Elinore's Birth Story

Elinore's birth story starts a few weeks before she was born. At 33 weeks and 4 days, I started having very frequent Braxton Hicks contractions that wouldn’t go away. We went to the hospital to get it checked out. At the hospital, the contractions started to become painful and the staff determined I was in labor. I stayed at the hospital a few days as they tried to stop labor from progressing. It was successful and I was sent home at 34 weeks on modified bed rest (no work, lots of resting and only light housework) I was also on a medication to keep the contractions away. Each night following I would get contractions again but they would go away as I slept. When 37 weeks came I was given permission to stop the medication as it would be fairly safe for her to be born after that time.

I was mentally and emotionally preparing myself to be pregnant for another 3 weeks on the day I stopped the medication, but that night I woke up to my water breaking at 12:45 am. I tried to wake John up, I said: "John my water broke!". John is quite the deep sleeper and he only half woke up and said "What? You want your water bottle?" And I said, "NO, my water broke!" A little louder than before and he immediately shot out of bed as if he hadn't even been asleep! He began frantically gathering our things. I called my midwife and told her the news and she told us to get ready and head to the hospital. When we arrived I was having contractions every 6 minutes. We got admitted to the hospital and I was handling the contractions well until about 3:30 AM at which point contractions were about 3 minutes apart and extremely painful. We didn't know how much longer I would be in labor so I opted for an epidural and I am so glad I did! After the epidural, I was able to rest some, but I was also very anxious for baby girl to arrive so I didn’t get too much sleep. The next 11 hours were full of a lot of waiting. My midwife would check my progression every few hours, finally, at 2:20 pm it was time to push.

Pushing that baby out was the hardest thing I have ever done! Even though I had the epidural, by 5:00 pm I was getting very tired. Still, with every contraction, I pushed as hard as I could! Around 5:30 my midwife was getting a little worried. It seemed like I was not going to be able to push her out, and the doctor on call had quite a high c section rate so she didn't want to get him involved if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I could sense her worry and realized there wasn't much time to get our baby girl here, but I also knew that I was doing absolutely everything I could. Between contractions I said a silent prayer pleading for help. I knew I could not do this on my own. On the next contraction, I pushed with all my might, and I could feel that it was the strongest I had pushed all day, but it was not entirely my strength doing the work. I know I was receiving divine help. In that moment our baby girl was born. My midwife immediately gave her to me and I was overcome with emotion. There was so much commotion in that room but it was so peaceful. As there were many things happening all around us, it felt like, John, Elinore and I were the only 3 in the room. John and I just cried and stared at our baby girl, and that is how Elinore Lucille White entered the world.