Ina's Birth Story

I was 41 weeks and 3 days and had pretty much resigned to being pregnant forever. I had been up all night, as I had almost every night in the last week and a half, because my joints hurt too bad to fall asleep, especially my hips and knees whenever I was laying down. At 3:45am, I decided to try to sleep again. After I layed down for maybe 10 mins, I had a painful contraction that was much stronger than the ones I had been having over the past weeks/months, and I sat up in bed and stayed sitting until it stopped. I had glanced at the clock and it was just prior to 4am. I had two more, and did the same thing sitting up/laying down, and then after that one I went and sat in the bathroom. I had 3 more, and looked at the clock and it had only been 15 mins with 6 total contractions. I woke up Rob and told him to stay awake because I thought I was in labor and it was going fast, but I wanted to shower to be sure, since all of my past contractions would usually die out in the shower. I got in the shower and had more contractions and when I got out Rob had fallen back asleep. (Good thing I didn’t need him!) I woke him up and told him I think we needed to call Irma (my doula) and the birth center because I think it was happening fast. He insisted we time more contractions first, so I put up with him timing contractions for a few mins and after he kept “messing up” and wanting to start over, I yelled at him to just go by the last three he had and start calling people. By those, I was having about 1-1.5 minute long contractions every 2.5 minutes. And I couldn’t walk, talk, move through them at all. After we called and decided we were going into the birth center, Rob started loading up the car with our stuff and I told him to get the list of the things I said to “grab as we were leaving” and I told him to not get like half the stuff on the list, since I didn’t feel like we had time and I didn’t think we’d need them. Rob grabbed Joey out of bed and loaded him into the car about 5:10. Joey wanted to know why we were going to have the baby in the dark and couldn’t we wait until day time? On the way, Rob called his parents to come meet us at the birth center (they were going to be with Joey while I was in labor) and called my parents in California to tell them I was in labor. I was told later that there was a beautiful crescent moon with Venus right near it that Rob and Irma both saw while going to the birth center, but I didn’t notice. We made it to Fruitful Vine about 5:30, and made my way to exam room to find out I was 5-6cm dilated, and then we went over to one of the birthing suites. Hope was apologizing that I was getting the small room, because there was another mom there that had her baby earlier in the night and was still in the other room. I don’t remember if I told her I didn’t care or if I was just thinking it, but I really would have had the baby where-ever at that point. The moment we walked into one of the birth rooms, Joey announced that his baby sister’s name is Ina Beth to everyone in the room. Totally made me laugh, that he kept his mouth shut the entire pregnancy and decided to announce it the moment I was in labor - we thought he had forgotten it. When Rob was unloading the stuff, Joey stayed with me and started immediately pigging out on his “birth snacks” that he had been waiting weeks to eat. I had maybe 3 more contractions and Irma got there and shortly after, my inlaws got there about 6am and went with Joey into the waiting room to watch DVDs. I had been sitting on the bed and moved to kneeling in front of the bed. My water broke after about 20 mins like that and then I got up on the bed at 6:30am. Hope wanted to check me but I had another contraction start, and out came half of her head along with her left hand. The next contraction came and out came the rest of her at 6:36am along with the rest of my amniotic fluid all over Hope, lol! Super fast! (oh, and no tearing either!) We had planned to have Joey come in for her being born, but it all happened so incredibly fast that there was no time, so we waited until after the placenta was out and she had nursed some and then Rob went to the waiting room to get Joey. We also didn’t get any labor or birth photos because of this. He asked Joey if he wanted to come see his baby sister and my inlaws were shocked and said “Already!?” :) We have a short video of just after Joey met Ina, the first thing he said was “Can we take her home?” and then he was talking to her very quietly saying “I’m your big brother and you’re my baby sister”, holding his hand up against hers. She was super wide-eyed alert the moment he started talking to her too, so sweet. Also, since I'm frequently asked, my Ina Beth is named after my childhood babysitter who died in a car accident when she was 16. I was a young girl and Ina Beth was like a big sister to me.