Today my sweet Milo is one year old! I have truly been so grateful for all this extra time at home with him. I just can’t believe how fast this year has flown by! With a little background, here’s how we spent this day a year ago today 🙂
My due date was September 18. Emerson was born 10 days past his due date, so I wasn’t expecting much for this date either. However, I’d been having a ton of those little contractions (not painful) since early September, so I’d started working from home a little earlier just in case. That day came and went, and on September 22- still no baby. Chris and I had a youth event that was a little over an hour away, and I figured I should go because worse case scenario- I’d rather be with Chris than home alone if anything happened. I even brought my hospital bag, just in case!
But nope, nothing.
September 23- I woke up with a very sudden contraction around 5am. Not just a little tightening, but a big one! It was strong enough that I wouldn’t have been able to go back to sleep. So I sat up, and thought I’d play a little Candy Crush to pass the time. But then another big one! So I told Chris I was going downstairs and that I thought this might be it, but I’d let him know in a bit. I wasn’t even halfway down the stairs before my contractions were so close together and much too painful to walk. So I call him, he comes right down, and he knows it’s time to go. This was around 5:15. He wakes up Emerson, and then asks me if I can make his lunch for school. HAHAHA. I could not. So he makes a quick lunch for him, and helps us both to the car.
I had to call my midwife while Chris was driving, and it truly felt impossible. It was ridiculous and I don’t even know how I did it. My contractions had no time between them, it was just constant at this point. Our hospital is about 40 minutes away, and thank goodness it was early enough that there wasn’t any traffic! The off-hours voicemail listed each midwife and the dates they were on duty, and then their phone numbers, starting with Monday at 8am. Not a simple “press 2” type of thing. Even worse, I had to listen to the entire prompt starting from Monday to get back to the Sunday night shift hours. I had Chris’s phone in one hand and mine in the other as I tried to dial the numbers as they were listing them. I had to call about 7 times before I finally got through to the right one. She would meet us there, but she also lived about 40 minutes away. Then Chris called our dear friends Olivia and Kurt, who would meet us at the hospital to help with Emerson.
So Chris gets us there pretty quickly, but every single bump and turn was excruciating. We got to the hospital around 6:20, and I could barely make it through the parking lot. I was already starting to push, but all the maternity ward doors are still locked before 7am. Chris had to find a security guard and finally ran in (with Emerson), and got someone to help us get a wheelchair, so we could check in. I very vaguely remember this part, but I do know I was super annoyed that I had to look for my ID and they were asking me all these questions, while I’m literally feeling these strong urges to push. They wheeled me to triage; I was already fully dilated, and then my water broke. So they rushed me down the hall to the delivery room. A resident told me my midwife wasn’t there yet, and asked if I would like to try and wait. No thank you.
In one push, Milo was born at 6:38am. He was definitely ready! My midwife made it in time to deliver the placenta, while Emerson sat quietly in a chair next to me watching Netflix and eating a bagel. Good thing it was quick, I guess! Kurt and Olivia arrived shortly after Emerson got to witness his little brother being born, and all was well!
Milo Sullivan Whitaker, 8lbs. 13 oz, 21 inches long. He was, and is, absolutely perfect!
