Tag: spotting

Hi, thanks for coming on the show. Can you tell us your name and where you’re from?

 

Kristen: My name is Kristen and I am from a small town called cooks Creek Manitoba in Canada.

 

P: Oh, wow. Nice.

 

K: How many kids do you have? 

 

K: I have two biological children and I have two stepchildren so I have four

 

P: that sounds like a full house.

 

K: Always.

 

P: What’s the age range?

 

K: Our youngest is seven. He just turns to Oh, he’ll be eight in August and our oldest just turned 12 in October. 

P: Oh, so are pretty tight. 

 

K: Yes, my two are oh, he just turned 12 actually on the ninth of January and my daughter will be 11 this coming September. And then my husband’s two are 12 and seven.

 

P: that’s a band. That’s awesome

 

K: Yeah, they and they all get along so incredibly. Well. We get so lucky with these four.

 

P: That’s awesome. What’s the gender mix?

 

K: We have two girls and two boys.

 

P: Oh, nice. God it’s really balanced.

 

K: Yeah, and in fact, it actually made from oldest to youngest. We go girl boy, girl boy.

 

P: Well done. I don’t know how you did it. But that’s well done. So before you got pregnant, what did you imagine pregnancy would be Like? 

 

K: I was I was relatively young. I was 24 when I got pregnant with my son, so I’m 23 I guess I was 24 when I had them. I really hadn’t given it a lot of thought before getting pregnant. I was probably one of my first friends. My best friend. At the time had a terrible pregnancy and terrible birth experience. She was sick all the time I was there while she had her daughter and it was less than ideal birth experience. So I had worries that my birth might go the same way as first had put on got pregnant, but before then, I’d really give it a lot of thought

 

P: yeah there’s was probably something to be said about that approach. So the first time did you get pregnant easily?

 

K: Yeah, I actually I had gone off. I got off birth control for health reasons and told my boyfriend at the time that it was not his responsibility to take care of birth control and I ended up pregnant three months later.

 

P: Already, then that’s pretty easy. Yes.

 

K: Yeah. it wasn’t. There was no training involved. There was no planning involved. It was just kind of like, this is my this is why I met I had given him the speech of this is my five year plan. If it’s not yours, that’s okay. But this is mine. You’re in charge and wasn’t in charge. 

 

P: I’m assuming having a baby immediately was not the top of the five year plan.

 

K: No, no, it wasn’t. My long term plan. My long term five year plan was to buy a house have kids, but apparently my son decided it was time for him anyway. 

 

P:  I assume you found out with like a home test?

 

K: I did. Yeah. And I actually had thought I was pregnant the month before. Yeah, and I was just feeling off. I was working one day and I made a comment to my partner that my boobs are really sore and the the nurse or the assistant healthcare and I think that we had with us that day. She she’s pregnant to sit No, I don’t think so. But it really got me thinking about it. And actually that day after work, I went and picked up a test and went home did it and lo and behold, I actually was pregnant. So the only real thing that kind of tipped me off was like I hadn’t missed my period yet. I was yes, I had maybe a little bit but I wasn’t unusual for me to be late. That’s why I had been on birth control for so long was to regulate my my periods. So the just the the soreness of my boobs was kind of the giveaway that I might be pregnant and I wouldn’t have even thought about it had somebody else not suggested it

P:Oh wow.

 

There’s some common signs you might be pregnant, like this period or tender breasts or fatigue. And according to the Mayo Clinic Another symptom that makes the list is increased urination from the increase in blood volume. Other signs of pregnancy include moodiness, bloating, cramping, food aversions, these are also kind of what you’d expect, but symptoms I’d never heard of before are constipation which may arise thanks to hormone changes and nasal congestion, which could also be related to hormone changes and or increased blood production which can cause nasal passages as well. 

 

P: And what was the pregnancy like?

 

K: It was was pretty well uneventful with the exception of the fact that I’m a paramedic. That’s I was, I was I’ve been a paramedic now for 15 years and when I got pregnant with my son, I was still working on the truck. I stayed on the truck, but every time I would go and do a heavy lift, I was spotting. So I actually ended up having to come off the truck around 20 weeks I might have been 20 weeks pregnant. My doctors said that’s enough. You’re done because I had at that point gone in probably four or five times with spotting worried that something was going wrong. And all I could think about for months, all those times was like I’m losing my baby. I had had probably around the 10 week mark I had a long conversation with my aunt who’s a nurse about about it and come to terms with the fact that if I was going to lose my beanie, there was a reason for it. And yes, it was gonna suck but that meant that there was something that wasn’t working. And there was a reason why that that was supposed to happen. But lucky for me that didn’t happen.

