Grey's Birth Story - {Part One}

It's taken me a little longer to write this story than I planned. And much longer than most bloggers take to write their little one's birth stories. There were reasons, physical and mental, that went into the reasoning behind that. Reasons that will be touched on here. But I feel my heart is ready to share the story about how our little man entered this world early one summer morning. 

My beautiful husband talking me through a contraction

At 35 weeks we met with our doula to come up with a game plan of how the day would go if I was able to go into labor on my own. This was something I was praying HARD for as I didn't want to be induced if little man decided to take his time arriving. My goal was to have a medication-free, intervention-free birth at the local hospital. My OB was great throughout my whole pregnancy and knows my healthy crunchy mama way and supported this plan from the get-go. 

We had spoken about how when I went into early labor, that I was to eat and shower and sleep if I could. That I could work on the computer and take a walk. Basically a plan to maintain normalcy until active labor started. At that time we were to call her and she would come over and try to keep me at home until we hit transition so we could make our way to the hospital. Our hospital is across the street so I trusted her with this plan. 

However, God, my body and little man had a different plan to how things would progress. At around 2 am on August 4th I started getting contractions. Hard and three minutes apart. I had been a little uncomfortable the day before, but not with anything I would have thought to call contractions or early labor. Just sme braxton hicks tightening and a little mucous lost but nothing major. I thought for sure he'd be staying in until 41 or 42 weeks based on my symptoms thus far. 

I was totally wrong. 

Laboring In Little Man's Nursery

After over an hour of these contractions, still coming hard and 3 minutes apart (to which my contraction app kept saying in ALL CAPS - GO TO THE HOSPITAL - I thought surely I had a ton of time because this must be early labor still, I JUST STARTED. Haha. 

At around 3:30AM I had Mr. Charming call our doula because things were getting REAL folks. She had him put me on the phone and she told me to try to lay down (ha) and that when things got to the point where I couldn't really talk anymore to get into a warm bath and that she would head over. By 6am it was painful beyond wanting to speak so I got into the tub and by 7:30 am she was by my side, along with my hubs. I met our doula, Ashley Wain of Lovebug Doula, at a local event just two months prior and I firmly believe God led us straight to her. She has such a warm personality, amazing heart and I will say this a million times in our story, we couldn't have done it, I couldn't have gotten through this the way that I did without first and foremost God, her and my husband as a rock star birth team. 

I labored with her and Mr. Charming until noon or so, when I decided I may want to head to the hospital. The contractions were STILL coming 3 minutes apart, however, it didn't feel much different than it had all night. Ashley had me walk the stairs (that suuuuuuuuucked, but probably helped the baby move down) and I labored in bed, then on the toilet, back in the bathtub, on the yoga ball, being held by both Mr. Charming and Ashley and we kept up this rotation to help progress my labor. 

Having struggled with pelvic floor issues for years, Ashley thought that that may be a reason to my stalling labor and why I was in a strange pattern so she called a pelvic floor therapist who makes house calls. At 1pm an amazing pelvic floor therapist was at the house to work on my sacrum, pelvic floor and hips to try to open me a little more to encourage baby. While it was super awesome painful, I was excited to see if it would help. I also asked her to guess my dilation and she guessed a 2. 

A 2. I wanted to cry. I also felt like something telling me to go to the hospital. We did one more round of bed, toilet, yoga ball contractions and then Mr. Charming got me, and our hospital bags, into the car and zoomed us to the hospital by 2:30 PM on August 4th. 

Ashley wheeled me to labor and delivery while Mr. Charming parked the car. We arrived and got checked-in (not before I snapped at some family members who were there to see someone else having a baby because I was in total pain, STILL sorry by the way.) 

Once we got to triage (with me still disappointed that I was only dilated 2) I was checked and it turns out I had gotten to 6 or 7 at home! With me being that far along they sent me straight to a delivery room, as we thought surely the baby would be making an appearance soon!

Again. We were so wrong. Haha. 

Read More and Watch Us Welcome Baby In Part Two