A Year of April Brooke: A Birth Story

In honor of my sweet little red head turning One on Wednesday, the 24th, I decided to go ahead and give a full blog post for her and her birth story. I have all the baby feels right now with number three on the way and thinking ahead to the birth of our precious little one. Which also in turn gets me reminiscing on the births of my first two. If you are anything like me, you enjoy hearing those birth stories! So here goes!

Photo Creds go to: Camie Pew Photography

Her story is intertwined with the story of our house, so I will start there. For the first two and a half years of our marriage, we had lived with my wonderful in laws in their home. Prices of housing down here in Georgia is astronomical, and they just keep on rising with the influx of the movie industries nearby. My in laws have a few rental houses they own, one of which we had been waiting on the inhabitants to leave for a long time so we could move in. But due to the covid relief fund, it took way longer than it should have. The previous renters hadn't kept up with their payments and were supposed to be evicted in July, which was coincidentally when I got pregnant with little April Brooke. We had literally started packing when we found out that the covid relief stepped in and paid the bills, and it was no longer known when we would be able to get into the house. That was so extremely frustrating to me, I had been so excited and also impatient, and I was struggling to accept this.

Fast forward a few months and the payments stopped, and we had to wait through the eviction process again. It was determined that we might get into the house in March. Well, I was due in April, so that was cutting it extremely close. So, one night in January, my husband and I went out to dinner, and he took me to my favorite store which was goodwill. In there I saw this nice table and chairs set that was just the right size for the breakfast nook of our soon to be house, for just $25. I asked my sweet husband and of course he said no. Where could we possibly store it!? We were at max capacity and beyond, for how much stuff we had acquired, and I had brought a ton down with me from Indiana when we got married, that was still being stored in our trailer. I was sad but accepted it. My husband walked away to go sit back down in the furniture section, which is his favorite thing to do in goodwill, and I continued my search for treasures. A few moments later he comes up and says, "We have to go- NOW" and we proceeded to leave. He had gotten a call from my in-laws to meet them over at the house. The tenants had up and left, before being evicted, and we had the house to ourselves! Hallelujah! What did we do to celebrate? We went back to goodwill and got my little table.

So, all of that to lead up to this, I was now 6+ months pregnant, and we had an entire house to clean, paint, and move everything into. I was absolutely determined to get the house fixed and us moved in before the baby came. I didn't want to drag it out as a yearlong (or more!) ordeal that it could very easily become. The biggest wait time was getting the flooring installed, which my kind in laws let me pick out which flooring and color I wanted. So, I was over here working every night I could, while my husband worked his normal night shift hours, 4pm-4am and wasn't around much to help. It took me a bit, but I got it done. I did, however, throw myself into false labor three different times. I was doing too much by myself, overworking myself, and my body was struggling because of it.

Thankfully my husband has a great job where they say that family comes first, and each time I needed to go into the hospital because I thought it was baby times, they allowed him to leave work and come with me, no problem. Each time I had consistent contractions for several hours before going in, and each time the nurses laughed at me for thinking I was in labor. I felt ridiculous, but I had nothing to compare it to, since my first baby was induced, and I didn't know what natural labor actually felt like. I had learned so, so much in between my two girls though, that I was doing things completely different this time around. I wanted to be brave and go all natural, or as natural as I could handle. And I was prepping my body to be ready for delivery. I did the miles circuit almost every day, I drank my raspberry leaf tea, I went to the chiropractor regularly, took my homeopathy, I ate healthy and stayed active and I felt determined, but also unsure. If those labor pains felt anything like that Pitocin did, I was screwed. (Fun fact, did you know that taking Pitocin in labor increases your chances of having PPD by 36%? That is INSANE to me!)

Finally, the house was about done, and we were moving in. We moved in about 3 weeks before I had my baby girl. I wanted to have a bit of an adjustment period to the new house and a bit of rest before she came. Thank God, I was able to do just that, even though Rosie had JUST learned to walk at this point and was into absolutely everything. So, I adjusted accordingly and arranged things so that she could get into the bottoms of cupboards and cabinets without getting into anything dangerous or getting hurt. And we enjoyed our new house. We read books and snuggled and chilled for a few weeks and it was wonderful. Just soaking up that last bit of one-on-one time with my firstborn.

