Our baby made his arrival on July 11, 2024, at 40 weeks and 5 days.
Here are the moments of that day forever imprinted in my memory:
The quiet of the house at 4am, as I sat at my desk to wrap up the last of my 100 Days essays for Mom Brain. My contractions were 10-15 minutes apart, and I couldn’t sleep anymore. Rounding out all 36,458 words of this project, as my body made its way towards active labor, felt like the mental initiation I needed. It was bittersweet to see it come to an end — writing has been an unexpected lifeline on this journey to baby, all 24 months of it.
The moment I realized my contractions had jumped to just two minutes apart, and they weren’t letting up. It was only 7:30am, and I knew we needed to leave for the hospital soon if I was going to be able to tolerate the 40-minute drive. My time laboring at home had come to a swift end. Everything was happening so quickly, and I craved more time.
The intro instrumentals of Fall Out Boy’s “Fourth of July” blasting as we made our way down the driveway. The anthem of this birth, and the amp-up I needed to bear the drive to the hospital.
The tears flooding in when we entered the maternity department. My pregnancy was coming to an end and we were about to enter a whole new world. “I’m nervous” was all I could whisper, in-between the waves of contractions.
“Eight to nine centimeters.” The midwife on call (a familiar face, thank goodness) checked me within minutes of arriving. I was in shock of how far along I was…and how soon it seemed we’d meet our baby.
Listening to my husband and my mom’s hushed chit-chat in the delivery room. Our whirlwind arrival gave way to a peaceful afternoon as our nurses and midwife left us alone while we waited for me to fully dilate. Even with the epidural, my contractions demanded my total focus. While I went inward, my support people knew how to fill in the silence.
Deep, quivering breaths. If we couldn’t get the baby’s heart rate up soon, we’d need to move quickly for a cesarean. As I surrendered to hysterics, my midwife directed me to breathe. The baby needed oxygen. My hyperventilating wasn’t going to help. And so, my only job in that moment was to take deep breaths.
“Would you like a few minutes alone before we get started?” It was time to push. I was grateful our midwife seemed to know (and perhaps had seen hundreds of times before) how emotionally tender it is to shift from waiting to pushing, the final act. I am more thankful, however, that Adam and my mom kindly took over executive decision-making on this offer. If it were all up to me, I don’t know how long I would have waited in the spirit of collecting myself.
Realizing my pushing was working…and the baby was crowning. Adam took a peek, looked at me, and said, “He’s got a full head of black hair.” Another layer of reality hit. I was pushing out a whole human, whose features we had yet to discover, only imagine so far.
The screams of our baby as he took his first breaths in this world.
