Welcome Alexa

Here is Miss Alexa's birth story.

On January 24 (Monday), I started waking up at about 3AM with some cramps. They woke me up about every half hour between three and six, when Jevon's alarm went off. By the time breakfast rolled around, they were definitely coming in irregular waves.

Jevon went off to work after making me promise to call him if anything changed. The contractions got more regular through the morning, so Jevon decided to come home at noon to work from home for the afternoon (he didn't get much work done, in the end).

The midwives arrrived around 1:00 to check me out, and decided that labour had indeed started and that I should call them when things got a little closer. By that point, contractions were anywhere between three and 18 minutes apart, lasting about 45 seconds.

My mum left Huntsville around 12:30, and we called Rachel (Jevon's sister, who was also our Doula) to come from Kitchener at around 2:00. They arrived one after the other mid-afternoon. By that time, things were definitely underway, and I was very glad of the support. Mum, Jevon and Rachel made a fantastic team!

We called our midwives around 5:00PM, and Deborah arrived close to 6:00.

I had a good labour, in and out of the birthing tub, supported by Jevon, mum, Rachel and the midwives. Midwife Deborah left late in the evening, and Suzan and Melinda took over. It was actually fun - Jevon helped me relax with the hypnobirthing techniques, and I leaned on whoever was close by whenever a contraction hit. I relaxed in the pool, on the air mattress, or at the chairs when I could.

I got to 9 cm at 2:00 AM. We were getting pretty excited. Unfortunately, my body wanted to push even though things weren't ready, so I used a lot of the hypnobirthing breathing and visualizations to get me through. Despite this, my body continued to try to push and it was difficult to stay calm. After a trying this for a while, we decided to break my water to see if that would speed things along. We tried some homeopathics to help, some visualization and relaxation techniques, and tried having me in several different positions, too.

Nothing we tried worked. I stayed at 9 cm, so eventually the midwives suggested that we try going to the hospital to see if an epidural would help. Sometimes this is the only solution when your body is pushing ahead of time.

At 5:00AM, we piled in the car to go to the hospital. The hospital staff tested my blood to see if I was a candidate for an epidural. I was, so after about 1.5-2 hours at the hospital we ended up getting an epidural. I really didn't want an epidural - it wasn't in my plans for a natural birth - but this was the best way to see if things could progress. An OB was brought in for a consult. She highly recommended a caesarian right then and there, but we stuck to our guns. Thankfully, she was soon replaced by a much more sympathetic OB who understood how badly I wanted to minimize interventions.

After an hour and a half, there was still no progression, so they tried augmenting the labour with oxytocin. After another hour, things were back between 8 and 9 cm. This baby was stuck! The new OB tried moving the baby manually - turns out the baby was "sunny side up". Our spines were together instead of her facing my spine. That was why I had so much back pain during labour! The OB managed to turn the baby, but only temporarily. The baby moved back to sunny side up right away.

The OB and midwives talked to Jevon and I, and we made the decision to have a caesarian for the safety of both baby and mum. It was the hardest decision I've had to make and there were a lot of tears in the hospital room. It was a far cry from the at-home, natural water birth that I had planned.

At the time that we made the decision to have the caesarian, I had laboured for 9.5 hours at 9 cm. It was a very intense few hours.

Once the caesarian decision was made, things moved very quickly. I was wheeled into the operating room and things started happening very quickly. They boosted the epidural strength and strapped me down. Jevon was allowed to come into the room and sit by my head.

Soon, we heard "Well, you don't have a small baby" and then some little cries. The cries were the most beautiful sound! Suzan peeked her head around the drape and asked if she could tell us what we had. We said yes, and she said that we had a little girl. With nine nephews and only four nieces (and none of the nieces on the van der Meer side), I was actually a little surprised to hear the news.

Soon, they brought our girl over for some skin-to-skin time with daddy. It was amazing. He got to bond with her while they were stitching me back up. They wheeled us into the recovery room and put the baby on my chest. The epidural was making me shake, so the midwives wrapped hot towels all over my body (on my head, legs, chest, arms... it felt heavenly).

We looked at our new arrival and decided that our favourite girl's name, Alexa, indeed fit her. Her middle name was a given - we knew that a girl would have Grammie's name as her middle name.

Alexa Leslie VandenBerg made her way into the world at 11:35 AM on Tuesday, January 25. At 8 lb 11 oz, she wasn't exactly tiny. Just as the surgeon said.

We fell in love with her immediately. Neither of us was quite prepared for the overwhelming feelings of love that washed over us upon seeing her for the first time. As I was lying on the hospital bed, I started shaking with emotion.

In our eyes, she is the most beautiful girl in the world. We are both absolutely smitten with our new arrival. On one hand, we can't quite believe that she's ours. On the other hand, we can't quite believe that she hasn't been with us forever. She was so familiar from minute one of life.

In the end, we had the at-home labour experience that we wanted, even if the delivery didn't quite go to plan. But the end result - our little girl - is perfect.