 

P: did they link the spotting  to the heavy lifting is gonna pay off.

 

K: later down the road, they discovered that my placenta was fairly low lying, laying near my cervix. So every time I would lift there was too much pressure. And that’s what caused the spotting. The the following 20 Weeks was pretty uneventful. I gained a lot of weight. Please, for me anyway, I gained about 40 pounds in my pregnancy and having been a very active person who was very weight conscious all my life. It was really difficult to get behind the idea that this was weight I needed to gain. When that was really tough to get up on the scale and see more weight, more weight more weight. 

 

P:Yeah. 

 

Okay let’s talk about weight gain during pregnancy. according to webmd and the CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, someone who’s quote unquote average weight and average is defined by BMI, she gained 25 to 35 pounds during the pregnancy. And someone who’s underweight should gained 28 to 40 pounds. For those who are overweight, the window of 15 to 25 pounds. How’s that window determined? Where’s the weight going? Here’s some estimates. Let’s just look at the lower bound. Let’s say the baby’s eight pounds add the placenta that’s another two three pounds so now we’re at 10. At ml fluid. That’s another two three pounds an hour 12 fresh tissue increases that adds to three pounds. Now we’re at 14 and the blood supply that increase that could cause nasal congestion. That’s four pounds so now we’re 18 uterus expanded to a growing baby as two to five pounds. So now we’re already up to 20. And then you’re going to need some stored fat for breastfeeding because that fuels milk production, which has another five to nine pounds, which gets us pretty easily to 25 pounds. And that’s just the lower bound 

 

K: you know, but the rest of that pregnancy was was pretty easy. was about the 32 week mark when my placenta finally moved enough that the doctor decided I could get back in the gym and I could do light working out, which was fantastic because I really needed to get moving after doing nothing for 12 weeks. 

 

P: Yeah, that’s  hard. You rest right. You just couldn’t do a lot of stuff.

 

K: Right? I just couldn’t do any any lifting and anyone didn’t want me working out. Anything strenuous really.

 

P: it’s interesting that Your placenta just moved.

 

K: Yeah. And the way they explained it is it’s kind of kind of not that it moved but that it’s you know the uterus gets bigger right so naturally, where it was positioned with move as the uterus is expanding. This way I understood what they were explaining to me so that was interesting, because I didn’t I thought that once it implanted itself where it was it was it was just a stay there.

 

P: Yeah, yeah, I agree. That’s cool.

 

K: I guess it wasn’t it wasn’t covering my cervix. It was just low enough that it was causing grief.

 

P; Tell us about the birth. How did you know you were in labor?

 

K: I have had my membranes stripped.

 

P: So your doctor might suggest stripping your membranes aka sweeping membranes to try to induce labor if you’re near or over your duty. And this procedure Doctor separates the amniotic sac from the wall of the uterus. And this separation encourages your body to produce prostaglandins. Chemicals that soften your cervix and repair your body fileserver know that it can only be done if your cervix is a little bit dilated, and it doesn’t always bring on labor.

  

K: at my last appointment I was like 39 weeks three days movie and the opposite like I was already two centimeters dilated so she gave it a good good sweep, which is probably not the most comfortable thing in the world. But she she did that and I went home and I had a lot of back pain over the course of the night and I didn’t really think much of it until about 530 in the morning when my water broke. I actually sent my my boyfriend to work and said you don’t go to work. I have no labor at home. I’ll be fine until I can’t walk or talk through these contractions and they’ll call you and you can come home.

  

P: and was the water breaking like a Hollywood event or

 

K: no I was actually in bed and all of a sudden I kind of felt a little bit wet nose like I think that’s my water and I got up to go to the washroom. It wasn’t the big gush or anything it was a little bit of a trickle but he and he went off to work and I hopped in the shower I had some breakfast and then I got in the shower and knowing knowing what I know from my from my job I knew that once I got to work or to the to the hospital, they’re not gonna let me eat. Let me do anything. They’re just gonna let the labor and I wanted to make sure I had food in my system before I went in. 

