Gavin's Birth Day

Dear Gavin,

It has been 20 whole days since you were born. You have already changed SO much! You fill every single day with so much fun and entertainment for us - especially watching your crazy expressions! Every time I sit with you sound asleep in my arms, I think about writing this, your birth story, and it seems overwhelming. How can you put an experience like that into words? That could be why it's taken your procrastinating mama so long to get around to writing this. It's hard to know how to describe the feeling of becoming a mother, and it's difficult to go back and relive the scary parts of your birth. But I want to try to remember every detail of that day and these weeks since as they are already going by too fast. Here is the story of your Birth Day.

Love, your mama


We had big plans for Easter Weekend, as we do with almost every holiday. Lots of running around, trying to spend time with both our families, meaning lots of time in the car. Our Easter plans kicked off Thursday night when we made the trek to Guelph. We threw our "hospital bag" and midwife binder in the car, just in case. Before leaving the city, I participated in a Baby & Me Fitness class (bebo mia just purchased the company with plans for tons of new, great classes - can't wait to now try out the postnatal classes!). The class was Bootcamp Bellies, and man, was I in for a workout! I wish I'd been doing classes like that all along, in addition to yoga and Aqua Bellies, which I made it to a few times. You can check out a photo of me during the class on the new Baby & Me website!

We made it to Good Friday church in Guelph and then headed to Tillsonburg for my family's Easter dinner that night. I had been feeling somewhat crampy sporadically throughout the day for about a week at this point, so when it happened again that afternoon, it was nothing out of the ordinary, and was such a nice day that Eric and I went for a bit of a walk. It was great seeing my family and talking about how soon things would happen. My grandma even got out a needle and thread for the old wives tale gender test. Result of this experiment: Boy!

It was great to have some downtime at home on Saturday and squeeze in a visit with my best friend as well. Looking back on these photos, I was looking pretty huge! The plan was to go to Easter Sunday church in Tillsonburg and then head back to Guelph for lunch and get back to the city after that. Turns out, we never made it to brunch....

Saturday night, I had a nice long bath and went to bed fairly early. Then, around 2:00am, I woke up with what felt like gas pains. I went to the bathroom, then back to bed, thinking it would pass. Then a few minutes later, I felt the cramp again. And again a few minutes later. After timing them for a bit, they came and went consistently every 4-5 minutes. By 3:00 I figured maybe I should tell Eric and fully expected him to say we should wait until the morning and see how things went. Once I told him, he was out of bed, glasses on, saying we should get going! We ended up waking my mom to tell her and she decided to come back to Toronto with us, as this was looking more and more like the real thing as the pains continued every few minutes while we were getting ready. About 4:00 and we were on the road, ready for a long and very uncomfortable drive (with lots of bathroom stops!). My mom kept saying that with how frequent the contractions were at that point, I would probably have a short labour like her and baby may be born before noon! I wish!

Once we got back to Toronto, I went straight to bed to see if I could get some rest. We turned on the Hypnobirthing CD and it definitely helped me relax, but the surges (Hypnobirthing lingo for contraction) were still about 5 minutes apart so I would barely start to drift off to sleep and another would come and wake me back up. Pretty frustrating as I could have really used a bit more sleep, especially now knowing what was to come. We had called both our midwife and doula when we got to Toronto to let them know and our doula, Emilee, arrived here around 9:30. Confession time: in the last few weeks of my pregnancy, Eric and I had really started to debate whether we needed a doula or not. Even though I work with bebo mia and totally recognize the benefits, we figured we already had our midwives and my mom as support and was it really worth the cost to have yet another person there when maybe we could get by on our own. BIG MISTAKE for even letting that thought enter our minds, and THANK HEAVENS we stuck with our plan. Having Emilee's presence and support through almost my entire labour was incredible. She was constantly by my side to offer words of support or rub my back and when things intensified near the end, her voice was always in my ear, encouraging me and motivating me to keep going. Truly invaluable support.

