Lucas’s Birth Story
- Rachael Mora
- Mar 5, 2019
- 6 min read
As you’ve no doubt noticed if you follow me on Instagram, I recently had a little boy and am completely obsessed with him. I’ve held off on writing about his birth because I wanted to hang out with him and figure out the whole mama thing first, and it was pretty intense and I think I needed to take some time to process it before sharing.
I always said my “birth plan” was to leave the hospital with a healthy baby and that’s all I really cared about. I’ve since learned how naive that statement was 😝. I was never attached to any specific plan, I wanted to try to avoid a cesarean and thought I’d try some other pain relief methods prior to an epidural but realistically knew I’d end up getting one. I figured the pain with an epidural would be minimal and I quite honestly didn’t think about it or fear it much at all. I was more scared of the actual epidural than labor. Again, so naïve 😝.
Lucas was past his due date so we schedule an induction for Tuesday evening. It ended up that the hospital was crazy slammed and didn’t have a bed, we kept calling every 4 hours and eventually they basically said “don’t call us, we’ll call you” and we decided to get some rest. We prepped for bed and I was actually pretty exhausted so was excited about sleeping. Laid down and closed my eyes and bam – my water broke 😝. Most of my friends water never broke at home so I didn’t know what to expect at all, it was so comical and we were so deliriously excited and surprised - I was giddy getting my hospital bag while Felipe went and got puppy pads to put on the seat of the car (because what the movies don’t show you is that once your water breaks it doesn’t stop until the baby is actually born). Our trip to the hospital and getting checked in was like our last single adventure together!
Once we got to the hospital and the nurses checked that my water had indeed broken (they seemed suspicious and in fairness we’d been bothering them all evening for a room), they got us checked into a room. I wasn’t dilated at all, so we gave it a few hours then they started Pitocin to get things moving. I tried an iv painkiller once contractions really started to hurt and basically slept that whole time, then the nurse encouraged me to go ahead and get the epidural because they could just continue to give me the medicine once it was in so there was no reason to wait. Spoilers – that’s not necessarily true, as I found out later 😝. Each time they checked I was still not dilated at all – After the entire day on Pitocin I’d gotten to less than 1 cm. The nurse let me know that 24 hours after my water had broken they’d start considering a cesarean and that I may need to start wrapping my head around that. Again – with no super detailed birth plan, I was okay with that if it had to happen.
I took a nap (epidurals really are amazing and help with the pain a lot). I woke up starting to feel some pain again because my epidural was wearing off, so I asked the nurse to get the anthologist to give me more medicine (she checked and I was at about 6cm at this point). I was so excited that things had started progressing and told Felipe to go tell the family they could come back for a visit, but that I wanted a popsicle and some ice chips first. In the time Felipe went to the room for the ice chips and came back, my pain went from 0-100 – poor guy came back in and I was like GET THE NURSE AND TELL EVERYONE NOT TO COME BACK HERE TO VISIT. I had gone from 6-9cm in the 20 minutes she’d been gone. Again, I was excited that it looked like things were moving but super ready for my epidural medicine at this point. Unfortunately (and it was never really clear why) – I DIDN’T GET ANY MORE MEDICINE so we were all natural from this point out. I think I just dilated too quickly and things were moving so fast that it just wasn’t an option, though it wasn’t really clear to me why that was the case. This was about 7:30, the nurse said she’d give me until 9:00pm then check again and if I was fully dilated she’d let me practice pushing and get closer to ready before calling the doctor in.
I lasted about 30 minutes in intense pain before forcing Felipe to go tell the nurse I needed her. She came back in and I was already at 10cm. We did a practice push and she said “Okay – I’ll tell the doctor you’re ready. DO NOT PUSH again until the doctor is here and we’re ready because once you do this baby will be born. Then she left the room while I had intensely painful contractions and tried not to push (I had back labor which was so intense I truly didn’t know how I’d survive it – I’m honestly not a dramatic person about pain, but this was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced). Since the hospital had been so busy and I hadn’t been dilated for so long, I was behind in the lineup for a doctor and had to wait over an hour before I could push. I honestly don’t know how I’d have dealt without Felipe being so incredibly loving and supportive. Once the doctor came in and chaos ensued, they called for the tech team and three pushes later Lucas was born. Let me tell you – pushing felt like heaven after waiting an hour not able to do anything. If I could change one thing about the whole experience I’d hire a doula who could have helped me navigate the waiting and the epidural issues because when you’re in labor you can’t really advocate for yourself :/.
Once Lucas was born, I knew he was a boy before Felipe even told me. I have no idea how I knew, but I saw him and noticed his sweet face and his hand in the air and I’ve never felt anything like it. The physical pain was gone and it seemed like it all happened so fast once the doctor got in there, next thing I knew this tiny baby was on my chest and I was just in shock and awe. He was more precious than I could have anticipated, he was SO tiny and his beautiful eyes melted my heart from the first moment. It’s hard to find words to describe it – from the second he was born everything changed. I had a pretty uneventful pregnancy and was super excited to meet my baby and knew I’d love him or her, but it really is crazy how in that one second you go from being pregnant and wanting to meet this unknown child to knowing this little human who has already become your everything.
Labor is crazy and unpredictable and so different for each baby, but the one consistent thing is that if you leave with a healthy baby and mama you’ve done okay. Recovery sucked at first and breastfeeding was so hard (another post to follow on that whole process because I learned SO much!). I have never been so happy to leave a hospital as I was to go home! Again – if I ever do this again I’d spring for a doula because I’d imagine it is crazy valuable to have someone just to put your questions at ease – I thought the nurses would do that, but their job is to check things and more transactional, not to be your friend or comforter.
So there you have it – way more details than you probably care to know about how Lucas came into the world. Labor has a terrible reputation for a reason, and being a mama is touted as so awesome because it truly is the best. Kid is only 2 ½ months old and he’s already by far the best thing I’ve done with my 30 years of life 😝. We didn’t have a birth photographer because I didn’t want to be thinking about photos (in retrospect I wouldn’t have even noticed with how chaotic labor is), but I will never forget the experience and how it felt the moment I first saw him ❤️.
Side note – did you other moms feel super physically attached to your little ones even after they were born?!? It’s gotten less intense, but for the first month or so it was difficult for me to even let other people hold him because I felt super anxious whenever he wasn’t in my arms! I’ve always felt emotions pretty intensely but that wasn’t something I knew to expect. Hormones are weird.
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