 

So I had my breakfast say hey, had my shower stood in there for a while. By the time I was getting out of the hot shower, only about an hour after I sent him to work. I was calling him saying you know what? I actually think it’s a good idea. If we go by the time you get there, it should be ready to go. So he came back and he got me we went off to the hospital and they got me triaged but they had no bed so they had me walk the hallway. And when I got there around 11 o’clock in the morning, and I walked and I walked in I walked that they had a room and then

 

P: how are you? How are you feeling during all this walking?

 

K: Not overly comfortable but I had to bet I had decided at the beginning of the pregnancy that the as a result of my friends negative experience with an epidural and and medications that I was going to do this all natural. I had many people ask me are you sure that’s what you want to do? Are you like are too afraid it’s gonna hurt tonight I would respond with Well, I know it’s gonna hurt. There’s no, there’s no, there’s no, no two ways about that. It is what it is and I’m expecting that so it was uncomfortable to say the least but not intolerable. 

 

P: okay

 

K: walking the hallways. I would stop every once in a while have a contraction and keep going. Once they had a space for me, I got to labor in the birthing tub. I should say birthing tub it’s just a tub because they won’t allow you to have your baby in the tub. I labored in there for a while and then I I went into the shower and I stood in the shower for a while they got me a birthing ball and they sat on that. So my water had broken about 530 in the morning and by about 430 In the afternoon I was ready to push the I was 10 centimeters dilated and they had this lovely little rail that they were able to attach to my bed if I wanted to get up and use that as a as an option to bear down and I pushed for so long it was five hours

 

P: oh my god that’s super long. Wow. 

K: enduring that that whole process while I was laboring in my room I actually one of my friends and co workers had popped into the hospital knew I was in labor pop came upstairs and the nurse comes in she’s like your friend is here is wondering and I’m like can I let him in sewing for a while. That was that was before it was pushing but then. So by the time I was ready to push, the nurse was convinced that every time I push she could see his head so she figured this was going to be a short process but an hour and a half later I was still pushing in the resident came in to take a look and see what was going on. And it turns out that my son was situated sideways so he was shoulders instead of being held facedown he was facing sideways. Oh, square peg round hole doesn’t work. 

 

P: Yes. Yeah. 

 

K: So she she tried to turn him and was unsuccessful. He was too far down into that birth canal for him to be successfully turned.

 

P: That sounds like a not super comfortable procedure.

 

K: No, no, it’s definitely not I don’t I don’t have a lot of memory about how it went down but I just remember it being kind of an uncomfortable push. But at that point I’d already been pushing for an hour and a half so it didn’t really that much different. So she she tried and she was unsuccessful. And she said you know what? he might still turn on his own so we’re gonna give you to about a three hour mark usually at about three hours that’s when we come in and assist delivery. Okay, and off she left and I continued to push for another hour and a half. My mom was there my my mother in law my other half and my aunt and my sister were all there in the room with us. And obviously, by the time I got to three hours he still hadn’t come out. And the resident and the physician were both in C sections. So there was nobody to come and help me at three hour mark. So at that point, the nurse says to me, she says do you want the nitrous and I said, Well, is it gonna is that going to stop my contractions really because she said at this point she’s saying tried to breathe through your contractions and I’ve been pushing for three hours you want me to breathe through my contractions…that’s not a thing that is going to happen. And slowly we can offer you the nitrous. They said they’re going to do what’s not going to do for me so that might decrease the intensity of the contraction. I said okay, well I’ll give it a try. Because at this point my my eyelids were swollen

 

P: oh my God

 

K:  and purple because I’ve been pushing so hard for so long. It looked like I was wearing eyeshadow and I could barely you barely keep my eyes open. So I took that first hit of nitrous and it’s subdued my contractions for about four minutes. It was the most brilliant four minutes of my entire life. It was nice to just kind of relax and chill for a couple of minutes after, you know, screaming pushing for so long. But it didn’t obviously stop the contractions and definitely but it did it did make them a little bit less intense. I didn’t think it was doing a lot but the nurse was insistent that yes, absolutely. You’re not squeezing your eyes shut as hard. You’re not pushing as hard. It’s doing something for you. He’s always ready to give it back because like this is useless. I’m not getting anything after that first shot. So by another another hour and a half goes by or whatever and the doc the doc finally comes in at about the five almost five hour mark and then resident at that point suggests taking me to an OR because just in case. Anything goes awry and my nurse was wonderful and she actually advocated for me. She says, Do we really need to take her somewhere else like she’s gotten this far without drugs because of these five people here. 

