You didn’t ask for it, but here it is: my youngest’s birth story. I figure at this point, you have been waiting for a year to hear it, so why not? Perhaps, if you enjoy this one, I’ll even tell you about the delivery stories of my other children.

I somehow knew that I would be going into labor on Friday, September 6th, 2019. I don’t know how I knew, call it mother’s intuition. It would be two days until my delivery date. On Thursday evening, I made sure my bags were packed with everything I would need plus everything we thought we might need for the first few days of the new baby. Even packed a few of my son’s hand-me-downs, just in case the sonographer had been wrong about the baby’s sex.

Around 4:00 AM, I awoke to find that my amniotic sac had torn a bit. This was our third child, so by this time, I knew I had plenty of time, and there was no need to rush to the hospital, so I took a shower and got everything ready to go. I made sure that my older two kids had their bags packed, as they would be spending an overnight with close friends of ours that have become rather like members of our family while Chris and I were at the hospital, having a baby. I got everything set next to the door for easy carriage to the car, and only then did I wake up my husband.

It turns out he needed a shower too. No problem. We had time.

At around 6:00 AM, we were ready to go. Everyone and everything loaded into the car, and off we went. We dropped the kids off–quickly, though, my contractions were less than 10 minutes apart and beginning to get quite uncomfortable. It wasn’t far to the hospital from our friends’ house, and by 6:45, we had arrived and gotten ourselves checked in.

The nurse came in and took my vitals. She hooked me up to a monitor. My contractions were 6 minutes apart and it wasn’t even 7:00 AM! They got me to a delivery room within the following hour.

At our hospital, we can choose between having a midwife or a doctor deliver the baby. I chose a midwife because that’s what I had last time and my experience with her had been amazing. Unfortunately, this would not be a repeat experience. When the midwife and her nurse came in to check on me, I told them my contractions were getting really strong and I felt that I was getting close to delivery. When they checked, they found that I was fully dilated, and the midwife told me I could start pushing with my next contraction.

I should have listened to my body because it did not feel like pushing. The baby had not yet fully descended, and my body was in no hurry. But the midwife stared at me expectantly (excuse the pun) like she had places to be. There was no pressure from my body, but I felt like there was pressure from the midwife and so I pushed… and pushed… and pushed.

And then there was life. The midwife held up our newborn girl for us to see. Beautiful and squishy and rather blue. They set her on top of me, but all too briefly. Something was wrong. There was too much liquid inside her lungs and they could not evacuate it fast enough. They took her away and put her on a ventilator. My baby girl, whom I had just met, was now being taken away and fitted with a C-PAP machine.

It was just me and my husband, the midwife and the nurse, but they needed extra hands, as there was a lot going on.

They called for extra nurses and suddenly– there were extra nurses. A lot of extra nurses. Almost as if they were coming in one door and leaving through another only to come back through the first again like I was on some kind of comedy bit like Monty Python. Round and round, round and round, nurses in, nurses out. In retrospect, it was quite humorous but in the moment, I was only thinking about the baby and how soon I was going to get to see her again.

The nurses who stayed told me they were going to take her down to the NICU for monitoring and that is where she would stay for the remainder of our stay at the hospital.

“Go with her,” I told my husband. “I’m fine. She needs someone to stay with her.”

In reality, I think it was me who needed someone to stay with her.

By this time, it was 10:00 AM. I was taken, baby-less, down to the maternity ward. It was bittersweet. On the one hand, I had just experienced, once again, the miracle that is producing life, on the other, I was missing the bonding time with my new baby.

My husband came back to my room and told me what he had learned, that this was a fairly common issue and nothing to worry about, as there was no permanent effect. Later, he and I would both go down together and see the baby; I would get the opportunity to hold her for the first time. They momentarily took off the parts of her tubing that they could so that we would be able to get a decent picture to send to our friends and relatives.

I was sad that she was going to have to spend the entirety of our hospital stay in the NICU (and I would possibly have to leave without her), but I was also extremely grateful for the nurses caring for her, so knowledgable about her condition, and nice to talk to while I was otherwise by myself. I was grateful that her condition was not permanent. I was grateful that technology exists to monitor her and make sure she was doing well.

Those next two days, I spent a lot of time alone, but I made sure I was there for every feeding to bond with her. They were having me give her formula bottles, as my milk had not come in yet, and I, therefore, had nothing to pump. They monitored everything. Intake and output, oxygen levels, blood sugar, how much liquid was still in her belly and lungs… These were all determining factors in whether or not I could take her home when it was time for me to leave on Sunday afternoon.

This was a decision that was not made until Sunday morning. Talk about anxiety-inducing. Saturday evening, they said her levels looked good, she was off the ventilator and her oxygen was maintaining, her blood sugar was fine. Sunday morning, her doctor came in to give her one last check-up and concluded that yes, she was indeed ready to go home, a full day earlier than they had anticipated!

That afternoon, my husband came to claim me with our son. Our daughter stayed with my mom as we had to limit the number of people we allowed in the NICU at a time, and children my daughter’s age were not allowed, anyway. I was so relieved to be able to take her home with me and introduce her to her siblings and my mother, and start our life as an official family of five.

She is a year old now and sometimes I wonder why I decided to have a third child, but mostly I’m glad I did. She is the smiliest girl and always up for a good cuddle. I am thankful for her and for the way that she fits into our family. Our lives would be a little less complete without her.