{The last photo of me pregnant, right after our walk trying to send myself into labor on March 14th. Read on to find out if it worked! 🙂 }
Well, it took me over two years to write Cora’s birth story (read that here and here if you haven’t already), so I’m not gonna lie when I’m pretty shocked to be writing Issa’s story at only two weeks out. It still feels like a blur, though, so I don’t know that I’ll have a plethora of new details that were long gone by the time I wrote Cora’s story.
Issa was “due” on March 5th. I say that with quotation marks because I know how annoying it is to some birth professionals when women expect to go into labor “on time” or when they’re “supposed to”. I can remember thinking after Cora was born that I didn’t want to tell anyone our due date to avoid the constant check-ins and questions as to where she was. Because even though there are a thousand ways to supposedly kick start labor, it’s really not something that’s in my control, as much as I might want it to be. So March 5th came and went without so much as a whisper of a contraction because apparently I take forever and a day to cook buns in the oven. I was perfectly OK with that though, because as luck would have it I came down with a pretty nasty cold that lingered for about a week. I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around what it would be like to go into labor while coughing up a lung. Having the ability to breathe is highly recommended while giving birth, in case you weren’t aware.
While I was fighting to get myself healthy, I also started to feel a sense of panic when it came to labor itself. It got to the point where I was having a near panic attack at the thought of going through that much pain again. It’s strange, with Cora I think I was so young and/or naive that I really didn’t worry too much about the pain prior to my first contraction. And even with this pregnancy, it wasn’t until the eleventh hour that I really started to put much thought into the mountain I was about to climb – AGAIN. This is why I think women are the most amazing creatures on the planet – because we KNOW what labor is going to feel like, and yet many of us do it multiple times for the sake of cuddling that itty bitty newborn. Personally, though, the more I let myself lay around and think about what was coming for me, like it or not, in the next few days, the more I felt a tightening in my chest that was hard to handle. When I confessed my nerves to my midwife, she recommended an herbal supplement called Bach Rescue Remedy Spray. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical at first, and the stuff doesn’t taste great, but it immediately helped me calm down when that ugly fear started to settle in.
It also helped to talk with my fellow hippie mama friends and feel that sense of reassurance that I’ve done this before, my body knows how to do this, and even though it’s going to be hard and there’s going to be moments where I want to quit, I’ll get through it. During one emotional breakdown with Orlando, we both told ourselves what would our lives be missing if we had never met Cora? All this pain, all this hard work was going to be worth it because we were going to meet another little lady who was going to have just as much of a wonderful impact on our lives. How could I be scared of that?
Speaking of Orlando, if you remember from Cora’s birth story, he was in the middle of his basketball playoffs in Mexico and had to drive through the night to make it for Cora’s arrival. This go around, we timed it out JUST RIGHT (sarcasm font) again where he would be in playoffs and fate would determine where he would be at any given time when my first contraction hit. There was no guarantee that he would make it, and with second labors going notoriously faster for most women, I was afraid he wouldn’t. Leave it to Orlando to make sure he made it back in dramatic fashion once again.
He was playing in a quarterfinals game half a world away in Tampico, Mexico when his hand was accidentally stepped on. He kept playing for a few more minutes before realizing that nagging pain wasn’t going away. A quick X-ray after the game revealed what his team doctor suspected immediately: it was broken. The question now wasn’t if he had to have surgery, but WHEN. With me set to go into labor any day, it seemed the best option was to get him through surgery as soon as possible so he could fly home and be with us. So my poor husband flew all the way back to Xalapa, had hand surgery, and then flew out the next day with his hand in a sling and nothing but his family on his mind. Now do you see why I was a bit stressed?! 🙂
At this point my mom, two sisters, and my husband were all in town and available to witness the birth of our newest addition. If I wasn’t under pressure before to go into labor, I was definitely feeling it now! My sisters were only able to stay for a few days, so we started trying walks, aromatherapy baths, and a whole host of other options to try and kick start the contractions. I started having nightly rounds of what I called “lightning crotch” with Cora, where it was just sharp sensations each night but fizzled out within a few hours. I could remember that this went on for about a week before I went into labor the first time though, so I wasn’t going to get myself or my family too excited just yet. We even thought maybe my body was waiting to have this baby on Friday, March 13th so Issa and Cora would both be born on Friday the 13ths, but NOPE even that day came and went.
On Saturday, March 14th, we finally went to see my midwife after another morning stroll and she did a quick cervical check, applying some pressure in certain spots to send a rush of hormones to the area and potentially get things moving. She warned though that my body would only go into labor when both my hormones and the baby’s hormones synced up to create that perfect combination. We headed to lunch at Zoe’s Kitchen and did some shopping afterwards, but since I still wasn’t feeling anything I assumed this was just another trick up our sleeves that had failed miserably. I should have known what happens when you assume. 😉
Part two coming next week!
XO,
A
