A Little Late: Malachi's Birth Story

cnbean · May 2014

So I've been meaning to post this, but keep forgetting. New mom brain FTW!

Malachi Walter was born April 28th at 5:39am. He was 7lbs 11oz and 19 inches long.

Sunday April 27 we decided to take DS to the new Cabella's here to check it out. It just opened and we hadn't been yet. I'd been wanting to get out of the house and walk a little bit to hopefully get some progress. I didn't really expect anything since I wasn't due until the 9th. Well while we were out I started having some mild contractions, but nothing consistent. Then once we got home I was hit by the nesting bug big time, after cleaning the whole bathroom and picking up the rest of the house I was really crampy. I figured I'd get in the bathtub and see if the cramping went away or stuck around.

Well after an hour in the bath I had gone from cramping to full on consistent contractions. I called my husband up from his computer room and let him know that I though it might be the real deal. We started timing the contractions and sure enough they were already 3 mins apart and 1 min long! I called the midwife and she came over to check me and see whether we needed to head to the hospital. I was already at a 4 and so she told me to head in as soon as we got DS taken care of. My SIL came over and picked him up and we got to the hospital at 1am.

It seemed to take them forever to get me checked in, which was irritating since I'd pre-registered. But eventually we got into our room. I labored for a while on the yoga ball, and then on my side in bed. At that point my contractions started to taper off a bit and so we decided to break my water to get things moving again. After that the contractions were pretty much from the devil. I was so close to asking for an epidural, but I was already at 8 cm and I didn't want to slow things down. A little before 5 am I was finally ready to push. I pushed for about 40 mins and after an episiotomy that tore, Malachi was here!

I was able to do immediate skin to skin with him while they stitched me up. After a couple hours they did all the newborn test and we were able to skype with our family to show him off. Everyone was very surprised since it was early and no one knew I'd been in labor. We stayed in the hospital overnight and went home the next day.

So far my recovery has been a thousand times easier than with my c-section. I am so grateful that I was able to have my VBAC, I think a part of me figured it wouldn't actually work out. Big brother is infatuated with him and so are we!