Our fourth baby, and the roars that brought you here!

 Where to begin...'Twas the slowest of births and the fastest...

    Saturday the 12th, my waters broke spontaneously around 8am - not like in a gush and flood the floor way, but significant leakage...yay, we get to meet our baby that day!  I was 6 days late at this point....

     ...not so much meeting, more just not sleeping. Lots of painful contractions through most of the night, labor stalled once morning broke. 

   ....so Sunday hits, surely labor will start now?! Contractions really picked up at night, around 2-3am of Monday morning, so I called the midwives in...We had a great time in the wee hours chatting and they played some board games while I rested for a bit. I even said how I had the full experiences of birth - hostpital and homebirth...there was foreshadowing there, as I had never had an unattended birth...

Annnnnd nothing. Labor fizzled out almost entirely by 8am this Monday morning. To say I was feeling defeated and incredibly disappointed is an understatement...Being held in mid, stalled labor, for two days just felt so exhausting to accept that this process may take another day or two. Brooke was very confident the castor oil would be the ticket. 

   THE PLAN: to take 3 oz castor oil with breakfast, do some lunges and walking, and pump, try to nap...estimated time from castor oil will be 4-6 hours till I'm in active labor. Cool cool. That means around 1-2pm, I should really be rolling into solid labor.

Castor oil: 8:52am. Around 11am, I start having frequent, intense contrations - what the heck?! I assumed it was just a bit of an effect of the castor oil, but they weren't stopping. I texted my midwife to come back NOW. 

I get the birth pool filled back up as fast as possible. I'm in quite a lot of pain and soon realize I'm in transition based on the pace of the contractions and the severity of them. I manage to get in the pool, Daniel (my husband) is around on and off - dealing with the kids upstairs while trying to cope with the fact his wife is in a birth pool, alone, in the basement, literally roaring. 

Then, the contractions tapered off a bit, so I could actually breathe a bit between them..but they were like the mack daddy mag truck when they came. I knew what was about to happen, this is push time. How did I end up in this position?! It's only 11:20, I'm pushing a baby out, my midwife is still at least 25 minutes away...Daniel is pacing and low-key panicked in the best fatherly/husband way...

I said "not to be an alarmist, but I think she is coming out...."

Ring of Fire...the Ring of Fire (sing it in your best Johnny Cash)...

Details get a little gory here....feel free to scroll down to where I put "gory parts over" 

(scroll 4 paragraphs)

I felt for her head...and it was definitely there....I pushed the cervix over it gently...and Daniel got ahold of Brook the midwife as this is happening...

She tells me to stand up inside the pool so she doesn't inhale any water...my initial response was "come again?!?!?!?"(I am basically on my hands and knees, with a baby's head, and I'm supposed to STAND UP?!) But I did it....and with a few hip tilts and bearing down with a contraction she gently plopped into the water as I scooped her onto my chest....it was 11:58am...a mere 3 hours since the castor oil started...

She pinked up quickly(I have watched too many Call the Midwife episodes), she started crying and clearing those lungs all on her own...started looking around the room....

Then those placenta contractions hit within a minute or two of her exit, and Brooke, the amazing midwife talking us through everything, explained that I could gently tug to ease it out if I was already pushing it out...and it freed up quickly and easily, and intact....Daniel stares in horror...and for those of you who've ever delivered a placenta in a small birth pool, you know the effects that this has - poor Daniel handed me a bowl for the placenta and had to look away from the literally horror scene. He was SUCH a champ, considering how far outside his comfort zone, this was.  

~Gory parts over~

And Brooke arrived just moments later, with the rest of the birth team just after her. We examined the baby, we got me under control - I did take a shot of pitocin to be extra safe as far as hemorrhage risk. Baby doesn't have any tongue ties and is nursing SO well. She looks just like her siblings and Daniel's whole Heidenreich side...She is 9 pounds, 1 oz, and 21" long and has a cute little head of hair. She's a touch bigger than Samuel and a touch smaller than Edmund. I didn't tear with her or have any shoulder distocia <3

This whole experience has been so surreal, such an honor, and so empowering. I've been feeling so insecure in myself - old, out of shape, how am I gonna deliver a large baby at home?! And here I did it, basically by myself....empower overload!

We are *so blessed* by this sweet girl. I looked into my family geneology and I'm the first woman in my family on either side, to have four living children. I feel so honored <3

Her much awaited name: Lilian Rose. Water lilies are the birth flower of July, and NC state wildflower is the Turks Cap Lily...Emilia has also wanted to name the baby Lily since we found out I was pregnant...so this is our version of incorporating Lily into her name....and Rose is my middle name, a favorite flower, and my gramma's middle name as well-all of our middle names are also family names

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Thanks for reading, here's some pics of our brand new baby...