Felix Birth Story

 Felix Joseph Blood was born at 1:15am on July 26, 2024
6 lb 8 oz
18 inches

Now here's the long version with the graphic details:

I started having Braxton Hicks contractions about 10 minutes apart around 1pm on Tuesday the 23rd. I didn't take them too seriously, because I had been having them fairly often for a few weeks, and it was still 2 weeks before my due date. I was dilated to a 3, but that was not unusual for me. Whenever the contractions got closer, I would lie down, and it would space them out to about 20 minutes apart. I was supposed to go to the hospital once they hit 6 minutes apart. 

This went on all evening. The contractions got to about 8 minutes apart when I was trying to cook dinner, so Aaron tagged me out so I could lie down. I decided to go to book club that night figuring I could lounge on Jill's couch as well as my own. Whenever I stood up, I would trigger a contraction, but then they would space out again. Every hour or so I would get a painful contraction, but most of them were minor. Before going to bed, I texted Joanna and Rayne asking them to keep their phones off silent just in case they needed to come sleep at our house and be there for the kids when they woke up. 

I slept for an hour, then was woken up by a painful contraction. I started timing the contractions around 11:30pm. They ranged from 8 to 15 minutes apart, but were all painful now. At 1:00am, I woke up Aaron saying that we should go in because of how intense the contractions were even though they weren't meeting the 6 minute criteria. He got up and started grabbing chargers and toiletries to throw them in the bag. I stood up and immediately got hit with the most intense contraction yet- and this one didn't stop. I was in a non-stop contraction until the baby popped out. We both started calling Joanna... then Rayne... then Joanna again... then Stephen and Claudia... no one would answer. I managed to walk down the stairs to the car, and we decided to drive to Stephen's house two minutes away. Aaron pounded on Joanna and Rayne's window to wake them up and send them to our house. Apparently their phones were turned on, but they are just very deep sleepers. By this point I was bracing myself between the handle above the door and the center console and offering up some very panicked prayers. It hadn't occurred to me yet that we might not make it to the hospital. I wasn't thinking anything very coherently at this point- but at the same time, I wasn't screaming or feeling like I might black out. I figured it was still a long way to go to get the baby actually out. 

My water broke as we left Stephen's neighborhood. A minute later, I told Aaron to pull over because the head was coming out. Aaron turned off onto Camino Hopa and sprinted around to the passenger side where I was sitting. I had pulled down my pants to reveal a whole head by the time he opened my door. He was face down, and I remember seeing a head full of hair. Aaron slid my chair back, grabbed Felix's head, and caught him as Felix slid on out. It was over in a matter of seconds. It was 15 minutes from the time I got out of bed to when we were holding him in the car. 

Felix was crying in a healthy kind of way. The umbilical cord wasn't wrapped around anything. I held him close on my skin, which was actually a bit tricky because of how slippery he was. Aaron and I looked at each other with wide eyes and had this funny moment where we realized that everything was fine, and we had no idea what to do next. I remember saying, "I feel a lot better now!"

Aaron called my doctor's emergency hotline. They recommended calling an ambulance, but that seemed unnecessary. I could tell that neither Felix or I was in an emergency condition and that we could make to a hospital just fine. We asked if we should go to the hospital with the birthing center up in Tucson, but they advised us to go to the Sahuarita ER first to get checked out since the full hospital was a half hour away. While Aaron was figuring all this out, I gave the umbilical cord an experimental tug, and the whole placenta plopped out. We stopped by our house to grab another towel and then drove to the ER. Aaron ran in and told them that his wife had a baby in the car and that we were out in the parking lot. They came out with a wheelchair for me, and I awkwardly transferred myself with my lap full of baby and placenta to the wheelchair. They checked us out, clamped and cut the umbilical cord, and got us into a state where we could drive ourselves up to the normal hospital. I was able to walk out of the ER, which was pretty amazing to me - I had epidurals for all my other babies and am used to not being able to walk for quite a while. 

The first picture taken of Felix!

Aaron and Felix in the Sahuarita ER

We checked into the hospital and went through all the same initial checks. I was able to talk my way out of getting an IV. The nurse asked if she could get me a snack around 5:00 am, and I realized I was STARVING, and also that I no longer had gestational diabetes! Cocoa Puffs Cereal has never tasted so good. 

I was hoping to convince the staff to discharge me that evening if everything looked good, but unfortunately they require babies to stay for 24 hours for monitoring. It ended up being way longer than that. Time is so weird at the hospital. We kept getting woken up by nurses checking on me or Felix, but then when I was eager to have the last people come check us out so that we could be on our way, it took hours. Aaron and I passed the time video calling family members and texting "guess who had a baby in the car at 1am" to people. My mom had by far the best response. She was at Aunt Audrey's house getting ready for Alpine and was going to fly to our house on Aug 1 to be there the week before the due date. I knew she already had a migraine from travelling and stressing over the women's retreat at Alpine, so I knew I had to break things to her slowly. I texted her saying "Hey, call me when you wake up. I have an update!" She called thinking I had new logistics about the induction that I was working on scheduling. I had the camera pointed at Felix. She started hyperventilating and generally freaking out that she wasn't there to help us, and this was before she knew the car part of the story! She wisely sat down with Dad and braced for the story. Her gasps and general reactions were priceless. She also lobbied hard for us to change his name to Brigham once she realized he was born on Pioneer Day. 

For those who are wondering, Aaron did a wonderful job cleaning the car. He went out in the hospital parking lot and used up an entire package of baby wipes to get the worst of it before it could bake in the heat. He worked some magic on it when he went home, and now the passenger seat is visibly cleaner than the driver side! 

Aaron ended up going home that night to be with our kids since there wasn't much to be done at the hospital. He brought the kids with him in the morning thinking that we would all drive home together (in theory, they didn't let us leave yet). It was a great family bonding moment.

Annie's first time holding Felix. She cannot get enough of him. I frequently have to banish her from touching Felix so that he can nap. 

Elliot volunteered to be late to pool party day at summer camp to get to meet his little brother. Elliot is SO sweet with Felix. He loves watching him and commentating on his little faces and adding sound effects when Felix is flailing around. 

Isaac was quite concerned that Felix was trying to eat his pikachu shirt. They have since become buddies. 

Aaron took Elliot and Isaac but left Annie with me to have a fun hospital date. We obsessed over Felix, shared my lunch, and watched some shows on the iPad until they finally discharged us around 1pm. 

I'm writing this a week after Felix was born. Reflecting back on it, this birth story is the one that every pregnant woman is terrified of, but I think that emergency C-sections or bad reactions to epidurals are both worse and more common. I am very grateful that there were no complications and also that it was the middle of the night so that I didn't have an audience of friendly neighbors there for the delivery. My recovery has been much faster than it was with the other births. Overall, I feel much less traumatized than perhaps I ought to be. 

We had to wait and struggle for a couple years to get pregnant with Felix. He seems like such a gift! We are already all so in love with the newest addition to our family.