Shannyn's Bump Day Blog: Owen Mitchell's Birth Story

In general, pregnancy is difficult. Pregnancy after our loss is extremely difficult, complex, and hard to describe to someone unless they’ve gone through it themselves. I had imagined what going into labor would look like, but it was always hard to allow myself to get excited about it. This is why when I went into labor, it felt so surreal – we made it!

I knew from the day we found out we were pregnant again that I would have three goals for the birth of our baby:

Work towards an unmedicated birth
Strive for a redemptive birth
Bring home a healthy baby

I prepared as much as possible to ensure that I surrounded myself with people who would help me reach those goals, and I’m so proud and excited that we were able to accomplish all three!

If you’ve been following along, you know that I had a cervical cerclage placed during week 21 of the pregnancy.

I discussed this with my doctor, and it was advised that I remove the cerclage when I was about 36 weeks pregnant. At 36+2, I went into the office for the quick procedure, and the waiting game started. Although, I wasn’t expecting to go into labor as quickly as I did. The next two days I had mild contractions off and on, but I had been feeling these most of my pregnancy, so I didn’t think much of it. At 36+5, I went through most of the day with no additional signs of labor, but at 2:15 pm, I went to the bathroom and heard an audible popping sound and some leaking. My water broke!

I was home alone at this point, but I started laughing and crying at the same time because it was over the same toilet that my water broke during my pregnancy with Sophie. It seemed like the world’s weird way of reminding me that Sophie was with me and helping to bring this baby into our family. I called my husband and texted my doula, and we were SO excited because we knew this meant we were meeting our baby boy soon.

I also knew it could be a while for contractions to pick up so my doula suggested taking a walk around the neighborhood.

When my husband got home, we walked down our street once, but this proved to be more challenging than I thought. We made it back home, and I took a shower and folded some laundry to help myself relax. About an hour and a half had passed and I could feel contractions picking up. I was so glad things were moving along because I know there is sometimes added pressure for delivery soon after your water breaks. I laid down for a bit to “relax,” but it was tough with the contractions I was experiencing. I felt like there was a little bit of a pattern and they felt pretty close together, so around 4:15 pm I had my husband start timing the contractions. We were both surprised they were 45 seconds to 1 minute long and about 3-4 minutes apart. They felt like intense period cramps that also made me want to crawl out of my skin.

Within the next hour of the contractions getting even stronger, we texted our doula and told her it was definitely “go time” and asked if she could head over to our house. She arrived close to 5:30 pm, and within one minute of walking in the door, she told us we should head to the hospital. I was excited and surprised, but I was also hoping I wasn’t overreacting.