My early labour lasted about 18 hours. Things were fairly steady the whole time, I kept trying to eat and drink even though I did NOT feel like it, we did some stairs, I rolled on the ball, curled up in a ball, and generally got more exhausted as the day went on. Once evening rolled around, I had my first doubts on how much longer I could do this. I had no idea how far along I was or how many more hours I had to go, and I think I finally started saying that if things kept going at this pace, I really didn't know how long I would last. Luckily my surges finally started coming a bit closer together and once they were 3 minutes apart for an hour, my midwife Sara was called and arrived. She asked if I'd like to be checked, and I remember being so conflicted. I know that frequent progress checks can sometimes slow things down or just be really discouraging, but at that point I needed to know where things stood. Turns out I was 6 cm! Had I been 5 or less, I would have been really discouraged. From the time Sara arrived, things really started to speed up. All in all, my active labour was only about 3.5 hours. It felt like my body had all of a sudden taken off without me and I was just trying to keep up. Sara also started my IV antibiotics as I had tested positive for Group B strep, and we decided that we would go ahead with the antibiotics. I was able to stay on top of the surges and focus on breathing through them....until my water broke.

Things were getting pretty intense at that point, as this was only about 45 minutes before birth. All of a sudden, I felt a gush of fluid and said something about my water breaking. Both Eric and my mom must have just heard "water" because they both started looking for my water bottle, until I shouted, "No, my water broke!". Sara warned me that the first two surges after my water broke would be the most intense....and she was right. From then on, the surges were SO much stronger and SO close together. The other thing that changed was the almost immediate urge to push. Each surge had a definite "wave" pattern. I was able to pant through the first part to try to keep from pushing, but as soon as the surge hit it's peak, my body was pushing and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Sara said that I was almost fully dilated except for one cervical lip, and I should try not to push against it. Emilee and my mom would help me try to breathe and pant through each surge to keep from pushing, but it was impossible. At the peak of the surge, my body would push, fluid would gush out, and I would be trying to fight against it. Around this time, my backup midwife Alicia had arrived and she gave me an oxygen mask to try to regulate my breathing. And then came the heart rate check....

They had been monitoring baby's heart rate fairly consistently, but this time when they checked, it was the scariest sound to hear how slow each beat was. They immediately had me switch positions and get on my hands and knees to check again, which I think made the heart rate increase, but not by enough. This was probably when Sara told me that they were calling EMS for backup. From this point on, things are a bit of a blur in my memory, but certain things stick out so clearly that I will never forget. Sara checked me again, but after those heart rate checks, she looked me in the eye and everything had changed. She said the baby's heart rate was too low and I needed to get him out, NOW. That cervical lip still hadn't dilated, but she said she would have to hold it out of the way and I would need to push past it. I will never forget her looking at me and saying "you need to push as hard as you can, as long as you can, as much as you can, and get him out NOW." I was absolutely terrified, but so completely exhausted. I think I almost went into autopilot at that point. We knew that our original plan for pushing was to do things very naturally and gently, with Sara's direction on when to push and when not to push. Not any more. She told me to pull my knees back, put my chin to my chest, hold my breath and PUSH as hard as I could, and when I couldn't push anymore, keep going a little longer.

When I started pushing, I was pushing so hard I truly thought baby would come shooting out. Not the case. It took FOREVER to even get past that cervical lip. I quickly became very aware of how completely exhausted I was. No matter what my intentions were, every time I started pushing, my body would give out so quickly, and I started to get really worried that I just wouldn't be able to keep going. I started pushing on my back, but things just weren't happening fast enough and got really scary when Sara started making changes, saying that we had to get the baby out as quickly as possible. They brought in a birth stool which I ended up sitting on on top of the bed, leaning all my weight back against Eric. With the added bonus of gravity, again I thought it would be no time at all before baby came right out. Again, not the case. Three firefighters and two paramedics arrived at this point, being let in and brought upstairs by my dad. I am so grateful to have had my parents there, but also feel very bad that they had to see me in that situation, and see poor little Gavin in his condition too. I remember knowing that EMS had arrived as I was on the birth stool and one of the paramedics appeared over my shoulder and asked Eric if he was ok or if he needed help holding me up. Thankfully Eric was a rock and didn't leave my side. EMS was great about staying in the background, so it never really felt like the room was crowded with people and the feel of the room was as calm as it could be given the situation. I however, was not okay at that point. As soon as I changed positions and was upright on the stool, I was seeing spots and told Sara I was about to pass out. I really don't even want to think about what would have happened if I did. Luckily they got an IV into me right away, as Emilee held my arm steady, while I was still pushing.

