Faith McKenzie Clayton

Faith Mckenzie Clayton

6 lbs 7 oz and 19.25 in

Born at 2:07 pm

Let me start off by saying, this was my BEST birth experience. It was my favorite of the 4 births. It was beautiful and wonderful. So here’s the birth story of Faith:

We had dropped the kids off with family the night before. Charlie stayed with Vaughn and Becca. Hannah and Bella stayed with Ben and Shalyse. We were able to go out to dinner and then returned home to finish getting any last minute things done and to have a quiet evening ending with going to bed early.

I did not sleep well but hadn’t slept well the couple of weeks prior. I had insomnia so bad with this pregnancy! I woke up to use the restroom several times and when I woke up at 4:30 am I could NOT get back to sleep. I tried and tried. Finally at 5 am I gave up trying and read articles on line that had tips about birthing naturally. And watched a labor and delivery story on YouTube until 5:45 am when my alarm went off.

I got up and made us a simple breakfast of toast with peanut butter and honey. We had breakfast together and then got ready for the day. We were in the van and on the way to the hospital at 6:30 am. We arrived and got checked in. We were brought back to our room and then in came our nurse. Now let me just say we had an AMAZING nurse! Her name was Nurse Jenny and we loved her! We got hooked up to the monitors and I had a saline lock put in instead of an IV. I planned to have an unmedicated birth but wanted the lock so I could receive pain meds if the placenta needed to man handled and if I needed Oxitocin after giving birth to help my uterus contract and shrink.

We then waited 3 hours for the midwife to come. I guess Sunday is a really slow day at the hospital and we were fine with just relaxing, even though part of me was ready to just get things started! We choose Sunday so the midwife that I love could be the one to do the induction. I was able to watch the clock during the time frame I was released as the ward RS president. I was so glad to miss itJ. I got to miss all the crying and focus on having a baby. It made it a little easier.

The midwife came in close to 10 am and checked me to find I was 4-5 cm, 80% effaced and -1 station. She broke my water and stirred things up to get the progesterone flowing. It was not exactly a painless procedure but wasn’t too bad. And then we waited. We walked, and rolled my hips on the birthing ball and nothing crazy happened for 2 hours! I had a few contractions here and there but nothing crazy. I almost had to laugh that I was so worried things would happen so fast I wouldn’t make it to the hospital. I’m sure if I had been having contractions before my water broke things would have been a little different but that’s not how things went. At about 12:30 pm I began to worry that I would have to be put on Pitocin and that my chances of an unmedicated birth would not happen. I was tired and wanted so badly to sleep. So around 1pm I decided to lie down and rest for a little bit. When I lay down to rest after about 10 minutes the contractions began. They were 5-8 minutes apart and were pretty uncomfortable. At 1:30 pm I got up because I knew something was happening and got back on to the birthing ball. Things began to change quickly and they contractions went from 5-8 minutes apart to 2-3 minutes apart. At about 1:50 pm I started to become nauseated and asked Dan if he could ask the nurse for something I could use. When the nurse heard I was nauseated she came in and got a rag and put it on my neck and stayed with us encouraging me with every contraction. The contractions were about 1 min apart by this time and I was feeling very light headed, so with Nurse Jenny and Dan’s help I was able to get back into the bed. Within 1 minute of being in the bed I felt her drop (this was around 2 pm the nurse said) and told the nurse she was coming. She called the midwife and a couple of other nurses and they had me scoot down and I was told to push when I was ready. My body began pushing on its own. I was able to feel everything but was able to control the pushing pretty well, after only 4-5 pushes Faith was born at 2:07pm! I didn’t have any tearing just a little ‘skid mark’ which healed within 24 hours. The placenta came out without any problems. The midwife kept telling me how amazed she was and how she had never seen such control when pushing a baby out and she wishes she could have caught in on video. All the nurses were amazed too. I guess some of them didn’t know I hadn’t gotten an epidural until the midwife pointed it out. Afterwards they all kept telling me how amazing it was. I was just relieved it was over.

The cramping was pretty terrible after the birth. By far the worst I’ve ever had and the IBprofen they gave me didn’t touch it so they gave me some Percocet with Benadryl (because I get an allergic reaction to narcotics) which helped so much but pretty much ensured I was drugged and sleepy through the whole stay. It wasn’t too bad because I was able to get plenty of rest and Dan helped with little Faith especially in the evenings when I could hardly function due to exhaustion and the medications.

The kids came to visit with our family at 7pm that evening. I’ll post pictures and more on that later. I just wanted to share Faith’s birth story.