Abigail Jean
October 4, 2017 born at 12:48 am 9 lbs 10 oz
Her birth story actually begins with her pregnancy which was by far the most difficult of my 4 kids. I had a sub-chorionic hemorrhage which caused bleeding early on, initially a low lying placenta and was warned I might not be able to deliver vaginally, failed my 1 hour glucose test and needed to take the 3 hour test, had my first kidney stone at 30 weeks (which resulted in me thinking I was dying and having Jennifer race me down the highway faster than an ambulance!) and finally at 32 weeks I was cleared by my OB to have a vaginal birth and I fully turned the remainder of my care over to my capable midwife Jennifer Whew! After all that, the baby decided to wait until almost 42 weeks to come out LOL! At 41 wks 5 days I started having a small amount of bloody show and that night around 10 pm I was laying in bed trying to sleep when I realized that my Braxton hicks were coming pretty frequently and by 10:40 I texted Jen. She suggested getting into a bath to see if that might make them go away. By 11:25 I texted my husband, who was working the night shift, and he decided to come home. Around 11:40 I texted Jen again to let her know that the bath did not help and that contractions were the real deal. They were coming every 2-3 minutes and starting to get more intense.
I was so thankful when my husband got home around midnight and started to set up the birth pool in our living room.
I busied myself getting other supplies out until about 12:15 when I needed to start focusing on the contractions and using my birth ball. Jen arrived at my house at about 12:30 and at that point I couldn’t really talk through contractions and I felt like things were moving quickly and I was starting to feel some pretty intense pressure. At 12:41 my water broke on the living room floor and I knew I needed to get into the pool quickly. I was really worried at this point that the Jenn (the student now) wouldn’t make it to my birth in time.
She’d been there for all my births and it was important to me for her to be there.
Jen assured me that she was on her way and a couple minutes later she walked in. Good thing too because I was feeling the urge to push. My husband didn’t have time to get into the pool with me like he planned and before I knew it the baby’s head was out. Jen didn’t even have enough time to put on her gloves before the baby was out and my husband was pulling her up to my chest. What a relief to hold my precious baby girl after such a long pregnancy. Abby was born at 12:48 and weighed 9 lbs 10 oz (6 hours later anyways...we didn't get to weigh her right away and that's a whole other story).
