Zachary's Birth Story - Nov. 2, 2011

(Written by Zachary's Dad)

Like his big brother, Zachary decided to stay inside mom past his due date. By Halloween, he was approaching a week overdue. Elizabeth was only able to sleep a few hours the night before Halloween, and then she had a really rough day with kids that were overexcited for trick-or-treating. We feared that, just our luck, labor would come that night. But nothing happened.

On the evening of November 1, there were no signs of anything happening. Elizabeth went to bed relatively early because she was tired – around 10:00 p.m. I was up doing work past midnight. At around 2:45 a.m., Elizabeth got up to use the bathroom and noticed there was a small wet spot on the sheets. She said “uh oh – I think my water just broke!” She confirmed that was true, and we were excited to know it was finally time. She didn’t feel like anything else was happening, so we were not in any rush to call our midwife, but she did tell her parents because they live three hours away. We got the supplies ready and prepared the bed. We even cleaned up the mess of toys in the family room so the house would look nice for our visitors:) I sent out a couple of e-mails to work colleagues saying that I probably wouldn’t be coming in on Wednesday. We finished up our preparations by 3:30 a.m. and there still wasn’t much happening so we went back to bed.

Elizabeth got up around 4:30 a.m. Her contractions still were not particularly strong and were not close together at all. She felt like this was going to be a slow labor compared to AJ, and she wanted to do something to get things moving. She talked about going for a walk (at 4:30 a.m.!) but ultimately decided against it. By 4:45, we decided we had waited long enough and should call the midwife to give her a heads-up. Rather than go with the on-call midwife, we called Regina, the midwife who only lives two miles away and who delivered AJ. Regina had agreed to deliver Zachary if she was not out on a separate call, and we hoped she’d be available. She was both available and already awake, so she said she’d head over shortly to set up. We also called Heidi, the birth assistant and woke her up. The contractions were 5-10 minutes apart and it seemed that nothing much was happening, so Heidi suggested we call again when things started to pick up.

Elizabeth decided to go downstairs to watch some TV and sit on the birth ball. Her contractions were apparently about 4-5 min. apart at this point, but they didn’t seem very strong to her. So I went back to sleep and told her to wake me if anything changed. At 5:30 a.m., Regina arrived. She had not rushed over because Elizabeth didn’t seem to be in any hurry when she called. When I heard Regina arrive, I finally roused myself from bed for good.

Elizabeth was in good spirits. Regina said she greeted her with a smile on her face and told her she hadn’t even woken her husband yet – so Regina assumed it would still be a while before the baby came. The contractions were now closer together – maybe 3-4 minutes – but were still irregular. I decided to call my parents at around 5:35, but I was distracted because Regina was checking Zachary’s heart rate with the Doppler. I told them to head over, and didn’t say much more. Elizabeth went back downstairs, and asked me to get her some food and drink. I got her a bottle of Gatorade and made her a piece of toast. Elizabeth also called Heidi again (around 5:40) and told things were picking up a little bit, so she should probably head up from Woodbridge.

Around 5:40 Elizabeth was beginning to have some harder contractions, but it still seemed that birth was a long way off. I sent an e-mail to work colleagues at 5:44 saying that I would definitely not be on meetings scheduled for the morning because Elizabeth was in labor and the baby would probably arrive in a couple of hours. Elizabeth was still tracking her contractions – and continued to do so up until 5:48. By then, they were only 1-2 min. apart. It seemed like things were picking up, so I called my parents again to tell them to come sooner rather than later (they live 5 miles away). I figured we still had plenty of time though.

Within a few minutes, Elizabeth started having more serious contractions, and she decided it was time to head back upstairs. When we got to the bedroom, she had one big contraction by the bed, and decided she better use the toilet one last time before getting ready for the birth. While sitting on the toilet, she started having much bigger contractions, and it was become obvious things were happening FAST. Good thing Regina was already at our house!

Regina gently suggested that Elizabeth move back to the bed, and Elizabeth said “I don’t think I can move!” At that point, it was looking like she might have the baby on the toilet (which apparently isn’t that uncommon for home births), but Regina suggested that she move to the bathroom floor. Elizabeth made it to her hands and knees on the tile floor, and Regina asked me to bring in some chux pads and towels. Elizabeth asked for the birth ball, so I retrieved that from the bedroom, and she rested her arms and chest on the ball. Our bathroom is quite narrow, so there wasn’t room for much maneuvering – Luckily Regina was in position to catch the baby.

Within seconds of moving to the floor, Regina told us that she could see Zachary’s head, and then it just 3-4 pushes before Zachary was born! He was born at 5:58 a.m., less than 30 minutes after Regina arrived. Less than 15 minutes after Elizabeth was downstairs carrying on conversation!

After the birth, we got Elizabeth and Zachary moved to the bed, and everything was fine. Zachary’s first cries of life had woken up AJ, so I had to go tend to him because nobody else had arrived yet. I explained to AJ that his new brother had been born! But AJ was a little overwhelmed and was not interested in meeting Zachary just yet. Charlotte slept through everything and didn’t wake up until 7:30 a.m. My folks arrived around 6:10 and took over taking care of AJ. Our birth assistant, Heidi, arrived around 6:15 and was very surprised that she’d missed the birth.

Everything went very smoothly after the birth. Zachary was a BIG newborn, but he didn’t look any bigger than AJ at birth. Regina was predicting a 9-pound baby, but we were dubious. We thought he was 8+. We were all wrong – he was 10 lbs even! We fed breakfast to our birth team, and everyone was gone by about 9 a.m. Happy birth-day, Zachary!