As you may have guessed, baby Shedd #2 is here!
For the past few weeks, I had been feeling so ready and anxious about the baby's pending arrival. I would tell Dan nearly every night "This is it...tonight's the night", only to sleep straight thru the night and wake up with no baby or any contractions. People were asking me constantly "How much longer??" or "I thought for sure you'd have had the baby by now!"
Not only that, but Dan has a trip scheduled for June 8th, first to fly to Georgia, and then to fly straight to California from there to be at a conference at our Alma Mater. We already talked about the fact that if the baby hadn't arrived by then, he would have to cancel the trip and we wouldn't be refunded any of the money from the plane tickets.
I started finding that these impending "if this then that" and questions about the baby were causing me so much stress. On Sunday evening of last week, May 26th, I told Dan that I just wanted to have a good Memorial Day, enjoy our time together, plant the garden, and not talk about the baby at all...
So we did!
We woke up early and while Dan tilled the garden, I planted peas, beans, kale, carrots, and squash and zucchini. Then we cleaned up, and drove into the village to watch the Memorial Day parade. Gwendolyn loved watching the marching bands and hearing the fire engines. We went to the park and listened to the speeches by town officials and watched the dedications of the wreaths at the monuments to the fallen.
We then came home, ate some lunch, and Dan went and worked at the house while Gwen and I made some cookies and dinner.
That night, we went to sleep and I woke back up at 2, unable to feel comfortable in the bed, so I moved to the couch. While I was laying there, I just thought about how nice it was to not worry about the baby not coming by a certain time or to stress when people don't talk to me about life aside from the baby. For the last two months straight, there have been very few people who actually talk to me about life apart from questions about babies, pregnancies, and such.
While I was thinking, I had a contraction. Since I'd been having them pretty consistently for a few weeks, I put it from my mind and fell asleep. I woke back up at 4:45 to stronger contractions. I figured they were nothing and tried to go back to sleep. When they persisted, I finally pulled out my phone and started timing them. I determined to let Dan sleep longer before waking him up for a potential false alarm, so I just kept timing them until 6, when I finally decided this was real, and not false labor.
I told Dan, he started working to inflate the birth pool while I made breakfast for him and Gwen and packed a bag for her to go be with the neighbors. I called the midwife, told her that I was in labor and she asked "Should I come right now, or do I have time to shower?"
I said, "Take your time...this is just dilation and I can deal with it."
30 minutes later I called her back and said "Okay...maybe you should come now."
By the time they arrived, Gwendolyn was almost finished her breakfast, the pool was up, and everything was ready. Dan took Gwennie over to our neighbors house at 8:30, and I got in the birth pool. I remember asking Dan the time and he said "9:13"...
At 9:41, May 28, our little Lucinda Rose Shedd was born! The hard part of laboring only took 15 minutes!
Lucie was 8 pounds 4 ounces and 22 inches long.
After cleaning up a bit, Dan went and retrieved Gwendolyn. She loves the baby and loves to "pet" her and say "baby, baby".
I'm convinced that if I hadn't determined to stop worrying and being anxious about circumstances beyond my control (like, WHEN IS THIS BABY COMING????), I wouldn't have had the baby that night.
There was something freeing about just deciding to stop worrying.
Also, as just a side note, my midwives are awesome. The day after the birth, my midwife's assistant brought me these energy bites. I ate them all up, and really do feel so energetic!
SO there you have it! The story of my second homebirth. No transfers to the hospital for any reason...no being pulled over by the police on the day of the birth...everything went just as smoothly as it could have gone.
I won't ever be one of those women who say that it's possible to give birth with no pain...because I think that's baloney. But it IS possible to give birth EASIER when you let go of stress and anxiety. I believe that.
Happy birthday to our Lucinda Rose! Hope you all are doing well! You'll likely see a lot more posts from me in this coming week.
