Jaeger's birth story

(blogger is still not letting me break between paragraphs so again i'm sorry! grrr) After a lazy day in the hotel room (which drives Nathan more crazy than it does relax him), he decided to take the older 4 kids with him to Target to get a soccer ball as a birthday present to himself (bday's tomorrow) and then go to the park to play. I decided to stay back because 1) it's freezing outside right now...about 40 degrees and windy, 2) I had to feed Jaeger who I woke up at 6:15pm bc he'd been sleeping since NOON!, and also bc I already got out for a few mins this morning when I went to Goodwill to find a few things we needed for around here (like some more hangers to hang laundry and to replace a bowl I broke). So now that baby's fed, and it's quiet for the time being, I'm FINALLY going to write (or start to write) Jaeger's birth story!! And it goes a little somethin' like this... Well, again with baby #5 we were living on the road in Northern MN so we decided that I would come back to our house to have the baby (about 2.5 hrs away). Since Brayan was 2 weeks early, surprising us all, and Ariella was 1 week early, I knew I wanted to come home earlier than later but I didn't want to leave Nathan working up north by himself for TOO long...so we tried to find a nice balance. We had planned on me coming home the day I turned 38 weeks, a Wednesday. Earlier that week on Monday, Nathan and I were blessed enough to go out on a "last date" while friends/co-workers living near us on the resort were watching our kids! On the way to the restaurant, I noticed that I hadn't stop having contractions, they came every few minutes. Nothing big but noticable. I tried to ignore it but they kept coming at 3-10 minute intervals lasting about a minute. Our whole conversation on that last date was around how long the contractions lasted and if I should drive home that night just to be sure I'd make it (We were having flashbacks to Brayan's labor). By the time we got home, contractions were becoming more infrequent and after a call to my midwife, we decided just to stay the night and see what came of it. Well, nothing came of it and I was able to stay until Wednesday morning as planned and we headed home. The next couple days were filled with errand running (still needed to buy a carseat!) and waiting! We had Ana come stay with us again, the young lady that was gracious enough to stay with me a few days a week last year when Nathan was working away from home. She worked hard in the kitchen preparing the meals and cooking ahead so we could enjoy meals that we already prepared after baby was born. She also helped with the kids and watched them while I ran errands and taught Tiernan his school...I liked having a sub :) Then it happened. I woke up on Friday morning, the 19th, got out of bed and immediately felt wet. "Well, that's not normal!" Sure enough, I had lost my mucous plug and my water was leaking! This had never happened with any other of my kids, my water had always broke when I started pushing so it kind of took me by surprise. I called Nathan. Since it was about 7am he was still in the yard at work and hadn't gone out to the job site yet. We talked for awhile about whether or not he should come back and since I wasn't having contractions or anything, we decided that he could work for awhile longer. Well, a few mins went by and after thinking that I really don't want him to miss this birth since he missed Ariella's, maybe he should come home. So I called him back and he agreed. He was on his way back! By 11:00 or so he was home and I was happy! My husband's going to actually be here for the birth! One big relief! But still no contractions!! We left Ana with the kids and decided to run some errands. We went to Coborns to drop off some movies and then headed to the mall. As we were walking around Target, the contractions would come and go. We laugh now when we think about how I would act during one. Nathan would be talking and say "hey, look at this." (or whatever) and I'd respond "No, let's just keep going. Maybe we should go back."...in a kind of crabby tone. And then when they were over, I was totally happy and would say "Lets do some more walking over here." :) So we came back to the house and the evening went on like usual. (Usual meaning normal chaos like two of the boys running into each other downstairs, making them both scream and giving Caedmon a bloody nose which dripped all the way upstairs on the carpet. So Caedmon's on the couch crying, Tiernan's crying, my parents were coming over, and I'm trying to make sure that blood's not coming from anywhere else on Caedmon all the while my water is dripping down my leg...nice timing. So, ya know, that kind of 'usual' :) before bed on friday night

