Third Time’s A Charm!

Well… technically they were all little charms in their own way.  Today is all about the third baby’s birth story, and how it went a bit slower… and a bit quicker too!  Welcome little Felix, the third (and final) baby :)

Let me first start by saying that I always wanted 4 babies.  And, if I could have it my way, it would have been a boy, then twin girls, then a boy.  Well, we had our Zachary boy first, then our girl Élise.  The Husband was adamant we stop at three… so I told him I’d compromise, if it was a boy, I’d be more willing to stop, but if it was a girl… then there’s a chance I’d want another baby.

But enough about that, let’s get to the baby story and pictures!

A Week Before Baby’s Due Date

I had a Doctor’s appointment scheduled the week before baby was due.  She checked how I was doing, and I was 1cm at this point.  She did a sweep and let me know that I could potentially go into labour in 2-4 days.  Well, fast forward to the Tuesday before the due date (Thursday November 28th), and I was back for my next appointment.  Another check revealed I was barely over 1cm, so she did another sweep and I was on my way.  The plan was to get scheduled for an induction on the Sunday or Monday.

At this point, I had been doing daily updates on Instagram Stories to let friends/family know that labour had not started yet.  My parents were worried I would go into labour on Wednesday (there was a big snowstorm coming).  Luckily I didn’t, since a portion of the highway ended up getting closed and the Husband would not have been able to make it!  (He stays at the Rental Renovation during the week while he is at work).

Well, the snowstorm came and went (we got about 1 foot of snow!) and if you are wondering, no, shovelling snow does not induce labour (in my case at least).  Then, Thursday came and went, and for the first time, I had a baby that was not born on their due date!

A Day Before Baby Arrived

Late Thursday/early Friday morning (aka 3am) I woke up for my normal 10th pee of the night, and I felt a contraction or two.  They were very far apart, so I pretty much just slept and went about my day as normal.  Zachary and I had a few appointments Friday morning, so I made the Husband come with me just in case.  (My parents had come in by now so could stay on guard if anything happened).

I’d say contractions were very light and irregular (maybe 10-30 minutes apart) all day.  It’s definitely my usual (I had contractions with Zachary for 12+ hours before I even went to the hospital), but I tried going on a walk before dinner to speed things up.  Then we ate supper, then put the kids to bed, and I thought… lordsies I don’t want to go through the whole night with these annoying sometimes-contractions!

So I tried bouncing, walking, walking with lunges, eventually between 8-9pm, the contractions started getting more regular closer to the 4-5 minute apart mark.  So we headed to the hospital, stopped at the drive-through (I’ll give you a guess who wanted to do that!) and got checked in around 10pm.

At the Hospital

After these small contractions for the past 19 hours, I was only 3cm dilated (yep, I’ve been there before).  They sent me to walk around for an hour to see if things progressed, as I couldn’t be admitted until I was in the 4-5cm range.  So the Husband and I walked around the hospital from 11pm-12am and the contractions were definitely coming in stronger and more frequently.  From one end of the hospital to the other, it was about a 5-minute walk, but factor in the contractions and I would slow down a bit.

I went back up for the next check, and luckily I was in the perfect 4-5cm range!  Great!  Let’s get me set up and hook me up to the Epidural please :)

This time, I was Group B Strep positive, so they had to give me antibiotics that would take 4 hours to kick in.  It took 3 tries to get the IV (ooh that was hard!), but luckily they were able to get my blood work in quick so the anesthesiologist could come do the Epidural as soon as possible.

Because of the GBS, they didn’t break my waters since they wanted the medicine to kick in (different than the last two!).  By 2am, the Epidural was working great.  I was told to relax and try and get some rest (it would be close to 4am when the antibiotic would be fully administered).  I was 8cm dilated at this point, but the nurse said the membranes (waters) were there blocking, so I could be a bit different.

Fast forward to 2:45am, and I had been somewhat relaxing when I felt my waters break.  Or should I say, I felt something come out of me, and I was positive that I had gone to the bathroom right there on the table (it felt hard, and not gushy like water).  I paged the nurses in, and they said that all my membranes/water had come out in one solid piece, and they had never seen that before.  They didn’t check me but must have seen the baby’s head… because I heard “ok, let’s try to push now”.

Hello Baby Boy!

Wait what?  I had to go from taking a nap, to this baby is coming out!

At 2:57, about 10 minutes after the membranes came out, I had a new baby!  I think I pushed maybe 4-5 times, didn’t need any vacuums like Élise, and luckily the baby’s heart rate was stable the entire labour :)

We had our little boy, weighing in at 8lbs 1ounce and measuring 21 inches long (our biggest, but just barely).  We didn’t have a name picked out yet (since we didn’t know the gender) but I had a list of names ready to go in my hospital bag when we were more rested (and I could get a good look at him).

The Husband had considered paying to upgrade to a semi-private or private room (compared to the ward with 4 beds), but we went with the ward again.  They had told us there was only one mom there now, and she would be leaving the next day.  And, for the first time, I was the only mom who was giving birth that night.  (In fact, after the first family left, we were all alone in the ward the entire time!).

We had gotten settled into our new little hospital home by 4:30am, and I was surprised that this baby had gotten the hang of breastfeeding pretty quickly.  Because he hadn’t gotten the full antibiotics yet, we had to stay for 24 hours, so chose to leave Sunday morning instead of the middle of the night.

A Few Weeks with Félix

We decided to name our baby Félix, with the middle name Joe-Louis.  Up until now, we had been giving each baby a middle name to go with one of the grandparents, but since this is 90% our last baby, we went with a hyphenated name (after the two grandparents left).

The older kiddos visited us at the hospital, and Élise was NOT happy when I was holding the new baby.  Like I said before, we came back home on Sunday, and I tried to spend as much time relaxing/napping as possible.  Unfortunately, the first two nights were pretty rough, as Mr Félix just wanted to be snuggled and would fuss when we put him down.

Luckily, he started sleeping longer stretches the third night, and I’ve been able to catch back up on all the sleep that I lost.  The first week he was feeding about 10 times a day but has quickly gotten to an 8-a-day schedule the last little while.

My parents had to leave and we’re slowly adapting to our new routines.  I spent the first week pretty much just taking care of baby, now I have all three to manage!  Thankfully, it’s going to be the Christmas break soon and the Husband will be here to help out.  The 3-week growth spurt is also coming, and I know I’ll need all the help I can get!

Because it’s Christmas next week and then New Year’s, I’ll be taking a bit of a break from the blog (and well, new baby!).  Don’t worry though, I’ll be back in 2020 with a lot of great content, and some new projects too!

Hopefully, you enjoyed reading all about our third baby’s birth story and liked seeing photos of little Félix.  I think I’ll have to write something about how we chose our baby’s names… because I’m definitely getting a lot of those questions!