If you missed the previous parts of Emmeline’s story, feel free to go back and read the previous two posts: Introduction and My Pregnancy.
And just a reminder if you missed it before – if pregnancy stories are tough for you to read, or triggering for any reason at all, please be kind to yourself. There is no reason at all for you to read this story if it isn’t helpful for you. Although it is a positive birth story in my eyes, it does include a very fast labor, a call to 911, and a birth at home.
I think the story of our babe’s birth day is best told in a timeline because it all happened so fast. In the days after she arrived, Tim and I relived the details over and over, putting all the pieces together, checking the timestamps from the calls on his phone, and looking at the photos on my phone, my mom’s, and our camera to piece together when and how everything happened.
“Rapid labor, also called precipitous labor, is characterized by labor that can last as little as 3 hours and is typically less than 5 hours.” – American Pregnancy Association
For reference, from the time I woke up with mild cramps to when Emmeline was born was 1 hour and 35 minutes.
September 19, 2018
4:50am I woke up to pee and noticed a couple crampy contractions in my belly. They were sort of similar to the Braxton Hicks I’d been having, but felt a little stronger. They were different from what I remember with Beckett though – almost like I’d eaten something that didn’t agree with me. I decided to try and get more rest in case I was going to go into labor later that day. I layed back in bed but couldn’t sleep and I counted 3 more contractions before getting back up.
When I checked my phone again it had been 15 minutes since I laid down which meant one contraction every 5 minutes. The typical rule of thumb (depending on your doctor or midwife) is to head to the hospital once you’ve hit the “5-1-1” or once you’ve been having steady contractions that are 5 minutes apart, lasting about a minute each, and that has been going on for an hour. I’ve also heard some people say 3-1-1 or 4-1-1, but we live almost 40 minutes from the hospital where we planned to deliver, so we keep the 5-1-1 idea in mind, just to give ourselves enough time to get to the hospital.
Since my “stomach cramps” were timeable being every 5-ish minutes apart, I got up to go to the bathroom one more time to give myself a little more time to assess the situation and decide whether or not I should wake Tim up. I wasn’t going to share this detail but I heard similar things from women on The Birth Hour podcast (and had never heard it before then) so I hope it might help clue someone else in when they’re in labor as it did me. I got up and went to the bathroom again and the polite way to say it is my body cleared itself out. Apparently this is a sign that you really are in labor as your body is making way for the baby. Since I knew this already, it got me excited because I thought TODAY IS THE DAY!
5:18am I woke Tim up and let him know we were likely going to have a baby later that day. He took a quick shower and started to finish getting packed up.
5:27am I thought I’d wait till 5:30 to call my mom to come over and watch Beckett for us. She’s usually up pretty early for work but I remember thinking I didn’t need to wake her earlier than necessary and that she might have an alarm set for 5:30am. My contractions kept coming pretty regularly so I ended up calling her at 5:27.
At this point I was still feeling totally fine through contractions. They weren’t painful but I was starting to focus more on my breathing throughout each one. I had one at the end of my short conversation with my mom and she was like “oh yep, I hear that! I’ll head on over!” She got ready quickly and hopped in the car to drive over. A side note here – because of the hurricane, the quickest route between my parents’ house and ours had a bridge that was closed due to water damage and erosion. What is normally a 15 minute drive would have likely been 5-10 minutes longer, but my mom paid no attention to the orange barricades, driving around them to get to us more quickly.
Tim and I spent the next half hour finishing packing our bags and Tim loaded the car. Before he took the camera to the car I asked him to snap a few photos as we finished packing and I labored around the house, thinking those would be sweet to look back on. (Literally everyone has laughed at me when I tell them this detail, but you must know that I was still not in pain at this point – I was just feeling regular pressure/cramps and I was starting to close my eyes in order to focus through each one. I thought we had many hours to go.)
I ate a quick bowl of cereal because I hadn’t eaten all night and knew I wouldn’t get to eat again when we got to the hospital. I thought I would need some sustenance for “the long haul.” Each contraction was getting a little stronger and they quickly got to be 1-3 min apart. The app on my phone kept telling me it was time to go to the hospital, but my contractions in early labor with Beckett were pretty close together and sporadic in length too, so I didn’t think TOO much of it at that point. So far the timing of the contractions was pretty similar to my early labor with Beckett.
Throughout that half hour I kept stopping to lean over the kitchen counter, dresser, bathroom counter, really anywhere I could bend over and rest my head on my forearms. I realized I was starting to vocalize a bit through one of the contractions which I knew as a sign that things were progressing. I had to vocalize to work through pretty much every contraction after that. I found a low “Oooo” sound worked best for me.
