This story begins about two weeks before my due date, on November 13, 2023. I’d been hoping this baby would come early, honestly, since I’d been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, which can be an indicator for premature delivery. After living with that for two months, in addition to all the general third trimester unpleasantness, I had November 15 in mind for some reason and was kind of low-key hoping to manifest that as Baby’s arrival date. So when I started feeling labor pains about 8:00 p.m. that Monday night, I thought, well, a little earlier than I’d thought (and I had some things with work I’d been hoping to wrap up, oh well), but better early than late, right?
It was similar enough to my early labor pains with Meg that I knew it wasn’t Braxton Hicks, but subtly different enough for me to wonder, and I did have this niggling thought in the back of my head that I might not actually be in labor. So I hurried to finish up the project I was working on that week as I waited for the contractions to get more intense and closer together, as well as Googling various forms of “how to tell if you’re really in labor.” The internet insisted that the only thing to look out for was contractions that were regular, painful, and lasted for about a minute—check, check, and check.
But then a few hours went by, and nothing was changing. I had low-grade contractions, uncomfortable but not painful, about every 5–10 minutes, lasting about a minute each, with sometimes a few weaker ones in between. I finally decided to try to get some sleep, but my mind was fraught with anxieties about Baby’s heart rate dropping if my labor had stalled and how would I know something is wrong here at home… So I really didn’t get much sleep over the next few hours, and I finally called it about 4 a.m. I knew I wasn’t in active labor, but I was paranoid about my labor being stalled (not totally baseless—my labor had stalled with Meg because she was breech), so we called in the grandparents to come stay with Meg and get her off to school while we checked into labor and delivery.
When we got to our room, the first thing we did was listen to the last fifteen minutes of someone else giving birth in the next room (note to self: bring noise-cancelling headphones next time…). Then the nurse came to check my cervix and told me I was still only dilated to about 1.5. Which I thought was odd, because that was the same as my last OB appointment a week before. And this is when I learned about a lovely little phenomenon called false labor. I Googled those words specifically when I got home (they discharged me after about 5 hours), and while it can take different forms, false labor is mostly characterized by painful, one-minute contractions that never progress beyond 5–10 minutes apart. It’s virtually impossible to tell apart from real early labor other than that your cervix doesn’t dilate and you don’t have a baby. Cool.
So this was “ante-partum” hospital visit #1 (keep track). They pumped me full of fluids (false labor can be caused or exacerbated by dehydration) and sent me home with the following conditions for coming back (this will be important later): active labor (i.e., contractions or water breaking), decreased fetal movement (i.e., baby not moving), or symptoms of preeclampsia (i.e., swelling, nausea, etc.).
So I went home and lived my life, a little disgruntled, but hey, this would give me time to actually finish up with work before I went on maternity leave. My doctor said he thought Baby might come in the next couple of days, but after the false alarm, I kind of figured we’d just be waiting out the full term.
Cut to Sunday. I’d developed some varicose veins in my thighs a couple weeks before, and this Sunday, the idea of putting on tights and sitting in church pews/chairs for two hours was just unbearable. So I called up the OB on call, and she recommended I come in to the office the next day, but if they got worse, I should go to the ER right away. About 4:00 in the afternoon, one of my legs started getting red and feverish, so into the ER we went. There was some initial confusion about whether I should be checked into L&D, but in the end I stayed in the ER, since it wasn’t really baby-related. They did an ultrasound to see if there could be a deep-vein clot, and fortunately there wasn’t, so they sent me home with some antibiotics (visit #2).
The following week was Thanksgiving. Matthew was pretty convinced Baby would be born on the holiday, because we were hosting my family, and of course it would be that day, but alas, we should be so lucky. The day before (Wednesday), I was sitting with Meg watching a show when I realized I hadn’t felt Baby move for about the past 4 hours. I panicked and rushed to my OB’s office, but it was the end of the day (right before a holiday), so they told me I needed to go over to L&D (they’re in the same building as the hospital). I had drunk some orange juice (my first concentrated sugars in over two months) before leaving the house to try to wake Baby up, and she finally started moving as I was checking in, but we still did the full non-stress test, which she of course passed no problem (visit #3).
The next Saturday (it always has to happen on the holiday weekend, doesn’t it?), I texted my OB about some new swelling I’d started having since Thanksgiving. I didn’t really think there was anything to it, but it was enough to make me wonder. Then as I was eating (or trying to eat) breakfast, I had this intense wave of nausea that had me lying on my kitchen floor trying not to throw up (no one else was home). So I texted that update to my OB and he said, “Yeah, you definitely need to go get checked for preeclampsia.” This time, I was extremely unhappy to be back in L&D AGAIN. I had to apologize to the nurse for being so grumpy, but like, come ON, right? Once again, nothing was wrong, false alarm (visit #4).
By this time, I was just mentally and emotionally exhausted by the whole thing. I was so angry with my body for all the fake-outs. Every time I would feel a “contraction,” I couldn’t let myself even wonder if I might be going into labor, and I kept having the thought that if it DID end up being the real thing, would I even be happy? Or would I still be angry with everything leading up to this point. I’d had a C-section with Meg, and the risks of induction are much higher in that case, so my options were kind of just wait it out or have a repeat C-section, and I had decided earlier in my pregnancy that I wanted to do what’s called a VBAC (vaginal birth after C-section), but the waiting and false alarms were just crushing my soul.
