Bastian’s Birth Story

On April 1, Seth and I spent a few hours walking around downtown Salt Lake. Even though my due date was about two weeks away, we were hoping to meet our baby a little early (doesn’t every mom feel like this in the last few weeks of pregnancy?). A few days earlier I’d had contractions that seemed like labor, but they had stopped when we went to bed. So we were thinking that maybe we could convince our baby to come out if we spent a few hours walking around.

It worked. Sort of. I started having a lot of pain in my pelvis, and eventually we had to go home because I couldn’t walk anymore. A few hours later, contractions started. We started counting around 8 pm, and when I started puking around 10, we felt pretty confident that this was labor. We went to bed around 11, and then woke up at 3, with strong contractions about 5 minutes apart, and lots of throwing up. We went and sat on the couch and watched The Office for a few hours while we waited to feel like we needed to call our midwife.

But then, around 9:30, the contractions completely stopped. We took a few naps and a few walks, and they started and stopped a few more times. They started again really strong around 6pm. The midwife came over, checked me, and said I was dilated to a 5 and 80% effaced. She said I was officially in active labor. I cried. I was going to meet my baby.

We got into the birthing tub around midnight, with contractions about 3 minutes apart. But the contractions slowed down. After a while, my midwife checked me again, and said that I was now 90% effaced, but still only dilated to a 5. My labor had stalled, after 30 hours! She recommended I take a Tylenol PM and go to sleep then let her know how I felt in the morning.

Cue the most frustrating three weeks of my life. No matter what we tried, labor didn’t want to start up again. The following Sunday, a week after the first time I went into labor, I started having incredibly intense contractions again. When the midwife came over, she said that despite the fact I was having contractions that resembled transition, I was still only dilated to a 5 and the birth wasn’t happening that night.

I cried a lot.

Then, FINALLY, on Friday April 21, I started having strong enough contractions that we thought it was real. Seth left for work around 10am (I’d “gone into labor” enough times in the past few weeks that I wasn’t going to make him stay home unless the contractions got stronger). Within an hour, they got really painful, really fast. My mom called Seth around 1:30, and he got home in record time. I couldn’t find any positions to get comfortable in, and I felt so relieved once the midwife showed up. She checked me, and told me I was dilated to a 7. I was so happy that I was actually progressing, I cried. Again. We filled up the birth tub, and I got in around 5pm.

I was squeezing Seth’s hand so hard that I’m pretty sure he bruised. I was so exhausted that between every contraction, I’d fall asleep for the 1-3 minutes I had before the next one would hit me. Seth says that there were a few times that he thought I was going to fall into the water.

At 7:30, my midwife said I was at a 9, and that if I wanted to, I could start pushing. And even though it didn’t make my contractions hurt any less, it made me feel like my contractions were actually DOING something when I pushed through them. I pushed in the birth tub for about an hour and a half, before the midwife expressed that she was getting worried because our baby’s heart rate was dropping every time I pushed and wasn’t going back up very quickly.

So we moved to the bedroom, and I labored on my side. I pushed for another hour and a half before he came. At the beginning of each contraction, I would push, and they told me that I could push him out during that contraction if I pushed hard enough. The first push of every contraction would tire me out so much that I felt like the rest of my pushing was useless until my next contraction. I cried and screamed and told Seth that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t push him out. It was too hard.

Then, finally, at 10:34 pm on April 21, 2017, Bastian Oak McCausland was born.  They brought him up into my arms and I finally got to hold him after so long of feeling him moving around inside me. After having loved someone so long that I had also never seen. I just couldn’t believe he was mine, that he was finally here, and that he was SO BIG.

It was so tiring, so painful, and so hard, but it was also so worth it. I had brought the most amazing, beautiful boy into the world, 21 inches long. He was 7 pounds and 12 ounces of the most wonderful thing I’d ever gotten to hold.

Pictures were taken by Ash Powers from Camera Shy Photography