We learned I was pregnant with our fourth child, our precious Cole Xander, two days after Christmas 2014. We had taken a family outing to find after-Christmas sales. I guess I had a feeling I might be pregnant because I bought a few dollar store pregnancy tests. We stopped for lunch at Firehouse Subs, and I actually took the test in the bathroom there! It was positive, and I was shocked! Steven and I had thought that getting pregnant in spring 2015 would be great, but we had no idea things would happen so quickly and so much earlier than we thought.
So Baby Cole is our early-bird! In more ways than one...
This is the only big belly picture I have when pregnant with Cole. I was taking a tour of our new house (the bathroom) when Steven snapped this.
He was due on August 24th. We had planned for a home birth because my hospital and birth center births were healthy, smooth and medication-free. It actually was lower-risk for me to plan to have Cole at home. I found a great home birth midwife and started seeing her regularly. I also had dual care at the Natural Beginnings Birth Center in Statesville as a backup in case I needed to deliver in a hospital. (Since North Carolina doesn't recognize midwives, if I were to need to deliver in a hospital, it would look like I hadn't had proper prenatal care.) So, I got better prenatal care during this pregnancy than any of the others because I was not only seeing my midwife in her home each month, I was also seeing Nurse Midwives for extra care! I also got 3-4 ultrasounds during this pregnancy!
I was also under the most stress during this pregnancy with all the stress of having our house on the market, not knowing where we would move, showing our house with three little kiddos, trying to keep the house clean between showings, and the weather being SO hot during the summer. The swimming pool was my happy place, and I didn't mind walking around chasing after Grace because I was at least in the water staying somewhat cool!
On Friday July 31st, our family went to Family Night at our church's main campus. We had a great time of eating pizza, watching the show, and enjoying the after-party which was an obstacle course outside. Several of our friends were also there, and some folks commented that I looked ready for the baby to come. I said, no I probably have at least two or three weeks left. At least two weeks for sure.
I walked around the entire field at that after-party, and I was worn out.
When we got home, I had no energy to help get the kids to bed. I laid down for a short nap around 9:30 PM. I woke up around 10:30 to give myself an at-home treatment for GBS+. Roughly an hour later, around 11:30, I went to the bathroom and I felt an all-too-familiar gush of water. I knew what it was. I knew my water had broken. I also knew it was July 31st and not August 24th. I wasn't expecting to have this baby until at least August 16-17th... I began shaking uncontrollably. My teeth started chattering nonstop. The only other time I had experienced that was when my water broke before I delivered Grace. I now knew it was a surge of hormones indicating an imminent delivery. I was still terrified though. Steven called our midwife. I tried to talk to her but my teeth chattered too much that I couldn't speak clearly. Given the facts that I was early, I was GBS+ (would need an antibiotic) and my water had broken (would need to deliver within 24 hours), she advised us to head to Davis Regional Medical Hospital in Statesville. She said she would contact the Nurse Midwife from the Statesville Birth Center who would meet us at the hospital. We got packed up (we hadn't even packed anything at that point, so we were just grabbing whatever we could find!), waited for my Dad to come stay with the kids, and got in Steven's car to head to the hospital. By this time it was around 1:00 AM on August 1st. On the way there, I texted friends to pray for me. I was scared that my body wouldn't begin contracting and I would have to be induced. Since I hate pitocin based on two previous pregnancies, this was a scary time for me. I was absolutely out of control of the situation and had no idea what the next day would hold. We prayed in the car and spoke over my body to begin contracting naturally. My home birth midwife said she would come to the hospital once I started contracting. I felt my first contraction on I-77 heading to the hospital. Praise God! When we got there, we had to register and get assigned to a room. Two sweet nurses came to the registration desk and walked us to our room. Katy, the one assigned to me, was a super sweet nurse probably in her late twenties. She seemed very calm, experienced, and was totally respectful of all my wishes to keep this birth as intervention-free as possible. We learned that her husband was a teacher/musician and she was a traveling nurse. She was contracted with Davis Regional to work temporarily for them during a nurse shortage. Next, I had to get an IV in my arm for the antibiotics, and that proved to be a challenge (as is common for me.) It took 3-4 nurses to get the job done. That was eerily similar to when I delivered Isaac - a few nurses tried to get the IV in and ultimately they had to call the head maternity nurse.) They had to call the head nurse of the entire hospital this time. She had been making rounds and was, thankfully, available. It took her a while to get the IV in. She was a sweet, soft-spoken gal who had recently had a baby herself. At this point, the lights were up and I was sitting in the hospital bed with my gown on. Contractions were steady but not really painful. I think the time was about 2:30-3:00 AM. Steven mentioned to the head nurse that he thought this baby would be born around 6:00 AM. Since I was still very comfortable and talking normallly, the nurse said, "Oh my! Maybe 6:00 tomorrow! Not today! That would be too fast!" She and I both chuckled, but I was thinking "Not on your life, sweetie. I am not going to go 24+ hours with this one!!"
