Seth’s Birth Story

 

I woke up just before 8am on Saturday, June 24 with plans to head to Sam’s club an hour away with my sister in law for some last minute shopping. I got up to get ready and after going to the bathroom noted some blood tinged discharge. I’ve never experienced “bloody show” or anything in my previous 5 pregnancies and knew it could be days or weeks before birth, but still decided to just stay home. I called my sister in law and told her we’d skip the trip as I’d hate to get halfway there and have to turn around if something started to happen. My husband, Elijah, and our daughter made a big breakfast and afterwards I helped clean up the kitchen and started to put laundry away. Elijah went outside to change the brakes on our car and at 10am I felt a contraction which I assumed was a Braxton hicks. When I felt another one a few minutes later I pulled up a contraction timer website and started timing them. The contractions were coming every 2/3 minutes and felt very mild, so I just kept assuming they would fizzle out. After about 20 minutes of this, I asked Elijah how much longer he would be working on the car as I thought we’d be meeting our baby today. He very quickly wrapped up his project and told the other kids to get ready to leave. 

 

I texted Dorothy at 10:30am and told her she should come in an hour. I told her I was still walking, talking and doing laundry. I texted Rachel, my sister in law and Dorothy’s assistant, and also told her I thought it was baby time. I went into the bathroom and changed into my labor outfit and put on a depends in case my water broke. I thought to myself “Oh yea, I remember how much contractions stink! I can’t believe I’m going to be doing this for a few more hours!” I also thought that when Dorothy came I would ask her to check my progress because I thought I had a long ways to go. 

 

My husband started inflating the birth pool and got all the older kids in the van in between checking on me in the bathroom. At 10:40am he came in again, and when he saw me on my hands and knees he knew it was serious and called Rachel back and updated her. Around 10:47am my body started pushing and I told myself to stop because surely it wasn’t time yet! I yelled for my husband who couldn’t actually hear me over the air pump. He came in again to check on me before he planned to leave to drop the kids off. I yelled for him to catch the baby and he quickly washed his hands, ran and grabbed some towels and baby blankets and ran back to the bathroom. I was sitting upright on my knees and he got behind me. At 10:48am, after 2 hard pushes, Seth Parker born into his dad's hands! I heard Elijah say “It’s a boy!” Baby Seth started crying right away and Elijah handed him through my legs to me. I sat back to marvel at this beautiful new person! Elijah called Dorothy to tell her the baby was born. Rachel arrived at 10:50am and Dorothy at 11:09am. They were so amazing and started cleaning things up, taking pictures, and taking care of Seth and me. After awhile I moved off the bathroom floor and into my bed for all the newborn exams and snuggles. It was the craziest, best experience!