Welcome to Judah Benjamen Delp, my T-Tapp baby!
He was born September 6th (40 weeks and 5 days for me) at 10:08pm, after a six hour labor, pushing for 13 minutes. :) He was 8lb 15 oz, 21.5 inches long, and had a 14.75 inch head! We are both doing great!
The waiting game really started back in August when I got back from the T-tapp retreat. We were glad to still be pregnant, but now ready for the arrival.
But 37 weeks passed.
38 weeks passed.
I was on the worship team that week. And then we thought, "now the baby will arrive!"
Nope.
39 weeks came.
My dad and younger sister were there that day and we had hoped that baby would come by 39 weeks (like Yonah), but nothing. I made it to my appointment halfway through that week and had my membranes swept. The midwife told me I was 1 cm dilated and about 50% effaced (and still pretty high).
So then 40 weeks arrived! And that day came and went. :)
During this time, I kept exercising, baking, tolerating my children and my increasingly anticipating husband who would ask me if I was having contractions.
had been having them—but they were painless and that meant nothing… if you have to concentrate to tell if a contraction is starting then it’s not labor!! :P
Labor day came and went. Then Tuesday was the first day of preschool for the kids, and so I went for a walk completely by myself for 45 minutes at a slow pained pace (my inner thighs had been bothering me for a couple weeks). I had my appointment and I had my membranes swept again (and it was much more uncomfortable this time), I could stretch to 2 cm, but baby was still pretty high. This was the appointment where the midwife tells you to call in when you reach 41 weeks to get your foley bulb placed. I was not excited about this option at all. The membrane sweep made me feel rather crampy, but I was usually crampy at some point during the day (usually caused by the digestion process ;)). I spent a good bit of time on the couch resting that evening. Then we slept through the night.
Wednesday morning came and we had our weekly mom’s group. Before we went, I used my breast pump for some nipple stimulation. And then I had a random migraine that started and ended at mom’s group— like the aura in my eye (the most annoying part for me because I couldn’t look at people!) and then a dull headache. After lunch, when I went to use the bathroom, I passed some bloody show, so I had it in my head that the migraine came from hormone movement, and I started mentally preparing for that to be the birthing day.
I didn’t start having contractions until 4:00, but I knew almost right away that they were the real thing because they were accompanied with the achey period feeling that would get more intense.
Naturally, I decided to make pizza for dinner, because it sounded good!
My contractions continued as I made it, and I called the midwife with our planned time of arrival, and I told my husband it was baby time. He needed to shower and put gas in the car, but naturally as I pulled some pizza (that I had baked in a glass casserole dish) out of the oven, it exploded all over our kitchen floor, so we (he) had to clean that up first, because I was in labor and we knew it! It was around this time that I told my kiddos that they weren’t going to be able to go to Awana (first night of the year) because Mommy was having the baby.
They were super mopey and didn’t want to eat their pizza. I hardly ate mine because i was cleaning up glass and laboring. Once our childcare arrived (and I somehow managed to pull off some semblance of bedtime), and Ben had returned from getting gas (and squeezed in a shower), we got in the car (my seat lined with a garbage bag and towel) and left! We encountered no traffic on the way in, but it still took almost 50 minutes. I continued to have contractions that I vocalized through and when we got to the birth center, I had one contraction in the parking lot while we were unloading. We went straight to their exam room (a pre-requisite for getting a birth room— you have to be far enough along so they don’t have to clean a whole room for someone who was in prodromal labor). A nurse (I think her name was Paula) took my blood pressure, followed some of my contractions with a monitor, listened to baby’s heartbeat, and told me what a good job I was doing vocalizing through my contractions. The midwife came in after probably about ten minutes (while Ben was eating his pizza!) and checked me.
I was at 6 cm, with a bulging bag of waters and +2 (location of baby’s head in pelvis). She asked me then if I wanted my water broken and I decided to wait and see if it would break in the tub. So at 8:00pm we went to our room and I got in the tub! The midwife who was there for our delivery was one of the few I had not met, but she was chipper and kind; so everything was just fine. Ben chose to stay out of the tub this time, bringing me my labor-ade and replacing my cool towels. the tub had jets… I would sometimes turn then on and off depending on the contractions (and how loud i was). Ben also did the music, and sometimes, depending on the song, would moan in harmony. I labored in the tub for almost two hours, slowly moving baby down (every time the midwife came to check heart rate (which was great), she had to relocate the Doppler further and further down my belly and pelvis.) Each contraction was hard, but not as hard as I expected transition to be, so at one point (probably around 9:45), I reached down and could feel that darn bulging bag of waters just an inch inside my vagina, and decided to have the midwife check me and also decided to have her break my waters. I was at 8cm then.
Once my waters were broken, it was game on—the midwives told Ben to turn off the fan because the baby was coming— and I was in transition immediately and got as loud and low as necessary to make it through. Right before I started pushing, I made one fitful declaration, “I’m so uncomfortable!!” Of course, there was nothing anyone could do about it but me! So I repositioned from a squat to semi-reclined on the side of the tub, and it was pretty much pushing time after that. Very, very soon after pushing started, baby was crowning ( I was feeling the stinging!), and I had to hold the crowning for in between contractions to let him stretch me so I wouldn’t tear. After that, he came very quickly. My core was strong and quite effective at pushing. It was quite easy for me to push—thanks to all my brain to body workouts (thanks, Teresa!) and he was out at 10:08 pm after 13 minutes of pushing contractions. I think I said something like, “Already!” and began talking to baby immediately. He was quite calm, and I was quite surprised that he was a boy (and Ben was elated and pleased).
My placenta came a few minutes later and I only slightly struggled with the membrane coming out. You have to cough for it. But even that was easier than previous births—despite a deflated abdomen I had noticeably more core strength to cough! I also didn’t get super shaky afterward. The midwives said his umbilical cord was longer than average—they held it out of the tub— quite long (although nobody measured it). Ben cut the cord after it stopped pulsing… I think I would have waited a little longer before putting it but at that point I was too tired and distracted to ask.
They weighed him at 8 pounds 15 ounces (would have been more if he was still attached to placenta a little longer), 21.5 inches long and a 14.75-inch head (that’s a big head.) When Bonnie the midwife checked me afterward, I only had a skin split so not even a first-degree tear. I felt pretty good— not woozy, blood pressure was great, blood loss was minimal, I walked to the bathroom with assistance (but would have been just fine). No problems with bathroom going.
Baby Judah wanted to nurse right away and wanted to stay nursing until he fell asleep (and then he did! But me and Ben couldn’t sleep. He was too cold, I was too hot, and the bed (a full size) was too small. We had hourly checks through 2:30am and then we went home. it was quite foggy when we left and we got home at 3:30 am.
The next morning the kids met Judah! Yonah heard him crying at 6:30 after a bathroom break and asked me what Naisa was doing, “Naisa is sleeping. That’s the baby!” “Oh.” and he went back to bed. Around seven I went downstairs and Elizabeth (our babysitter) was already awake and texting her mom. When the kids came down, Yonah and something he wanted to say to the baby. “What is it?” I asked him.
With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Poopie”. That’s true love right there.