Steven's thinking was that since Isaac had been born at 12:37 AM, Elise at 2:00 AM, Grace at 4:34 AM... this one was due to arrive around 6ish! Not bad reasoning, eh? Wonder if a 5th kid would actually come during the day?!?
Well, shortly after that, our home birth midwife, we'll call her Mel, came. She came in with her very calm demeanor and we introduced her to our nurse as our Doula (again, because of NC's lack of midwife support, we needed to protect her identity.) Katy the nurse said that she'd just heard from other nurses that this doula was one of the best! Mel asked me how I was feeling and how I was being treated. We chatted a while and the contractions continued to get stronger. I needed to stand up because my back hurt too bad for me to sit down. Maybe I was having back labor due to the position of the baby. Whatever it was, I wasn't able to sit down on the bed again until after the delivery. I tried, but each time I leaned up against the bed to rest my back, it hurt even more. I found myself leaning on the hospital tray table that sits beside the bed. Some of the time, I held Mel's arms and pressed into them, but most of the time I leaned my arms on that table. During this time, I had Steven sing one of his new songs to me, while Katy and Mel listened along.
I felt the urge to push earlier than I'd expected. Katy said she needed to check my dilation at that point. I was 7 cm dilated. She said I was probably almost in transition.
Shortly after this, the midwife from the birth center, Marcia, made it to the hospital. She wasn't sure she was going to make it to the birth - she said she was driving over 80 MPH to get there since she knew my body delivers babies fast! I think she arrived around 4:00 AM. For the remainder of my labor, Katy, Mel, Marcia and Steven stood around me as I worked through each contraction standing beside the hospital bed and leaning into the little tray table. There was a Family Fun magazine on it and it was flipped open to a picture of a minion from the movie Despicable Me. I looked at that minion for a while during my contractions, and then I got to a point where I was feeling them so strongly and I was getting irritable so I said, "I am done looking at this stupid minion! I'm turning the page!" And I proceeded to do just that. I think I turned the page to a reindeer or some animal that seemed pleasing to me in the moment. I was also sipping water from the plastic mug that the hospital provided. After another very strong contraction, I said to everyone around, "This is not a good straw! It tastes like plastic! It's awful!" I said it with some silliness in my voice so my attendants all laughed a little under their breaths. But it did taste pretty bad.
Sometime around 5:15ish... I really felt the urge to push. I was so tired (from the normal stresses of a Friday with my kids, then Family Night, then walking all around the church grounds, and ultimately from laboring for a few hours standing up.)
Even thought I've naturally delivered three other babies, I was a little scared in this moment. It hurt to push and I knew that I had to experience the "ring of fire" for this baby to be born. I had fears of breaking my body or hurting myself during the delivery, so my mind said, "Let's just push the pause button on this." I wanted to pause it and come back on August 24th when it was really time to have this baby. With the other babies, when it was time to push, the urge was almost uncontrollable. I had to push. With this one, I felt the urge, but I also felt like I was in control of when I pushed him out. A little too much control if I was thinking of postponing for a few weeks, huh?! Well, I decided in that moment that I couldn't exactly wait anymore. This was the time. This was the moment for Baby Cole to arrive. It certainly wasn't my time. It wasn't my plan. But it was the right time.