During the night I started having contractions again at about 12:30am. They were coming every 3-5 minutes if I was standing up but would only last 30 seconds or so. If I'd lie down, they were about 5-8 mins apart but they'd last a minute. This lasted all..night...long. They were hard contractions too, I really had to focus and breathe. During this time I had texted my midwife just to let her know what was up. At about 5:30am I noticed that when I was laying down, the contractions were starting to come more frequently...8 mins, 5 mins, 3 mins, and still strong so I let Joy know and she said "great, let me know when you want me to come over". And almost immediately after I texted her...STOP. Nothing. No more contractions! What?!? You've GOT to be kidding me?! This NEVER happens to me! I always go into labor and a few hours later baby is here! This has been going on long enough! So Saturday I decide to mostly just lounge in bed. I was exhausted from being up all night and frustrated that this labor was seamingly going no where. Contractions were nothing consistant, one here, one there. But the thing is that they were strong. Like really strong. Like strong enough to bring me to tears twice...and that has never happened. After a strong one, I went out to the couch and asked if Nathan could come in the room for a second. He did and I lost it. Sobbing I told him that I just wanted this over with. I was tired and was tired of a drawn out labor. More than it being painful, I was frustrated. Frustrated because I knew that the contractions weren't frequent enough to make real progress but they hurt like crazy. I wanted to be done. I knew Nathan knew that I was serious when he agreed to call Joy and didn't make me do it. "Yeah, Hi Joy. Uh, Dawn wants to be done. She says she's at her end. Yeah...okay..see you in a bit." She's on her way over. So about 1:30 Joy arrived to see where I was. She checked me and hoping I was at like an 8, she says "5 and a half". UGH! Seriously?? So she stretched me out, stripped my membranes, and "irriated" me a bit. She instructed me to take a bath, relax, take a nap, and then hopefully once I'd wake up from my nap, things would start heading in the right direction. So she gave me a two different liquid herbs to help relax me and then I was ready to get in the tub. Joy said she was going to leave and just to call her when I woke up or when things started to progress. So she was filling out her paperwork while nathan started the tub. I sat up in bed and immediately had a huge contraction. Wow...didn't see that coming. Before I got into the tub I thought I'd better use the bathroom first so right after that big contraction I stood up and mid way to the toilet, had another contraction. On the toilet, had another contraction. Got off the toilet, had another contraction. Got in the tub and had another contraction...see where this is going?? :) While in the tub, I had contraction after contraction every 2 minutes, lasting about a minute. Now we're talking. Joy decided not to leave until she saw where this was going. So she pulled a book from our book shelf in the bedroom and started reading on the floor. Nathan was sitting on the edge of the tub trying to read his book, which he said he couldn't at all because he was timing the contractions and they were coming too close together to get any reading done. Well, excuse me! :) Seeing how I was soooo tired, my desire was to just lie my head down. All I wanted to do was to rest my head and I didnt know how long I would be having these contractions before pushing so I decided to get out of the tub and onto my bed. The bed needed to be made up quick so Joy and Nathan got it all water-proof for me. While they were doing that, I was trying to get out of the tub and into the bedroom but that was a lot easier said than done. Nathan said "Yeah, I knew it was serious when we were getting the bed ready and I looked back and you were on the bathroom floor." Yeah, on my hands and knees I was in the bathroom, trying to get enough time between contractions to stand up. It wasn't working, they were coming too fast and too hard. Nathan came over to help me and in mid-stand I had another one. I gripped the trim on the doorway as Nathan held the other side of my body. We finally made it over to the bed but there really wasn't any resting of my head for me! I was positioned on my side and the contractions were on top of each other giving me no rest in between. Joy still wasn't convinced this was it so she went to her car to get a magazine. Once she came back in, she knew I was close. She asked if I wanted to get back into the tub since I wanted a water birth like my previous 4 but at that point I didn't want to move. And honestly, part of me wanted a "land" birth bc people ask all the time how water births compare to land births and I've always said I have no idea bc I haven't had a land birth..so I kinda wanted that comparison. (water births are waaaaaaay easier on your body and let baby come a lot easier too...no more land births :) But I did want to change positions. I wanted to be upright like I would have been if I were in the tub. We tried getting the birthing ball on the bed to relax over but that wasn't working, so I just had Nathan take all our pillows and prop me up real tall on the bed. That's when I decided to start bearing down with my contractions. I wanted this over!! "Let me check you to make sure you are all the way dialed before you push so hard." I was at a 9.5. She told me to just listen to my body and push when I needed to. Well, I needed to! With one push the head crowned and Joy told me to reposition myself so my pelvis was straight. I pushed again and the head was out. (During that contraction, I heard Nathan "whining" even louder than me!) One more push for the body and our beautiful baby boy was lying on my tummy! "He's a tiny one!" was Joy's first words when he came out. Which was surprising to me since I thought he was going to be our biggest. Six pounds even was the weight and 19 inches. Yes, he was our tiny one. I was so thankful to be done and for both of us to be perfectly healthy. Since this was a land birth, Nathan got to watch the baby being born which he never really did before because it was under water and I was usually upright so he really couldnt see. He said it was the most amazing thing in the world. The only thing that I'm bummed about is the fact that we didn't have any pictures taken or video of the birth, even though I was all set up for it. No one else made it there (a couple students, one of Joys and our babysitter) were planning on coming but because it happened so quickly after she "irritated" me, there wasn't really time. I went from 5.5 centimeters to 10 in about 2 hours. We waited for everything to be cleaned up and snuggled in before we told the other kids. (although they figured something was up when they heard a baby crying from our room! "Is the baby here?!?!" they kept asking :) After a few hours we settled on a name. Jaeger Brave Legatt was added to the family as our 4th son and 5th child (9th if you count our 4 sweet little ones with Jesus). It's definitely true that no two births are the same and they all come into this world with their own story. weighing him (bad lighting i know)

measuring him

dad holding his son for the first time

Jaeger Brave