Quaytn’s Birth Story

Her birth story is completely different than with my first. I learned many other techniques to help from the first and I pretty much knew what to expect. It went so much smoother than before. My pregnancy and birth were both much easier this time around.

I was late this time around, my oldest came at 37 weeks and Quaytn came at 40 weeks and two days and I had to be induced.

Knowing this is the last time I will be pregnant and giving birth made me very emotional, but I am happy with her being the baby forever.

I was incredibly nervous about birth again because my first experience was not all rainbows and unicorns. The extreme pain and commotion in the birthing room is something I will never forget.

With COVID being around with this birth, my husband was the only person I could have in the room with me. In the end I am happy about that because it made the whole process a lot less stressful with less people in the room.

I think I am in labor.

Once I hit 37 weeks, I really thought she would come any day after that since by son came early.

BUTTTTT…..

Quaytn decided to be stubborn and not show any signs of entering the world early at all.

On July 20^th, 2020 I was exactly 40 weeks to the day. I have done anything I could possibly think of to try to put myself into labor. That night I was having what I thought were contractions (I did not go through labor first with my son, my water broke first so I wasn’t sure what it really felt like)

I was timing them, and they got down to 5-8 minutes apart. I really did not want to have to wake my husband up and call my grandma to watch my son if it was just a false alarm, so I waited as long as I could until I could not take it anymore and I was nervous since the hospital is a 30 minute drive from our house. It was around 3 A.M when I finally decided to wake my husband up and call my grandma.

With it being the time COVID is around, we had to bring everything with us and in the hospital with us because once we got in, we were not allowed to leave and come right back inside for any reason.

Once we got there, they checked me in and monitored me for about three hours. I was having contractions and they said I was in early labor but since I was not dilating fast, they sent me home. I did tell them I did not dilate with my son on my own, but they said it did not matter and still sent me on my way. They did give me an incredibly low dose of Ambien to help me sleep for a couple hours once I got home since the contractions were keeping me up all night.

Back at home

It was around 7 in the morning or so when we got back home. We called my grandma to see if Kendyn could just hangout with her for a little longer so we could take a nap and she was fine with that. So, we had the air mattress in the living room, put on a movie and crashed hard for about 3 hours. My husband woke me up because my phone was ringing, and it was the hospital calling to schedule me to come in for an induction!

We scheduled it for that Wednesday morning which was less than two days away! We were so excited and nervous because we finally had a date that we would be meeting our baby girl.

We made sure that we spent all the time we could with Kendyn and took him to Scene 75 just us three for our last outing without a baby.

It is Induction Day!

July 22^nd, 2020

The day is finally here! My induction was scheduled for 8:00 A.M. and I had planned to get up early, make a nice breakfast for everyone, and enjoy my last moments with Kendyn being the baby.

BUTTTT…..

We didn’t get up with our alarm and had about 30 minutes to get up and ready. So I warmed up a breakfast sandwich, got our things, gave Kendyn lots of love and he made sure to give us juice and snacks in case we got hungry (my heart exploded).

We made it to the hospital around 7:40 A.M. Checked in and was greeted by our nurse that would be with us the whole time, and let me just say, she was AMAZING!

Once we were in the room, I put the beautiful hospital gown on and I had to get tested for COVID before she could start any meds or my iv. While we waited for my results to come back, we all three sat in the room talking about life and laughing, it was so nice.

It took my results about an hour to come back and it was negative. As soon as those came back my nurse started my iv and started the Pitocin around 9:50 A.M. My nurse was so amazing, she made sure I was comfortable the entire time and sat with us and just talked. She told us that her shift was over at 7 P.M. and we are going to have a baby before that.

She told us to try to take a nap and relax and she would be back around 11:30 A.M. to check how far along I am.

Well taking a nap and relax is easier said than done while in labor and in the hospital. So I just laid there, put headphones in and listened to calming music.

My contractions started getting bigger around 11:00 A.M. and the nurse came back in to check me, I was not dilating very quickly so she upped the Pitocin dosage. We then planned for my midwife to come in and break my water and then get the epidural. She had me sit up while we waited for my midwife to come in so we can move Quaytn down farther in the birth canal.