I told Marcia I needed to push. What should I do? "Do whatever you want," she said. Should I get on the bed, I asked. "Do whatever you want," she said again. Should I stand any certain way? Squat? "Do whatever feels right to you," again she said, so very tenderly. So I squatted, pushed, baby Cole crowned. Then I put my hands down to catch him, pushed again, and out he came, into my arms! I was still standing up, but with a tiny, wet, purple baby in my arms. Then my attendants all helped me get on the bed to get more comfortable. My back, which had hurt acutely throughout labor and had ached all through the pregnancy, was finally at rest! I was able to sit on the bed with Cole and cuddle him.
He was perfect. His breathing was perfect. He looked adorable, like all the Steven and Betsy Mauney babies. The midwives thought he might be around 5ish pounds, but once they weighed him, we learned he was 6lbs, 9oz which is a very healthy weight for a preemie. He was 19 inches long. We cuddled him and savored those tiny first moments. He was here! And his time of delivery was 5:50 AM on Saturday August 1st (which was the day I was supposed to have my baby shower - which is the reason for no baby shower and no late term pregnancy picture). Steven's guess for the time of delivery was not far off! But Cole was still early! Again, he's an early bird from birth!
We let his umbilical cord continue to pulse and stay attached for a while, maybe half an hour. Then it was cut and I delivered the placenta, which was quick and easy. Marcia checked me and said I had not torn and was going to have an easy recovery from this birth. What a blessing!
Our first of two sets of visitors were our friends Donnie and (his daughter) Lydia. They came Saturday and visited and held Cole. We were so glad to see friends since we were unexpectedly away from home and family for this birth.
Mom and Dad brought the big kids up on Sunday afternoon to see their baby brother. They had thought he would be delivered at home and were looking forward to that, so they were a little disappointed that Steven and I had left in the night to deliver him at a hospital. But once they met him, they were in love. Even little Gracie seemed to enjoy meeting her little brother. Isaac was shy and didn't want to hold him, but Elise was quick to ask if she could cuddle. We had a great visit with them, as well as Mom and Dad.
Due to his preterm birth, Cole had to have blood sugars checked every several hours and stay in the hospital for two days. I spoon-fed him colostrum to get his blood sugar levels up above 50. Once he had three above 50, the pediatrician would allow him to go home. Thankfully that happened in the first couple days of life, and we were scheduled to leave the hospital on Tuesday morning. However, we ended up getting some house showings on Tuesday, so we stayed in the hospital until that evening so we didn't have to worry about leaving for the showings!
We got settled back in at home that night - Steven, Cole and me. For the next few days, the big kids stayed with my parents and Steven and I bonded with Cole. It was a precious time with a precious little boy.
However, Cole had lost almost a whole pound since birth, so I called a lactation consultant to come to our home and help me with a game plan for weight gain. She came later that week and spent 3 hours with me and Cole. She determined that he wasn't able to nurse well because the fat pads in his face weren't fully developed yet. So, we made a plan for me to pump breastmilk (10-15 minutes per time), try to nurse him, and then feed him with a feeding tube in his mouth attached to a syringe. I needed to do that every 2-3 hours around the clock until he was able to nurse well. Needless to say, that plan was a recipe for keeping Cole alive but seriously depriving me of sleep. It went on for about 2 weeks. At that point, he was better able to nurse and we were able to stop using the syringe feeding system. During those two weeks, Mel visited me twice to check on me, check the baby, and help me work through any difficult emotions that come during the early postpartum days. I had some rough moments during the extreme sleep deprivation (she reminded me that sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture for a reason!) but once Cole started nursing well and gaining weight, I began to feel better overall.
I tried to savor that first month because I knew that our move was coming up and would take lots of energy (physical and emotional) from us all.
As I write this, Cole is almost 6 months old. He is such a pleasure to hold, cuddle, nurse, watch... He is such a happy baby and content most of the time. He has always loved to sleep in our arms and look into the eyes of anyone who will talk with him! He has discovered his hands and is reaching to grasp toys now. He can roll from back to front and front to back, but he doesn't really enjoy tummy time. He'd rather sit up in the Bumbo seat, the exersaucer (his newest thing) or be entertained by the shenanigans of his older brother and sisters. They all love him, by the way. They enjoy talking to him, holding him, and trying to get him to laugh. He is such a treasure to us all! We are thankful that he is here, that he is healthy, and that our home is even more full of love because of this precious gift.
