This birth story was written by the father of a former couple of mine. Her middle name is after his mom who passed away shortly after the birth of their first child. Thanks, Justin and Jen for sharing.
By Sunday morning Jen was already 9 days overdue and had been experiencing periodic contractions the entire week. She when she woke me up at 12:30 am and said that she was in labor I was very surprised. We went to bed and everything was normal, then all of a sudden she “knows” she is in labor, how was this different from the contractions she had all week? Well it turns out she was in labor. She told me her contractions were 10 minutes apart since 12:00am, but by 12:40 they were 3-4 minutes apart and growing stronger. After an hour of this we headed to the hospital.
When we got there she was 5-6 cm dilated. Jen heard another woman in triage that was screaming and she was thinking “what a drama queen”….. well a few minutes later she was the one screaming. She didn’t use an epidural for pain, she did the whole thing a-natural. Her contractions were so strong at this point they were taking over her body and she was screaming! It was just like the TV shows, this was much different than her labor with Gavin where she was very quiet and calm. Our labor and delivery nurse wanted to go on break and the delivering doctor hung up on the triage nurse when she tried to get him to examine Jen so after an hour we finally got a room around 4 am.
Dr. Fu was covering for Dr. Kurian and we were not pleased with this news. At 7 cm Jen said that she felt she had to push, everyone was telling her not to but she wouldn’t listen. She pushed lightly for the next few minutes and she was soon dilated to 9.5 cmm. Jen was begging to start pushing the baby out so the nurse helped move the cervix over Makayla’s head and we were ready to start! We are not sure what happened to the bag of waters. The nurse said it was gone, there was only a little bit left that she helped to break at this point. Jen began to push a little after 6 am. She was in a “laid out” position that the nurse had placed her in. After 20 minutes of pushing I realized that this was a terrible position, and I had her move, two pushes later Makayla was born!
Although we were very unhappy with Dr. Fu we were very thankful that God provided us with a good nurse. She was pretty negative about Jen refusing pain medicine, pitocin etc, but she helped us communicate with Dr. Fu. She had read over our birth plan and she would tell the dr what we wanted or reminded us to tell him at the right time. In the end the nurse was very impressed with Jen’s labor and delivery!
After Makayla was born she was able to rest on Jen as the cord clamp was delayed. Once we gave the okay the cord was cut and the Dr allowed the placenta to birth naturally, this happened about 5 minutes later. Once she was weighted, 8lbs 15 oz, I was able to hold her, she was beautiful!
Being born at 6:31 am was the perfect time. Jen and I were able to get some sleep the night before and with a few cups of coffee we were able to make it through the day. Makayla was a good sleeper right away and she pretty much slept the first few days and nights which we were very happy about. We are grateful to have a beautiful healthy daughter, Makayla Roxanne is truly a blessing from God.
