Charlie's Birth Story

Charlie true to his temperament and wild child nature, came into this world just as he lives in it now.  Like a wild man!

I was 7 days overdue with Charlie, and scheduled for an induction in just 3 days, so I had pretty much settled on the the fact that I was going to have this baby as I did with my first.  It was a Tuesday afternoon, around 1pm and I started to feel a little like I was having contractions.  I wasn't completely sure what to expect and I had been having a lot of Braxton-Hicks at that point, so I was fairly certain that it was still just "false labor" i.e. painful, annoying, and non-progressive.  I need to mention here that Mike works an hour away, his commute sometimes taking up to an hour and a half to get home from in the evenings, and our hospital is about 40 minutes to an hour away depending on the time of day that you drive there.  Awesome right?

So naturally, as this feeling started to bother me a little bit more, I called Jenny for my daily, "Am I in labor, I must be in labor, no, I am so not in labor" pep talk.  Jenny having had a very different first birth experience than me lasting close to 28 some hours, I kid you not, encouraged me to shower, try to lay down and to see if I could time them if they were regular. Notice that at this point, I had yet to call husband or doctor.

So after I showered, (a luxury only a mother of one has), I decided that it was still painful, and wow, coming quite frequently it seemed, "only 4 to 5 minutes apart?", that I should probably call Mike just to let him know.  I called him, encouraged him to get his work that he had going on finished, and then to maybe head home soonish.  He still had about an hour of work to do, and was again, an hour away.

Mikey had woken up from his nap, so he was hanging out with me in the living room, where I decided to watch "The First Wives Club" and sit and time my contractions.  (Okay, I know this is so weird but I really like this movie. My mom and I used to watch it all the time and I love Goldie Hawn. Also yes, I am 50 years old).  So I am sitting on the floor watching the movie and trying to time my contractions all the while assuming that I am doing this wrong because, "they aren't supposed to be 3 minutes apart, are they?", when my water breaks.  It full on breaks, like I hear a "pop!" sound and a giant gush follows.  At this point I'm like, "oh crap, I AM in labor!".  Obviously the 3 minutes apart contractions did not tip me off any.  When I went to change I realized that the baby was also quite possibly in distress because their was meconium in my water (sorry, so gross, but honest).

So, I call Mike and yell at him, "Ahh my water just broke! Come home! Where are you!?" After 30 minutes prior telling him to take his sweet time.  Then I call my brother-in-law who graciously offers to pick up Mikey and to wait in the driveway for Mike to arrive (ha ha which is probably the safest distance from what was going on inside).  As I am waiting for him to arrive, I am freaking out and running around the house trying to gather all of my belongings, none of which were packed yet, and Mikey is totally freaking out too and just following me around.  During all of this and even with being worried and having sudden incredibly painful contractions, I couldn't help but laugh because the whole situation was just ridiculous and hysterical to see.  I called the doctor also and they told me to just get to the hospital ASAP.

This continued for, you guessed it, another hour because Mike had to rush all the way home.  Oh, and guess what time it was? 4:45pm, ever been to Northern Virginia to witness D.C. rush hour traffic?  I was literally flipping out at this point.  We also had taking our minivan to the shop to have it serviced, you know, before baby arrives, so Mike had to drive me in his work truck to the hospital, which like I said, was 45 minutes away.

You haven't had a contraction until you've had one in a pick up truck.  You're just gonna have to trust me on this one.  It seemed like we hit a bump in the road at each peak of contraction, and I was NOT a happy camper.  Traffic was outrageous and I kid you not, we got stuck behind a girl with a choose life bumper sticker.  I wanted to lay on the horn and to proclaim to her that we were not only prolife, but that she was about to witness life if she didn't hurry up.

So, we arrived in style to the hospital about an hour later.  I was brought by wheel chair, equipped with multiple frightened looking bystanders to the birthing center.  They could see that I meant business and got me fairly quickly to my room where they checked me. 9cm. I believe it took 30 minutes for them to "process me" with multiple men running in and out of the room asking me again, "how much do you weigh?, and "what's your favorite color?", all while having the worst contractions of my life!  It's pretty much a miracle but they still gave me an epidural, and about 10 minutes after it started working, I was at 10 and ready to push.

I pushed 3 times, and Charlie was born within 5 minutes.  It was crazy.  I kept being like, wait, he's here? We just got here? Thank you Lord for not letting him be born in Daddy's pick up truck.

Charlie was a darling 7 lbs 13oz, and 21 inches long, tall and kinda skinny looking.  He was so sweet but having a really difficult time breathing.  I wasn't allowed to nurse him until 2 hours later because of his breathing issues, and we had a bunch of extra doctors in the room running multiple tests on him.  It turned out that his white blood cell levels we sky high, so after just one night of having him in the recovery room, he was rushed to the NICU to begin antibiotics.  We were so fortunate that they had an incredible staff of doctors and nurses who kept us very informed.  Charlie did really well and after 48 hours in the NICU he was transfered to the Children's ward where he would stay for the remaining 6 days to finish his antibiotics.  He was such a strong little guy and after finishing that long week out we were able to bring him home, 8 days after birth.


The whole experience was really surreal.  My labor with Charlie totaled only about 4 hours, and I was literally at the hospital for about 40 minutes before he was born.  It went shockingly fast, but that was a huge blessing as Charlie was ready and needed to come out and have immediate attention.  I am still so thankful for how well they took care of my little man.  It's really crazy that there is nothing that you can do to prepare for how different each birth will be. A least I know this time around that maybe I should error on the side of preparedness rather than waiting til the.very.last.minute!  We will see how it goes this next time around when little Charlotte makes her appearance this April. :)