Kristen here again! If you thought the African adventure ended with Botswana, you’d be wrong. Little did we know, the adventure was just beginning. 2 weeks after we got home from Africa, we found out we were expecting our rainbow baby!

I’ll spare you the details of the pregnancy itself aside from being fairly easy except for a) carpal tunnel from 23 weeks to 3 months postpartum (ouch!) and b) extremely high blood pressure at 35 weeks and being put on bed rest. Those both sound terrible but I was able to lift weights and do light cardio up until I was put on bed rest. Additionally, our rainbow baby was already well-traveled in the womb. She went to California, Kauai, Hawaiʻi (the Big Island), Maryland, Washington D.C., New York, Wisconsin, and Michigan all between 8 weeks and 32 weeks!

The Delivery

Now, if you do not want to hear about the delivery itself, I advise you to skip ahead to the next section. Nothing crazy happened by any means. However, I know not everyone wants to hear a “birth story”. However, for those of you that do…

It was Christmas Eve and we were celebrating Christmas at Austen’s family’s house. After dinner, I felt a little “off”; not bad, just not normal. I put my hand on my stomach and it was contracting every 5-6 minutes consistently. It felt like Braxton Hicks contractions which I had experienced several times before. However, since the contractions were consistent, I called my doctor to determine if I needed to make a visit to the hospital. He advised me to head to the hospital to be monitored. Austen took the driver’s seat and we started the journey to the hospital. (Side note: it seemed all Austen heard was “IT’S GO TIME!” because we got to the hospital in record-time.)

I checked myself in and was immediately hooked up to a tocodynamometer which is an electronic device that monitors and records uterine contractions during labor. Nurses confirmed I was having consistent contractions. However, I was only .5cm dilated so I had 2 choices: 1) Walk the hallways to try to get labor started or 2) Go home, get some rest, and see if labor started at home. I chose option 2, was given an Ambien to sleep, and we drove the 30 minutes home.

I fell asleep when we got home around 10:30 PM. At 2:00 AM, I woke up feeling uncomfortable and I continued to toss and turn until I decided to finally get out of bed around 7:00 AM. Austen made a HUGE Christmas breakfast for my family and after our meal, my mom suggested we take a walk outside. The weather was a perfect 65 degrees Fahrenheit (~18 degrees Celsius). During our walk, there were two points where I had to stop and take some deep breaths. Unlike the night before, though, these breaks (i.e. contractions) were not consistent and varied anywhere between 11 and 18 minutes. Chalking it up to just being uncomfortable because I was 39 weeks pregnant, swollen, and full, I told my very concerned mom that I wanted to just continue to go about the morning. My mom pushed back and told me to call the doctor. I called, I told him the time between noticeable contractions, and I was advised to try to sleep. However, my mom did not like this advice and told me to tell my doctor that we were going to head to the hospital to get monitored again. Off to the hospital we went (around 12:00 PM)…

And good thing I listened to my mom! By the time I was hooked up, I was already over 4cm dilated which honestly surprised me because I hadn’t really been in “pain” up until this point, just uncomfortable. I did not really go in with a birth plan other than wanting an epidural which I got as soon as I could (even though I still hadn’t felt “pain” at the point of the epidural).

The epidural sucked. I was told the epidural was not pleasant but I was absolutely not prepared for how unpleasant it was. The anesthesiologist put the needle into my “epidural space”, which is right outside of the membrane that protects your spinal cord, started moving it around, and asked if I could feel it in certain positions. Every movement, I felt the feeling you get when you hit your funny bone but up and down my spine. Forty-five minutes of this and my lower extremities were finally numb. Once the epidural started doing its job, I was in heaven but until that moment…*cringe*

Pitocin was started shortly after. Within 2 hours, I started feeling uncomfortable again. My dilation was at 6-7cm so I was given another nerve block through the epidural and the uncomfortable feeling went away. Within 45 minutes, I was feeling uncomfortable again so I told the nurse I didn’t think the nerve block worked. The reason I felt this way? Within 45 minutes, I had dilated 3 more cm and it was baby time! I was given a different type of block (I was told so I could feel the pushing but not the pain). The doctor arrived and I started pushing. The baby was still high with 2 pushes and started having decels so the doctor said we would need to use the tongs to get her lower. I’m convinced she just heard the tongs hit the table and she immediately dropped. 3 pushes later (10-15 minutes total), our daughter made her debut. Shortly after, in my delirious state, I looked at Austen and told him the epidural was a miracle and I could do that 10 more times. First, WHAT!? and second, I know with that statement, I have now set myself for awful deliveries with any future children we decide to have…

Fun fact: our daughter’s middle name means “beautiful flower” in an African language.

The First Year

Exhausted does not even begin to describe how I felt the first 2 days after our daughter was born. Her days and nights were mixed up. She was cluster feeding. She only wanted to be held. I literally broke down in tears when the doctor arrived in my room on Day 2. This continued on through the next 2 weeks until my saint-of-a-mother-in-law got us a Snoo bassinet. This bassinet changed my life. By week 6, our daughter was sleeping 5-6 hours consistently. She eventually worked her way up to 8 hours consistently before we transitioned to the crib in her room around 5 1/2 months. I will forever rave about the Snoo and recommend it to anyone who will listen!

Fast forward to today, our daughter still sleeps through the night (11-14 hours). We definitely had two 4-6 week periods where she had some sleep regression but we (barely) got through them. Overall, she has been an amazing baby and we are so blessed to be her parents. In terms of travel, she has traveled to Florida, California, Pennsylvania (with only mommy), and Costa Rica. She is not only a great baby in general, she is a great traveler just like her momma/dadda!

Cheers to planning our next adventure with our rainbow!