Then it was time: April 24th. It was a Monday, and with my sweet husband's strange schedule, he was off as it was his weekend. I was DONE. I was at that point of I want this baby out of me, and I want it NOW. If anyone ever tells you that they enjoy pregnancy, they're lying to you- It is not fun. But it is entirely worth it! But at this point I just felt miserable. I had even taken Castor oil the week before to no avail. So, my husband and I were trying everything in the book, and every old wives' tale we knew of. One of which was to go eat the eggplant parmesan at Olive Garden, and you'll be in labor in a matter of a few hours. So that's what I did, and it worked!! At about 2-3 Ish we ate at Olive Garden, by 6 pm I had started labor!

I stayed home and let it go until about 9pm, when the contractions started getting very intense. Our hospital was literally only 5 minutes away from our house, and we were there and checked into a room by about 9:45. I walked in with a birth plan, and determination. I told the staff "This is what I'm doing and if you have anything to say differently then I will go have this baby at home!" and they were all like "Yes, ma'am!" I wanted to use my essential oils and homeopathy, I didn't want any pain meds or to be induced, or antibiotics, and I wanted to be up moving around and not stuck on my back on the bed. They agreed and I got hooked up to an IV and started moving. I played some very strong, encouraging music, not the soft calming stuff most people do, and started doing squats as best I could. Gravity is your friend in labor! The staff mostly stayed out of the room and let me have my space, which I appreciated. If I had to do another hospital birth, I wouldn't mind going back there at all, they were very congenial, unlike my first experience, which I may tell you next post.

They had done a cervical check and said I was at a 6 or a 7, and they expected me to be in labor another 3 hours before I'd be ready to push, but I was ready just less than an hour and a half later. I told my sweet husband, "I think I need to push..." and he yelled that in the hall to the nurses and they all came flooding into the room. This was at about almost 11pm. They did a cervical check and said, "Not yet, you're only at a 9.5". Cue the eyeroll from me.

"I said I'm ready, and I meant it. I'm going to push!" So, they got me on the bed, that was the one thing they wouldn't compromise on, and in just a few short minutes the Doctor came in and was ready. My focus point this entire time was thinking of my first born, my sweet little Autumn Rose, trying to say "banana", which sounded more like "banabanabanannanana", and it made me laugh, distracted me a bit, but also encouraged me that just on the other side of all this pain, is another adorable little human being that will make my life so much brighter.

I started pushing at 11:38 pm. My water hadn't broken yet, and the Dr. asked me if I cared if she broke it. I didn't mind, and it would speed up the process. On one of my pushes, she broke the water, and my sweet little April Brooke was born just a few moments later, at 11:42 pm, on her due date. So perfect, so tiny, so sweet!! She weighed 7lbs and 10 oz. A bit bigger than her sister. I had done it, all natural, just as I wanted. It was a much easier delivery than my first one was, and God had blessed every minute of it. My entire healing process went much better too. And you will never convince me that spring babies aren't the best. It was wonderful, soaking up that warm sunshine and vitamin D in the days to follow, and healing, calmly, quietly, peacefully, in my new house with my new perfect princess. Such a wonderful experience!

In the hospital:

This time around, with baby #3, I plan to do an in-home water birth with a midwife, and I am so excited to see how much better even, the process will go!

Now, on Wednesday, my little red headed spitfire is turning one, and I blinked. I don't know where this year has gone! She's pulling up on everything and starting to walk, she can clap, wave, blow kisses, say "Mama" and "Dada" and mumble a few other words. She absolutely loves scrambled eggs and will shriek at me until I give her some. And she can sign "milk" and "more" and we're working on a few others. She's extremely observant and so smart! I'm so blessed to be her Mama!! I can't wait to see how many others God will bless our little family with. I love our little life!!

Here are a few pictures from the past year: