Well. I guess this blog has officially become the place I store birth stories. Felix is NINE months already; his birth feels like ages ago. Here I am forcing myself to write down as many details as I can remember, as I am beginning to realize the more children you have the more you lose track of which memories go with which kid. ! Mercy.

Sweet Felix was due September 13th, although for most of my pregnancy (right up until about the last month), we had a 9/6 (I think!) due date. I sort of had a hunch my dating was off, but still the end of this pregnancy felt like an eternity. By the time he made his late arrival on September 17th my mom had already been in town for nearly a week AND my dad (who came in for the weekend with the intention of meeting the latest grand baby) had SADLY already come and gone.

I had an appointment with the midwives the afternoon of the 16th. For the love of all that is good, I thought heading into my appointment, please let her strip my membranes. (If you’re not familiar, something they can do to encourage labor to begin.) It was the first thing on my mind. How can we get this baby out! I happened to be seeing Missy, the one midwife I hadn’t seen since my very first consult! She totally saw where I was coming from, and was happy to help out. I had had maybe perhaps a tiny bit of basically-nothing cramping that morning, and she stripped my membranes around 4pm. I headed home to my peeps, the kid, Jer, and my mom.

A couple hours later, I started having contractions. Regular, but nothing crazy. I remember thinking it was so funny to be hanging out with my mom because she kept kind of side-eyeing me, and being like “what’s going on? You still having those contractions?” and I was all “yup…” By that evening the contractions were coming something like every 7-10 minutes, but they weren’t increasing in intensity, so again, no crazy breathing or pain. I could pretty much act like nothing was happening. By 10ish still I wasn’t in much pain, and I remember saying something like, “well. I guess I’ll… go to bed?” It was so weird because it felt like I was clearly in early labor, but not progressing rapidly like I sort of remember doing with Will (and most certainly Nora!).

I got ready for bed, made sure our hospital bag was packed just in case, and got in bed. As was typical of the last several months of my pregnancy, I didn’t sleep. In fact before long my restless leg had me out of bed. Contractions hadn’t changed at all, they were still coming fairly mild every 8 or so mins. I went to the kitchen (as was my routine with my dang RLS) and set up an episode of fixer upper on my computer to watch while I stood up, moving my legs.

As soon as I was up the contractions started coming every 1-3 minutes, and worsening a bit in intensity. When I called my midwife Tara who was on, she must have thought I was a little crazy. I told her I’d been having contractions every couple minutes but only for the past hour (was it really time to go in? It didn’t feel too intense!) and when she asked when the early labor had started (and the deets of the clinic appointment), she was like, “Well yeah I mean it sounds like you should probably come in.”

I got Jeremy out of bed and told him it was time to go in. I think it was a little after 1am, but it was a gorgeous night and while my contractions were getting more intense I still felt pretty ok, so we decided to walk over to the hospital (which is about 3 blocks from us to the entrance). We chuckled over just meandering ourselves over to have a baby and about 1 block from the door my water broke.

By the time we got up to triage my contractions were PAIN.FULL and I even felt a bit of an urge to push, but I think I was only 7cm or so because I remember my midwife telling me it was not time to push. “Did you want to labor in the tub?” she asked, and I told her sure so she went to go work on getting it filled up. I had to sit in triage just waiting with a fetal monitor on which was probably the worst part of the whole thing because the contractions were sure coming close together and were SO painful. After about an hour in triage when the nurse came back in my room I told her I felt like I needed to push, so she started wheeling me over to my room and called to my midwife, “can you come in here? She says she’s feeling pushy.”

The minute I got into the room, it was just like the end of Nora’s birth. No time for the tub, no time for anything fancy, just a couple quick pushes and out came FELIX! He was born at 2:25am. I could not believe it was already over, and I could not believe my ears when the nurses told me he was 9lbs 120z! No WONDER I’ve been so dang uncomfortable! I thought. RELIEF!! Such a gift to have that sweet babe out in the world, healthy and huge! He is a gem, this number four. So thankful he came!