LIFESTYLE

HUDSON'S BIRTH STORY

It’s hard to believe I’m already writing little Hudson’s birth story. His birth always seemed so far away throughout the entire pregnancy and now he’s here with us and I can’t imagine life without him.

I am so happy to say that even though our pregnancy was extremely challenging, Hudson’s birth was very smooth for the most part. I can also officially answer the question ‘are kidney stones more painful than childbirth?’. Stay tuned for my thoughts on that.

last pregnancy selfie at home, 39 weeks.

Hudson’s birth story begins with our decision to induce labour at 39 weeks. We decided to induce for a few reasons, one being that he was measuring big for his gestational age and our medical team feared he was at risk for shoulder dystocia if we allowed him to stay in there any longer.

For those that don’t know what that is, essentially it means that the shoulders can get stuck in the birth canal which can lead to forceps being used or an emergency c-section. If the baby gets stuck the team has about 5 minutes to get them out safely.

We decided to induce as soon as he reached full term and it was the safest point to do so. As it turned out we would have needed to induce regardless as my blood pressure was starting to rise in the last weeks of pregnancy. My body had been through a lot as it had been a really difficult pregnancy and I think it had experienced enough. I had been feeling like that was the case but it was reassuring to hear our medical team confirm it. They said, your body is exhausted, it’s done and ready for him to be born.

Thursday, May 12th

We headed in for our induction at the hospital Thursday morning at 10 am. We had decided to do a sweep the week before to try to ripen my cervix as much as possible ahead of the induction. A sweep is when your care provider pushes the amniotic sac off of the wall of the uterus, and can only be done if you’re dilated. Luckily, I was 1cm dilated at 38 weeks and it was successful.

A few days later, I lost my mucus plug and was having more regular Braxton Hicks contractions throughout the week. I tried to go for a walk with Nick around our neighbourhood a few days before our induction and had to stop every few steps for a contraction.

at the hospital getting ready to be induced with cervidil.

When we went into the hospital for the induction our care team was pleasantly surprised that the sweep had both shortened and significantly softened my cervix. However, I was still only 1cm dilated and we had a ways to go .

Our OB decided to begin the induction with cervidil (a tampon like object that is positioned next to the cervix and releases hormones to help to ripen the cervix for labour).

After having the cervidil, we stayed a few hours for monitoring, then headed home to wait for labour to start. Sometimes cervidil has to be administered a few times (once every 12-24 hours) so it could take up to a few days before you go into labour.

watching selling sunset while we waited for the induction to take.

At home, we laid in bed all day watching Netflix (Selling Sunset to be exact) and waited for something to happen. The day was pretty uneventful (with the exception of watching the ups and downs of Chrishelle and Christine’s relationship lol). It wasn’t until about 11pm that I started getting some pelvic cramps and back pain, but it subsided and we drifted off to sleep.

Friday, May 13, 2022

1 am

Around 1am in the morning, I woke up with some pelvic pain and lower back pain that came every five minutes and lasted about a minute. It wasn’t as painful or uncomfortable as I thought it would be, so I rode it out for an hour and kept it to myself.. Finally I googled what contractions were supposed to feel like and I said to Nick I thought it might be contractions. He didn’t believe they were since I didn’t seem to be in enough pain and everyone says ‘You'll know when it’s a contraction’. For me however, because the kidney stone pain had been so extreme, these pains really didn’t seem significant enough to be labour pains.

After about an hour or two of the pains, I got nauseous and threw up (this really wasn’t out of the ordinary either, I had extreme vomitting throughout my entire pregnancy). When I got sick this time however, my water broke. I rushed to the washroom and a huge gush of water crashed onto the floor. Nick heard it from our bedroom and rushed over.

We called our hospital first (oops, we were supposed to call the midwife first), and they told us to come in right away. We scrambled around grabbing our hospital bags and Nick tried to help me find something to wear. I asked for the dress I had been wearing nearly everyday lately which was probably not the best choice but we weren’t thinking clearly lol.

Our doula lovingly teased us about this outfit choice immediately lol. We rushed out the door while talking to our doula on the phone. She was going to meet us at our home at first but after speaking with the nurse at the hospital we felt safest all meeting there.

HOSPITAL VISIT ROUND ONE

Our drive to the hospital was so short (5 minutes) that by the time we called our midwife we were already parked out front at the hospital. Had we called her first she would have told us to stay home with our doula until the doula thought it was time to go to the hospital (oops) but since we were already there she came to the hospital to meet us and do an assessment.

While we waited to be assessed, our doula set me up with the tens machine they had loned me. What god-send this machine was. It connects to pads on your back and you turn it on whenever you’re having a contraction. It distracts your body from the pain of the contraction and boy does it work..

