Toby's Birth Story

Our due date with Toby was April 1st and I knew all along it would be a joke of some kind. What I didn't expect was to see our due date come and go and a whole week go by. I tried to remain in good spirits and enjoy the extra time with just Ethan. We enjoyed some extra playdates, Defy Gravity (trampolines), playgrounds and a couple rounds of chase mommy. In reality I was done and uncomfortable. Wednesday my mom arrived. Thursday we went to the doctor and I was 2 cm. This was super encouraging because there was forward movement. That night at midnight I woke up to go to the bathroom and my water started leaking. I was not sure at first but after a couple wardrobe changes I was sure. I got in bed and immediately had a contraction. I woke Chris up and we started to head for the hospital. I was group b strep positive so we needed to get there for ivs for 4 hours. We got to UNC at about 1 and confirmed my water had broken and got admitted. By two we were in our room and ivs were flowing. We tried to sleep. For Chris it was the uncomfortable couch and for me it was contractions. About 4 we decided to walk the halls. Contractions were pretty regular around 2-3 minutes so I decide a bath would be nice. It all about stopped labor which was frustrating. There was a shift change at 7 and our new midwife and nurse arrived. I got out of the tub and around 8:15 asked if I could be checked for progress. Everything has started to get super painful so I was debating pain relief of some kind. Our midwife came up and checked me and I was only 5 cm. Not seeing progress like I had hoped made me think we were hours from the end. We all chatted for a bit and Instead of pain relief we decided to walk the halls. We made it around once with awful contractions every minute. Halfway down the hall I told Chris we were going back to our room for pain relief. We walked in and I climbed onto the bed on all fours and hit the call button. Our midwife walked in immediately. I tried to explain what I wanted. We decided on nitrous oxide. She ordered it with the nurse at about 9.  (I don't know exact times on any of this but I'm guessing). Before they could get it ready I felt like I needed to push. She checked me and sure enough we were at 10 and ready to go. She called in the birth team and I started to push. I think all in all I pushed for 10-15 brutal minutes. At 9:23 Toby was born. Praise God. He came up face up which caused some damage. They put him on my chest immediately. He screamed for about the first bit until he was able to nurse. While the nurse and midwife went to work on delivering the placenta (the easy delivery) and damage control/repair. The midwife did most of the repairs for a 2nd degree tear but called an OB because she found a hematoma that needed attention. The OB finished the repair and put in a packing to stop the hematoma from growing. By noon we were heading for our recovery room very grateful that was over and a little nervous about being parents to two kiddos.

His name: Toby means God is good. Matthew is my dad's middle name and means Gift from Yahweh. Toby is a good gift from God. We love our two boys!