James' Birth

I've had this post sitting in my draft bin for a long while now. Each time James turns one month older I'm reminded that I still need to post the story of his birth, but each time something else gets in the way and it continues to sit.

But now here it is!

If this kind of thing isn't your cup of tea then feel free to skip over all the words. Or even if the photos don't interest you too much that's okay too. Though I do have to say the very last picture of this post is very adorable.

Anywho, continue on if you want or otherwise I'll catch you in the next post.

Cheers!

~~~

James Christopher was welcomed into our family in the morning of Saturday, March 5th, 2022.

And this is his birth story.

We begin on Friday afternoon.

Where I was having a really rough afternoon.

I told my mom that the kids were really wearing me down and I wasn't feeling like a good mom. I completely broke down. She came to pick up the kids for the afternoon so I could nap. And I tried to nap, I really did. But I just lay in bed, unable to sleep, and continued to cry until Will got home.

And once Will was with me he graciously talked some sense into me. I was beyond exhausted and very hormonal. Not hormonal in a bad way, but matter-of-factly. I wasn't really a bad mom, just a tired pregnant one, and that's okay.

At 6:30 my dad said were keeping our kids overnight so Will and I settled down for a pizza night together.

We went to bed around 11 and I was having very mild, inconsistent contractions which was normal for evenings over the last few days.

But then around 2:30am I was woken up by contractions. I hadn't yet been woken up by them during this pregnancy.

I continued fading into sleep only to wake from contractions again and again.

3:42am text to Mom:

"You must have some sort of spidey-sense. Been having solid contractions very intermittently since 10:30pm. I thought sleeping it off would help but they are getting more intense. Maybe this is it? Who knows!"

At 4am I could no longer sleep between them and texted my friends

Will woke up around 5 and I told him I was quite certain that this was for real and we should start to get ready to head out. I made myself a bowl of oatmeal as my last meal but could only get a few bites in before I set it aside as the contractions were getting too intense for me to want to fill my stomach.

I called the midwife at 5:54am to let her know that I was now having contractions every 3-7 minutes and I felt like it was time to go to the hospital. She said that the hospital had been super busy that night (they had 7 births when 2-3 is the average!) so she could call ahead and make sure they had room/staff for us.

At 6:03am she gave us the go ahead to head to the hospital and by 6:10 we were on the road for the 2 minute car ride.

When we arrived at L&D they brought us to an assessment room to wait for Leigh, our midwife to arrive. Which was great because I had time to brush my teeth and do my hair while Will and I listened to music and squatted through contractions.

At one point a nurse popped in to check on us. "You're not going to have the baby now, are you?"

"Uh, no, I don't think so."
"Okay, we just read your file and that you labour really fast. Should we leave a nurse here with you?"

"Ah, no we should be alright. I'll call you if anything changes."

Leigh came and brought us to a room.

Quick side note on Leigh, I had seen her the week before for a routine check up and the poor lady had crutches as she had sprained her ankle real badly! When she came to see us in assessment one of the first things I said to her was, "You don't have your crutches anymore!" She had upgraded to a walking cast but still was having a difficult time with her foot.

Anyway, about the room - it was the same one we had delivered William in which was neat.

I headed to the shower and hung out in there with Will and my gatorade. I'm not sure what time I got out of the shower, but I believe it was a bit before 8 when I told Will it would be best if I moved over to the bed because this kiddo was coming soon.

The nurse kept encouraging me to make low tones, which made the chorus of the song All Time Low by Jon Bellion get stuck in my head. Will offered to play the song on his phone. Except we both forgot about an inappropriate line in the song which caused me to get all embarrassed which made us all laugh.

The music kept playing after that and I sung along to the songs when I could. Another one that came up in the playlist was Guillotine by Jon Bellion. Please note that I am in no way vetting these as good songs, but they are now songs that I associate with birthing our third child into the world.

