Liam - My peaceful & perfect birth story!

Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.– Elizabeth Stone

Before I gave birth for the first time in 2015 to Madison, I was obsessed with sleuthing the internet reading other women’s birth stories. I was fascinated with how different each story was and wanted mine to be just as perfect. For those who have followed me for awhile, know that I lost my firstborn daughter Madison. Not only did I lose her, I also lost the idea of my perfect birth story.

In 2016, Ethan was born at 36 weeks, which is considered preterm. At the time, I had no idea that the reason I went into labour was due to a placenta abruption. I had a relatively easy labour with Ethan, but also had unexplained bleeding which wasn’t a concern to me as my OB handed me a perfect 6 pound little baby! My birth with Ethan was peaceful yet full of a lot of fear. I was in my head quite a bit playing out scenarios of all the things that could possibly go wrong. After all, I didn’t know any better.

Fast forward to 2019 and finding out I was pregnant with little Liam was simply an amazing feeling! I would be lying if I didn’t say that fear crept up again occasionally, but for the most part, I was at peace. I somehow knew that all was going to be okay with Liam. You can call it intuition, but it was a feeling that was fairly strong. I was also monitored closely and put on modified bed rest from month 4 onwards. My pregnancy with Liam was fairly uneventful with the regular symptoms until I got to about 33 weeks. That’s when I knew this all too familiar sensation of my ribs being dislocated. Ethan had done the exact same around 34 weeks, and since he was born at 36, I only had a couple of weeks of discomfort. Well…this time, it wasn’t discomfort but sheer pain. I had seen my OB the day prior to going into labour and she stripped my membranes to help speed things along.

The evening of Friday September 13, 2019, (I was a little over 38 weeks), I was feeding Ethan his regular mac and cheese and he was being much less than cooperative. I was frustrated, tired and sitting on our living room floor bribing him to eat his dinner (not fun!). I remember closing my eyes saying “Ethan please eat your dinner.” It was right at that moment I recall having a burning desire to run to the bathroom to pee! I realized very quickly that it wasn’t a trickle; rather, my water had broken! Just like the movies, I called out to my husband and I was surprisingly calm, yet he was the one who was at a loss for words. (he’s never short on words, haha).

I called Labour & Delivery at BC Women’s Hospital to confirm that it was indeed my water because I really hadn’t experienced this before. I had no contractions so I was confused. The nurse asked that I slowly make my way in to get checked out as if it was my water breaking, I would need to deliver within 24 hours. I slowly made my way upstairs to pack the rest of our hospital bags and all I could hear on our main floor was a bunch of footsteps. My husband was busy doing the dishes and laundry because he knew how much I needed a clean house for this little baby to come home to. Mainly for me, but you get my meaning ;) I then texted my sisters and my mom to let them know that it was go time!

We left our house within an 1.5 hours and dropped off Ethan to my parents house. On our way there, we chatted about this being our last care ride as a family of 3 and how things would look different the next time we saw Ethan.  Ethan was super excited and couldn’t believe it was almost time to meet this little human that we had been prepping him for.

When we arrived at the hospital, I was checked and told that I was 2-3 cm dilated.  The hospital staff advised that in order to help speed up my labour, I should walk around. My older sister was the first to arrive, followed by my other sisters and brother in-law who brought junk food while we all hung out in the waiting room and I did some laps. It was now 11pm and I was starting to feel mild contractions. Nothing too major but they were starting. I knew I wanted an epidural, so I wasn’t going to wait until they were super painful to have that puppy inserted!! ;)

We were admitted around 1am, and by this time, my contractions were getting more and more intense. I was looking over my shoulder every 2-3 minutes waiting for the anesthesiologist to make her way into my room. She arrived, did her thing and within 20 minutes, I felt no pain from the contractions nor did the epidural itself hurt.  In fact, the IV was actually the worst part of the entire process.

The next two hours from 1:00-3:00am, my husband and sisters sat there while we all chatted about random things. I continued to sip my slurpee and was feeling rather good. At 4:00am, my sisters decided to take a cat nap in the car – even though we had actually told them they should just go home for a couple of hours as I was fine and who knew how fast I would progress. At this time, I was only 6cm dilated. They refused and wanted to stay because that’s kind of what we do for each other. At 530am, they decided maybe the car wasn’t the most comfortable and that they would go home for a few hours and sleep. The nurse checked me again at 5:50am and I was at 10cm! I told my family to stay home and get some rest as I was fine!

The nurse called my OB and prepped the room as she proclaimed to me “he’s right there and we are ready to go!”  I knew I was having Liam that morning but I was still in shock. Maybe because I wasn’t feeling much of anything, or maybe because I was in shock of how smoothly things were going. Whatever the case was, I was so happy!

My OB arrived and I started pushing at 6:10am. I was thinking that we may be pushing for perhaps an hour or so, but Liam was born in 14 minutes at 6:24am!! I felt calm, happy, and most of all at peace.

And here came my perfect little slice of heaven - Little Liam -”A strong-willed warrior and protector”. He definitely protected my heart and is exactly what my soul knew I needed. A fellow Virgo like me who was born on a full moon.

I have the most perfect little baby with that perfect birth story that I had been searching for. The road to get here wasn’t easy, but nothing this beautiful and worthy ever is. I truly believe my sweet little angel Madison held his hand until the very last moment ensuring he was with me safe and sound.

The next day was filled with family, friends and Ethan meeting Liam for the first time. My mama heart is so incredibly full!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and if you are a mama who is expecting and sleuthing the internet looking for the perfect birth story, it really is possible and depends on what your definition of perfect is. This just happens to be my version of it.