Rowan's Birth Story
August 8th, 2021 at 4:52pm our sunny girl came into this world sunny side up, and our days have been brighter ever since!
I’m a little late to sharing her birth story… but with her first birthday just around the corner it was the motivation I needed to share how our sweet girl came into the world! If you are into birth stories, you can read Ryder’s here.
My due date was August 12th and on August 6th I went in for a weekly check. Everything looked good and no signs of labor as far as I knew. I chose to decline a cervical check since I felt fine and knew we still had almost a week until my due date. Well on the drive home from my appointment I started to feel a little different. It wasn’t like contractions but I was on high alert since I remembered feeling similar with Ryder when I went into early labor. When I got home I focused on relaxing as much as I could, did a belly mask and went to bed as quickly as possible. I wanted to make sure I got as much as rest as possible! When I woke up the next morning I knew I was in labor because I was having more clear contractions. Although these were mild and far apart. So I kept myself busy while trying to rest as much as possible. Later that evening we decided to give Ryder his big brother gift because I was sure by the next day we would meet our girl! (I was right too!) We spent some time with family that evening and my contractions were getting much more painful by 8pm so I decided to get home and get to bed. I didn’t get much rest as the pain was getting stronger, and I was worried about labor progressing much quicker since this was my second pregnancy and our hospital was 45 minutes away. So at 4am on August 8th we loaded up the truck, and headed to the hospital. Ryder stayed with my in-laws and was so excited to become a big brother!
On our drive to the hospital we listened to Bright Eye’s First Day of My Life and it’s a song I still like to sing to Rowan at night when I rock her. I was much more calm this second time around because I knew what to expect, but when we got to the hospital, I wasn’t as far along as I assumed I was. Only about 5cm dilated. I remember feeling a little discouraged about that because I was hoping labor would go much quicker. With Ryder it was so slow and felt agonizing. Labor with Rowan went much slower than we anticipated so we could’ve hung out as home longer but we didn’t want to take the chance!
So we did a lot of waiting around and it’s so funny to think back on now how calm I was compared to Ryder’s birth. With him I was so scared and with Rowan I was so much stronger mentally and we had music on, even watched a movie (which I don’t even remember what movie it was now lol but just having that background noise was a nice distraction!) We were even joking around more. It was a really nice labor for the most part. Although I did have back labor again which was brutal! I would joke that I was “trapped” when a contraction hit because I felt like I couldn’t move until it was over.
Later that afternoon my labor started to stall a bit which was really discouraging. I was getting so tired and just wanted to get on with the show! My midwife came in and suggested we break my water to speed up the process which we did with Ryder too and I knew that it would make things get much more intense quickly. This is when some fear set in and I got emotional over making the decision to go through with it. I chose to go unmedicated again so I knew I had to get it over with as quickly as possible. After my water broke I think it was about an hour or so later I was close to 10cm dilated. When it came time to push, I ended up pushing for around 20 minutes and I remember feeling like it seemed harder than it did with Ryder…which I later learned there was a reason I felt that way! Rowan was in the occiput posterior position which means she was face up, and commonly called “sunny side up”. This is fairly uncommon and only happens in about 8% of births and makes it harder to push the baby out. But our girl was here and that was all that mattered! She was 7lbs 11oz and 21in and the sweetest little squish I had ever seen! Our family feels complete now with our son and daughter and I am so grateful to have two beatufiul and heathy babies!