 

P: Yeah

 

K: These people have been helping her through this. She’s only here because of that. We need to take her somewhere else and then the OB she says you know what? You’re right. We’ll get the NICU called the NICU team bring them here because our room was nice and big. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: So they brought them in and they ended up having to do an episiotomy. And then vacuum deliver him which

 

P: you’re not anesthetized for the episiotomy?

 

K: No, not at all she said that the pressure from the head will cause enough to have you not feel really the episiotomy and I don’t remember feeling the episiotomy So, 

 

P: okay, good. 

 

K: It wasn’t it wasn’t an overly traumatic experience there. But when the the suction delivered him there was actually a pop as he came out, because of the just the pressure from him being there and he was his head was very bruised afterwards just from being and cone like from being stuck in the birth, birth now for long. My My first thought after he came out was oh my god, thank goodness that’s over. 

 

P: Yeah. 

K: But at the same time they I was I was thankful that it was over but I also the first things out of my mouth. Were that wasn’t so bad. And the nurse and the doctors are looking at me and I really just pushed for five hours that you’re saying that wasn’t that bad. Really, it wasn’t too over. They put them only on my chest for about 30 seconds. And I knew I remember saying to him like you I’m sure you’re beautiful but mommy can’t even see you because I couldn’t open my eyes. 

 

P: Oh my god. Wow. 

 

K: And he was crying very quietly and I said if this is all I have to deal with, I can deal with this. The doctor was like, That’s not normal. We’re actually going to take him Now, he wasn’t trying very loudly. He was very, very quiet. So the NICU team ended up taking him and suctioning him and taking him off to the NICU for a while. What had happened was because he was stuck for so long in the birth canal he was full of mucus 

 

P: Oh Wow. 

 

K: They had to take took him away to make sure that the other they got all of that out. They kept him on his stomach for a little while he was making. I didn’t see him for that entire time that he was in the NICU. His dad went in and walked down the hallway but they really didn’t give him a much opportunity to see him. While they were dealing with it. He ended up having his first bath without me and being all cleaned up and he came back to me all wrapped up wearing a diaper.And it was probably a couple hours from the time that I had until the time he came back to my room.

 

P: When they returned them to you. He was fine. 

 

K: he was fine. Yeah. But in that in that hour and a half I remember saying to my mom Mom I want I need something to eat go and get me a big extra which she’s all I wanted after having that experience was she what she’s from?

 

P: I mean, you basically just run like two marathons right? That makes sense. Yeah.

 

K: When he when he came back, it took him a little bit of time to learn how to latch and I actually ended up in the hospital for four days postpartum because he lost 11% of his body weight his birth weight and the they were really kind of reluctant to send us home until he gains back some of that. He ended up on phototherapy because he was jaundice. So they had him in an incubator with phototherapy going but he was not having any of that he didn’t want to be that far away from mom so he ended up with a phototherapy blanket. And this is just basically like a UV light that they put inside his his blanket. He doesn’t keep on clothes. He just kept through this diaper and wrapped up in a blanket with that UV light behind him. And he hadn’t quite gained back his birth weight by the time we left but he was he was significantly better but I had to nurse him and then supplement him and then pump and I did that for every hour every couple hours or the first couple of days. And I remember it being about 60 hours that I hadn’t slept from the time when my water broke until the time I finally got a good nap in. And that was me saying to the nurses please take my baby so that I can sleep.

 

P: yeah, no kidding, Good Lord,

 

K: can you do something because this is this has been over two two and a half days here and I I need a good rest because every time I would just fall asleep they would come in to be doing vitals on me or the baby. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: And then just they finally they took him for a couple hours so that I could get a solid sleep in the in the night. They’ve just brought it back to me when it was time to feed him. Yeah, by the end by the time he took me home I had to I had to keep doing that. The nurse supplement pump every three hours and that process took about I don’t know an hour an hour and a half. So I would do that every every three hours for the whole day for 10 days. So those first 10 days of his life are pretty much a blur of sleepless everything

 

P: that just seems like an unbelievable task. I mean, I don’t know how you slept or ate.

