Grace Isla Cruz was born on April 13, 2019. Here is our story…
In the early hours of Friday, April 12, 2019 (my due date) I started feeling light cramping that progressively became stronger. By 3:30am, I started feeling the discomfort slowly turn into a dull pain that wasn’t going away so I woke Daniel up. In and out of sleep for the next few hours, we waited to see what would happen.
Around 9:00am we finally called the nurse hotline to see what we should do. I had a scheduled appointment with my midwife later that day at 2:00pm, and since the cramping (which I later found out were contractions) was spaced out and not too painful yet, they advised to wait it out and see what my midwife said at my appointment. Hospital bags packed, we showed up to my appointment and was told that I was only dilated to 2cm and 90% effaced, so I had to go back home. At this time I did a second membrane sweep (the first one I had done a week earlier) in hopes that this would get things moving in the right direction. Later that evening at home, my contractions started getting increasingly more painful and closer together (about 6-7 minutes apart). I took a warm shower, drank a bunch of water, and tried falling asleep but nothing helped and at this time I was in tears from the pain. Now my contractions were about 3-5 minutes apart, and I was scared to wait too long because we live about 40 minutes away from our hospital. At 11:30pm we called to let the hospital know we were on our way.
When we finally arrived it was about 12:30am on Saturday, April 13th. I was taken into triage and super relieved to see my friend and labor & delivery nurse there (thank you Erin for EVERYTHING!! You helped make my experience a great one!) Daniel’s mom and sister met us at the hospital and camped out with us. Once I was all strapped in, there were two different times that Grace’s heart rate dropped and nurses rushed in. Even though I was only dilated to about 3.5cm and 95% effaced, they decided to admit me to be on the safe side. While we waited, I hunkered down through contractions until about 5:00am when we finally got into our room. I immediately decided I wanted to get an epidural because I was in a pretty good amount of pain and had been awake for 24 hours already. Although I had planned to try for a natural birth, I knew I needed to get some sleep and relief for the journey ahead. Although getting the epidural was only supposed to take about 15-20 minutes, it actually took about an hour and 3 different tries until she finally got it right (this did hurt a bit, but in my mind it was totally worth it!) At 6:00am, Daniel, his mom and sister came into the room and we all took a nap to get ready for what was to come.
By 12:00pm, I was sitting comfortably feeling no pain whatsoever but getting pretty tired of laying down. I was stuck with laying on my left side because Grace’s heart rate dropped when we tried rolling me onto my right side. When the nurse came in to check me, I was dilated to 6cm and 100% effaced, with my contractions very close together. Thinking that things would likely move very quickly from this point, she started getting everything ready, but then my contractions started slowing down again. I started receiving pitocin to help the process along.
We waited and waited, and around 3:00pm I was dilated to 8cm so everything was looking up. I suddenly started feeling some of my contractions coming back and realized that my epidural had run out. The nurse gave me another dose and we waited again for what seemed like forever. When the midwife checked me again around 6:00pm I was finally dilated to 10cm. At this point I felt INTENSE pressure like I had to poop REALLY bad (lmao, this is real life folks and something I was afraid of happening during childbirth lol). Even though most of my pain was taken care of by the epidural, the pressure was so extreme and enough to cause tears of fear and anxiety. I was so excited that Grace was almost here, but super nervous for what I was about to experience next.
About halfway through pushing, I had low levels of oxygen and needed an oxygen mask. The midwife also saw meconium come out during that time so she alerted the NICU team to get ready to do a complete exam on Grace when she arrived. This honestly scared me, but Daniel knew we were in good hands and told me to stay focused. I pushed for a total of one hour and our beautiful Grace Isla Cruz came into this world at 7:30pm weighing 7 lbs 15 ounces and 19.5 inches long. As soon as I pushed her out, I felt SUCH a relief and bawled by eyes out for a good 5 minutes. The NICU team did her exam in the room right next to my bed. Turns out, she did not inhale any meconium and was perfectly healthy (YAY!). After Daniel cut the umbilical cord and the exam was over, I got to hold my baby girl for the first time. WOW. What an indescribable feeling to finally have our perfect sweet girl, after Daniel’s fight with cancer and a miscarriage 3 years prior. Everything finally came full circle for us. We are so very thankful that God saw us through the worst time of our lives, to bring us to the best moment of our lives. 10 of out 10 would do this again 😉
