Not Lyle But Lilah: A (VBAC) Birth Story

I was over due. I simply could not believe it. I never imagined I’d go over due with the second one. Every one kept telling me that the first child would be the longest pregnancy and labor and the second one would come sooner. Not so.

Lies I tell you.

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Ok, I shouldn’t complain too much though.

I was only two days over due after all. It could definitely be worse.

So on my second day overdue I decided I’d break my own rules and have a cervical check and maybe a membrane sweep and that was the absolute furthest I would go with intervention. You see, this was my first VBAC attempt and I wanted everything to be au natural. No induction, no pain meds, no epidural and definitely no c-section. But I was so over being pregnant. So break the rules (my own self imposed rules) I did.

I had an appointment with my midwife at 3pm that day. I requested a cervical check and she obliged. I was 4cm dilated and 80% effaced. She was pretty confident I’d start labor within 24hrs but just to be sure I had her strip my membranes.

I went about my day. I went to the chiropractor, then to pick up Vera, my oldest, from Grandmas house. Then we went home and I honestly don’t remember much after that until my husband got home from work.

I had been crampy since the doctors appointment but it was not horrible and cramps are normal after a stripping of the membranes so I didn’t really think anything of it. But around 8:30pm I started to notice something different. It seemed my cramps were “waving”. Starting off small and peaking then receding.

Like contractions.

But they still didn’t hurt much so I told myself it may be the very early start of labor and not to get my hopes up. I started timing them and was really surprised that they were 5 minutes apart and averaging 50 seconds long. But they still didn’t feel that bad. I told myself since they didn’t feel that bad that it was probably false labor. I quit timing them while my husband and I discussed what we should do.

Should we take our eldest daughter to Grandmas now or in the morning? What if we didn’t go into the hospital until morning? But what if we needed to go in the middle of the night? Wouldn’t it be better for her to get a full nights rest? And worst case she just ends up staying the night at Grandmas for fun and we don’t have a baby.

So we decided we would take her to Grandmas that night. It was about 9pm when we started getting ready to go drop her off. On the way to her house I started timing my contractions again. They had definitely gotten stronger and didn’t seem to be going away. They were about 3 minutes apart now but still averaging 50 seconds long.

When we got to Grandmas I put our daughter to bed which took way longer than normal. I think she could tell something was up.

By the time we got done and had informed Grandma of our plans it was 10:30pm. We left for home and the plan was to pack our bags and clean the house one last time then we would see where we were at with contractions and decide if we were ready to go in.

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By the time we got our bags packed there was no way I was going to clean the house. The contractions were definitely getting stronger and I had to focus and breathe through them. So I sat on the living room floor while I timed another 15 minutes of contractions just to be sure that it was as consistent as I felt it was.

The contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and still averaging 50 seconds long. I didn’t feel like I was in transitional labor but decided we should head in because the contractions were strong enough that I didn’t want to be in transitional labor in the car.

We called our doula as we were heading out the door and told her she could make her way to the hospital but no rush because I was still convinced we had hours and hours to go.

By the time we got to the hospital it was somewhere around midnight. We checked in and went to Labor and Delivery. They put me in triage to monitor my contractions and check my dilation to determine if I really was in labor. I was dilated to 6cm and still having 2 minute apart contractions so I was admitted and transferred to my birthing room.

When we got to the birthing room I sort of lost all track of time. Labor does that to you. It takes time and transforms it into this weird neither here nor there concept.

Our doula, Rebekah arrived not too long after we got to the hospital and was helping to get things set up in our room. The contractions were strong but still not unbearable so I think I was in denial of how fast things were going. I had Rebekah start filling the tub with hot water because I thought the hot water sounded wonderful for my aching body. But before I could even get in the tub I had the beginning of  the pushy feelings.

Our midwife arrived sometime around this time. I think. I could be totally wrong. Everything kind of became a blur at this point. I had blood running down my legs and was just focused on what my body was doing.

See this is the furthest I had been before being whisked off for a c-section with my first baby so I wasn’t sure what to expect next.

I think every new mom kind of wonders if they will know when and how to push. I had the same thoughts with this pregnancy since I missed out on that part with the last pregnancy. Believe me, you know. Your body just does it. Involuntarily your body will just start pushing when it needs too. It’s quite incredible actually. To know that you don’t have to “know”, that you can just trust your body to do its thing.

God really did an amazing job designing us women.

Anyway, I started having to push and everything seemed to speed up and slow down all at the same time. It seemed like each push took an eternity but that the over all pushing was happening at lightning speed.

My wonderful husband, my poor husband. He was amazing through out all of this. He did exactly what I wanted him to do. Which was to not touch me. I felt a little bad about it because I had read all of these amazing birth stories of the husbands being super hands on and the wives needing their husbands touch but that was not what I needed. On the best of days I am not a physical touch lover and so when I was in the trenches of labor and needing all of my energy and focus, I was definitely not wanting physical touch. I still loved my husband and loved him being there but I didn’t want extra bodies to worry about.

So mamas who have felt the same way, know that you are not alone and that it doesn’t mean that you love your husband any less.

I had planned to push and deliver in either squatting or hands and knees position but it didn’t quite work out like that. I pushed for a large part of the time standing/squatting but my legs got really tired after a while so I moved to kneeling on the bed. At this point baby’s heart rate was dropping with each contraction and they couldn’t get the belly monitor to stay on me so my midwife wanted to use a scalp monitor on the baby.

For this I ended up rolling on to my back so she could attach it and for some reason that I really don’t understand I just ended up staying in that position for the rest of my pushing. The whole time I was pushing Rebekah did an amazing job of keeping cool towels on my neck and face and keeping me hydrated (with this labor-aide). She was amazing.

I highly encourage people to hire a doula. It’s worth it.

The whole time I was in labor I really never felt the contractions were overwhelming or even super painful. I never even thought about an epidural, or even that I couldn’t do it. It really wasn’t that bad honestly. I also didn’t have too much of the ring of fire that every one fears. I ended up pushing for about 45 minutes. Or so I’m told. I really have no idea.

Did I mention that we didn’t know the sex of our baby?

We never found out the gender (yes, by choice) but I was dead certain this baby was a boy. In fact we never even gave girl names a thought. Both my husband and I were convinced it was a boy. This pregnancy had been so opposite of my first one and I was carrying totally different. Every one we met said they thought I was having a boy. So a boy we were going to have.

Only when the baby came out, my husband said “well we have another little girl”.  My response? “You HAVE GOT to be kidding me.”

You see, I wasn’t really all that upset about having another girl. I was upset that I was SO wrong.

Those that know me know how I hate to be wrong. I had 40 weeks and 2 days to convince myself that I was right and boy, God sure humbled me.

So the baby that was to be Lyle David, was Lilah Grace after all. Born on September 28th at 2:11am after only 5 hours of wonderful, glorious natural labor.

My first VBAC was the best thing I could have hoped for . I’m still in awe at how amazing and smooth it all went. Does pushing a baby out of your vagina suck? Yes. Especially when you end up with third degree tears and a ton of stitches.

But I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Did you find out the gender of your baby? Were you shocked by the gender when they were born? What was your labor experience like? I’d love to hear from you!