The Birth Story of Kaiya Paige Katz Murphy

Since the day she missed her due date, we joked that Kaiya was going to be the type of girl who did things her own way. in her own time, on her own terms. Being an Aries, and my child, there was always a pretty good chance that this girl was going to be super independent with a firecracker personality. There was little chance she was going to make her debut until she was good and ready.

The belly on the day I went into labor.

Eight days past my due date came and it became increasingly evident that we were going to have to pick her due date for her. I had nightmares of birthing a 30 pound baby, and another that we'd have to do a c-section because she'd grown too big to fit through the birth canal. Wednesday, April 3rd, I had my last doctors appointment before my induction (scheduled for 8am on Thursday morning), and I was ready. We had picked the 4th to be induced because that was the day that my doctor was on call, and I loved her so much I really wanted her to be there, and not one of the other 30 doctors that work at the practice I go to. However, being induced early on the 4th meant arriving to the hospital on Wednesday night so they could start cervidril (if you care what that is, and why it's done, you can read about it here). 

John and I have always joked lightheartedly (on most occasions) about our lives being run by Murphy's law. A great example of that is the mind-boggling number of things that went wrong at our wedding (a great story for another time). It's actually what inspired the name of this blog. It was silly for us not to expect it the day we were supposed to be going in to have our daughter, but we really didn't. However, when John's phone up and died the morning of the induction, I laughingly joked to John that it was Murphy's law. As he sat at the apple store trying to take my phone upgrade so that he could have a phone in case I happened to go into labor before he got home that evening and was told that some woman in Alabama had somehow accidentally been given our upgrade, I chalked it up to Murphy's law, yet again, and called Verizon to make it right. When he called my mother on his way home from picking up that new phone and told her not to freak out, and that he had a little incident and would be late getting home and we wouldn't make it in time for our 7:30 admittance time at the hospital, I started to get worried. I mean, what are the chances of THIS happening to anyone else?!

Luckily, the excitement of finally having our BABY was enough to allow me to look past the unfortunate luck (aka Murphy's Law) that was plaguing the day. When John finally arrived home we grabbed the bags we had packed weeks ago in anticipation of a frantic midnight race to the hospital and calmly, yet excitedly, loaded into the car for our drive in. 

On our drive in we talked about how surreal it was that after 2 years of trying to get pregnant, and what seemed like the LONGEST pregnancy ever, the next time we came home, we'd be a family of three. It was crazy to think our dream was finally becoming a reality!

We finally arrived at the hospital, checked in at admissions and were assigned a room. I put on the issued robe (backwards, of course, because I can never seem to figure those damn things out) and the ugly green socks and climbed into the bed. The nurse came in and hooked me up to a fetal monitor (to monitor the baby's heart rate), and the monitor that captures contractions. I had been crampy all afternoon, but being 8 days late, I had been enduring plenty of braxton hicks. The nurse started asking a bunch of questions, keeping one eye on the monitor read out. About half way through her survey she looks down at me and asks if I knew that I was contracting every 2 minutes. I told her that I had been crampy, but that I hadn't really bothered timing anything since I was on my way in to the hospital. At the time, they weren't very painful. The nurse decided that instead of starting the cervidril as prescribed, she would call the doctor and see what they wanted to do.

The doctor decided to keep me and let me labor myself, which was a good decision because it wasn't another hour or so before the pain was regular and intense enough that I would have come back anyways. By one in the morning I was already exhausted. With contractions every 2 minutes it was hard to recover enough to prepare myself for the next contraction. I called in the nurse and asked her to check me. I was 6cm, and making quick progress of it. At this point I elected to have an epidural and we called our birth photographer.

The epidural was amazing. I mean, I give props to any woman who decides to do it au-natural, but I have no regrets with deciding to get the epi. Unfortunately, the epi only took effect on the left side of my body, which, to be honest, was still leagues better than not having it at all. It was tolerable for a while, and actually kinda nice because I could still feel when the contractions were occurring and how intense they were getting, but as I closed in on 8 cm, it started to suck. The nurses advised me to turn onto my right side to try and let the medicine drain in that direction. It wasn't a quick fix, but about an hour later, it started to work. Once I was numb on both sides, I was able to take some catnaps as per the nurse’s recommendation.

By morning things were progressing nicely, but Kaiya's heart rate kept dropping so they put me on oxygen. There aren't many things that have scared me in life as much as hearing her heartbeat fall off monitor and having a bunch of nurses come in, roll me on my side, strap oxygen on my face and stare at the monitors waiting for her heartbeat to come back. After that, progress felt slow, but come 9:27, it was time to push.

21 minutes later, the most perfect and beautiful gift imaginable was placed in my arms.

John and I couldn't be more in love <3.

Click below to see the beautiful and touching birth video put together by our birth photographer, the talented Heidi Daniels. I could not recommend her talent enough. She was one of the best choices we made during our pregnancy.

the birth of kaiya paige from Heidi Daniels on Vimeo.