Lincoln enjoying his brother

Paul at 6 weeks

Our Birth Story

Our second son, Paul Monroe Miller, was born on June 25th at 10:48 pm at St. Mary's Hospital. He was 8 pounds 13 ounces and 20 inches long and has a shock of dark brown hair that I think is here to stay. At first, we thought he looked nothing like Lincoln (mainly because of the dark hair), but we are seeing more and more similar features each day. We are so excited about our new family member!

I wish that I had more time to reflect and calmly enjoy this time period, but having a second child is just so different. Lincoln really loves his brother and gives him kisses all the time, but he is definitely acting out a lot more than usual. I've heard "NO!" from him more in the last weeks than his whole verbal life before. We are trying very hard to keep his life as routine and predictable as possible, but what with our recent move, a crying newborn, and his transition to a big boy bed in his brand new room, this has been kind of difficult! Added to that, Greg and I have both had bouts of food poisoning (separate cases) and I had my wisdom teeth extracted on Thursday after one of them cracked. I can't wait to be on the other side of this chaos and enjoy spending time with my family of four in an organized house of our own! Anyway, all of this craziness means that I'm just finding time to share my reflections on Paul's birth on his 6 week birthday.

I have been blessed with two amazing birth experiences now. Paul's was amazing and incredibly fast! What more could I ask for? My mother arrived from Delaware with her one-way ticket on Tuesday, June 21st, and we used the next couple of days to get all the little loose ends tied up before Paul's arrival. On Saturday morning, we finally got the clean baby clothes into the dresser and bought and wrapped a gift for the baby from Lincoln. I finally felt like I had all of my ducks in a row by the time we went to our new neighborhood for a Summer Solstice festival at around 4:30 pm. After visiting with friends and watching Lincoln dance at the festival, we headed home for a late dinner at around 6:15 pm. As we were sitting at the dining room table, I started having gas pains, which I attributed to the snacks I had at the festival. After a couple rounds of complaining about gas pains, I realized that the pains were coming pretty regularly. Greg got out his iPod (which has a great stop watch function for timing contractions) and started timing my "gas pains". They were coming every 5 minutes, but only lasting for 20-30 seconds. I kept eating and was fully functioning through what I now knew were contractions. I don't remember contractions feeling like that with Lincoln, but that's because when I started feeling contractions with Lincoln, they were 2 minutes apart and super painful. This labor started much less intensely and silly me thought I was in for a longer, calmer labor than with Lincoln. We continued to time our contractions at home and I was able to read Lincoln some bedtime stories. Greg called our doctor at around 8:00 pm and we headed to the hospital at around 8:30 pm.

It was clear we were staying at the hospital when I measured 4 cm dilated, 90% effaced, and 0 station. The contractions were definitely intensifying as we moved into the birthing suite around 9:45 pm and I asked the nurse to fill the tub right away. Our nurse, Gina, said that she was on shift until 11 pm and another nurse would help us during labor after that (ha!). I hopped (yeah, right!) into the tub when it was filled and quickly asked Greg to join me in the tub to apply counter pressure on my back. No modesty with this couple, just naked in the tub. Gina asked a million obligatory questions between contractions and then let me concentrate on breathing during the contractions. The counter pressure that Greg applied was a lifesaver and allowed me to pretty calmly work through the contractions, which were coming every 2 minutes or so now. I'm not sure how long we were sitting in the tub before I felt a major pop and knew that my water had broken. It was really strange to experience this in the water, because I didn't feel the gushing of fluid. Gina came in and recommended moving from the tub to the bed so that my doctor (who was already in the hospital) could check how far along I was. After this was stated as the plan, I had two or so more contractions and then felt this incredibly painful urge to push that scared me silly. I yelled, "I'm puuuuussssshinnnngggg!" and Gina tried to talk me through it so that I didn't push yet. With the next contraction, I was panicking and yelled again. I had two hours of pushing with Lincoln and I was thinking that if I had to endure the pain I was in this time around for two hours, I was going to die. When Gina realized that she was not going to talk me out of pushing, she charged out of the bathroom and yelled into the hallway, "I need some help in here!" and all of the sudden, there were 5 or 6 medical staff (all women) in the small bathroom with me and my naked husband. One of them was my doctor (Dr. Bonk, I love the name) and she still thought that we were going to move to the bed. With the next contraction, she changed that plan to at least getting me out of the tub. The nurses started laying towels down on the tile in the bathroom. With the next contraction, Dr. Bonk declared, "We're having a water birth!" Paul popped out into the water with the next push. They immediately lifted him from the water and put him on my chest. Greg cut the umbilical cord in a very strange position kind of pinned behind me and then they whisked Paul away to do tests and attend to his breathing, which was very wet and heavy. I was attended to next and as I stood up, I dropped a lot of blood into the tub where Greg was sitting. He kind of jumped up away from the bloody water and as the remaining medical staff helped me out of the bathroom, Greg was left standing naked with no towel in a tub full of bloody water. Definitely shows the place of importance the father holds in the birth experience...last. Poor Greg. As we settled in for our recovery time in the birth suite, the staff was buzzing about the water birth. This is not protocol at St. Mary's, so it was a new experience for our doctor and a lot of the nurses. Definitely makes for a vivid memory and a fun story to tell.