Sadie
“I know.”
It’s how I’d always respond when people would tell me, “It’ll happen for you one day.” I always responded with some form of “thank you” or “I know it will,” but to be honest, with each loss, it became harder and harder to believe. But then I got pregnant again, and each non-eventful, “everything looks great,” “there’s the heartbeat!” appointment brought more and more hope with it, and now…
She’s here! Our perfect, smart, kind, beautiful, strong, funny girl has arrived, and we are so in love.
Sadie Lauren was born on May 26th at 3:25pm. In one of our baby classes, someone asked the question, “When should we start thinking about meeting with our birth designer?” I googled “what’s a birth designer,” and it turns out, it’s someone who helps you curate the perfect atmosphere for giving birth, from music to lighting to — well, I’m not really sure what else to be honest. I had to laugh because it wasn’t something Sean and I had even thought about. We had spent the last 8 months just wanting everything to go smoothly and for the birth to result in a happy, healthy baby. The lighting, music, etc. simply didn’t make the list of things that were important to us.
Well, let me tell you, a birth designer could not have designed as smooth a delivery as the one we had.
I was induced at 37 weeks because I had gestational hypertension. We went into the induction expecting it to be a long process since it was early and my first time ever giving birth. We were prepared to be at the hospital for at least 24 hours before actually meeting our baby, but Sadie had other plans.
Saturday, May 25th
We arrived at the hospital around 8pm and were taken back to the delivery room, where we were told we could set up the room however we’d like. (They even said we could light candles, which shocked us.) We brought nothing of the sort, but I did crank the AC because I was super pregnant and very hot.
Neither one of us got any sleep that night, partially because I was hooked up to a bunch of monitors, including a blood pressure cuff that went off every 15 minutes, and was receiving fluids, which made me had to pee every hour (and also made a poor nurse have to come and assist me each time to disconnect me from everything). Plus I was having contractions, of course. But I honestly don’t think we would have slept anyway because we were SO excited to meet our baby.
At one point, the nurse came in to adjust my monitors, and she grabbed my hand and put it on my belly and said, “That’s your baby’s hand.” I melted into a puddle of tears and thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be able to touch this baby’s hand without the barrier of my belly between us before too long!”
Sunday, May 26th
The next morning, my doctor came to check me and see if I had made any progress, and…I hadn’t. I remember feeling so discouraged, but she assured me it was normal for a first time mom to take a little longer. (I guess I knew that, but I thought after a full night of contractions, I’d at least had moved the needle a little bit!)
She told me she’d break my water to get things moving but wanted to warn me first that, “This is when things get real. Don’t be a hero. Get the epidural whenever you feel ready for it.”
I consider myself to have a high pain tolerance, so I thought, surely I can wait until I’m at least five centimeters before getting the epidural. It was important to me that I could still walk around, and once you get the epidural, you’re stuck in bed. I told her to do her worst, and then ten minutes later, HOLY SHIT was I in tears. Boy, was I humbled.
I called the nurse and frantically asked for an epidural, and thankfully they came through and took care of me quickly. It was immediate relief, and I regret nothing.
Then we got a tornado alert on our phones just to add to the drama.
I then passed out for some number of hours. Seriously had no concept of time all day, so it could have been one hour or could have been six. I couldn’t tell you. All I know is I slept HARD until the nurse came in and woke me.
Nurse: Are you feeling pressure?
Me: I feel nothing.
Nurse: Are you sure?
Me: Positive.
Nurse: (nervously) I’m going to go get your doctor.
I looked at Sean and said, “I hope everything is ok?” And then I felt an enormous amount of pressure and said, “Ope, there it is.” The nurse came back in with my doctor, and I let her know I was now feeling it, and she said, “I knew it!” My doctor checked me and literally said, “Oh my god, you’re 10 centimeters, and I can feel the baby’s head.”
I had slept through basically my whole labor.
Sean and I started laughing and crying, and my doctor said, “I’m only partially joking when I say this: Don’t laugh. Don’t cough. Any movement could send this baby right out of you, and we are not ready!”
Chaos ensued from there. Doctors and nurses filled the room as they flipped it for delivery. I remember feeling like everything around us was so chaotic and crazy, but all Sean and I could see was each other. It was the strangest out-of-body experience.
Holy shit. We’re about to meet our baby.
Time to push!
It was so dark and stormy outside. Between the dark room and the sound of thunder, a birth designer could not have drawn up better ambiance. I can’t get over just how strangely relaxing the actual labor was. We chatted with the nurse in between pushes, and she confirmed what we had learned from our many ultrasounds: “This baby has a full head of hair.”
She told us it was brown, similar in color to Sean’s. I remember thinking how cool it was to have our first description of our baby. She said she’s usually pretty good at guessing gender from the baby’s cheeks, but she couldn’t tell with Sadie. She did say, “If it is a girl, there’s enough hair here for a bow already.”