5:55am Tim snapped a couple more photos of me before running out to the car with the camera bag – the last thing to get packed up, and I suddenly started feeling the emotion of what was to come. Our lives were about to change in a big way and I was suddenly feeling it all. For a few seconds, that is. Then another contraction came over me and I got focused again.
I took one last selfie with my belly in the mirror. I was still smiling and feeling pretty good in between contractions, although mentally I was really scatterbrained. It was right around this time that I started asking Tim, “Where is Mom? We need to get going!” I was starting to get anxious about the car ride if the contractions were going to continue getting more intense as quickly as they were.
All our stuff was packed up in the car and we were ready to head out the door by around 6. The drive to the hospital is about 35-40 minutes away.
6:00am Tim called my mom to check on how close she was – she told him she was about 6 min away.
At this point we were totally ready to head out the door to the hospital. I was standing near our front hall, leaning over the arm of our couch, working through a contraction when my water broke. Tim grabbed a towel to clean it up and asked if I wanted to change pants (I was still just in sweatpants and my bra at that point – somehow I never had gotten it together enough to find a shirt) but I was like “NOPE! No time for that! Just throw a towel on the ground here and grab a clean towel for me to sit on in the car!” He remembers thinking, “Really?? No time to change?”
6:05am I suddenly started feeling extremely anxious to get to the hospital, so Tim called my mom one more time to let her know we were just going to leave the door unlocked and we’d wave at her on our way out the driveway as we would likely pass her on our way out.
I made it to the front porch, and as I had another contraction I leaned against the column by our front steps. Tim bounded down the stairs, thinking he would start up the car so we could get on the road faster. I stopped him as he ran, grunting “TIM!! I need you!” at him through a contraction because I needed some stability and I wanted to hold onto his arm through it. He slipped on the wet grass and fell on his knee, catching himself before running back to me on the top of the steps. (We laughed the next day when we saw the smear of mud where he slid through the grass.)
I was suddenly feeling so much pressure in this contraction that I sorta grunted through it, “TIM I think you’re gonna have to call 911. There’s NO way I’m gonna make it to the hospital!” I was having visions of giving birth in the car, or on the side of the road, trying to figure out and explain to 911 where we were and how to find us – that thought absolutely terrified me.
Tim dialed 911 on the screen but didn’t press “send” right away, putting the phone in his pocket instead. He still thought we had enough time to make it to the hospital. We were still headed to the car and made it part of the way across our yard when I had to stop for another contraction. With that one I had a MAJOR urge to start pushing. It was the kind of feeling I’ve heard some women share about – my body was pushing the baby out whether I was ready or not. It wasn’t scary, it just felt like such an intense amount of pressure and something I just needed to go with rather than fight. I actually remember looking at the cool wet grass in our yard and thinking how nice it would be to just lay down in it. I told Tim I was starting to push and his response was “I don’t know if that’s a good idea!” (And yes, we laugh about this now!)
6:07:46am We were standing in the dark in the front yard as I struggled to get to the car, and Tim called 911. You’ll hear on the call how he keeps telling me we either need to get to the car or get back to the house – I remember having such a hard time with that, knowing we needed to go to the hospital, but being terrified of having a baby on the side of the road, and desperately wanting to go back into our house which felt much safer to me than getting in our car at that moment.
They asked Tim if he could see any part of the baby and ultimately he made the decision that we needed to get back inside and into the light so he could check. We somehow made our way back up the steps and into the house which was super difficult for me. At this point I could barely walk and I was so inward-focused that I could hardly open my eyes between contractions to see where to go. Tim guided me back inside and I leaned over the arm of the couch again. Tim stripped me down to check to see whether the baby was crowning or not and reported back that he could not yet see any part of the baby.
(I had Tim edit the 911 call to remove our address – I felt weird about having every detail of where we live out on the interwebs haha! If you know where we live, you know where we live. Let’s not be creepy about it.)
Our 911 Call, Part 1
My mom arrived which you can just barely hear on the 911 call if you’re really paying attention. She must have quickly gathered what was happening and she came right over and held me, putting her hands on my arms while I leaned over the arm of the couch and stood over the towel where my water had broken.
The urge to push was so overwhelming and I quickly told Mom “I’m pushing!” Her first reaction was something like “Baby, maybe try not to push quite yet!” but when I told her I couldn’t help it, she just encouraged me through it all.
It was so unexpected to have her with me in labor but she was exactly what I needed in that moment. Tim was having to run around gathering things and I needed a solid encouraging presence with me. She just put her head down next to mine and held my arms and told me I was doing amazing and that I was an incredible mama. I asked her if she would say a quick prayer over me and baby and she did in that moment – it is such an incredible memory that I will always cherish.
