Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Emmitt Wesley Smith

I posted the birth story but if you’re uninterested in all those details this is just a post of pictures 😉
Emmitt Wesley Smith
02/23/18 - 6:30PM
8lbs 2oz, 20 3/4”








Emmitt Wesley’s Birth


Emmitt Wesley Smith arrived Friday, February 23rd, 2018 at 6:30PM. He weighed 8lbs 2oz and was 20 3/4” long. 
I was so nervous that I would think I might be in labor and call Wesley home from work 2 and a 1/2 hours away in IL only for it to be a false alarm. So Thursday after having pretty regular contractions throughout the day I told him I thought he should come home and I hoped and prayed it would turn into labor. Disappointingly enough I was able to fall asleep and sleep pretty well in spite of now inconsistent contractions through the night. 
In the morning Wesley took me to my already scheduled midwife appointment. I was back to  having regular contractions and was dilated to 4 so I was hopeful it could turn into labor and had a membrane sweep in the hopes of turning the corner to true labor.
Between one and two the contractions really picked up and I decided it was labor but kept bouncing on my ball, walking around, and leaning on Wesley’s support through them, holding off on calling the midwife until, I hoped, closer to delivery time. I had chosen to try a water birth this time so at the time I decided I was in labor I had Wesley start filling the pool. I kept holding off on calling my midwife because with both my past labors I feel like everyone was here waiting far too long. At 4:15 I called and told her my contractions were still manageable but getting really hard and I was hoping to start laboring in the pool soon. She and her assistant were here by 5 and said I was almost to 9.  I didn’t really believe her because in the past by the time I reached 9 I was fighting the urge to push. I got in the pool and really enjoyed it for the rest of my labor. Shay, my friend who is equal to a sister and now training under my midwife arrived  and started serving me snacks, juice, and water on my whim and demand. Wesley sat on the edge of our bed and could hold my hands or let me cling to his arms through each contraction. Soon our moms were called and arrived.
My midwife checked me again and I was complete but my cervical lip was still hard, the same problem I’ve had with each of the girls. She said to just holler when I had the urge to push, which I still wasn’t fighting so I nodded and continued to labor. The very next contraction as I visualized my uterus squeezing my baby down through my pelvic bones I realized the baby was coming. I believe I screamed “it’s coming, I’m not even pushing, its coming” along with a lot of other inaudible noises. My midwife was beside me and said “I’m just going to help hold back the cervical lip, keep pushing”. With my next contraction I heard her saying “crown” “head” “it’s tight, really tight.” I missed the part that the cord was the issue and thought she was just referring to the fact that a whole baby coming out of me was really tight and well, heck yeah, time and time again it’ll seem like a miracle. But no, the contraction stopped so I stopped pushing but she yelled at me to keep pushing which was confusing to me because I’d struggled with my last two deliveries when it came to pushing because in my logic the more I pushed the faster the baby would exit but my midwife would continually tell me “you’re not contracting any more, stop pushing.” So here she was telling me to push while not contracting.. push I did and out came my baby at 6:30PM. Merely an hour and a half after my midwives arrived, and less than forty minutes since the moms came.
I gave birth on my knees, holding Wesley’s hands, but as soon as the baby arrived I turned over and sat down holding my lifeless baby, a fact I still didn’t note. Wesley has said that the instant transformation that takes place in me at the point of birth is a mystery to him. I go from agony and pain to simple childlike joy. I repeat myself and use simple words, and just sound giddy and in awe. I immediately noticed the baby was a boy and I vaguely recall repeating “it’s a boy, we have a son, Emmitt, our little Emmitt, we have a boy.” Over and over and leaning back to kiss Wesley and say “thank you, he’s perfect, isn’t he perfect?” All the while I noticed my midwives stimulating our little Emmitt and trying to get him to cry although I took little note of it. He was here, his eyes were wide open, nothing seemed wrong to me, and in the end nothing was, he perked right up within a minute and was happy to join our world. Apparently his cord was wrapped tightly around his neck and arm, so tightly in fact it had already collapsed and was therefore not delivering blood to him but it doesn’t seem to have caused any problem.
Following delivering the placenta and  my moving to the bed from the pool and getting us both dried off I kept saying “I’m bleeding a lot” and my midwife checked and said it was a normal amount but I kept insisting that it was a lot and it was pooling up under my back, so my midwife checked again and sure enough it was too much. She stuffed some pills into my mouth (that I signed a consent form to early on in my pregnancy)  to be dissolved and absorbed under my tongue then she poked my uterus and it was filled with blood clots. She tried to encourage them out on their own but it wasn’t happening so she had to manually remove them. It was a pretty uncomfortable experience but worth saving my life. So not only have I now survived birthing three children but also hemorrhaging. It has caused me to be a little slower at recovering but I am finally starting to feel back to normal.

Emmitt weighed in at 8lbs 2oz, and was 20 3/4” long.

Emmitt hasn’t been my easiest baby but at the price of easiest Labor and Delivery, I’ll take the rough start we’re having. He struggles with breathing, could be genetic from his daddy, or he may have caught his sisters colds right out of the womb. He also throws up. A lot. I try to burp him after even the tiniest little feeding but even then sometimes he’ll throw it all up. I also have way too much milk so I may be over feeding him and causing the throwing up issue. Some nights he sleeps okay, some nights he likes to sit up for a couple of hours with me and stare at the bedroom wall. He rarely cries but does need more of my attention than I remember the girls needing this early on.

So there you have, in probably too much detail, little Emmitt Wesley’s birth story.