IT’S TIME FOR NASH’S BIRTH STORY. But first, let me hit you guys with all the pictures. 😉

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Photos by Chantel Cherie Photography.

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The story:

Let me preface this whole story with this. Saturday night I had a plan to take a shower, but honestly bed time came and I was so freaking tired that I said – eh I’ll do it tomorrow. Well that entire night I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t really in pain, just uncomfortable and for whatever reason, WIDE AWAKE. Come Sunday morning, I finally fell asleep at like 4:30am when my alarm went off around 7 to get up for the day and ready for church. I woke up, Marcus told me to go back to sleep because he knew I was freaking tired and to just stay home today. Honestly – didn’t argue with him at all because end of pregnancy and I was kind of done. So I went back to bed while he got himself and Blake ready. I woke back up around 9AM, Marcus and Blake were still home for a little bit and I hopped in the shower since I hadn’t the night before and well, it needed to happen. When I got out of the shower, within 30 seconds of being out and dried off, I walked into my closet and immediately felt some sort of liquid running down my legs. At first, I thought – oh, just got out of the shower, ya know, need to finish drying off. But then I kept drying off and more “fluid” continued to run down my legs and it clicked. I said “Marcus I think my water just broke.” to which his reply was “Are you sure?” (Haha!) Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure in that moment and my water didn’t break with Blake so I had no clue what to expect but it wasn’t this “gush” that I assumed it would be.

Well, long story short, it just kept coming – so obviously my water. Now, this is where it got a little comical (now looking back). Once I realized completely that it was definitely my water I yelled “I AM NOT GOING TO THE HOSPITAL WITH WET HAIR.” and then went on to blow dry my hair….while Marcus stressed out. Literally, I’ve never seen him in such a panic. He was convinced we were going to have a Jade + Tanner situation here (from the bachelor) and I was going to deliver this baby in our closet, since that’s where it all started. And honestly I was a little worried too because contractions were happenin’ – but I also wasn’t going to go to the hospital with wet freaking hair, mkay? 😉 Marcus was literally running around the house collecting all the things, loading the car up, getting Blake ready, calling our parents – no joke you guys, I wish you could have seen it. It was honestly like the movies, where you see the husband just stressed the heck out, freaking out trying to get out the door. That was 100% Marcus. Honestly, it was kind of cute. Until he opened the garage door to the house while Blake was trying to go out and knocked her down to the ground. I’m not kidding when I say we were the hottest freaking mess getting out the dang door. We finally left, Blake eating a popsicle while driving to “help” her feel better, me holding the pup to take to our parents who was freaking out and Marcus driving and constantly asking “are you okay?” “are you having a contraction?”. I mean honestly, I’m surprised we made it to the hospital in one piece and like somewhat collected.

BUT, we did. After dropping Blake and the dog off at my parents we went to hospital and I casually tried to convince Marcus to stop at Starbucks on the way to which he kind of ignored and we didn’t stop. Haha! When we arrived they checked us into the triage center to make sure it was actually my water, check everything and all that jazz. I mean, if it wasn’t my water then we had an issue because literally water ERRRWHERE guys. After about an hour in triage they confirmed it was indeed amniotic fluid and it was BABY DAY. We honestly got the best freaking nurses ever and the entire hospital stay/experience was incredible compared to Blake’s. We were moved over to labor and delivery around I want to say 12PM and started a bag of fluid immediately so I was ready for an epidural since I went so quickly with Blake just to prepare for that again (which spoiler alert – this time wasn’t the same). With Blake I literally went from a 3 to a 10 in an hour. After being in labor and delivery for about an hour and bouncing/rolling on a ball in hopes to get baby boy to turn (since he was still sunny side up) I was dilated to almost a 5 and got my epidural.