At some point I demanded that the music be turned off. I can't remember when exactly, but at some point it was too much for me to have so much else going on while I was trying to focus.

At one point I also tried oxygen since I had never used that before in labour and wanted to give it a try. The nurse told me it would feel like I had one too many glasses of wine. Also something I've never tried before so a poor example for me 😛. Well, I gave one breath a try, but like with the music, decided it was one too many things going on and we set it aside.

My water broke and I got a little break from intense contractions for a bit. I made a joke about the amniotic fluid being warmer than the shower water from earlier.

By now the sun had risen up over the houses across the parking lot. The sunbeams pouring into our East facing room were beautiful, soft sparkly yellow. But it got really warm. And I wasn't even the first to comment on it, so it wasn't just me. :P One of the nurses turned the A/C up to combat the sunshine.

I rested over the back of the bed and did self-directed pushing this labour (officially now my favourite way to deliver and I would highly recommend to anyone) which began at 8:28 and at 8:29 our baby was born!

I was the first to spot he was a boy but was too shaky to hold him right away.

He was crying fiercely and I wanted so badly to scoop him up but I was shaking so much that couldn't.

"Momma's here Baby" I said, "I'm coming, just a sec"

It was so brutal to see him crying there and being physically unable to hold him.

The nurse encouraged me to pick him up but I had to ask her to do it for me. It felt like a long time but really was only a little longer than a minute before I was ready.

The adrenaline combined with those post-partum shakes is viscious!

8:32am

Very grateful for Erin, our student nurse, who took a few pictures of Will and I soaking up our sweet baby boy just after he was born.

Will doing the fatherly duties of chord cutting.

At 9am we were ready to start calling our family and friends to let them know we had a baby.

But there was one problem.

We didn't have a name yet!

Same as with when we had William, we arrived at the hospital with two boy names and two girl names, but with William during labour we picked which names to use. With this guy we had tried but then decided we wanted to wait to meet him.

So now with Will holding our baby in his arms I asked him which name he preferred and he said he liked them both. My favourite of the two was James, so we locked that in.

Then I told Will the middle name that I had paired with James. He asked what the other middle name options were. I read those off to him and he excitedly picked the middle name that was to go with our other first name option (are you following all of this? I just really don't want to give away the other names we hope to use some day). But then he said the whole name. James ______ Vanspronsen. And we both kinda grimaced at each other. Even the nurse, who was so polite about it, thought that this was not a good selection. "Maybe there's another middle name you could use?" She asked. 😂

So we agreed to stick with the original middle name we planned to pair with James; Christopher. After Will's older bother.

With a name picked out we video called our kiddos to show them their long awaited little sibling.

Delilah was excited, William sorta unsure about the whole video call idea, and my sweet baby brother Jonah was waving adorably at us.

At 9:19 he was weighed, 9lbs 4oz was the reading. Our smallest babe so far!

9:45am

I think Will was either on the phone with Chris or his Grandpa at this point.

10:04am

Holding James so I could shower

10:42am

What a little chunk already!

After all those weeks of having him growing inside of me, it just is special to get to snuggle this sweetie.

That afternoon Will slept like a log. I tried to talk to him but no success.

I tried to nap but also no success.

1:59pm

Lack of sleep was really hitting me. I kept nodding off, and I tried so hard to fall asleep but couldn't.

I quickly fell in love with his cute nose.

Such a sweet little face

Oh his nose!

With Will and I having not-so-small noses, I'm grateful that our children have always came out with cute noses. 😅😆

Will's parents came to visit but we didn't get any pictures...

The 3m dino sleeper that I had bought with plans to dress our baby boy in was too large for James. And the newborn sized sleeper I had brought along just in case was too small. Just can't win. 😛

Around 6pm we started packing up to get ready to leave. James had been eating like a champ and was passing all his blood sugar tests but we had one more to do before we could get discharged. We were hopeful to leave soon after getting the pass.