Madilyn's Birth Story 01.24.19

Well, here we are on our 4th child and I haven't even written her birth story yet. She's already one. This will be the best version that I have from my memory. We were scheduled to be induced(as per usual) on January 24th, 2019. It was a pretty typical last week being pregnant. I was really uncomfortable. It was the first time that I have been pregnant while I had other kids in school, so walking the halls was really awkward and embarrassing for me. The night before we were scheduled to be induced, my mom had the kids over for a sleepover. We dropped them off and then went to Brown's to have some supper. We got home and I can't even remember if we watched a movie or packed our bags, I just remember that Andrew put the car seat in the car that night...way to wait until the last minute haha! We arrived at the hospital around 6AM. There wasn't anyone in the emergency waiting room. We were admitted right away and sent upstairs. I was so excited to see the new birthing suites, they did not disappoint! It was still dark outside and we had a direct view of the parkade, so we were able to watch everyone arrive for their shifts while the nurse was taking our information. I was too nervous to eat that morning, plus you don't want to eat too much, if you know what I'm saying. So I quickly ate a fruit bar and then got changed into my hospital gown. By that time they were in the middle of shift change and we were just chilling out, getting excited. The birthing plan was different then any of my other inductions. My doctor decided to just come in and break my water right off the bat without using any of the gel. She checked me, broke my water and was out of there! You can tell she is super efficient haha. From there, I got my IV put in and was just waiting to have my epidural. Here is when one of the most memorable parts of this birth came to be. I kept filling up my blue bed pads with amniotic fluid and they were just changing them over and over again but I started to feel like I needed to pee as well. The main RN had gone on break and so I was left with a nursing student. It wasn't even her practicum either, she was just on the floor for a few days to see what labour and delivery was like. You could tell she was totally out of her element and that this wasn't an area of the field that interested her. I asked her if she could see if one of the senior nurses wanted me to use anything specific to walk from the bed to the bathroom without getting amniotic fluid on the floor. She went and asked and they told her it was fine if I just held the bed pad underneath myself as I shuffled to the bathroom. My nurse just happened to come back in as I was contemplating how to pull this off without making a mess. She was all like "oh you should be fine, we've already changed the bed pads quite a few times, I'm sure you won't make a mess if you just hold one under yourself and walk to the bathroom". I don't think they realized how much fluid I was carrying, I knew there was still a lot left in there. Anyways, my prediction of making a huge mess was accurate and as I stood up to go the bathroom, the bed pad filled up completely and I just started getting TONS of amniotic fluid all over the floor. The RN was SO nice and made me feel so good, she was like "it isn't a problem at all, we will clean that up for you!!" So I figured they would get a janitor in there to mop up that part of the floor (there really was a lot of it). But instead, she told the nursing student to help her and they were trying to wipe it all up with cavi wipes. It was quite humorous and very memorable. Andrew just laughed at me. Anyways, soon after that I was able to get my epidural. The anesthesiologist was a woman and she did a great job of my epidural but they were so efficient that morning that is was probably only 8:30AM by the time all of this had occurred. So now the waiting game had commenced. We did what any couple in love does, we stared at our phones for a bit! Nothing was really happening. I had started to contract pretty regularly but they weren't painful obviously...just a tightening and then release. I'm always really interested in anything medical so I didn't spend too much time on my phone. I was happy to sit an stare at the monitor to see how things were going. Our nurse was fantastic (she was actually my brother's friends little sister and her and my mom had gone to nursing school together.) She was very knowledgable and seemed to really love her job. As we were getting closer to noon, my doctor had come back and checked me, I was still only a 4 so she decided to give me a little pitocin to give my body the little kick it needed to progress some more. I definitely started to feel my contractions were amping up. It was noon when my main nurse went on lunch and another RN came in to cover for her while she was gone. This other nurse was fantastic as well! I had such a great experience this time around. She visited with me but I was starting to feel that my labour was changing. I was feeling uncomfortable but not quite in pain yet at this point. She decided to check me again and I was about a 6-7 she said (this is around 12:45). By 1pm I was really starting to feel some pain (which was unlike my other deliveries). I totally forgot about the top up button on the epidural and I guess things were so chill for so long that no one reminded me that I could use it. The nurse helping me said I should push the button and see if it would help at all. I didn't quite know if I had progressed the last 3-4 cm's in the last 15 minutes but I wasn't wanting to talk at all during my contractions. The nurses started placing bets on when the baby was going to be here. The temporary RN was like "I'm pretty sure we are going to have a baby by 1:30". At this point she decided to check me so she could call the doctor if necessary. She said I was at 10 cm but that I needed to try and rest so that the doctor would have a chance to run over here (she practices across the street from the hospital). Well for a girl who's epidural has started to wear off...resting wasn't really an option. So I turned onto my side, tried to grin and bear it while my doctor was called. My main RN was back by