The epidural this time was SO different than Blake’s for several reasons. One, I kind of had a weird reaction to it this time and my blood pressure dropped really low and I was super light headed, shaky and sick within a few minutes of getting it. So I was given medication for that and monitored closely until it resolved (which it did within about an hour thank gosh). Also this time I could move my legs quite a bit, like it was no big thing but couldn’t really feel anything. With Blake, I could not move my legs, I couldn’t feel them, it gave me a LOT of anxiety. So this time being able to be more mobile was so nice, the low blood pressure part, not so fun – but we made it through that 😉 At this point it was probably about 3PM, they checked me again and told me to tell my photographer/videographer to come on down. So I did and they headed down (thanks ladies). For the next couple of hours, I just hung out – I was super shaky this entire labor for whatever reason, so that was obnoxious to not be able to control that and I had to press the button a couple of times for my epidural to keep that in check.

Time went on, a little slower than Blake’s like I mentioned 😉 So my poor girl friends there to take pictures/video were just hanging out. I told them to go grab dinner probably around 5:15 since things were looking boring and then they started me on Pitocin around the same time to hopefully get things moving along a little quicker. About an hour later, 6:15 ish, the nurse checked me again and immediately said “Sooo I would tell your photographers to come back right now” – Haha! I was at a 10 and he was ready to come out. Marcus texted them, I started to kind of freak out – for whatever reason it took that long to like kick in that holy cow I was about to have a baby. Apparently all the contractions I felt earlier and pain I was in didn’t do it…. *eye roll*. It took the doctors actually setting things up and coming in for me to realize crap, it’s time. Marcus calmed me down while they set up and they were seriously the best because the doc just hung out with me for a few minutes while we waited for my friends to get there so they could capture it all. Which side note, my OB was out of town when I went into labor, AGAIN 😉 – he was out of town for Blake’s birth too, we just can’t seem to get our timing right. Haha! Anyways, so my friends got there and I literally immediately started pushing within seconds of them arriving, at this point I want to say it was about 6:35.

He was still sunny side up as he started to come out, so it took a little extra push from me as he started to turn, which Marcus said was pretty cool. He apparently just turned as he came out, so he was facing up towards the sky rather than down at the floor. Before his head came out those, I had to hold it right there, halfway out until another contraction and honestly, I could feel quite a bit of that and it was really freaking painful. So that minute or two was long and probably the hardest part of all of it. I don’t know if my epidural just kind of started wearing off right before that, because it had been going in and out during the process (which is why I kept pushing the button), but that part was rough and just had tears streaming down my face, but it was weird I like couldn’t make a sound. I almost couldn’t breathe, it was a really weird thing, probably just because I was in a lot of pain and there was a ton of pressure. Well, finally, I got to push his head all the way out and he was born after about 10 minutes of pushing.

They placed him on my chest and he took a little bit to cry, to which I asked “Is he okay? He’s not crying” and they let me know he just came out really fast so he had taken in a lot fluid on his way out. They cleaned him off and warmed him up like they do to get their blood circulating and he finally let out a little cry, which made me cry, naturally. Honestly this part is all kind of a blur, I was so freaking tired and trying to just collect myself and hold my baby and focus on him crying and whatever else that it was like my brain couldn’t work properly at the time. I only had him on my chest for about 20 seconds before they took him over to the little baby set up and started doing stuff. Which I didn’t know what was going on until after, because again, was so out of it. And at this point we were working on pushing my placenta out which was kind of a task because I had velamentous cord insertion and apparently the cord was hanging on by a thread, so they couldn’t just help pull it out, it had to be done carefully and slowly. So it took quite a bit of time and that entire time I was doing that, they were over there working on Nash. They had to stick a little tube down his throat to get a lot of the fluid out and help him breathe and regulate his blood flow.

But eventually I delivered my placenta, they got him under control and brought him back to me so I could do skin to skin and all was right in the world. Seriously, the journey to getting this sweet boy here was freaking hard. I say it all the time but IVF and this whole thing has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But finally, I was holding him and he was perfect and it was ALL worth it. I would do it over and over again.

Our sweet boy was born on September 8th and named after my (“step”) Dad Ken – Nash Kennedy (means Grandson of Ken) and we all all so freaking in love, especially his big sister. 😉