It was at this point I called up a dear friend of mine who had been in a similar situation to ask for advice. She assured me that a planned C-section is way less intense than an emergent one, which did ease my mind somewhat, but the thing she said that really stuck with me was, “You have to do what’s right for your physical and mental health as well as for your baby.” And it just made me really look at how much my mental health was suffering, trying to wait it out, and how much I would benefit from having a “done” date. So I made the decision to talk to my doctor on Monday (four days before my due date) to schedule a C-section.
In the middle of the night on Sunday, I woke up about 3 a.m. with a searing pain in my left side. I knew I wasn’t in labor, and I felt like I just kept jumping the gun on nothing, so I got up, changed positions, tried to stretch it out, did some more Googling (still utterly unhelpful). Half an hour later, the pain hadn’t subsided at all, nothing was helping, and I said to Matthew (upon waking him), “I hate to say this, but I think we need to go to the hospital again…”
So here we are with ante-partum visit number FIVE… and this time there was actually something wrong—sort of. We got there and the nurses were talking about maybe kidney stones (and I’m like, oh man, that would SUCK), so they did an ultrasound on my kidney. Fortunately for me, there were no stones, but they did find inflammation, and my OB said his best guess was that Baby was sitting on my urethra, which was blocking urine from exiting the kidney. And I had already decided we were going C-section, so I was like, “Pull the trigger, Doc.”
So we went home, again, but this time we have a date and time: 8:00 a.m. Tuesday. We actually had to check into L&D by 5:30, so we had my mom stay the night to be with Meg and get her off to school in the morning. For the first time, I finally had peace as we went through the process and waited for 8:00 to roll around. Plus, when you have a C-section, they put you in the long-term recovery room, where you can’t hear all the other moms and babies on the ward, so that was a relief.
We actually ended up having to delay our C-section due to an emergent C-section that had to be done at 7:30, but again, we were just chillin’ at this point. The important thing was that I would not have to leave the hospital without a baby this time, and everything else just rolled right off my back. As far as I know, that C-section went well, though I did feel for that other mama, since I know firsthand how scary and difficult an emergent C-section can be.
So we finally got into the OR around 10:00, and as my friend had said, it was all very chill. I was much more settled within myself, knowing what to expect, and the team were pretty low key with it all. They didn’t even strap my arms into the “cross” this time, which was very nice. They use a different kind of anesthetic for planned C-section, a three-hour nerve block instead of the epidural. I barely even felt the needle going in. As it was supposed to be taking effect, I could still very much feel them prepping my stomach, though. The anesthesiologist assured me that the pain blocker would still work but I would be feeling “pressure”… and honestly, that was the only time I felt even slightly nervous, but he was right and it was fine. There was no awkward hiccupping or weird shoulder pain, and since my hands were free, I was actually able to hold Baby for a moment in the OR, which was nice.
It really takes surprisingly little time to “deliver” this way. They tell you they’re starting and it’s all quiet for a couple minutes while they work, and the baby doesn’t even cry at first. When the doctor was pulling her out, I sort of heard him mumbling, “Oh, Lara, this is not a small baby!” I actually thought at first he was remarking that she was a small baby, but then he lifted her up over the drape for Matthew and me to see and said, “Look at this kid! She’s huge!” (Side note, she looked exactly like Meg in that moment.)
Large birth size is a fairly common complication of gestational diabetes, so I had been expecting a larger baby, but every time I would go in for an appointment, he’d tell me my stomach was measuring textbook size. So he was absolutely shocked. Apparently my GD diet had eliminated all the fat in my stomach, so there was nothing but baby, making it deceptively small (though I definitely still felt huge…). When they took her to the weigh station, she was 9 lbs. 5 oz.
I went straight back to my room from the OR this time, no interim recovery room, and as soon as Baby was all cleaned up, I got to hold her again. I didn’t have any hard drugs in my system, so I definitely felt much more present this time, which was something I had been concerned about.
Now, the name. Matthew and I are notoriously bad at naming girls. We can hardly find a name either of us likes, let alone one we agree on. I liked the name Sierra but Matthew didn’t; he liked Guinevere/Gwen but I didn’t; and Meg had put forward Julia, but neither of us were crazy about it. Unlike with Meg, we had not managed to come to any conclusion before the event, so we dug up our list and started trying a few out. I’d call her Julia for a couple of hours, then try Serena (a new name Matthew had suggested)…
As I was running through our list of names to check that none of the initials would spell something weird (we’d already decided on Lucille as a middle name), I realized that Serena (our top S pick at the time) would make her initials SLK, which is the name of Matthew’s family ranch, which is in turn named for his grandfather who had those initials. Matthew really loves for a name to have a family connection, so we now knew that her first name had to start with S. Matthew was actually the one to say that Sierra was back on the table after that, and we narrowed it down to a couple of similar names. We still took our time to try out all the S options, but in the end, my pick won out (Sierra) and we filled out the birth certificate paperwork on our way out of the hospital two days later.
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