When our midwife arrived she did her assessment, my cervix had shortened fully but I was still only 1cm dilated. I wasn’t far enough along at that point to be admitted. Our doula was confident if we went home we could progress things quickly based on how my labour was going so far and we could be back at the hospital in an hour or two.

LABOURING AT HOME

We headed back home (Luckily it was only 5 minutes away) and our doula met us there. Our doula coached us on how to get labour to progress. She recommended we walk the stairs in our home to encourage things along. I walked one stair at a time, often having to stop for a contraction. I snacked on some cucumber (delicious, but temporary) and within the hour my contractions were back to being 1 minute long about 4-5 minutes apart. I was getting sick constantly and our doula thought it was time to get back to the hospital. We packed up and headed back once again for assessment. We had been gone for about an hour and it was nearly 6am at this point.

BEING ADMITTED TO THE HOSPITAL

Once we got checked at the hospital, we still weren’t very far along. Only 2cm I believe but my contractions were so aggressive and because I was vomiting and we didn’t want to lose the room they decided to admit us.

MORPHINE

I had already been in intense early labour for about 7 hours so they decided to let me rest and gave me some morphine so I could try and sleep for a bit. I slept for a few hours and got some rest to build up my strength. During that time, I only dilated another cm to 3cm.

ACTIVELY PROGRESSING LABOUR

Over the next few hours we tried to speed things up. Our nurse Emily (I loved her) recommended we try pumping to encourage things along and our doula recommended we walk the halls and bounce on the peanut ball. We started a circuit where we would pump for 10 minutes, then walk the halls, then sit on the peanut ball and bounce. We did this for a few hours. The next time I was checked a few hours later, I was 6cm. We couldn’t believe the progress! At 6cm you’re approaching active labour and you can get an epidural.

THE EPIDURAL

At this point we had the conversation with our midwife, doula and nurses about getting an epidural. Up until this point I had been handling the contractions really well and they didn’t feel I needed the epidural. To be honest, contractions aren’t fun by any means but they were absolutely nothing compared to the pain I had with my kidney stones. My team worried the epidural would slow the progress down as it had already been about 15 hours or so since my water had broken.

My mom had always told me, ‘just get the epidural, don’t be a hero’ so I stuck to my guns and said I wanted one. With how quickly things were progressing at this point I didn’t want to delay my decision and miss my window, especially since it can sometimes take a while for the anesthesiologist to have time to see you.

I got prepped for the epidural and luckily the anesthesiologist was available really quickly. I had already had an epidural for my kidney stone surgery so I wasn’t worried about the needle. I honestly barely even felt it. I know a lot of people are scared of epidurals and I used to be too but it feels like a little pin prick in your back, nothing scary at all.

After the epidural, I was stuck in bed and just slept. It took the pain of the contractions away which was nice and allowed me to rest up for labour. I don’t have much of a recollection of the time between the epidural and pushing because I was mostly sleeping but my team became concerned with my blood pressure at some point between the epidural and actively pushing.

active labour

When I was dilated about 9cm I began to feel some pain in my pelvis which surprised me since I hadn’t felt any pain since the epidural. They tried putting a peanut ball between my legs to alleviate the pain but it didn’t work. It was around this time that I began getting the sensation that I needed to push. I always worried I wouldn’t know when I needed to push, I thought ‘how do you just know?’ you do, that’s all I can say. Your body honestly just kind of starts doing it and showing you the way. My midwife asked me to refrain from the urge to push until they could figure out what was causing the pain. They needed me to get on my hands and knees so my midwife could find the problem. They were doubtful I would be able to flip over on my own with the epidural but luckily I was able to quite easily (thanks to all those yoga classes lululemon offers at the head office lol!)

Once I got into position she was able to see that my cervix was being pinched by something. I was stuck at 9cm and the pinch was what was causing the pain. My midwife repositioned Hudson and was able to fix the problem. I quickly flipped back over and began pushing. It was such an odd feeling because while I was on my hands and knees the room had filled with nurses and the team that would deliver Hudson. There were carts with countless shiny metal objects on tables covered in blue table cloths. I thought to myself ‘oh my god, this is really happening now’. It’s such a bizarre feeling when that moment arrives. I had spent so much of my life thinking about this moment and how it would go and now the moment was upon us.

The first picture taken of the three of us just moments after Hudson was born.

My midwife told me to start pushing, she counted me in and out of contractions so I knew when to start and stop. She had talked me through how to breathe through a contraction very early on in my labour journey and now was helping me through labour just as well. She was amazing. For those wondering: Stay as relaxed as possible. Don’t tense up. Use your tens machine. Just breathe in and out until it’s over. Before labour, try to practice some meditation and tap into that with each contraction.

