GRACE’S BIRTH STORY

For me, becoming a mom was like experiencing my own personal big bang. The world as I knew it ended only to come back together as something more wonderful, more fulfilling and crammed with so much love I could barely breathe. Parenting Sophie for the last 3 years has been such a learning curve for me. People often say that children teach you more than you teach them and I am here to confirm that that is indeed a fact.



Having a second child has been part of our plan since we laid eyes on Sophie. I wasn’t too keen on having 2 little ones in nappies so we decided to wait a bit…  We waited so we could give Sophie time to grow, we waited so we could give ourselves time to get to know Sophie and to just bask in the joy of showering one little person with all the love and affection we could muster. Well, we did all of that and the time cam to start “trying” for number 2.

If you’ve never tried to fall pregnant you probably don’t know what a heartbreaking journey it is. There are no guarantees and you will literally conjure up pregnancy symptoms where there are none. Then you’ll get your period and your heart will fill with an incomparable sadness.  And you’ll keep doing this for months or years or however long it takes. In between all of the trying and life in general we found out I was pregnant! Queue joy and elation and all round happiness… But then it all came crashing down thanks to an 8-week miscarriage. The thing about miscarriage is that you don’t feel entitled to your sadness because: was it really a life? Most moms have planned their child’s entire life in the time it takes for those two lines to appear on the pregnancy test, so yes; to us it feels like a real loss.

After the miscarriage we were quite ready to throw in the towel. Was it worth it? Could we handle more disappointment? More heartache?

We decided to hit the pause button on the whole baby-making story.

Then, some months later, quite unexpectedly, we found out I was pregnant. I did everything I could not get excited, not plan, to steel myself against any possible heartbreak should this not work out. The weeks passed and hey, it looked like the baby was here for good. Go team Human!

Fast forward 8 or so months, skip past the 2 terrifying preterm trips to the labor ward, we now have the most precious little girl named Grace (Gracie to Soph).

If you’ve read Sophie’s birth story, you’ll know that I had a totally natural birth with no pain intervention (what a freak!). It took all of 22 hours and a failed induction to get her out of my baby box. It was tough, but at the end of it all I felt like a warrior queen. Here was my child that I physically made with my body and physically brought into this world with my body. I was desperate to have the same experience with Grace’s birth.

At our last visit to the gynea, we found out that conditions below were quite favorable for induction, I was quite over being pregnant so we said, “Heck yes! Get this baby out!”. That night I was admitted to the labor ward to begin induction. Woot! Woot!

By the time morning arrived I was 4cm dilated and not having a single contraction. Throughout the night Grace’s heartbeat was steady, but showed no acceleration – which is something the Dr’s look for. Nevertheless, on we went. At midday my gynea popped in, had a look at Grace’s heart beat monitor and reassured us that he was not worried about it yet. He went on to break my waters and just like that, labor (read: agonizing pain) began.

I don’t really understand why, but after my waters broke, I started having seriously intense contractions. I was having 5-7 contractions in a 10-minute period of time. They were literally on top of each other. No room to breathe, no room to nap, just wonderfully intense pain. I was so optimistic that this would  mean that Grace was on her way and I would be one of those blessed souls that experienced a 20 minute delivery.

My gynea came back, checked my cervix, checked Grace’s position, checked her heart rate and told us that at this stage he recommends we do a c-section. I was crushed. Grace had moved positions and was no longer in the right spot, her head was at a strange angle and this coupled with her heart rate made him uneasy. Like any mother, my child’s safety came first, without hesitation we agreed to the c-section and I was promptly wheeled off to theatre.

I won’t go into the gory details of the c-section, what I do want to say is that it is way shittier than natural birth. Anyone who thinks that a c-section is “the easy way out” clearly has never had one. Aside from the rank indignity of laying starkers on an operating table while you’re completely awake and weeing into a bag, the recovery pain is just nuts. It’s over a week later and I am still on painkillers, anti-inflammatories and blood thinning meds. But I have a gorgeous, healthy baby girl at the end of it all and there is little that can take away from the joy of meeting her and seeing our little family grow.

Sophie is in absolute awe of her baby sister. We have had some ups and downs over the past week with adjusting to life as 4, but I know the kinks will work themselves out in time. For now I am still very much in a euphoric bubble of love.

TGIF dudes, I’m off to sniff my baby’s head and smother her with kisses.