Amelia Jade Harris

Amelia Jade Harris

May 7th 9:54pm

7lbs 6 oz

18.5 inches long

A beauty.

I'm blessed to be able to celebrate Mother's Day this year. I've written down most of our birth story, mostly as a way to remember the details, but also to share the experience with our friends and family. 

There is no way to accurately describe the emotions of what it feels like to become a mother. I feel as though I have thousands and thousands of words to write here just to very briefly touch on my experience  of bringing Amelia Jade into this world.

I've been thinking and holding on to every second of Amelia's birthday. It was so long. I'm afraid I won't remember it all. Thus, there is a lot written down here. Good luck making it to the end. :)

Each moment was surreal. I couldn't believe that she was actually arriving...3 weeks early!

It started likely Sunday morning. We had a busy weekend with an amazing baby shower, watched The Avengers, had a fun maternity shoot in portland with our friend Mei Ratz and spent time with family. By Sunday morning I was pretty tired, but we headed to church. I felt normal pregnancy uncomfortableness. During one of my many trips to the bathroom during our sunday school class, I realized that Amelia might be making her way into the world a bit sooner than we thought. I spent the rest of sunday school class pretending I was reading my scriptures on my iphone, but was really looking up various signs of labor and contemplating the idea that our little girl might be here soon.

We went home. Relaxed. I started to get ready to do some work on my maternity plans, but found myself  not able to focus and posting on facebook, "Amelia should just get here already." I decided to go take a nap. I started thinking of all the things I needed to do in the next 3 weeks to get ready for her arrival and how it would actually be nice if she just showed up and then I wouldn't have to worry about doing everything (like my maternity sub plans). Within seconds of these thoughts, my water broke.

Every moment from this point forward felt both like a blur and also the longest moments of my life. 

Dan is amazing. As soon as I said, "Dan, I think my water just broke" he literally bolted out of bed...just like in the movies! He rushed around the house and got everything ready to go. I called the hospital, tried to remember what I hadn't yet packed in my hospital bag and tried to take big deep breaths. I was shaking in excitement.This was really happening! We left for the hospital within an hour. 

We were admitted and almost immediately the midwife started talking induction. This was my biggest fear. I wanted a natural birth...not just so I could be superwoman - but because I wanted my body to do what it naturally wanted to do. I was also afraid of the cascading events that often lead to a C-section. 

We felt a bit of pressure at first to get pitocin (and looking back, probably should have taken it!), because my water broke early and we really only had 24 hrs to make this birth happen before the serious risk of infection. My contractions were not that strong and only 5-7 minutes apart. But somehow my contractions kicked in a little bit more around midnight and we were left alone to sleep through the night. 

I didn't really sleep, I kept wondering how long this was going to take and what exactly was supposed to be happening. On one hand I was told to rest-up for what was about to come and on the other hand I wanted to be up and moving around trying to get things going. Dan slept off and on. The guy can sleep anywhere.The nurses kept saying I wasn't in active labor yet, but I was definitely feeling like I was headed that way. It wasn't until about 5am that I really started feeling strong contractions. At this point, I got up and started moving around, trying to get labor going.

I did this for about 8ish hours. How all that time went by, I don't know. Even just a few days later, I'm not sure what I did for those 8+ hours. My contractions were still only 4-5 minutes apart. I think Dan just made me laugh the whole time, then I would have a contraction and it was done and we would talk and laugh some more. The pain wasn't really that bad at first. But then I started having extreme back labor probably around 11ish. It got so bad that I had to stand against the wall...or anything really, and have Dan apply counter pressure on my back. He did just as much work as I did. I can never be thankful enough for all that he did to make my happy and comfortable. The back labor killed...but I was just so anxious for everything to start actually happening that I really didn't mind. I kept saying that I wanted the pain, just so it would be over sooner (yes, I quickly took that back later!).

I labored on the ball. 

I labored in the shower. 

I labored against the wall. 

I labored on the bed on all fours.

I labored in whatever position my amazing labor nurse suggested to try to get Amelia to move away from my back. 

We tried ice to get her uncomfortable enough to move away from my tailbone (apparently it works for some...). 

And nothing. 

By about 2pm, I was just exhausted. My contractions hurt, but it wasn't out of this world painful - but they still were not the required 2-3 minutes apart.

I finally decided it was time for a little pitocin. I just wanted her here and it seemed my body just wasn't quite ready to get her here quickly enough. Because I was only 37 weeks it was taking forever for my cervix to dilate. At this point, we didn't even know how dialated I really was because they didn't want to check due to the risk of infection. It was irritating, but best for both of us.

As soon as the pitocin started dripping, I knew I was in for a lot of pain. I had been up and active the whole time, but now all I wanted to do was just lay down because they pain was so unbearable in my back. My contractions were closer now and there was less time to recover from the back pain. Poor Dan was busy! 

Eventually, I felt a little pressure and asked to be checked. 3 cm! Argh! 

By 4pm, my awesome nurse asked if I wanted to try the whirlpool because I was in so much pain. She said that once I hit 4 cms I probably had only around 4-6ish hours to go. I said yes to the pool, but I knew that I didn't mean it. I was starting to vocalize A LOT during contractions and couldn't keep my cool any longer. I just wanted Amelia here! As soon as she left to get the pool ready I told Dan I wanted the epidural. He ran out to get our nurse and seriously within 5 minutes the anesthesiologist was in the room prepping me. 

Let me say that at this point, I was ecstatic to get an epidural!  In no way was I disappointed in myself for not going naturally. I'm so glad that I made the decision to get one. I was starting to seriously not enjoy my birth experience and I wanted it to be something positive in my life that I always looked back on. In fact, I couldn't wait for the nurse and doc to hook me up! I started smiling again and was eagerly looking forward to the next few hours. 

The relief from the pain was indescribable. I slept. It was fantastic. 

My legs were numbed, which I didn't really like, but it was a thousand times better than my back labor. 

Around 7ish, I felt like things were really starting to move down. At 8:30 the midwife checked me and said I was ready to go! In fact, thinking back on it now, I was probably ready to actually start pushing a good 30 minutes before that, but I just couldn't feel it enough to know.

Pushing was exhausting.  Really, really exhausting. I had absolutely no idea what to do. I couldn't feel anything! I think I pushed for about 30 minutes making little to no progress. But everyone (including Dan!) was incredibly encouraging despite that fact. Eventually they let me look in a mirror and put the bar up with a sheet attached to pull on and started to make some progress. I really thought that I would only have to do a few pushes and she would be out...not so! 

The worst part about it was that I had to hold my breath while pushing. Seriously head-ache causing. Why do they tell us to do that? I'm convinced it didn't really help me, but made things worse. 

Despite the difficulty of pushing, the excitement of her soon making her appearance into this world was exhilarating. I couldn't believe that after 26 hours of labor, Dan and I were going to be parents! 

About 50 minutes in, the midwife told me that I really needed to push her out because her heart rate was going up. OH HOW I PUSHED! Still....not too much progress. Eventually she said I had 2 more pushes otherwise she needed to do an episiotomy. YIKES! You better believe I got her out in those two pushes! :)

From then on, I can't describe what happened. In some ways I don't even want to write down the feelings that I had because they are far too personal. 

.....the incredible surge of happiness and relief and love was beyond what I ever could imagine. 

I can't believe she is ours. 

The best part about the whole experience was seeing the love that Dan had for her almost immediately. As she was laying on my chest, naked and hardly 1 minute old, I couldn't she her little face, but all I saw was Dan cooing at her. He was completely awestruck at her tiny little body. Those first few moments are ones that I will remember for the rest of my life. I loved it.

I might just leave it at that for now...