Hello!!
From the beginning of this pregnancy, I had it embedded in my head that I would do things as differently as possible and for the most part that's true. We made it all the way to the end without finding out the gender and if I were to have another baby, I would do it exactly that way once again. The journey was long but so exciting at the same time! At the very end, I started to get overly anxious but we made it!
I did not want an induction but given my history and the onset of gestational diabetes with this pregnancy, I figured that an induction at 39 weeks was probably a better decision than to wait it out simply for the fact that with gestational diabetes there is a risk that baby will be bigger than previous babies, making it hard to get through the canal leaving doctors and hospital staff in a very scary position. My gestational diabetes was not severe as I wasn't on medication - it was controlled by diet and exercise routines (which I am oh so thankful now, I gained a total of 32lbs with this pregnancy whereas with my other three I gained about 50-60lbs.) However, Ryan was very broad shouldered as a baby so there were minor complications with his birth so that was a concern of mine prompting my decision which after is all said and done, was not the birthing experience that I wanted but it was what brought our precious baby into this world safely.
We scheduled our induction for October 24th at 1:00am, I was nervous.. really nervous, to a point of anxiety maybe just because I felt like.. we already had three perfect children and there was no way that I was going to be blessed with another perfect baby without complications. The plan was to take me to the hospital and Ryan would transport the kids to a friend's house while we got the process started. At the last minute, he spoke up and let me know that he wasn't comfortable with that and that he wanted to be there from start to finish. Of course, I wasn't going to oppose so we took the children to Jill's house together. On the way home they called to let me know that the induction would be post-poned, I bargained a little and they agreed to call me first (due to my situation with the children being with my friend and on somewhat of a time budget due to her busy schedule.) We went home and slept which was awesome! They called and had us come to the hospital at 7:00am where we started the process.
Back to my craving for a different birth style, I planned on a natural birth and I'm proud to say that even though I was administered pitocin, I made it through without pain medication. I was very scared as I have read online that pitocin can completely derail a birth plan, but with the support of Ryan, my nurse and the ambition to do it, we made it through. The pitocin was scary, it made my contractions so intense that at one point they were back to back which made things hard to breathe through. At the very end, the nurse checked me and I was at an 8... I started to become annoyed and filled with anxiety because I just wanted to be at 10, the pain was intense, the pressure was unfathomable and frankly I had been at the hospital for 7 hours and I was done. I requested for the nurse to check me again just a second later because I felt like I just had to push, I was at a 9.. but I knew it was time. So I started pushing.. they rushed the doctor in there with all of their little tables with tools and all that good stuff. I'm pushing and I hear "don't push.." "oh no.. we have a double nuchal" OH NO? I hear no crying.. I can still feel the ring of fire and I'm wondering what the hell a double nuchal is. Finally I'm cleared to push at the end of that contraction and I hear "ahh! It's a girl and she's gorgeous!" I couldn't believe it, she didn't cry... not a sound was coming out but the staff was going about their business like it was normal... I asked "is she going to cry?" they replied "she will cry plenty, just enjoy this moment" and they handed her to me. The most precious gift was meeting that little person, I didn't know anything about her prior to that second.. she was a total stranger turned light of my life in an instance.
From this experience, (not knowing the gender) I feel as though it's kind of comparable to the way people stalk others on the internet before formally meeting them, they know things about that person before that person has a chance to tell them who they are. It's not as hard as people think, I was able to shop for her after she arrived, picking items that play off of who she is, what she looks like because contrary to what most believe, each baby has it's own look.. style.. attitude.. even from the first moment.
On to the aftermath, this was the worst part. Those after pains were NO joke. The contractions afterwards were horrendous, they say those get worse with each baby and god knows I believe it (this may be due to the fact that I have always had an epidural which wore off with only one of my previous births) The stitches were god awful. I tear every single time I have a baby, no matter what preventative measures I take... it always happens.
My recovery so far has been unbelievably perfect. I was up walking around within an hour of her birth, I was able to get dressed and do my hair the next day for photos, I tried to be on my feet as much as possible and when I went home, the first thing I did was clean my house. I'm still working on getting a workout routine in place, I've yet to commit to something. Mainly I'm just dieting, watching what I eat and walking on the treadmill and for now, I think that's enough. The children are adjusting beautifully to our new addition, they love her (a little too much at times) Nolan especially. He loves to hug and kiss and sing to her which sometimes she just is not in the mood for quite frankly. Addison tells everyone that she is "her baby" & Maliah has taken our little girl under her wing as her own, carrying on the tradition of being a little mother to her.
Things are rough when it comes to the other parts of our life right now, we're in the process of finding a new home, which in Arizona is nothing compared to our home search in Idaho. The homes here are a little more expensive in terms of what you get for your money, then there are the HOA's which just flat out disgust me, it seems like in this part of the country, the dream of home ownership is dead - people here are pretty much living in large apartments and that's not what I'm about. So we're playing with the idea of looking beyond Arizona once again. We just can't fit a family of six in 2700 square feet, we can't do an HOA and we have to find a place with great schools because with four kids, our main goal is to raise smart, respectable, honest little people and to surround them with less than that... that makes our job as parents harder, it makes their childhood harder and really just takes the fun out of parenting school-aged children. So, we'll keep our eyes open for something but if it doesn't happen... I'm totally up for jumping states again.
