lets be best friends!

it was January 24^th and i was 38 weeks pregnant, which is when i usually start operation: get this baby out! i asked my instagram friends the best “remedy” to start labor. 99% of my feedback was: pineapple! it had to be fresh though, not canned. so i got pineapple, two actually and i ate it that evening. fast forward to january 25^th at around 3AM, i woke up to go use the bathroom (because thats all you do when you’ve got a big baby hugging your bladder!) and started feeling some contractions. they were pretty consistent, around 3-5 minutes apart. BUT, they didn’t hurt. at this point i was already 3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced, so my doctor told me to come in if this happened for no longer than an hour. around 5AM, i walked into Tenley’s room as she was asleep, picked her up, hugged and kissed and told her that i loved her because i knew that would be the last time i would do that before Tate arrived. i’ll never forget those last minutes with just the two of us. Ben and I then headed off to the hospital.

fun fact: if we were having a girl, her name would have been Olive Kennedy. Olive was a patient of mine when i first started working on the Mother/Baby unit. Kennedy was after one of our friends that died Jan 2016 in a helicopter crash.

i got there and was evaluated, i was contracting and got myself admitted! it was baby time! honestly, it was pretty uneventful for a while. i pulled my makeup out and got my face on, my husband was doing squats, we listened to Bon Iver on pandora, facetimed tenley and he continuously brought me orange pops. it was actually quite relaxing, no toddler running around! for the better part of the morning/early afternoon we were essentially stalling his birth because i wanted my doctor to deliver me (the perks of working with your doctor!). he had a full patient load at the office so he wouldn’t get to the hospital until atleast 3PM. and if history were going to repeat itself, Tate would come pretty quickly after they broke my water! in the mean time i got medicine to calm my nerves and my epidural because this girl doesn’t want to feel a THING! i’m the girl that walks into L&D backwards, give me that medicine!

so they eventually broke my water which is when the contractions started kicking in big time, i was sitting at 8 centimeters, fully effaced but Tate was still a little high. so we were just waiting. my mom and photographer were starving, so around 5pm, i told them to go down to the cafeteria to get some dinner.  they left and my nurse came in, a little worried, Tate’s heart rate was dropping. being a nurse myself, i could see the fear on my her face, so i started to freak out. then my doctor came in, and said “i saw that, let me check her.” he gloved up and started to check me and said, “well that’s why, the baby is right there!” umm, WHAT? the last i heard, it was going to be a couple of hours! my mom LEFT! at that moment, there were probably 10 other nurses/techs prepping my room, it was PUSH time. i was shaking, i was trying hard not to cry, i was scared, i was excited, it’s one of the few times in your life where you literally have every emotion in the book come across you all at once.

4 pushes later, and Tate was out. i was a basket case. i cried harder than he did. happy tears, sad tears, guilty tears…it was the first time i saw his little nubbie. the first time i was faced with what i had prepared myself for since that 15 week ultrasound. you can read more about Tate and his lucky fin HERE and HERE. our perfect little 7lb 3oz baby BOY born at 5:36PM!

i have been blessed with two very amazing, easy deliveries. i love telling people my birth stories because you hear such horror stories of births, and trust me, there are terrible ones! but its nice to hear (especially for first time moms!) a good experience to relieve some of that natural anxiety!

lucky fin bracelets in support of the Lucky Fin project and limb differences

XOXO,

Lauren

***and a HUGE thank you to Melody at Melody Gillikin Photography for documenting Tate’s birth for us! you can also check out her blog on Tate’s birthday here!

NOW! head to my instagram and enter to win a gownie AND matching pillow case just like mine!