My midwife broke my water around noon, and I got my epidural after thar around 12:30 P.M. so I could try to relax more. After my epidural, I laid on my right side for a while, and I started to worry because I could still feel my contractions on my left side. I told my nurse I was feeling them, so she had me sit up to try to get the medicine to equal out on both sides. Before I sat up, she checked how far dilated I was, and I was between a 7 and 8.

Around 3 P.M. I told her I still felt my contractions on my left side, being the amazing nurse she is she called a doctor to come in and give me a half dose of lidocaine to help. Man let me tell you, it worked very well and fast!

I received the lidocaine around 3:10 P.M. and my nurse helped me lay on my left side. Once I laid down, I started having the constant feeling of having to push, even between contractions. I told my nurse about it and so she checked me again and I was fully dilated and ready to push!

She let my midwife know and had me do a couple practice pushes. Once my midwife got there, I started pushing around 3:46 P.M.

It was the most relaxing time. I know that sounds weird but my experience from my first one to this one, I would say this one was way better. It was only my husband, my nurse, my midwife, and one other nurse to help. In between contractions we were just talking and laughing, I know I said it a million times before but it was such an amazing experience.

I pushed for 17 minutes and we had our beautiful baby girl at 4:02 P.M. on July 22, 2020!

She was 8lbs. 3oz. and 20.75 inches long with a full head of hair!

We were only supposed to stay 24 hours after birth but she had higher levels of jaundice, so we had to stay an extra day until it leveled out.

We were able to leave the morning of the 24^th around 9:30 A.M. and we were so excited for her to meet her big brother that has been anxiously waiting for her to come!

Her great grandma (Gigi) and Kendyn were the first two to meet her and they just could not get enough of her.

Kendyn’s Birth Story

It has been four years since our little man came into the world and I have been wanting to write this and just haven’t been able to. I knew it would be too long because all of the emotions you are going through, it is difficult to keep it short and sweet. I knew you wouldn’t want to read tons of pages on it so I have been able to make it as short as possible.

I read and watched a million birthing stories a few weeks before Kendyn’s arrival. I know that was probably not the best thing to do seeing how this was my first and watching those videos made me a little nervous, but I also learned that not everyone’s experience is the same so that made it a little better for me to think about that.

My pregnancy was not too terrible other than the fact I did have high blood pressure and I did swell up quite a bit. Once I hit 36 weeks I was so huge and tired that I was ready for him to make his arrival.

At 37 weeks, just three days after my baby shower, I woke up for work that Wednesday morning and did my normal morning bonding routine with him where I would lay on my back for a couple minutes before getting ready and watch him move and talk to him. I had zero signs that my water would be breaking that afternoon. I went on with my morning and went into work, It was a sunny day and chilly because it was the middle of March.

Side note: I do not remember ever seeing my mucus plug come out so I was not expecting him to come three weeks early.

My job at the time was to drive mentally handicap adults to and from work, So I was at someone’s job to pick them up and I had to use the bathroom while I waited for him to get ready. I walked back out to the front desk to sign him out, I remember it was 3:30 p.m. and as I was standing there I felt this huge gush of liquid come out and go down my legs. I was very surprised at how calm I was and I just looked at the lady at the desk and calmly told her I had to leave and someone else would have to come out to pick him up because I am very confident that my water just broke. She was very nice and gave me what I always call “puppy potty pads” to sit on in the vehicle and she wished me luck.

As soon as I got back in the vehicle I called Marcus and told him my water broke and to meet me at the hospital, he is a dump truck driver and actually beat me to the hospital. I then called my boss and told her as I was heading back in to drop the vehicle off. I drove about twenty minutes back to work to drop off the work vehicle and have someone take me to the hospital. My boss was acting like a b**** and wasn’t going to let anyone take me to the hospital but I told her I was either taking a vehicle, she could have someone take me, or I was having the baby on the floor in her office. So she finally decided to have someone take me there, because we had one vehicle at the time and my husband would take it to work. My husband beat me to the hospital and was waiting by the front doors with nurses and a wheelchair for me. Once we went inside and up the elevator they wanted to check me to make sure my water actually broke, even though every move I made it was just gushing out. So I stood up from the wheelchair and they immediately had me sit back down and said, “Okay, lets get you in a room.”

