Tabitha's Birth of Eli Isaac
Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 12:05PM Tabitha's Birth of Eli Isaac
I woke up right at 7am, feeling like I needed to go to the bathroom. I was still very groggy and out of it by the time I made it into the bathroom (I had only 2 hours of sleep, my 18 month old was up most of the night) and I went to pee and then pulled my underwear back up and noticed that they were wet. I didn't think very much of it, because I still had a bit of a cough left over from having been sick recently and had kind of lost a good bit of control over my bladder thanks to baby, so I changed my underwear and went back to the bedroom.
I had just lay down and felt a bit crampy like I needed to go, ahem... number 2. I thought the Mexican food I had eaten the night before had not agreed with me. I went back to the bathroom and had some not-so-fun diarrhea, I thought, oh joy! I then noticed the cramps were turning into contractions, pretty good ones, too. It was about 7:30 or so at this point. I woke up my husband and told him that this may be it! The contractions were already pretty consistent and somewhat strong.
I called my midwife at 7:50am and was only on the phone with her for about 5 minutes when I had 3 very good contractions and on the last one started feeling like my body was needing to push! I told my midwife this and she told me, "I can hear you tensing, you need to relax." I yelled at her, "No, you don't get it... I really feel like I need to push, NOW!" She said, "Grab everything and I will meet you at the birth center, asap!" My husband and mother-in-law started grabbing our bags and getting everything we needed to head to the birth center.
By the time I got outside, I knew I was going to have to walk down our steep driveway and to our car, which was parked by the sidewalk, but walking down the driveway, I realized there was something else going on. With every step I took I could feel the baby moving down and down... I was not pushing, but my body had other ideas and was pushing for me. I was physically trying to fight my body from pushing! I got halfway down the driveway and grabbed onto the collar of my husband’s shirt and screamed, "Stop pushing, stop pushing... it won't stop!" I couldn't believe my body was doing this. I managed to get about 5 feet away from the car and couldn't walk anymore... like my legs had forbidden me to move any further. My body continued to push, despite my wish for it to stop and it just wouldn't let me make it to the car. My body was still pushing, no matter how much I had fought it.
I stood there, reached down and could feel the head. I told my husband, "I can't move; the baby is right there! I could still feel my body pushing and I had a flash in my mind of the baby coming out and bouncing off the concrete sidewalk, so I told him, "I'm getting on the ground; the baby is coming out." I got down and held myself up with my hands behind me and my butt off of the sidewalk and told my husband to look because I could feel the baby’s head coming out. He looked and said, "The baby is right there, like RIGHT there, oh wow!" The next thing that happened was absolutely amazing, because of the position I was in, I was able to see the baby turn as his head was coming out. I actually said out loud, "woah, look at that!"
My mother-in-law had run inside and grabbed a bunch of towels and a blanket and by the time she got back to us she was on the line with 911 and the baby’s head was already out, despite me never having pushed. I had not pushed once, it was all my body. The person on 911 said, "If the baby’s head is out, tell her to push." I pushed at the next urge and he popped out into my husband’s arms! I yelled at my husband to unwrap the cord from our son’s neck. Suddenly I realized I hadn't heard him make a single noise yet and looked down to see him turning a bit grey; I thought the worst! He was in my husband’s arms and my hands were full of dirt, pine needles and whatever else they had picked up off of the sidewalk, so I just looked at him and said, "Breathe, Eli… breathe, please breathe... mommy needs you to cry!" I told my husband to sweep his mouth; poor guy was so nervous. My mother-in-law motioned for him to hand her the baby and she swept his mouth with her finger and patted his back, and there it was, his first little whimper and his first tiny little breath! I felt an instant indescribable relief. My husband wrapped him in a towel and we waited for the ambulance.
The ambulance arrived about 2 minutes later. When they got out, they were told I was pregnant and in labor but did not know I had already had my baby before they had arrived. They ran over to me on the sidewalk and I noticed a look of shock on 2 of the guys’ faces (I would later find out 2 of the 3 men in the ambulance were trainees). They got the gurney and tried to pick me up and I said, "Wait! My son is still attached, I haven't had the placenta yet." They put my son on my chest and put us both on the gurney and loaded us into the ambulance. They cut his cord and took him off of me to give him a little oxygen because they said he didn't seem to be taking enough in on his own yet, probably because of the quick birth and not having a chance to expel enough of the fluids during birth.
10 minutes later, we arrived at the hospital, were unloaded out of the ambulance, and making our way to a room. They immediately took my son off of me and put him under a warmer, gave me a quick chance to hold him and give him a quick look-see. His little face was so bruised from having come so quickly. Then they took him to the nursery, I had my husband follow along and now they were waiting for me to deliver the placenta. About 15 minutes passed and I laughed about something and felt a "sploosh" as my placenta just fell out, ha! They watched my blood pressure because they said it was very high, which I contribute to the obvious, "Hello! I just had a baby on the sidewalk, people!"
2 hours later I was moved to another room and they finally let me see my son again! I immediately pulled his little hat off to look at his hair; just like I had thought, "sweet little peach fuzz." My other son had tons of hair, but I had a feeling Eli wouldn't have quite as much. I gave him a little kiss and looked at my husband and told him how amazing he was and we just smiled at him and talked about how cute our new little man is!
We were both disappointed the ambulance would not take us to the birth center and insisted we go to the hospital since our son was just fine other than needing about 3 minutes of oxygen in the ambulance. I was planning a 2nd natural water birth like we had with our 1st son, I got the natural part at least, ha! I declined even the Tylenol they tried to offer me in the hospital, they thought I was nuts.
Our son, Eli Isaac, was born 1/22/11 at 8:11am at 39wks, 2 days and weighing 7 pounds 11ounces and was 20-3/4 inches long. What a crazy, unexpected and surreal day it turned out to be! I had only timed 5 of my contractions on an iPod app and then thought it was wrong, so I gave up on that, because it said they were already a minute apart and I had only had 8 contractions at that point. A few days after I had my son, I re-opened the app and looked at it more closely and it had a configuration button on it, I pressed it and it said, "transition phase." Come to find out I was in transition at the time I was telling my husband that I THOUGHT I was in labor! My first son had a 4 hour labor and I arrived at the birth center, got into the birthing tub and found out I was already 10cm and pushed with the next contraction. Because of that, they put me on precipitous watch for this pregnancy, but no one ever thought my labor this time would be only a little over an hour from start to finish! I was told next time, they'll plan a home birth from the get-go, ha!
At the hospital, everyone knew who we were. "You had the sidewalk baby?!" is what everyone who came in asked us. We got to go home after 9 hours, instead of the normal 24 hour period because our midwife was going to take over our care and do a home visit once we got back home. What an entrance to the world he has made! Our neighbors, the neighborhood joggers and people driving by in cars got quite the show that morning! Our son is 12 weeks old now and still on the fast-track. He even started cutting his 2 bottom teeth at 9 weeks and they're almost through! We feel blessed to have everything go so perfectly in such an unexpected turn of events that morning and we are sure to never, ever forget this day and we can't wait to tell him all about it one day!
tags: quick entrance, extremely fast labor stories, extremely fast child birth stories, extremely fast childbirth stories, birth on the sidewalk, sidewalk birth stories, fast labor, natural birth, unassisted birth stories, unassisted childbirth stories, birth stories with pictures, quick birth
Reader Comments (2)
Way to go, Mama! Be prepared, though, it sounds like your little guy works on his own timetable! LOL
Congratulations! My last birth was fast too, and that was part of the reason I planned to birth at home, otherwise she would have been born in the car or at the triage desk and instead she was born into my arms in our home bath.