I don’t know, guys. I had to take a few weeks to really collect my thoughts before I could sit down and write this post. Mainly because there is so much that I want to share but also because carrying and delivering baby A was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life (physically).

I had the most miserable pregnancy ever with A.

I did not glow. I did not radiate. I did not look cute or vibrant or feel cute or vibrant.

I was sick, I was stressed, my body started gaining weight the moment the pee stick showed “positive”, and I had two other tiny humans to care for all while going through it.

During my 2nd pregnancy, I exercised 5-6x a week and continued going to my favorite Bar Method workouts until my due date. I felt fantastic and LOOKED fantastic (despite my 45 lb weight gain with D) so I had big plans to do the same with this baby. Unfortunately, I realized pretty early on that any time I tried to work up even the mildest of sweats (like, I’m talking even going for a walk around our neighborhood) I’d end up with the most intense migraine and feel sick to my stomach for days afterward. It was so brutal! As if this baby were allergic to my heart rate increasing or something!

Worst than the weight gain though, was this weird throbbing pain that I had in my groin for the latter half of my pregnancy. It started right around my third trimester and at first, I chalked it up to normal pregnancy aches. I know that relaxin makes all your joints and muscles loosey goosey and this being my third go around, my body was all too familiar with what it felt like to be stretched out. I didn’t carry my massive prego tummy in the typical “high” or “low” positions but in an OUT & DOWN way. As in, it literally looked like my belly was hanging OUT of me and then dangling down LOW. (My low back just hurts typing this and remembering all the strain.) I figured that all that extra weight plus the stress of the huge belly were factors in the odd pain I felt “down there” and my midwife reassured me that it would all resolve after delivery.

By the time I hit my due date, I literally looked like a human version of Jabba the Hutt rolling around. I had gained eighty pounds (that’s TWICE what I typically gain in a pregnancy); I could barely drive my car. My feet were so swollen that my shoe size went up not one, but two sizes, and the only shoes I could fit into were super stretched out sneakers (with the laces barely tied). I was so big that I was wearing J’s t-shirts and the same stretchy maternity maxi skirt every. single. day. of the week; it was too uncomfortable to wear pants!! If you’ve ever been that big then you know what I mean when I tell you that I couldn’t even sit at the dining table with my family to eat my meals. I was so freaking miserable, you guys, and I was ready for the baby to come.

Both E & D had arrived about a week past their due dates (E-10 days late, D-8 days late) so I was pretty sure baby A would go over the due date as well. In the weeks leading up to labor, I had a few “false alarms”. Nothing where I actually called the midwife but definitely a few evenings where I’d get regular, semi-painful contractions that would be gone by the next morning. I remember there was even one day where I had such bad pains I swore it was the real thing … only to have a massive poop a few hours later and feel much better 🙂 HAHA!

At exactly 41 weeks pregnant, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with another terrible stomach cramp. I sat on the toilet a bit, figuring it might be another potty-thing instead of a baby-thing… but after a few hours, it was clear that this was the real deal! I was so relieved to finally be having the baby; I woke up J and told him to call in sick to work, called my parents and asked them to come scoop up the big kids, and then texted my doula to let her know that I’d probably need her later that morning.

Even though I was excited to finally be meeting our third baby (and to be rid of that gigantic belly!) I was also really nervous. We were shooting for a homebirth with this one. I have a history of delivering large babies (E was 10 lbs, D was 9 lbs) and E was actually delivered via an unplanned cesarean after I was already dilated to 10 cm. With D, I successfully had a VBAC but had to deal with a LOT of pushback from the hospital in order to make it happen. It was a stressful experience and I was hoping that since I’d proven that I could deliver a big baby vaginally, the hospital wouldn’t make such a big fuss about scheduling another surgery if I ever got pregnant again.

Well, I hoped wrong. With baby A, from my very first check up, the conversation was already centered around whether or not I should just schedule a c-section. It was so SO frustrating. I’ve never had gestational diabetes, I don’t have complicated pregnancies, my babies have all been healthy at birth … so why the need for preemptive surgery? Because I make big babies? That’s just what God gives our family; it didn’t make any sense. And I already knew through my experience with D that one conversation with a firm and final “No, I’d like to have a VBAC” would not be the end of it. I was already so stressed with the move, selling our old house, J starting his new job, and just feeling gross all around that I decided to just go a completely different route and try for a homebirth.

And also, typically, my labors don’t last hours … they last days. I was in labor at the hospital (with pitocin) for three days with my first; two with my second. So, that all said, I was so nervous about laboring and delivering at home without the option of any pain medication for hours and hours on end.

THANKFULLY, there is some benefit to not being a first-time mom and I progressed to 10 cm pretty quickly. I didn’t even realize that I was already there because I have a pretty high pain tolerance and I was anticipating that my labor would go late into the night and probably even into the next day. At my doula’s suggestion, I got in the shower to relieve some of the pain and immediately got this weird sensation like I had to push … with every contraction, it felt like trying to hold in a diarrhea or something and I just HAD to push! Anyone who’s ever had a baby knows that that’s a big uh-oh, but for me I’d only ever had c-sections or an epidural-assisted vaginal delivery so I didn’t know what was going on. I mentioned it to both J and my doula who were waiting in the bathroom and my doula immediately called my midwife.

The midwife arrived right around 3pm and promptly told me after an internal examination that I was indeed 10cm and it was time to push … !!

But here’s where things got hard.

No matter how hard I pushed or labored, darn baby A was so slow to come out. Later my midwife told me it was because my contractions didn’t seem as effective or as long as what she would expect to see — meaning, if the typical contraction is x minutes long (giving mama that much time to push through the contraction), mine would be only half of that. I labored and pushed in so many different positions, you guys. Hour after hour, location after location, position after position, nothing seemed to be working and I was losing my steam. I tearfully told the midwife that I gave up and I just wanted to go to the hospital because I was so tired and in so much pain and she told me that even if we went, at this point I wouldn’t be able to get an epidural anyway. WAHHHH 🙁

I don’t think I regretted choosing a homebirth any more than I did in that instant. What kind of an idiotic idea led to me think this would be a good decision!?

The only good thing out of it all is that baby A seemed unaffected; her heartrate never dropped and she was moving down the birth canal, she was just doing it ever so slowly.

Six hours later (yes … six hours later), my midwife told me the baby was starting to crown. I was so delusional, I started saying random things like “I don’t believe you!” “Why is my pee hole ripping apart?” “My pee hole feels like it’s ripping!!” (The midwife reassured me it wasn’t and I was fine but man that ring of fire stings!). Then, suddenly while I was bearing down and pushing on our bedroom floor the midwife told me “SOPHIA, GET UP ON YOUR BED. BABY IS COMING NOW.”

I just wailed back at her that I couldn’t.

She yelled, “UP! NOW!” And with whatever extra-human strength God graced me with in that moment, I heaved my entire body up on the bed, flipped onto my back, and pushed out our sweet little baby girl.

It was euphoric!

We did the usual skin to skin cuddle time, J & I sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” to her softly right after she was born, he cut the umbilical cord … and then it was time to quickly take a shower and while the midwives cleaned everything up and helped me get settled into my clean bed (ah, the perks of a homebirth!).

… Except that I was having an exceptionally hard time walking. Like, not that my hoo-haw or private parts were hurting, but my HIPS hurt. And after I was lying down and settled in with our little newborn, I couldn’t even shift from one side of my body to the other without an excruciating pain that radiated from the center of my pelvic bone and all around.

What was going on?

… I’ll tell you next time 😉