I think Gavin had finally started crowning when I was told to switch positions and lie on my back again. I think Sara had said around then that his heart rate had gone back up a bit, but I still needed to get him out as quickly as possible. Looking back, it was probably only a few more pushes at that point, but still felt like forever. Finally I heard Sara say that baby's head was coming out, and truly believed that he was almost here when Eric kept saying he could see dark hair. Sara told me to look but I think all I could see was a bit of the head and dark hair before I had to shut my eyes and push for the last few times. I don't have any real regrets about the whole situation, but I do wish that I remembered seeing Gavin finally come out. He was out so quickly, and Sara immediately cut his cord and they put him down on the floor to start giving him oxygen so I never even saw him. I was frantically asking if he was okay until either Sara or Alicia said he was doing alright with the oxygen. That's when I asked if it was a boy or girl, but wasn't even phased when Alicia said he was a boy...I knew it. During these first few minutes, Sara was asking for someone to give her the time of birth, and I clearly remember one of the paramedics say, "It's 12:00 exactly", meaning midnight, meaning technically one second into April 1st. I wondered afterwards if things hadn't been so chaotic if they would have let us choose his birthday, but we are happy with our April baby.

It was only about 10 minutes before Gavin was en route to the hospital with the paramedics and Sara. Eric wasn't able to go in the ambulance but that gave him a few minutes to gather some things and my dad drove him to the hospital where he didn't leave Gavin's side. I'm so thankful he was able to be there with our little man in his first few hours. I on the other hand was bed-bound at home for another 2 hours to finish off the third stage of labour and have a bit of extra time with the IV and time for recovery. I did need a few stitches but thanks to midwife support and doing our homework with massage, my perineum didn't tear. It was the most bizarre feeling to be lying in bed in a now eerily quiet condo with just Alicia, my mom and Emilee when minutes earlier there had been slight chaos and more than double the people. To be lying there without Gavin or Eric was the worst feeling. I truly just felt empty. I felt like I'd just completed the longest and most challenging marathon of life, and I was just sort of standing on the finish line with no real finale or celebration. I was very quiet at this point, not really knowing what to think and not really having much to say. My only focus was how long I had to wait and what I needed to do to get myself to the hospital to "meet" my baby. Thankfully, Emilee had taken a photo of Gavin to show me, and Eric was soon texting me from the hospital and sent a photo once Gavin was in the incubator.

I needed to wait about 2 hours before I was allowed to get up and head to the hospital. Even just getting up and walking was enough to make me lightheaded but I was determined to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Being wheeled up to Gavin's incubator was surreal...I just kept thinking that this was my baby I was going to see. He looked so tiny and uncomfortable in his little incubator, arms waving around, legs kicking...he certainly wasn't sound asleep! I reached in to touch him and all I cared about was when I could hold him. They said about 45 minutes. So for 45 minutes I sat and stared into the incubator, counting the minutes. Finally, they changed his diaper and brought him out to me. Finally having him skin to skin was such a relief, and he went from flailing around and fussing to completely calm and fell fast asleep. Now, why the nurses said I couldn't hold him more often because it would "disturb" him, I'll never know... He never seemed settled in the incubator, always startling with his hands flying around and then fussing. It wasn't very fun to watch. But those precious minutes of holding him are something I will never forget.

There is so much more to tell about our time in the hospital and our first few weeks at home, so hopefully I will be able to keep up better from now on. I'm getting used to typing with one hand as this little man EATS and EATS and EATS all day long! As tired as I get and as frustrating as it can be when he's wailing for seemingly no reason, it's all completely worth it when he looks at me with those big blue eyes.

Welcome to the world, Gavin William. We love you SO much!