If you’re about to give birth and don’t want details on the actually pushing part skip this paragraph:

Once he started crowning I felt the ‘ring of fire’ as they call it and that moment was worse than the kidney stones, nothing else to that point had been. It was not fun and I thought to myself I just need to get this over with as soon as possible. I would push with each contraction and take a break as I was being told but it felt like his head wasn’t moving past this one point. After a few rounds of this I thought ‘forget this’ and decided to give one more huge push after they told me to stop. With that push I felt his head finally come out and his entire body followed. My midwife, doula, Nick and the team of nurses were shocked. My midwife scrambled to grab him and told me to reach down so she could pass him to me.

okay you’re good to keep reading:

holding hudson

It happened so quickly (just 13 minutes to be exact) that I was so surprised she asked me to take him. I reached down in shock and pulled him to my chest. I don’t think I cried because I was so surprised he was finally here and so quickly! I had only pushed a handful of times. I held him in my arms as they stitched me up and removed my placenta. They showed us the placenta, it was HUGE! I swear my midwife said it was one of the biggest she had seen. I wondered if it was because I had been so sick?

Hudson wasn’t crying as much as the nurses wanted him to be so after only a few minutes of cuddles they took him away to clean him up and check his oxygen levels. He had just been placed in my arms and he was already gone, I was very emotional but I was trying to hide if from everyone as usual.

They weighed him and measured him, he was 8lbs 8oz they said. They let me cuddle him again but felt it was best to take him to the nursery to be monitored. I felt like my heart had been ripped out. They told me I could go visit him once I was finished being fixed up.

Over the next thirty or so minutes, nurses were coming in and out of our room, removing all the trays of tools they had wheeled in earlier. It was during this time when I started being referred to as his ‘mom’. It was the most amazing thing. One minute I was just the same Lauren I had always been and the next I was a mom. It felt heavy, new, strange, unfamiliar and so incredibly special. It was also so bizarre because he still felt like a stranger. We had only just met. I didn’t know what he liked or didn’t like yet. I didn’t know what made him laugh or cry. Then one of the nurses told me I didn’t need to have another shot of whinro since Hudson also had RH- blood. I remember feeling in that moment like I knew him, like he was my son and we already had something in common. I felt like he was a part of me in that moment, he was the little boy who had been in my tummy all that time. The baby who I had talked to before I went into surgery for my kidney stone, asking him to be strong, not knowing if he would survive it. The same baby whose heart beat loud and strong when they checked for it after my surgery. It felt like I had always known him in that moment and he had always known me. It’s a hard feeling to describe but I felt it tied us together just like everything else we had been through together throughout my pregnancy. Like it was his way of protecting me after such a hard pregnancy and I felt like a mom for the first time.

going to the nursery

Once the nurses had cleared out our Doula started her goodbyes. She kept telling me I needed to eat since I hadn't eaten anything since before I had gone into labour a little over a day ago but I couldn’t think about eating, all I could think about was getting back to my son. All I could think about was how quickly can I have a shower and go see my son. I had the most intense need to get to him. Every second that ticked by without being next to him, holding him, felt like an eternity. I had to shower to clean off all the blood…etc. then I could go to him. I showered as fast as I could. I was too sore to walk so Nick managed to find a wheel chair and wheeled me to the nursery as soon as we were ready to go.

When we went through the door of the nursery, my heart was beating out of my chest. The nurse who had taken him to the nursery greeted us at the door and brought us to him. He was laying in an incubator, his chest rising and falling as the monitor above him flashed his Oxygen level readings. He looked so peaceful. I couldn’t help but well up when I saw him, Nick did too.

When the nurse removed him from the incubator he started crying. She placed him on my chest, covered him in a blanket and he stopped crying. She said ‘he just needed his mom’. My eyes filled with tears. It was the moment I had waited my whole life for. Nick finally got to hold him too. I hadn't realized that until that moment, he hadn’t been able to hold him yet.

They kept him in the nursery overnight, not bringing him back to us until the early morning. I think partially that just wanted us to get a good nights rest as we hadn’t slept at all in the last 24 hours and he was born so late in the evening. I think by the time we were in the nursery with him it was close to two in the morning.

the next morning

The next morning we awoke to a nurse rolling him back into our room. He was completely fine and they were no longer having to monitor him. We were so relieved and so happy to finally be able to be together as a family.

We spent the next two days in the hospital, getting to know him, holding him, changing him, hearing his unique cry, feeding him, bathing him, calling our families and debating names that could suit him. It was truly magical.

I can’t end this post without mentioning what an amazing partner Nick was throughout my entire pregnancy and labour experience. Our labour team nicknamed him the ‘dudela’ because he was so amazing. He was by my side through it all and I couldn’t have gotten through it without him.

I will always look back on our birth story fondly and with extreme gratitude for the amazing care and support we received at the hospital. Our experience was incredibly positive and that was largely due to the amazing care we received. In a way, it was actually sad to leave the hospital, because it meant that part of the story was already over. Luckily, the next chapter started with going home, excited for our future together as a family.