piled into the room. The running theory on why all of this happened so quickly was that when the epidural went in, my uterus was able to relax which allowed the baby to move into position, and emptying my bladder allowed him to come down to where he needed to be. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get them moving. The only problem I could foresee was that I was still completely numb from that super strong epidural medicine they had literally just given me. How on earth was I going to push out a baby when I literally couldn’t feel ANYTHING below my waist?!

But I did. 

This time around, I knew how to push, when to push, and for how long. Turns out I didn’t need to feel anything. It took 30 minutes from declaring me complete to holding a baby on my chest. 

I could not believe how fast it all happened. 7 hours in labor and 30 minutes of pushing. The complete opposite of Ruby’s birth, and a truly healing experience overall. I don’t even feel like a failure for getting the epidural. My body was too tense to allow progression, and who knows how much longer I’d have been there if I had been stubborn about it. 

And now we have Conway. He’s been the chillest baby so far. He endured 12 hours of heel sticks directly after being born to monitor his blood sugar levels, he handled his circumcision like a champ, he loves warm baths, warm bottles, and a warm chest to nap on. And he only gets upset when he’s hungry, which is every 2 hours. 🫠 

Ruby’s little world has changed completely, and we are doing our best to prioritize her needs and emotions. She is showing interest in little bro and I expect that to increase as he grows and becomes more interesting to her. And I know without a doubt that she is going to absolutely love having a sibling. 

We are blessed and grateful that both of these little souls chose us to be their family. I am completely obsessed with both of them and am so excited to watch them grow into little people and develop personalities of their own. There is so much magic ahead of them and I’m thankful we get to be a part of it – that we actually get to shape some of it. I find that mind-blowing, and I thank God every day for gifting me and Matt with this enormous responsibility. 

🤍