Killian Andrew Keth

This birth story is a bit late, but I'll just blame it on him being my third. ;)

So my entire pregnancy I kept praying that things would go better than they did with Jace. I prayed that labor would start before my water broke. Starting around late August I started having intense Braxton hicks that remained during the rest of my pregnancy. I figured it was a good sign, surely labor would start before my water broke and what happened with Jace was just a freak occurrence...

On October 22nd, two days before my due date, Shaun I decided we needed to take the kids to the park in the late afternoon because I was going crazy waiting for labor to start and analyzing every single little twinge. 

We got to the park and started playing, everything was going great. I picked up Jace to get him a drink when I felt it...such a familiar feeling. I tried to convince myself I peed myself and excused myself to the bathroom. I still wasn't sure what happened so when I walked out Shaun asked me what happened and as soon as he did I felt another gush and I knew it, my water broke. We packed it up and I texted my midwife. She gave me the opportunity to try to get labor started on my own before I went to the hospital. I can fast forward a lot of time by saying there was a lot of walking, praying, and pant changing but barely any contractions.

I finally went into the hospital at around 10pm. I was 3cm and contracting every 5 minutes so I decided to walk around and try to get it going. Well, it didn't end up going and I knew I was going to have to be induced.

Having been in this situation before I decided it would be best to get the epidural and then start pitocin. At around 1am I got my epidural started and what do you know...my blood pressure drops and I almost faint. It was seriously like Jace all over again! (These kids of mine are little stinkers) Again my blood pressure dropped and I nearly passed out, but I turned on my side and after about 5 minutes I began to feel a bit better.

Everything got settled at about 2am and I did what I do best during labor...I slept. At around 5am the pitocin was cranked all the way up and I was progressed pretty far and we knew it wouldn't be long. The epidural was starting to wear off on my left side but I wasn't too concerned about it.

Around 7am things started to get a bit crazy, the contractions were coming hard and I was feeling lots of pain on my left side and pressure in general. My midwife came in to check me and I was at a 9 and almost ready, we knew it would be soon. Only a little bit of time went by and I called her back in because I was feeling immense pressure. I knew it was time. They got everything set up and at 7:30 I started pushing (immediate relief, like its so crazy how that works) and at 7:35am Killian Andrew Keth was born!

They put him on my chest and the first thing I said was that he looked just like Emery. I felt like I had already birthed this baby! We got lots of skin to skin time and then they took him to get him cleaned up. He weighed 8lbs 9oz (we were shocked because I swore he was smaller than my other kids, but he ended up being smaller than Jace and bigger than Emery) and 20 and a 1/4 inches, making him my longest baby by a quarter inch! The hospital stay was awesome, he had a little scare with his Temps and blood sugar but he was quickly cleared.

He is now over a month old and he is just the sweetest! He is my first exclusively breastfed baby and it is going so well despite the fact that he has a tongue tie. He's growing more and more everyday! Emery loves him to pieces and Jace is starting to interact with him more which is great! This is the first baby where I finally feel like I know what I'm doing...it probably helps that I just had a baby last year and my memory is fresh lol.

Killian still sleeps a lot during the day but he's also starting to interact with us more. He coos and goos and smiles away when you kiss him. He has slept pretty good for me since the beginning, he usually gives me 3-4 hour stretches during the night. He loves music already and he is such a wiggle worm. He's another sweet and calm soul, he reminds me a lot of Jace with his laid back personality. We still think he looks a lot Emery but he also has features of Jace and is overall getting his own look more and more. He's the perfect fit into our loud, crazy family and he is so so loved.