A Third Baby Story

Being a mom of 3 during a pandemic has got me short on time!!! So I’m copying my birth story below from my Instagram post announcing his birth! At the end, I’ll add a little bit about the recovery process this time around. This was a truly precipitous birth, though my first two births were also pretty precipitous. To be honest, there was little pain this time around, when I left for the hospital I really thought there was a lot more to come, but a lot changed during the 11 minute taxi ride to the hospital.

Our first on-time baby, second full-moon baby, and third little-boy baby 💙💙💙 jumped into this world April 7, 2020 at 2:27 AM.

I felt contractions throughout the day on April 6 but they were pretty inconsistent. After dinner I started timing them and they consistently started coming in 15 min intervals. I couldn’t sleep because of it and it was painful enough that I started wishing for pain relief, but thought I was being wimpy because they were 15 min apart…. Then at around 1:50 I got one long contraction that lasted about 5 min and told my husband that I wasn’t sure yet but maybe this was it. He was in a huge rush to get out the door but I was still hesitant… I called my midwife a little after that long contraction and she said to wait until they were 4 min apart for an entire hour. I wasn’t sure still and nervous to call a false alarm, but we started getting ready anyways and called our neighbor to come sleep on our couch.

All of a sudden I was really uncomfortable getting out the door. My husband called an Uber and we got in at 2:11. I told the driver he needed to go fast and I was not sure I was going to be able to keep the baby in 😬 We arrived at the hospital at 2:22. Husband ran into the ER to find me a wheelchair. Then there was a huge contraction and my water broke 😆 still sitting in back of a black Cadillac Uber. Driver tells me he has 3 kids and it’s fine 🤦‍♀️ I get in wheelchair to labor and delivery, they are debating putting me in an ER bed and I am telling them to just take me to the 4th floor!!!

I stand up out of the wheelchair into the triage room and this child literally jumps out INSIDE MY LEGGINGS — like he’s fully out all of a sudden and I didn’t even push 😬😳 and I’m screaming something along the lines of “someone help me there’s a baby in my pants” as they are trying to check me into triage 😆😳 Baby was born 2:27 AM, 5 minutes after arriving at the hospital!

My biggest fears before this were having a lobby baby or a taxi baby…. but here I am with a triage baby born in the middle of Manhattan during all of this!!!! So thankful that he is here and healthy.

Recovery

Due to COVID, my husband wasn’t allowed to come and go from the hospital. If he had been able to stay after the birth, he could have stayed with me, but since he had to go back to take care of our other two kids, I was stuck alone. I had made big plans in my head to enjoy certain foods post-birth and come home rested, etc… But all of that pretty much went out the window. It was just me (and the nurses, etc… who honestly are more of a bother than a help, coming in every 4 hours to check vitals when all I wanted to do was (try) to sleep…) 24/7 for about 40 hours.

I spent most of the day trying to figure out how I was going to get home since we didn’t have a car in the city and my husband coming in an Uber with the two other kids plus infant car seat just wasn’t ideal in the pandemic situation we were in. So I ended up asking a friend if she could do it and she agreed, so that was a lifesaver. The following day, which was the day I went home, I spent most of the day begging them to release me, which took them like 6 hours for some reason.

I was once again let down by the hospital birth experience, though given all of the circumstances it wasn’t that bad. Due to history of blood loss/hemorrhage, I’m not comfortable planning a home birth, and so my options were limited. I was glad I made the plans I did to choose the only hospital in NYC that had private recovery rooms, and it also happened to be the closest hospital to my apartment, and given the timing if I had chosen a different hospital I may have ended up with that taxi baby.