Thursday, September 08, 2016

Soren Patrick Shaw

So things have happened.

The last blog post I wrote, I just gave birth to my daughter Lucy. Little did I know, when she was 6 months old, I would find out that I was pregnant with her brother Soren!

When I first found out, truthfully, I was devastated. I didn't feel strong enough to have 2 babies under two years old and just the thought of it terrified me. It took me a good few weeks to come to terms with the fact that I was going to be a mom again so soon. Which is a silly thought to me now, because our fertility was such an unknown just a few years before Lucy came to be. I eventually came to terms with the fact that Lucy was going to be a big sister so soon! Soren was born on June 14th at 37+1 weeks, which was a complete surprise to us that he decided to come so early!

Since I had gestational diabetes, I thought that home birth wouldn't be an option and that made me sad, since my hospital birth with Lucy wasn't the greatest experience. My midwife assured me that when it came time for me to go into labour, if things were progressing well and quickly that I would be able to stay and labour/deliver at home. Luckily things did move quite quickly. At 37 weeks we discovered that I had a small tear in my hind water and we needed to get things moving. I had a few doses of what they call a "labour cocktail". Which is basically apricot juice, castor oil, almond butter and some verbena oil. While this made my contractions start, my water didn't fully break on its own. So on Tuesday morning around 11:30 my midwife broke my water at the clinic and I walked back home. My contractions started again and I worked through them at home sitting on the couch and watching movies etc. At around 2:45 I ate some lunch and decided that I wanted to get into the bath because I was feeling nauseous and uncomfortable. At this point my contractions were about 5 minutes apart. Cora said that if I got into the bath and the contractions slowed down I would have to get out, but boy was that not the case. I got into the bath and my contractions immediately ramped up to 2 minutes apart and boy were they intense. Cora arrived at around 3:20 and set up all of her gear (her electric heat pack basically exploded in the hallway, that was fun). My wonderful doula, Danielle, arrived just after Cora and helped me through some of the strongest contractions. An hour after Cora arrived, Soren Patrick Shaw was born at 4:30pm! Weighing a pound more than his sister, he was 7lbs 4oz! I couldn't believe that it all happened so fast. I had such a supportive team of people surrounding me. Jordan, Heidi, Cora, Danielle and Stephanie were all instrumental in my emotional and physical well being throughout my pregnancy, labour and deliveries (both of them!)