The Birth of B

Tomorrow Baby B will be 2.

I suppose I will have to stop calling him "baby."

Maybe.

Some day.

A lot of people have asked me about my kiddo's births. And I actually really love talking about them because they were such amazing experiences. So I thought I'd share B's birthstory today.

This is exactly as I wrote it the day after he was born. I don't have time to clean it up or make sure it's PC or anything, so hopefully it's all appropriate.




***THERE ARE PICTURES OF BOOBS. THERE ARE ALSO PICTURES OF A FRESHLY BORN BABY. IF BOOBS, BLOOD, OR BIRTH BOTHERS YOU OR IS TOO GRAPHIC, DO NOT - I REPEAT - DO NOT KEEP READING.***

 

 

 

 

 

The Birth of Basilio Patrick Atticus

 

So, I’d been saying to J how August 27, 2011 would be a good day to have the baby. It was a Saturday, I’d be my 40 weeks and then some, my sister would be around; it was just overall convenient for us. And you know, babies like to be convenient. 

Well, Saturday came and mostly went and nada. There were no symptoms or signs of pregnancy coming. We ran some errands, and I remember telling Jaime at about 6pm that my back really hurt, but it wasn’t like back labor or anything like when I had H, just a sore back from all the weight. And I lamented that my back had to be so sore and there was no action.

Yep, I was awesomely huuuuge!

 

J put H to bed around 730pm, and C brought her boyfriend over for us to meet. At about 830pm J was making mashed potato tacos per my request, and I joked that wouldn’t it be awesome if they were “labor inducing mashed potato tacos”?

Flash forward to almost 10pm, and we are sitting in the living with C and her boyfriend, watching TV and talking and I start to feel a little crampy. Not even as bad a period cramps and it was all in the front, which I’d never experienced as H was full back labor, so I didn’t think much about it. At about 1030pm I told C and M good night, and J and I went to bed. At this point, the cramps were coming and going in regular intervals.

J started timing them, even though I was pretty insistent that they were *not* contractions. It was nothing like with H, so it couldn’t possibly be contractions or labor. Well, they were lasting a good minute and coming about every 2.5 mins so he texted our midwife. Not long after they were coming every 1.5 mins and our midwife decided it was best for her to come over.

J told my sister she should probably take her boyfriend home. I made some coconut water popsicles and walked around while J set up the birth pool. My midwife showed up, followed shortly by her apprentice A. I let her check me, even though I knew it truly didn't mean much. I was just curious. She checked and I was at 4. This was at approximately 1230am. Well, my contractions were strong for a while, and then puttered out to nothing.  At 130am H woke up and so C went upstairs to be with her.

At about 330 my midwife checked me again and I was only about a 7. It was pretty miserable. When the contractions came they came with nearly no stopping in between, and then they would suddenly stop for quite awhile before picking up again. I definitely preferred the steady, slowly increasing contractions I’d had with H. Not to mention, I had no idea how to handle front labor. Although everyone swears back labor is more painful than front labor, I would gladly take back labor any day over what I was experiencing. I just had no idea how to get comfortable.

To make matters more fun, the baby’s head was super low, but my cervix was somehow pushed up and behind the head, so until my cervix came down below his head, he couldn’t get out. So my midwife suggested that during each contraction J put his arms around me and pull up on my belly, helping to shift my cervix forward. This was medieval torture for sure. It was excruciating to the point that I started telling J I wasn’t having contractions; I just couldn’t deal with it. I was starting to feel mostly like a failure at this point, and I was so tired. H’s labor had been so easy, and nearly painless. I made it clear at this point to J that he would never again touch me until he was shooting blanks.  

At some point, I asked my midwife to break my waters, in hopes of things going quicker. At this point I was hoping the baby would be born before H woke up for the morning.

 C came downstairs at 430 followed by H screaming, and declared that she could not stay with her anymore because all H was doing was laying there staring at her. Quite frankly, I didn’t care if H wasn’t sleeping, so long as she wasn’t crying. So I told J to go upstairs with H while I walked around, dealing with some pretty intense contractions, and my sister lamented on how she had to be at work at noon and hadn’t slept yet. Super annoyed and in waaaay too much pain to listen to her, I told her to go to bed. She had said earlier she couldn’t lay down and sleep with H since she hadn’t washed her face or removed her contacts. So she did so, and then went to sleep with her, since J at this point had her back to sleep. Needless to say, she was lucky at this point that I was in too much pain to really talk or tell her how I felt about the situation.

 

Now *those* are some beefy arms!

 

At around 530 I said I wanted to push. But when I tried, my midwife realized I still wasn’t dilated enough to push. So I leaned back on J and was in a pretty comfortable position, so even though my midwife suggested I walk or get in the shower to help things get motivated, I refused. I just needed a break from the pain, and this was the best I was getting. And for some reason I had zero desire to be in water of any sort. I had been planning to have a water birth, and yet my birth pool stood completely untouched. So I sat for about 30 minutes before finally deciding to get up and walk around. I really wanted the baby out before H woke up.

The contractions started coming on top of each other and I got up on the couch and leaned on the birth ball, trying to deal with them. And then suddenly, I was pushing. I couldn’t control it; the baby was going to come. I moved off the couch, but remained in the same position, using the couch as my support and being on my knees in front of it. It was 653am when I started to push.

I felt like I was going to explode. But I could feel him sliding down with each push, which was actually pretty incredible, even though I was exhausted and would have been in tears if there had been any energy for them. For the last two big pushes I turned around and then voila! At 713am, I was holding my baby.

 

 

I looked down at him, and had to do a double take, sure I was seeing the cord and not a penis, but there it was! I had a boy! “I have a boy! He’s a boy!” was pretty much all I could say. My mommy intuition sucked mucho with him. I was certain without a doubt in my mind that I was going to have another girl. So much so that the possibility that I could have a boy truly never entered my mind.

 

Within 10 mins of him being born H woke up and down she came with C. She loved him instantly and proceeded to climb into my lap and try to show him how to nurse. B, however, was not nearly as interested as she was, and didn’t bother to latch on until 810am.

 

 

My midwife asked if we had a name and I told her “no.” We hadn’t really discussed boy names. We had planned on calling H Basilio if she were a boy. We’d talked for about half a second about Atticus at the beginning of the pregnancy. But since I was sure he was a girl, we didn’t discuss it more than that.

 

So, I told J after a few minutes that he was Basilio. My little Lio. And later decided on Patrick Atticus. J agreed. I’d just birthed an almost 9lb baby; I don’t think he was in a position to disagree.

 

 

So my little Basilio was born at 713am on Sunday, August 28, 2011, weighing a whopping 8lbs and 15oz, and being 21 inches long. Perfection.