Welcome Molly, the newest My Healthy Beginning Bradley baby!
Molly Stephanie Moen was born 2 weeks early and weighed 8 lbs 5 oz on Monday, July 22, 2013. Here is their birth story as told by dad Jesse’s perspective (and such a sweet one!).
Emily’s water broke at 10:00 pm Saturday July 20 but she wasn’t having any contractions or feeling any signs of labor. We called the midwives at Health Foundations and we made a plan to go into the center at 2:15 pm Sunday July 21 if labor hasn’t started just to check to make sure everything is going well still. After meeting with Amanda, the midwife, we went back home with instructions if labor hasn’t started by 8:00 am Monday morning we were going to start the herbal remedies and castor oil.
Bedtime (around 10:30 pm) rolled around Sunday night with still no signs of labor whatsoever. At this point it had been 24 hours from the water breaking. Emily went to sleep with positive thoughts on her mind that it would happen overnight and we wouldn’t have to induce with castor oil in the morning. She woke up at 12:30 that night with extreme pain and we knew labor was in full force! (Little did we know, how full force it actually was) Emily told me it started at midnight and the contractions were lasting 30-40 seconds and were coming 3 minutes apart! With us living 45 minutes from Health Foundations, this had me starting to get a little worried.
We called the midwife right away and she was on the phone with us for about 10 minutes and the original plan was to wait an hour and check back in with her. But in that 10 minute phone call, Emily had 3-4 contractions and we decided that we needed to leave immediately.
We were in the car by 1:00 am on Monday morning July 22 with a 45 minute drive looming. Emily was in extreme pain with the contractions still happening about 3 minutes apart. After about 20 minutes in the car Emily told me she felt like she had the urge to push and this scared both of us since we were only halfway there. At that point we knew she was in the transition period. She skipped over the entire early labor stages and started off with the transition period!
After another grueling 25 minutes in the car we arrived at Health Foundations at 1:45 am and they checked her immediately and she was completely dilated and they gave her the go ahead to start pushing on her next contraction.
She pushed for about 4 contractions in the bed while waiting for the tub to fill up because she decided on the way over she wanted to have a water birth. We eventually moved her to the tub where she continued to push and after about 45 minutes to an hour of pushing, Molly Stephanie Moen was born at 2:46 am on July 22!
Baby was healthy throughout the entire ordeal and she immediately perked up and cried right away as she was being brought out of the water. Emily, on the other hand, had a bit of a struggle after the birth. The placenta was not wanting to come out and the midwives had to basically reach in at one point and grab it. The midwives did an absolutely wonderful job of being calm through the entire process. We could tell they were being more urgent about getting the placenta but they were very calm in how they went about it. As a result of this, Emily lost quite a lot of blood and they had to give her two shots of pitocin to help the uterus contract back into place and stop the bleeding, plus they put her on an IV and gave her two bags of fluids.
Emily was also running a fever in the few hours after birth and the midwives were slightly concerned and didn’t want us to leave until it had come down. They wanted to make sure there wasn’t any type of infection that was causing the fever.
At about 8:00 am Monday morning her fever was regulated enough and had come down to a point where we were discharged and could go home! We were home by 9:30 am and couldn’t be happier with our new addition!
Looking back, it was a very close call considering she started labor at midnight and the baby was born at 2:46 am and we had a 45 minute drive in-between. But all in all, our decision to switch over to Health Foundations was the best decision we could’ve made. We were so happy with out birth experience there and the Bradley classes were crucial in our knowledge of what was going on. We will be recommending both the Bradley classes, with you Nichi, and Health Foundations to people we know in the future!
Thank you so much for our Bradley class and speaking so highly of Health Foundations!
-Jesse, Emily, AND Molly Moen