 

K: I guess they just I can’t even remember at this point. It was it was it’s just a blur. He slept in my bed. I co slept with him because it was impossible. I had I had a bassinet beside my bed but it was so much easier to just, you know he would sleep there for the first block of sleep and he didn’t sleep my son did not sleep very well. He only ever really slept for two or three hours at a time. And he didn’t nap during the day if he nap during the day. It was short. Unless I was holding him if I was holding him he would sleep. 

 

P: Yeah, 

 

K: so at nighttime it was just, you know do what I needed to do to get some sleep which meant he usually slept with me that worked out alright because his dad he wasn’t homeless. He was he worked out of town. So a lot of the time he he wasn’t there. It was just me and my son in bed. It worked out alright.

 

P: wow.. Oh, that’s some initiation into parenthood.

 

K: Yeah, my second one was so much easier than that. But thank goodness.

 

P: So he required all that feeding. Was it because of the latch issue or was it something

 

K: just because he lost so much weight they wanted him to catch up but by the by the time he hit that 10 day mark and the public health nurse had come to check on him. She’s like, you don’t have to do this anymore.  my milk head had come in in abundance. 

 

P: I imagine everything else seemed easy after that introduction.

 

K: Yes, yeah, it was not. Although he the first four months maybe before I figured out what was causing him grief is every night around the same time he would. He would just start crying and crying crying and I remember having to call my mom My mom lives. I lived in a duplex. My mom lived downstairs and I remember getting her to come upstairs and take him and walk with him because I just I needed a break from the crying. I tried so many different things and we were you stopped eating spicy foods. I stopped eating anything with spices. I couldn’t figure out what was the issue until I realized that every morning for breakfast. I was eating yogurt. I stopped eating the yogurt for breakfast and my son stopped being colicky.

 

P: oh Wow. So it was a food sensitivity on his part

 

K: And I had tried that when I tried probiotics and I had tried all sorts of thing eliminating everything tasty under my diet try to find out what the problem was. And it was the yogurt and as soon as I ended that he started sleeping a little bit better and he stopped crying in at night. There was always an evening who was okay all day in the evening. It was awful to this day. He still he’s 12 now and he still has a dairy sensitivity, but that knowledge that I had from that experience carried through to my daughter and she had a similar problem when she was first born and she would projectile vomit and shortly after I would nurse her and at least at that point I knew to eliminate the dairy in my diet in that solve the problem for her as well.

 

P: That’s super interesting. Do you or your husband have a dairy sensitivity?

 

K: I have always had a dairy sensitivity and it was kind of like an upset stomach. I don’t generally digest animal proteins very well. And I find that dairy products actually caused me to have an asthma attack. So 

 

P: oh Wow. 

 

K: It wasn’t a surprise that my kids would both be have adverse reactions to to dairy. Their dad also was a heel heel he would he would tell you he wasn’t lactose intolerant until he met me but he didn’t he didn’t recognize the gastrointestinal upsets that he was having were as a result of dairy he was eating because once I went sparse done once I realized he was not he was not able to have dairy. I stopped buying it. And we started using alternatives and their dad’s problems also stopped. So he didn’t know until I suggested that this was potentially a problem for

 

P: Wow, that’s amazing. And so your kids are close together in age. Did you guys play in the second one?

 

K: Nope. I had one one menstrual cycle in between my kids. I didn’t have any cycles up until I started. Nighttime weaning my son so when I started taking him and he was about 10 months old when I started getting getting him into a routine of not nursing at night because I was going to go back to work at the one year mark. And so I had a cycle at the beginning of this. He was born in January 9th. I had my typical post partum bleeding for about six weeks. And then I had nothing until the beginning of December of that same year, and I ended up pregnant December 23. 

 

P: oh Wow. 

 

K: I knew I knew the day it happened.

 

P: That sounds like you’re pretty in tune with your body. So my guess is you were you were on it. And were you surprised?

 

K: again it was one of these situations where I had said to to my ex that you know, like we have to be careful because this is where we’re at like and so I was I wasn’t necessarily surprised that had happened. I was I had a hard time with the idea that I was pregnant again. Right away. I actually was in denial until a new year until I’ve got to a point where I was gonna miss my next period.

