Ainsley’s Birth Story
A few days before Ainsley was born, my friend, Malissa, and I decided to go see a movie. We knew it would be the last chance we’d have to do something like this for a while after baby arrived. During the movie I was having contractions for about an hour, but by the time I went to bed that night they’d stopped completely.
I was still almost two weeks away from my due date at that point, but so restless and ready for baby to come. Apparently I have big, healthy babies and thus gain a lot of weight during pregnancy. This lends itself to comments by total strangers and well-meaning friends alike about how ready I am to “pop” or how I look like I could go at any minute. I think these are an attempt to sympathize. But those comments along with the “poor you” looks from people in grocery stores, at church, on the EL, etc. lead to a very grumpy me- all that and the fact that it had been a very hot summer. All week I’d been telling Andy that I was ready to be done with pregnancy. At one point he told me I should be prepared to be pregnant for at least 2 more weeks. Avery was 10 days early and I did not want to hear that from Andy! I was actually angry with him!
On Friday, September 2, I did some talking with God and resigned myself to the fact that I really had no control over when she arrived. I decided that having a really bad attitude about it wasn’t going to help anyone. That evening went to Malissa’s apartment to watch the Tigers’ game. On the way there we realized that something was wrong with the brakes on our car. We could still brake, but not without a lot of effort. Andy was working on a solution to the car issue throughout the game, while I was experiencing periodic back pain.
We made it home safely and around midnight I started having more intense pain. I thought I was probably in labor and tried to get some rest. With Avery, my water broke and then I started having contractions and 21 hours later he was born. This time I wasn’t totally sure it was the real deal, but I wasn’t able to sleep. So I took a couple of baths and started timing the contractions (using my new smartphone and a contraction timer app I’d downloaded). By 3 the contractions were intense enough for me to call our midwives to ask about coming to the hospital. They told me there weren’t any beds available and since I was planning to do a medication-free delivery, it would be better for me to labor at home for as long as possible.
By 4 am I was in so much pain that I told Andy I wanted the epidural that I’d been dead-set against for two pregnancies… the one that I’d gone without for all 21 hours of Avery’s labor. To go to the hospital we needed to call a friend to come watch Avery. Andy was reluctant to do that at 4 in the morning considering the face that when we went to have Avery we were there for another 14 hours before he was born. His thinking was that we should wait at home for a while longer and give our friends a chance to rest. I was insistent though and he finally called our friend, Linsey, who lives just behind us. We had to ask Linsey to borrow her car to get to the hospital because of the brake situation on our car. I was thinking Andy should have called Malissa, but he thought she’d been too tired the night before. Malissa lives about 10 minutes away from us and Linsey lives about 1 minute away… Andy’s choice turned out to be so providential!
Linsey arrived and a little after 4:30 we were out the door. On the way down the stairs I was having trouble walking because I was in so much pain. I remember looking at the clock in Linsey’s car when we were driving up to the hospital. It said 4:50. We walked from the parking garage (Andy had scored the very first spot… praise the Lord!) and I had 2 or 3 contractions on the way in that were strong enough for me to stop to work through them. I asked Andy who had the bright idea to have another baby. And I realized that I felt like I needed to push. Neither Andy nor I really believed it could possibly be time to push yet. In our previous experience I’d pushed for 5 hours before anything really productive happened. It seemed impossible that 5 hours into labor I would really need to push.
We got into the emergency room entrance and Andy quickly gave them whatever info they needed. I told them I needed to push and they said whatever I did I shouldn’t do that. But I think they took me seriously because we were on our way to the labor and delivery floor pretty quickly. We checked in at L&D triage station at 5:03 AM and the nurse asked for a urine sample. Upon reflection later, I wished I had told her how serious I was about my desire to push. But in the moment I looked at that little cup as the last obstacle on my way to some sort of relief. I’m rather proud of the fact that I made it to the bathroom, filled the little cup without spilling anything and replaced the cap… all before things got really exciting.
I stood up after using the toilet and simultaneously felt my water break and felt myself involuntarily giving a huge push. Immediately I felt the baby crowning. I called out for Andy… he and the triage nurse came running. In natural childbirth classes they teach you that one of the signs you are in the last stages of labor is a loss of modesty. That explains why it didn’t occur to me that I should pull up my pants before walking down the hall toward the birthing suites. We walked about 50 feet to the first room, which was mercifully empty. The whole walk down the hall I could tell exactly where baby was! Doctors and nurses who were walking past were pulled into the room. Andy and a nurse (I think) helped me onto the table. There was no time for checking anything. I pushed two more times (again without much control or volition on my part) and Ainsley made her appearance. . I guess the midwife on call was paged, but she said she almost immediately received a second page telling her the baby had already come.
Andy and I looked at each other in shock. I think we said several times “did that really just happen?” He started calling friends and family right away. Many of them asked if we were in labor and he had to keep repeating that we were done with labor and baby was here.
We got to hold our sweet girl almost right away. She was 8 pounds and 19 inches long. Although she arrived in very different fashion, she was the spitting image of her big brother. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over her arrival, but that’s how Ainsley Marie Brandt came to join our family.