that point and was surprised by how fast I had progressed in an hour. I couldn't lay there anymore, I needed to push! She said "how about we do some practice pushes while we wait"(this was around 1:10). So I turned onto my back, got my legs up and started pushing. They were amazing coaches, but when it gets to the pushing part, I almost want to say "don't worry, I got this". I was in A LOT of pain by this point. Right when my doctor walked in I started crying (something I haven't done EVER during labour). She was like "ahhh, it's okay, it's okay, you are okay". I think it was just a combination of feeling most of the labour but also the relief I felt when she showed up so I could push this baby out!! She was an amazing coach as well. Madilyn had the cord wrapped around her so she was able to coach me on when to push and when to ease off the pushing so she could get the cord off of her. Andrew said it was amazing to watch her get Madilyn out. Of course we didn't know who or what this little baby was yet. I felt her head come out and then that really weird feeling when the rest of the body follows and kind of just slips out haha. So they lift her up to put her on my chest and obviously Andrew is by my side and sees that she is a girl before I got the chance. So they lay her on my chest and I still don't know what it is! Andrew was all teary eyed and looked SO happy...so I assumed it was a boy (not that he wouldn't have been happy with a girl, but he was hoping for a boy). So I immediately assume that it's a boy, and say "Is it a boy?" and he was like "no, it's a girl", which made that moment so incredibly special. It was literally heaven touching earth. Such an amazing moment. I have always wanted a lot of kids so I wasn't really leaning towards either gender. I had guessed from the beginning of the pregnancy that is was a girl but we decided to have one surprise baby. Logically I thought it would be great to have a boy close in age to Max so they could be besties but something about that moment when we met her. Everything just felt so perfectly right. Like she was absolutely the next little spirit that was meant to enter our family. She was absolutely perfect. Her official time of birth was 1:18pm and she weighed 7 lbs 9 oz. My tiniest baby yet! I don't have her exact measurements but she was around 20cm long, so even though it seems like she would be light, she was pretty short and stout! I held her for a little bit while they did all the "end of labour" stuff. They then weighed her, and listened to her heart, they thought they heard a murmur so that was a little bit scary (I always go to worst case scenario) but Lexi had the same thing and she was fine the next day. Anyways, I held her for a little bit longer but I always get the "shakes" after I have my babies. So Andrew took her for about an hour while I suffered through them. They were especially bad this time. I felt like I was dying!!! The student nurse made me some peanut butter toast and I literally wanted to throw up at the sight of it. Nurses kept coming in to check on me and try to calm me down but nothing was working. They had me loaded with warm blankets, at least 5 of them! I was finally able to drink some apple juice and I think the fact that I hadn't really eaten a good breakfast that morning and had just pushed another human out of my body had affected my blood sugars. So once I had started drinking the juice I started coming out of it. Everything after that was pretty standard. I was able to cuddle with her for a little bit longer before the wheeled me over to the post-partum floor. We didn't want to pay for a private room but ended up not having to share, which was awesome! My mom and grandma came with our kids but they weren't allowed onto the floor, so we met them in the little waiting area and they got to meet "the baby". The girls were very excited but you could tell Max was really homesick. It was his first night away from us and I don't think he was feeling very good. Andrew decided to take the kids with him home to get them some supper and Mom decided she would stay at our house for the night so that Max would be able to feel more comfortable. So Andrew left with my grandma I think, to take the kids home. Mom stayed with Brock for a bit and my Dad showed up later on. The nameless baby and I cuddled for a bit by ourselves but I had a student nurse that kept checking on me non-stop...her voice was so crazy high that I couldn't take her seriously. I wanted to laugh at her every time she would talk...I'm terrible but seriously...it couldn't have been real and she was annoying me! So next to being her little "project case" everything went as decently as it can while you are stuck in the hospital. We didn't sleep very well, a snow plow was clearing the walks at like 4AM and Andrew was snoring the whole night....so I was eager to get home. I was trying to decide on a name for the baby. When I first found out I was pregnant (before I knew the gender) I had Hudson Gordon Maclean as my boy name and Olivia Dawn Maclean as my girl name. My friend ended up naming her little girl Livvy, which totally suits her but I knew we would probably be in the same ward and school for a while and wanted my baby to have a different name. I was so TORN because I love that name so much and couldn't really think of anything else. One of my other top girl names was Addilyn but it just wasn't speaking to me in the hospital haha. So I chose a name that had been on my list when we were pregnant with Max (before we knew he was a boy), Madilyn! We chose both our moms middle names because we found out we were pregnant with Madilyn on Mother's day of 2018. So there you have it! We did the little blood test at the end and they had to squeeze Madi's foot like crazy to get enough blood, then ended up just poking it again. We drove home and I really wanted to have some McDonalds before we got home, while we were at the McDonald's, Andrew made me drive because he was tired and his eyes were dry LOL. I like to tease him over that. When we got home my Grandma was there, she had made us dinner. She is the best! She had a few baby cuddles and then decided to leave us....too soon... Our journey as a family of 6 had began!