 

P: Yeah, it sounds like your body is still recovering. And so that is kind of a surprise.

 

K: Yeah, it wasn’t it wasn’t there wasn’t ready for it. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t change it for the world my kids are as his best friends as they could possibly be being multi for the boy and girl. But I definitely remember thinking the day the day after the day I got pregnant like the next day when I was spotting and I was certain it was implantation bleeding. Yeah. I was like, Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. We had planned for a New Year’s Eve party at our house and I sipped on the same beer the whole entire night because I was sure that I was pregnant. Yeah. And lo and behold, I did my test in January, and I picked him up one day, and I said to him, like, yeah, when I was talking on the phone the other day, and I told you, you have children. Yes, yeah. pregnant again. This is well it’s too soon. This time. I will agree with you. Yeah. But here we are. So we’re gonna have another one. And it took me about 16 weeks 16 weeks to be okay with the idea that I was having another baby, because I was so excited that my son would finally sit and play with a bucket of toys. By himself that he will do things he would see was crawling and he was mobile, and I didn’t have to be with him 100% of the time to keep him entertained. And at that point, I’d also discovered that he was allergic to dairy and eggs. So I already had this like worry that now I’m going to have you know, two kids with allergies and I don’t want to have ya I’m just learning how to deal with one I don’t want to have to deal with 2am I gonna do this. I’m gonna have two toddlers in my house. Yeah, but it’s actually a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be. 

 

P: Oh, good. Yeah, that sounds pretty busy. And one benefit of having nine months of pregnancy is it gives you time to adjust the idea. 

 

K: Yes. 

 

P: So how was the second pregnancy

 

K: uneventful. Oh, I was I was able to maintain my my my gym routines. Maintain my work. I stayed on the on truck until I was I think 28 or 29 weeks and I only came off because my belly was starting to get in the way I didn’t gain as much weight with her. I had like his basketball belly. If he looked at me from behind, you would never know that I was pregnant.

 

P: and he didn’t have a placenta issue again. 

 

K: No, no problem with the placenta. I had a lot of back pain with my son and I and as a result I had a lot of back leg was back labor. The thing they thought that was big because my placenta or my uterus was tipped backwards to towards my back as opposed towards the front. Whereas if my daughter had after that first pregnancy had put itself in a good position. I didn’t really have much for pregnancy symptoms with her like I had with my son. I had no real knowledge that I was pregnant other than you know that other than that spotting Other than that, like if I wouldn’t have known that just go on about my life like there was nothing Yeah. Blowing up saying he’ll, you know, here’s alarm saying you’re pregnant. I did have a little bit of morning sickness with her which I never had with my son but like very minimal link to the point where like, Oh, I haven’t eaten enough today. So I better eat something and that’s how I felt. That nausea that you get when you have an empty stomach.

 

P: Yeah, good. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. And then what was the birth like for her?

 

K: Oh, that was so good. I was in comparison Lee again. My daughter had gone into my my appointment on the 10th of September. She was she was due on the 15th Avenue and we went in probably on the 10th and she stripped my membranes because again, I was dilated, and I knew from my previous pregnancy that that meant I was probably going to end up having a baby within the next 24 hours. So I went and I did my grocery shopping after that, and I started laboring probably around two o’clock in the afternoon. While I was at superstore actually, and I just picked up all of my groceries, I went home, my ex got home from work and I told him the city. We’re gonna we’re gonna have a baby tonight. So be mindful of what it is you’re choosing to do tonight. Little bit of background as he he was a heavy drinker. And so he actually came home from work and he hit the beer pretty hard. And I kept telling him like, I’m gonna have this baby tonight. And he kept choosing to drink and going to bed around midnight and as about 130 When I said Okay, it’s time to go, but there was no way he could drive me actually to call my mom. My mom was coming to watch my my son so that I could go to the hospital and yeah, I was convinced I was just going to take a taxi to the hospital because there was no way he was going to be able to drive me and my mom actually called my sister and my sister came and picked me up after she woke my my apps up multiple times and told him to get his butt out of bed so that he could come with me in the hospital to have this baby because I was fully prepared to have him have her all by myself. 

 

P: Yeah, 

 

K: you know, he decided he needed to have a shower first and then my sister’s like, hurrying wrong I lucked out that I waited so long to go to the hospital because they actually had no beds that night. They had their just their emergency labor beds and I was five centimeters dilated. By the time I got to the hospital. 