So, here’s the story. It was quite a ride! Andy and I had been watching my niece, Shekinah, for about a week and a half and she was set to go home on Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday evening Andy had a softball game and we went and then went to grab some food afterward. We got home and I was checking email and such when I felt something like a punch very low in my pelvis so I started to head to the bathroom and on the way felt a gush of water. We called the midwife hotline and they said not to come in until we were having contractions that were less than 5 minutes apart, but that we’d probably have the baby within 24 hours. I hadn’t had any contractions yet, but within an hour I started having them and they were about 6 minutes apart. We packed a bag and made arrangements for a friend to come stay with Shekinah should we actually need to go to the hospital before our already scheduled midwife appointment that was at 8:30 AM. So we tried to get some sleep, and Andy did get maybe an hour, but every time I’d start to dose off, I’d start to have another contraction and I just couldn’t sleep. We started timing them again at around 2:30 and they were 3.5-4 min apart. So we called the midwife hotline again and they said we could come in or we could wait, but we decided since I wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, we might as well go to the hospital. Our friend Malissa, came to stay with Shekinah and we left for the hospital at around maybe 3:30.
At the hospital they checked and I was only about 2 cm dilated, which was disheartening to say the least. We were very tired all morning, but my contractions were never more than 5 minutes apart from there on… Andy rubbed my feet, back, or legs through each one (sometimes as he was half asleep) and they finally checked me again at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and I was 6 cm. They didn’t want to check too often because of the risk of infection since my water had already been broken for several hours at that point.
At around 5 or 6 I started having the urge to push… the midwife had wanted to give me some pitocin to increase the productivity of my contractions, but decided against it because things started to pick up again. The next time they checked I was a disappointing 7 cm dilated, but then an hour later had moved to 9, so that was good news. We started pushing in earnest at around 6:30 or 7:00 PM and then realized that Avery was posterior (sunny side up) and would have to rotate before he was to make his appearance.
At some point in there I took a bath which helped with the intensity of the contractions. We pushed for another hour or so and then Charity, our midwife, said again that we should start some pitocin because I’d started to spike a fever (the bacterial infection that they were concerned about when they wouldn’t check to see how dilated I was very often)… she really wanted us to have him out before 24 hours of my water breaking passed. We did the pitocin and also a catheter because I wasn’t able to pee… and Charity thought that the baby’s head couldn’t get passed this tiny lip of cervis because my bladder was so full. Charity had to move his head out of the way to actually get the catheter in… it was pretty painful. So then things really got moving. We pushed for a little while longer and he was finally crowning and I was tearing a lot! Then things got a little scary and I heard Charity ask the nurse what Avery’s heart rate was and it had dropped to 68! I was in some intense pain and I wanted to be done. I’d been alright up till that point, but I just wanted everything to be over. Then suddenly and without asking really, Charity started an episiotomy and I screamed so loudly that Andy had to look away… he just hugged my head and cried. Then suddenly Avery was out… they put him on my chest briefly (like 20 seconds) in accordance with our birth plan, but then they took him away quickly and there were like 10 people in the room instantly. There were 4 people working on my third degree tear and episiotomy and probably six more surrounding Avery working on getting him breathing right and checking him for the bacterial infection they thought he might have. We both ended up having to have an IV… but in the end, everything is good! He’s 8 lbs. 11 ounces, was born at 8:57 PM, and is 22 inches long.
Although it was an intense ending… the Lord did some really neat thing in this process. First, we’ve seen 2 midwives alternately throughout the pregnancy. They are a part of a group of 18 midwives that work at the UIC hospital. Anyone on duty in that group is who will deliver your baby when you go into labor. So we had no guarantee that it would be either Kathleen or Charity that would actually deliver the baby. Although we’ve had a positive experience with both Kathleen and Charity, Andy had warmer feelings toward Charity. When we had our miscarriage last year, she was just really caring and personable. I think that’s what endeared her to him. Anyway, when we got to the hospital on Tuesday night they said that Kathleen would be on duty in the morning, which was comforting to look forward to seeing a friendly face. But when we got to the L&D room, Charity actually greeted us. She was phenomenal! She stayed with us for good portions of the day… and it just felt like someone who really knew us and cared about us was a part of the experience with us. How sweet of the Lord!
But then something else He did… on the Sunday before we went in to labor our pastor mentioned that they year before had been his trail sermon at our church. I’d been aware that the anniversary of our miscarriage was approaching anyway, but it reminded me even more acutely because I clearly remember his trial sermon. He said something about how sometimes that tomb is actually a womb for new life… that sometimes something/someone has to die for something new to take root… he was talking about Christ. But the words got all switched around in my mind because on the way to church that morning I’d called our midwife hotline to ask them about the bleeding that had started to happen that morning. Andy was encouraged by the midwives saying that it could be nothing, but I was already loosing hope and my mind was fixated on how sometimes the womb could be a tomb. Those words haunted me in ways that I’m sure our pastor never intended... I remember sitting there and desperately praying… and then not understanding why that would be God’s will… I still can’t pretend to understand that. Well on Tuesday, August 26th of 2008 we lost our first pregnancy and on Wednesday, August 26th of 2009 we were blessed with little Avery. I think still need to process this all a little more… but here’s what happened. I think that writing this all out is helping me to do that. I just wanted to share what God did. I still kinda can’t believe it! I look at this beautiful little boy and realize that he’s ours! Wow.