I remember hearing Tim explain and re-explain where our house was to the 911 operator and I finally told him he needed to go to a different room while he gave them our address again. Google maps often takes people to the wrong place and it was stressing me out hearing him explain and re-explain where we live and envisioning them not arriving on time because they went to the wrong place. On the call it’s clear they know where to go, but it didn’t feel that way in my head at all!
At one point they asked Tim to let them know when each contraction was starting. He caught the beginning and end of the first one but missed the start of the second, just telling the operator when my second one was finishing. The operator said they were about two minutes apart.
Much of the call sounds quiet, but Tim was running back and forth checking for the baby, keeping me cleaned up (bless him), and eventually he started collecting all the things the guy asked him to get just in case he would have to deliver the baby before the first responders arrived (he was asked to gather towels, a blanket, a shoelace for tying off the umbilical cord, and safety pin or something sharp.) He has a hilarious memory of looking around our bedroom for something to tie the cord with and finally yanking the shoelaces out of his dress shoes.
Our 911 Call, Part 2
I just kept bearing down with each urge to push and I could feel the baby moving down with each contraction and back up a bit when they would ease up (it was actually amazing and not scary at all, weirdly enough). I asked a few times if they could see the baby, and you can hear Tim answering me on the call, saying no each time. And at some point right before the first responders arrived I remember saying something like, “I think baby is coming SOON!”
Throughout this intense part of my labor I remember focusing on just two things. The first thing I remember thinking about was to keep the tone of my voice as low as possible (rather than screeching, squealing, or screaming – I remember my nurse telling me to do this when I was in labor with Beckett because it helps to keep you more calm and under control rather than panicking.) With the reminder to “stay low” I instinctually made a sort of low “OooUhhhh” noise. The other thing I remembered from my first labor was to relax my face. That sounds so weird, but when I was pushing with Beckett my nurse Mary kept reminding me to relax my face – there’s some sort of connection between relaxing the face and relaxing everything “down there” for baby to make his or her way down and out. Having done yoga here and there, those two things made sense in my head, even if much of it is just mental. After my water broke those were literally the only two things I could remember to do. Everything else, especially my position leaned over the couch, was purely instinctual – that was what felt the best so that’s what I did!
The operator asked Tim to get me to lay down on my back and you can’t hear it in the call but I flat out refused. I physically could not move from the spot I was in, bent over at the waist with my forearms resting on the arm of our couch. In the background my mom and Tim were getting pillows and towels ready to make it more comfortable for me to lay down on the floor when the lights of the firetruck appeared outside our window. I remember feeling such relief in that moment knowing they were that close, but I also remember telling my mom how badly I did NOT want to get in the ambulance. I was so nervous I’d have to give birth in the back of the ambulance as it bumped down the road and that honestly sounded terrible.
Our driveway is fairly long and they parked the firetruck at the end of it, so Tim ran out to let them know they were in the right place and that the door was open for them. He then ran back inside to check me again and the baby had just started crowning so he hustled back out to let them know he could see the baby’s head.
At this point in the call he left the phone inside near my mom and I while he ran outside, so you can really hear me working through my contractions more and you can hear my mom encouraging me as she could see baby starting to crown. We think he put his phone on speaker at this time because I remember hearing the 911 operator on the call from here on out.
I love that you can hear the excitement/nervousness/enthusiasm in my mom’s voice as she goes back and forth between encouraging me and talking to the 911 operator. You can hear her say “You’re doing great! You’re doing great!” over my high pitched voice asking “Is baby coming out? Is baby coming out??” Mom answers me saying “just a tiny bit!” and then she reassures the 911 operator that I’m undressed from the waist down. She then sees the baby crowning and she says “oh yeah, here comes… oh yep! A little bit.. Cute little (head)! Just the very tip of the head!”
You can hear Tim and my mom both showering me with encouragement toward the end of the call as Tim walks back in the door with the firemen on his heels. (A couple times Tim and my mom told the operator that an ambulance had arrived but we realized later that it was the first responders in the firetruck that arrived first and the ambulance arrived just after the baby was born.)
At this point the three firemen walked in, introduced themselves, and one said, in a distinct Southern drawl, “alright ma’am, things are ‘bout to get real personal!” which you can start to hear if you listen very closely at the end of the call.
Our 911 Call, Part 3
Click through for the second part of Emmeline’s Birth Day Story (on her actual first birthday)! I promise she will actually be born in this next post!