Finn's Birth Story

Well hello everyone! It's been a few weeks since I've been around these parts but for very good reason! We finally had our 2nd beautiful baby boy just before Thanksgiving! These last 2 weeks with our new bundle of joy have been filled with so much happiness and I've just been wanting to soak it all in as much as I possibly can. Today though, I want to share our birth story with all of you! So here we go...

Finn Joseph Cabrera joined us November 23, 2019 at 4:31pm weighing 8 lbs 12 oz and 19.5 in long.

The previous day I had my weekly check up for being 39 weeks. For the past 2 appointments I was only 1 cm dilated but I had been having so many false contractions I had high hopes that I had progressed a little bit more. Unfortunately though my doctor told me I was still only 1 cm! I was starting to get so frustrated because I was incredibly uncomfortable at this point. Caleb came with me to this appointment and we started to have the discussion about inducing. We had decided that if he hadn't come over that weekend, I would be induced on Monday the 25th. We wanted to be home for Thanksgiving and baby boy wasn't getting any smaller. My due date was Tuesday the 26th, so we would be almost right on target. This gave me such a sense of calm. I felt more in control and a lot of the anxiety of "when is it finally going to happen?!" melted away. My doctor also did a membrane sweep at this appointment with the hopes that it would get things moving. Well it certainly did! I could literally feel the relaxin releasing in my body the rest of the day.

I woke up the next morning tired and achy but no contractions. I decided to still go to my lash fill appointment that I had made for that Saturday morning. I wanted them to look good for photos on Monday, ha! Well about 30 minutes in to my appointment I started to feel some contractions. I had 3 that I believed were about 5 minutes apart. No big deal right? Well after those 3 contractions, my water broke! That's right...my water broke right on the lash bed. I had to tell my esthetician that I thought my water broke. Right away she took all the stuff off and had me go check and oh boy it had definitely broke! I was gushing water so I high tailed it out of there (thankfully I only live 5 minutes away so I didn't have any contractions while driving). When I got home, Caleb was already packing up the rest of our stuff. While we waited for my mom to get to our house to stay with Kai, I had a peanut butter sandwich with Kai for lunch. I was also chugging water in hopes of not being super dehydrated this time around like I was with Kai's birth. My mom got to our house really quick, we said our tear filled goodbyes to Kai and were off to the hospital!

When we got to the hospital they set me up in triage to get all checked in then moved me over to a labor and delivery room right away. I was at 3 cm when I got to the hospital and hadn't really progressed at all from the time I was in triage to the time I got to the labor and delivery room. This discouraged me a bit because I was having pretty steady contractions that were as close as 2 minutes apart and they were starting to get painful. Pretty much right away when we got to the labor and delivery room I asked for an epidural. They administered it and I started to feel a lot better. However though, I could still feel a lot of pain on my left side and after a little bit of time I started to feel faint and sick. My blood pressure was starting to drop but my nurse worked her magic by turning me on my left side and administering some medication to bring my blood pressure back up. I felt better within minutes. We then decided to try using the peanut ball to help move things along as well as started Pitocin. I also needed to get 2 doses of antibiotics 4 hours apart from each other because I had tested positive for Group B Strep. We figured we had some time to kill so Caleb and I put Friends on and tried closing our eyes for a little bit to get some rest.

After about an hour I started to notice a lot of pressure down low to the point where I felt like I needed to poop. I mentioned this to my nurse and she decided to check me just in case. While she was checking she all of a sudden had this shocked look on her face and said, "I can't feel anything. I think you're at a 10!" She called in another nurse to double check for her and she said the same thing. It was go time! I couldn't believe how fast I had progressed.

We started doing some practice pushes while we waited for my doctor to come. After only about 20 minutes they started prepping everything for delivery. I was honestly shocked by this. I had to push for so long with Kai that I was in disbelief at how fast this was moving along. After only 40 minutes of pushing, Finn was born!

They placed him on my chest right away and it was instant love. INSTANT. I felt this amazing connection with him right away and it all just felt right. Caleb cut the cord, we did skin to skin, and it was all so perfect.

I did have another 2nd degree tear in the same spot I tore the first time around and had to receive some stitches for it. I didn't even care this time though. I barely noticed any of what was going on except for how perfect Finn was. I also got the opportunity to see my placenta this time. One of the techs brought it over to us and explained the different parts of it, which both Caleb and I found so fascinating. They took Finn for a few minutes to do their routine check on him and thankfully all was great.

After the medical staff had left and it was just us and my nurse, we tried to breastfeed. Finn latched only after a couple of minutes and it truly brought me tears of joy. My hormones immediately started to level and I truly felt like I was on Cloud 9. 

We spent the next 2 days in the hospital because Finn had to be on a 48 hour observation to make sure he didn't get an infection from me being positive for Group B Strep. Since he was born so quick, I wasn't able to receive the 2nd dose of antibiotics I needed for it. While we were anxious to go home to Kai, it all turned out ok and it was nice to take advantage of the nurses help and peace and quiet of the hospital room. Finn was also testing a little high for jaundice, so it gave us peace of mind to still be at the hospital for a little extra time. We came home Monday the 25th and our journey as a family of 5 finally began!

photo courtesy of Brandie Scales