Leo's Birth Story | Cincinnati Birth Videographer & Photographer
It’s taken me a while to sit down and write Leo’s birth story. On the one hand, how on earth can I put such a life changing experience down into simple words? I know I’ll never be able to articulate or retell it in a way that captures all that it was, but I hope when Leo reads this, he gets a glimpse of his first moments here on earth and knows how absolutely adored he is.
To be totally honest, the reason I’ve kept putting it off is because I’ve felt totally guilty about my experience. So many women have birth stories that are traumatic or terrifying… stories that are hard to process & accept. Yet, ours was nothing short of perfect. And when I sit down and really reflect on my reasons for feeling guilty or not writing his story, I have to remind myself that Leo’s story is a gift and that it’s important that good, positive birth stories are told. The good stories matter too.
On the evening of October 7th, 2020 Zach and I went to bed around 10:30pm which is very late for the two of us. Around 11:45pm I woke up suddenly with the urge to run to the bathroom. By the time I made it all of 10 feet, my water had broken and I like to say it was an utter disaster. I will tell you as someone who has worked in the neonatal/maternal area of medicine for 8+ years, all knowledge went out the window. I stuffed my underwear with countless baby diapers that proceeded to almost instantly needed to be changed out. I was shocked at how much fluid there was. We called the doctor and they told us it was best to make our way in. I wasn’t having any contractions at that point so between my constant changing and frantic packing (because I’m not a big planner… our hospital bag was only partially thrown together 😂) it took us almost an hour and a half to get out the door.
We arrived around 2 am into triage and got prepared to be fully admitted. At that point I still wasn’t having any contractions. It wasn’t until I was in the delivery room around 2:45/3am that I started to feel some inklings of contractions. Even so, they weren’t unbearable. Luckily, even with COVID restrictions, Zach and I were able to walk the halls which I’m so grateful for. I stopped here and there to breathe through the contractions as Zach read really beautiful Christian birth affirmations he found quickly on the internet (again, no preparation here 😂). Someone even stopped us in the hallway at one point and pointed out that the window we were standing in front of had some gorgeous sunrises. I looked at Zach and said “we should come back here when the sunrises”! (so naive). In general I remember feeling so much peace. I never once worried. I never let the hundreds of scary scenarios I’ve experienced take over my mind and I really felt this made all the difference. I trusted that God had me. No matter the outcome and no matter the process of getting there.
As we got closer to 7am the contractions started to kick up. I gratefully accepted a popsicle at one point which is hilarious because I realized very quickly, I could not eat a popsicle in the throws of natural labor. As we neared 7am, I knew natural labor wasn’t in the cards for me. Ironically I think I could have handled the actual contractions but it was the in between where I was struggling. I was shaking so badly and tensing up my muscles so aggressively that I was getting no relief or rest between them. I think it was my body’s way of processing the pain but it was relentless and made it impossible to even relax when I was able. Of course asking for an epidural around shift change means you're never going to get it. So around 8am, I finally got my epidural (I was only 4cm at this point). It took awhile for the epidural to work, especially on my left side, and there were talks of having to redo it (which was probably the only part of labor where I felt frustrated).
Once I got the epidural, I was worried it would end up stalling any progress but not even an hour and half later, I was complete and ready to push. That was such a surreal conversation. I expected it to take hours to go from 4cm-10cm so I’m pretty sure when they checked me and said it was time, I responded with “are you sure?”.
After less than 30 minutes of pushing and multiple hand gestures of how babies are born from Zach’s perspective (😂) our little Leo love was born. As his head was delivered, the midwife asked if I wanted to pull him out and without a second thought, I reached down and brought him all the way out. For a brief second the umbilical cord blocked my view but as I shifted him up to my chest, Zach cried out “It’s a Boy!!”
Nothing really prepares you for that moment. It was a simultaneous feeling of joy, shock, peace, confusion… all combined into one. One moment you’re just you two and then all of a sudden you have a moving, living child in your arms that is yours. That you created.
For anyone who knows our story, Zach experienced a bankruptcy before we met which ultimately was the reason we ended up meeting. To get through that time in his life, the verse Luke 10:19 was his lifeline. It was a bible verse that was always top of mind in our dating years. About a year before Leo was conceived, I had found out that I had a uterine anomaly (a heart shaped uterus) which could make creating children, staying pregnant, & having children etc to be a difficult road. So in February of 2020 when we found out we were pregnant, we were shocked. We not only were pregnant with a healthy baby, but my uterus was perfectly shaped. A real life miracle before our eyes. And you guessed it, our due date was 10/19. We always joked how crazy it would be if our baby was actually born on 10/19. God is cool like that sometimes. A redemption, a healing and miracle? So obviously when my water broke on October 7th, we laughed on the way to the hospital and said I guess God is finished with bringing that story full circle.
As they stitched me up (only a first degree thankfully!), Zach looked up at the clock which read 10:26am. He tells me that he immediately thought there was no way it was possible. But I remember hearing him ask the nurse “wait, what time was he born?”. She grabbed the contraction sheet, and flipped backward and simply said 10:19 am. For Zach and I, it was a moment that only him and I could probably ever articulate. In my 30 years here on earth, I have never felt so intimately loved by God until that moment right there. For an actual solid moment of time here on earth, I knew unquestionably that God had a hand in my life and he loved ME. Enough to bring me to my husband, to heal me & to speak to me in such an obvious way was overwhelming.
After everything was over and the room emptied out, we snapped endless photos and stared endless hours at this perfect little baby that was now ours. When I think back to those two days in the hospital it’s almost surreal. It was this room that irrevocably changed our lives. We walked in different people than when we walked out and how grateful I am for the adventure.
Birth Photography by the lovely Stacey Reid from Cincy Birth Stories