They had me change into the gown and lay down on the bed to get me hooked up to all the monitors. By this time I had been in active labor for around two hours. I was dilating pretty fast but then stopped at 5cm. I kept wanting to go to the bathroom to make sure I got all poop out because I didn’t want to poop while pushing lol. They had me walk around the labor and delivery floor for about half an hour and then went back to bounce on the medicine ball. When I still wasn’t dilating quickly they ended up giving me Pitocin. After I had that, I could feel the contractions more. Up to that point they really were not that terrible. There were a couple times when the nurses were surprised I wasn’t reacting when they were looking at the monitors. Contractions really are like a wave like they say, they start very mild and then build to an intensity where you can’t do anything else but focus on it, and then they taper off.

I knew I wanted to have an epidural that has always been the plan even before I was pregnant. So once they offered it to me I took it. I am not going to lie, I was petrified of it but It really was not bad at all, the numbing shot they gave me hurt ten times worse than getting the actual epidural. Getting the epidural was just uncomfortable because you have to sit up, hunched over, and perfectly still while having contractions. But that relief once it kicks in is well worth it!

By this point I have been up for going on 12-14 hours, I was already so exhausted and haven’t eaten anything other than ice chips for about 8 hours. So after the epidural kicked in around midnight we all tried to get some sleep. Let’s just say I didn’t really get much sleep because I was already uncomfortable, still leaking fluids, and the nurses would come into the room multiple times to check me. The last time they came in to check it was a little after 1 a.m. and I was finally dilated to a ten!

 

This is when it really hit me, I was about to become this little boy’s mommy. It was finally time to push and meet our sweet little man.

Once they started bringing in all the supplies I started getting anxious and nervous. I remember the bright lights turning on above me and there was a mirror I could watch if I decided to, which I did sometimes and I do highly recommend doing this!

My doctor was not there yet so they were trying to get me to not push but if you have ever been in labor and your body is wanting to push, it’s nearly impossible to not do it. So they gave me a little more of the epidural to try to slow down contractions until my Doctor arrived. The nurse did let me push a couple times to try to get him started, she had me hold on to the bars that are attached to the bed and it was difficult for me to figure out how to push that way, it just didn’t feel right. Finally my doctor made it and it was game time! Being a first time mom and never having to push a baby out of me was hard to figure out and it took me two hours to push him out which made him get stuck in my birth canal. It was the most intense pain even with the epidural so ladies who go without It you are a hero! I remember them putting an oxygen mask on me and there was just so much going on I felt like it was strangling me, so every time I pushed I had to take it off. Marcus was such a trooper and kept rubbing my head and talking me through everything and I appreciate him so much he really is amazing!

After a long two hours of pushing and twelve hours of labor, Kendyn Roy Grimshaw made his arrival on March 17, 2016 at 3:58 a.m.

Our little St. Patty’s day baby!

The moment they laid him on my chest, nothing else in the world mattered. All the pain I felt just seconds ago went away. I don’t really remember birthing the placenta because I was in such awe that my son was actually here! I do remember getting stitches (second degree tear) only because I did feel a couple pinches from it, but I was so overwhelmed by all the emotions pumping through my body that I didn’t care. There truly is nothing in the world like that moment when he was first laid on my chest.

I don’t think I can even put this next part into words because my writing is not that amazing to put these feelings into words. When they put Kendyn in my arms for the first time and watching Marcus cut the umbilical cord, it was one of those few moments in life when I was living in the exact moment I was in and I was not worried about anything else in that moment in time. I was in complete waterworks, and I was later told by him that Kendyn’s head was extremely cone shaped from being stuck for so long, but I didn’t even really notice with everything going on. I do remember Marcus asking to hurry and put a hat on him before we take more pictures, haha.

And the bond we had from breastfeeding, that first latch was so precious and amazing. He did have a hard time latching but we eventually got the hang of it.

I remember when they were giving him his little bath he would start getting fussy and then the nurse would rub his back and he would immediately stop. He was already spoiled as can be. I remember being so exhausted by the time we made it to the other room, we all passed out for a few hours before it was time for me to feed him. Later that afternoon we allowed family to start coming in to meet him.

We left the hospital on March 19th around 12:30 p.m. to head home to transition into our new lives as a family of six! His siblings came over when we got home to meet their new baby brother and they all just adored him so much and still do.

Before I say I am finished with this post, I wanted to say one more thing. I am so very thankful for Marcus, my partner through this whole amazing journey. He was so calm, sturdy, comforting, and sincere throughout it all. I appreciate all you do babe you are my rock and I love you so much!