Once the head was mostly out, she called in my doctor to finish delivering. She asked if Sean wanted to touch the head, and he said no. Then she asked me, and I said, “Nope. It’s absolutely none of my business what’s going on down there; let’s just get this baby out, and I’ll touch his/her head then.”
She asked for last-minute guesses. I had spent my entire pregnancy thinking boy with my brain but girl with my heart. Everyone I knew was telling me it was a boy, but every dream I had, it was a girl. Every stranger I bumped into told me it was a girl too. (I think that means I was carrying heavy…) But then after one of our ultrasounds, Sean told me he was pretty sure he had seen a penis. I guessed girl, even though I was pretty certain it was going to be a boy. Sean guessed boy “to be different.”
Once she was out, my doctor held her up and said, “I’ll let you say what it is! What is it?” I couldn’t see around the umbilical cord, and I was so certain it was going to be a boy, I thought for sure I was just missing something. “Is it… is that… is it a girl?!”
It sure was.
I don’t mean to sound like I would have been disappointed with a boy, but I really couldn’t picture my life without a daughter. I had always envisioned having a little girl some day, and we only plan on having one kid, so it was really now or never.
“So, does she have a name?”
We had a LONG list of girl names we loved — much longer than our list of boy names. We had narrowed it down to our number one choice and then three back-ups. Sean looked at me and said, “What’s her name?” I said, “She looks like a Sadie to me,” and he agreed, so there it was: Sadie Lauren.
Side note: Our back-up names were Olivia, Phoebe and Audrey. All beautiful names I still love a lot, but this girl is definitely a Sadie. Lauren was the middle name no matter what after my sister. :)
Golden Hour
The first hour is the most crucial for skin-to-skin (at least that’s what we learned in our baby classes), so we soaked it in. The nurse placed her inside my gown, and I cuddled her hard. One of the first things I said to her was, “I hope you like dinosaurs because everyone thought you were a boy and bought us dinosaur clothing.”
I remember at one point a nurse taking her from me and telling me she didn’t like her color, but she was back in my arms quickly, and we never heard any more about it. Apart from that, we spent the entire first hour of Sadie’s life skin-to-skin. I even got to nurse her for the first time. It was magical and beautiful and a moment I’ll relive in my mind forever.
After the hour was up, they took her for measurements: eight pounds even and 19.5” long.
The Aftermath
I forgot to mention that my blood pressure was kind of all over the place throughout my entire stay at the hospital. It dropped too low after the epidural, so they had to inject me with something to increase it, but then it shot up too high, so they had to lower it. I think all the back and forth did a number on me because after giving birth, the nurse asked if I could stand, and I thought I could, but then I nearly passed out, and she told me to get back in bed and that I wasn’t allowed to eat anything (a fact I was pretty sad about because I was starving).
Once I had recovered a bit, she “peri and padded” me in the middle of the room. Another humbling experience I wish Sean hadn’t witnessed. But we’ll keep that memory for just the two of us.
The First Night
I was taken by wheelchair to the postpartum wing. Sean, Sadie and I were paraded through the halls as nurses yelled, “Congrats!” and “Happy birthday!” It was so fun!
And then I got hangry. By the time we got to our postpartum room, I hadn’t eaten a true meal in about 24 hours. I don’t know if the nurse who greeted us was actually as annoying as she was in my head or if it was just the hunger/pain setting in, but I was DONE. We asked how to go about ordering food, and they told us the cafeteria was closed, so we were stuck ordering off the “late night” menu, which resulted in two incredibly burnt grilled cheeses for dinner. But I didn’t even care because I was just happy to have some food in my system.
After eating, I was a much happier camper. We spent the evening cuddling our new little girl and taking shifts sleeping since she was also all about the cuddles and didn’t want to sleep in her bassinet. We did manage to get her in the bassinet for one small stretch of sleep, which was quickly interrupted by a nurse turning on the lights and announcing, “I didn’t know Sadie was LGA.”
What’s LGA, you ask? We had the same question. It stands for “large for gestational age.” Our little girl wasn’t so little and was in the 90-something percentile for weight given she was born at only 37 weeks. She had to undergo a few simple blood sugar tests and then was given the all-clear.
The Morning After
The next morning, Sadie got her first bath. I tried to film it on my phone and then felt like the oldest fart when I realized I hadn’t hit the record button. She hated the bath part but loved getting her hair washed. It was the cutest thing seeing her enjoy her little spa moment, and then the nurse gave her the cutest combover I’ve ever seen.
Sean’s brother and a couple of our friends came to visit Sadie, and we had a fun day FaceTiming family to show off our perfect little gal.
We spent the rest of the day in sleepy newborn bliss, taking turns napping as we prepped for night two (a night we had been warned about). Night two was not bad at all, and we were able to go home later that day.
I can’t believe our sweet girl is already 12 weeks old and will be 3 months on Monday. So far each phase has been more fun than the one before it. I know they say time is a thief, and maybe I’ll feel that one day, but right now I’m just loving seeing how she grows and changes each day.
It was a tough road to parenthood, but our Sadie was well worth the wait. ❤️