 

P: Wow. 

 

K: And they said well, it’s a good thing. You find that you’re in active labor because if you wouldn’t we would be sending you home or sending you off to another facility to have your baby basically because we don’t have anyone. But because I was an active labor they couldn’t send me anywhere so they put me in a room. That was about 330 in the morning. probably about 630 My nurse said she was going to go for a break and she said to the relief nurse, when I get back she’s going to be ready to push. I was quiet at this this this particular pregnancy was so sick even the labor was so easy. There was no loud pushes there was no screaming there was no anything. I was just calm. I was breathing through the contractions. And her relief nurse was convinced that I had had an epidural or some kind of medication she refused to let me get up and go to the bathroom when I had to pee. The only I guess the only real complication with my daughter there was like she her heart rate got really high. So they ended up giving me an IV they wanted to try to hydrate me to see if that would decrease her heart rate. But I because I had this IV I had to pee in the source was like no way you can’t get up I

 

P: was like you were she thought you were anesthetized.

 

K: Right Yeah, and she’s like I’m just gonna catheterized you like I don’t care just empty my bladder like don’t get let me get up. That’s fine. Have to pee somehow, and so she ended up St. Catheter me and my nurse came back from her break and she’s like, oh like catheter I string catheter and emptier blah. She’s like why was that epidural? Like no she hasn’t She’s nothing like she was fine. She couldn’t go she’s been getting up to go to the bathroom all morning. Such as like, really? She’s quiet. Like yes, she’s she’s fine. But the bonus I had here was that she my water never broke. He actually had to I was 10 centimeters dilated. My waters were still intact. And the OB actually had to break the water in order to for me to push. 

 

P: does that feel like anything?

 

K: it actually it’s more scary to look at because it looks like this big one crochet hook that they’re going to use to break the water and she sticks this up in there and puts a hole in it. And I don’t remember it really feeling like much other than all of a sudden I could feel gosh, oh yeah. And then I actually only pushed four times with her and she was out as a forefront anyway. I don’t even know if it was four to four pushes but every every every push was solid push and she came

 

P: that is awesome. Some awesome and averaging out over the two to make it reasonable. 

 

K: Yeah, absolutely. 

 

P: And so she didn’t have any mucus issues or anything. 

 

K: She’s totally fine. He was fine. They thought maybe she was a that maybe we got the due date wrong just because the amount of vernix that she was covered in they figured she was more than 30 week baby than the 39 week baby.

 

P: It’s a quick note here about vernix versus that white pasty material that covers a newborn. It developed from a third trimester and has all kinds of functions during the pregnancy and right after delivery. In Utero it protects fetal skin from amniotic fluid at the same time the fetus swallows vernix in amniotic fluid, and the Fornix is believed to aid in innate immunity and intestinal development. In the first hours after delivery. Researchers think vernix helps with temperature regulation and also acts as a skin moisturizer.

 

K: But she was super teeny tiny she measured tiny through the whole pregnancy and now she’s 10 years old and she’s like my seven year old and 10 year old rolls and things like that. She’s a tiny little petite thing. And she always has been she she was born like seven pounds 18 and a quarter inches like she was just

 

P: the year about seven pounds isn’t that tiny? That’s that feels average,

 

K: seven pounds, definitely average but her her length was very short. Like in comparison, my son was 76 and 19 and a half inches long. So you know, comparatively she was bigger, you know per inch. Yeah, yeah. Then my son was

 

P: well good. I’m glad that wasn’t easier birth. 

K: Oh, yeah. 

P: Did you get to leave the next day or how did that work?

 

K: Yeah, you she they were slightly concerned that her Billy Rubin was a little bit high when we were leaving, but it was still borderline because they had no rooms they could put me actually on a warm and I was sharing a room with four other women. 

 

P: Oh, wow. 

 

K: And and their babies. Yeah. So I actually said to them the next day, so I’d had her at 730 by noon. It was like 900 Yeah, I don’t have to be like No, I have to keep you will keep you today. We’re just to monitor and then you know, everything’s good. You can go home tomorrow. And thank God I got to go home tomorrow because it was it was in the night with four babies other than my own in the bedroom was actually more stressful than being at home with my toddler and infant. Myself.

 

P: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I shared the room too. And that’s that’s a recipe for no sleep at all.

