From Braxton Hicks to Immediate Transition: Backseat Car Birth of Kenan John!

On Wednesday, January 27th at 2:30 pm I went to my birthing center for my weekly checkup. With me being 38 weeks and 4 days and having had consistent Braxton Hicks for the past couple weeks, my midwife decided to check me. She said I was at a 1 and my cervix was completely soft. While she was down there she did a little extra stretching to maybe encourage things to move along. I left her office at 3pm and headed to my mom’s house to pick up Brecon. While I was there I started to feel more Braxton Hicks and my stomach continued to stay tight. Bobby was working in Galveston that day and was going to be home late so we decided I would hang out at my mom’s until it was time to put Brecon to bed. Nothing really changed throughout the day. At 7:30pm Brecon and I headed home and I got him in bed. I was laying with him and started to feel what felt like real contractions but VERY mild and VERY inconsistent.

Bobby got home around 8:30pm and by the time he showered and ate it was 9:30pm and the contractions were the same but I just had a feeling it was for real. We decided to go to bed and try and get some sleep in case I was right. I slept on and off until 10:10pm when I was woke up with a HARD contraction! I woke up moaning! I crawled out of bed and went to the living room to figure out what was going on. About five minutes later I had another hard contraction and called my mom to come over. I didn’t plan on calling her over this early in labor but when I got Bobby up I didn’t want to be alone if Brecon woke up and he had to go put him back to bed.

I woke up Bobby and we called my midwife Kathy. She said it sounded like the early stages of labor and to call her back in two hours and we would assess the situation. At this point I was already on my hands and knees rocking back and forth through contractions. I should have known that I wouldn’t last that long!

My mom got to the house and started timing my contractions with the app on my phone. Things get a little foggy at this point but the time was around 10:45pm.

I remember having to go to the bathroom. I had two contractions while in there and my mom said she heard my voice change and knew things were progressing. When I came out of the bathroom I was shaking. I was in transition! I got back on the couch and had 2-3 contractions right on top of the other. My mom called Kathy and said this is progressing very fast. It takes us 30 minutes to get to the birthing center so Kathy said she would meet us there. We had called Bobby’s mom to come over and stay with Brecon but she hadn’t made it yet so we called my brother to come stay until she got there.

My next contraction my water broke and the next contraction after that I felt the need to push! Mom called Kathy back and told her I was pushing. She told her to get me in the car NOW!

I remember them telling me I had to move and walk to the car. I cried and said I wasn’t going! Somehow I got the strength to stand and walk to the car. I had one contraction on the way out to the car. It was around 11:25pm at this point.

We got in the car. I was in the back on my hands and knees, my mom slid in behind me, and Bobby drove. I don’t remember much else except that after his head was born, there were about three contractions where he didn’t budge! Mom had checked to make sure the cord wasn’t around his neck so she knew that he wasn’t in any danger. I remember she had me put one of my feet on the floor board to give him more room to come out and that seemed to work. Two more pushes and he was out! 11:39pm!

His cord was really short so I had to do some acrobatic move to get my leg over the cord to sit down so I could hold him. Even then I couldn’t get him all the way to my chest so I laid him on my belly the best I could laid out in the back of a Prius! We were about five minutes from the birthing center at this point. When we got inside, because I had labored so fast the midwife wanted to make sure my uterus would do what it was supposed to so she gave me a shot of pitocin to help with the bleeding and birth the placenta. Bobby got to cut his cord and then we instantly worked on nursing.

This boy knows how to nurse! It took maybe two minutes before he was latched on! I feel like he hasn’t gotten off since!

We let him nurse a little while and then cleaned him up and weighed him. He came at 9lbs even, 21 inches long, 14 inch head circumference, and 15 inch chest circumference. Much much different from my 4 lb 10 ounce Brecon!

After I got cleaned up we got to go home! It was around 3:30am. Definitely the most crazy six hours of my life!

Submitted by Kellie Lister.