 

K: No. And they were giving me a hard time the nurses at that point is I have my daughter had my daughter and my bed and they had her sleeping with me and their policy at the hospital is no co sleeping in the hospital. 

 

P: Yeah, 

 

K: and they kept coming in tell you she can’t sleep with you. I was like, yes, she can. This is my baby. It’s your policy like, I don’t care if it’s your policy that she has to sleep in that bed unless you’re gonna sit here and take care of her every time she wakes up. All these other babies are I’m keeping her in my bed because she’s sleeping and she’s quiet.

 

P: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s worth a lot. And when you got home with her, how was that?

 

K: It was it was an easy, relatively easy transition to having two kids. My son was really good with her. He was very excited to have a new sister. He was very helpful and willing to to give me whatever it was I needed. And I learned very quickly how to do everything with one hand because I always had a baby attached to me. She She was my warp speed child though. Like she did everything faster than the speed of light. And as a result, like by the time she was four months old, I didn’t really have to do a ton for she was rolling already. She was sitting already. My son would hang out with her and I could do a lot more than I could when my son was the same age. 

 

P: Yeah. 

 

K: Which was which was wonderful and made for a much easier time having two small kids then I thought it was going to be when she was crawling away by six months and walking by nine months and 

 

P: wow. 

 

K: And learning that she she basically taught herself how to potty train like I was potty training my son and she decided that that was what she wanted to do also so before she I think she might have been 18 months old. 20 months old been potty trained and getting up like she would get up in the middle of the night. Go to the potty in her room and go back to sleep.

 

P: I hope you all the money you saved on diapers you have given to her for her new car

 

K: it was it was a dream and she she slept like my son didn’t sleep and my daughter slept I put I ended up putting her crib in my room because I was anticipating her being much like my son. 

 

P: Yeah, 

 

K: and she preferred to sleep in her crib than she did to sleep with me. So once her once she outgrew her bassinet, that’s when the crib made it to our room and that way I still didn’t have to go in and wake up my son every time I wanted. She was waking up. Yeah, but she would she would just get up she would nurse and go back to her bed and she would sleep for six hours stretches at night. 

 

P: wow. Oh my god. That’s awesome.

 

K: It was a dream. It was a dream after having a child who didn’t sleep.

 

P: Yeah, it’s also it’s also your kids who’ve done it in the right order as if it had been the reverse. He wouldn’t seem so much more difficult. Yes, absolutely. Well, that’s awesome. So what are they into now?

 

K: My son plays hockey. And of course with COVID This year we have missed hockey desperately. 

 

P: Yeah, 

 

K: we don’t do any any summertime sports but he plays ice hockey in the winter and ball hockey in the summer. My daughter is curls in the wintertime that she was when she was about six when she decided she wanted to curl and she’s really enjoyed it. She decided a couple years ago that she wanted to play ball hockey in the springtime as well and she used to play soccer and baseball hockey in the spring. They go to school and we have a farm and they help take care of animals occasionally.

 

P: That sounds awesome. That’s very cool. So if you could give advice to your younger self about pregnancy, what do you think you would tell her?

 

K: It’s never going to go the way you expect it to go. Or the the everything that you will be thrown curveballs just roll with it.

 

P: Yeah, that’s good advice. That seems to be a pretty common experience. Right? People come in with a plan and it’s hard to really stick to that.

 

K: Yeah, I was lucky in the sense of you. Well, maybe my my birth didn’t necessarily make my first birth didn’t necessarily go as I had at home, I was still able to do it without deviating too far off what I was hoping to do, I still had chosen to maintain a natural birth in the sense that I didn’t need any anesthesia or pain control, which I always was thankful for. Because it doesn’t work that way for everybody. My hand and my sister had gone into her first pregnancy with hoping to follow in my footsteps. She’s a I’m not going to do I’m going to do this naturally. I’m not going to do this with any drugs and she got there and she was laboring and she said looked at me and she says I hope you don’t think less of me but I need to take something because I can’t do this. And I said this is your story not mine. Yeah. Well, you you do what works for you. And if it’s not the same as what works for me, that’s okay.

 

P: For sure everybody’s different right? So yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your stories today.

 

K; No problem. I really appreciate it. I enjoy I enjoy telling me no problem. Thank you. So much for having me.