In my arms.

Had someone told me last August that one short year later I would be sitting here writing these words, I would have walked away from them with a burning heart and stinging disbelief.

Last August was the hardest month of 2018; it was a month of going to doctors appts every single week, of tests galore and of terrifying and lonely unknowns.

But this year I sit here to write this post with the most scrumptious tiny human laying on my lap - and he’s all mine. God is so good.

For my own sake as to not forget any details of the world altering experience that labor and delivery was, I’ve written out every step of my birth story.

. . .

Sunday July 14th, 5 days before my due date, I was completely over being pregnant and just wanted my baby out. We got up at 6am to get ready for church and while my husband went to worship practice, I snuck around the school’s campus in search of an exercise ball to bounce on in hopes to encourage labor. I determinedly bounced for almost 2 hours, went to the service and then trekked back home.

That whole afternoon I tried all the suggestions to naturally get labor started; so many squats, so many cups of tea, so much walking and hot sauce on everything.

Then at 5:42pm I had my first contractions. However, the whole last month of my pregnancy I’d experienced on and off contractions so we just settled down to rest and watch a show while we waited for the contractions to phase out as they had every other time.

Two hours went by and the contractions were persisting and consistently 2-3 minutes apart. At the two hour mark my husband called the doctor who told us we better come in to the hospital. I waddled as best I could around the house to gather some final things and zipped up the already packed suitcase that had sat open and waiting in the corner of our room for weeks in anticipation.

My husband was buzzing with excitement and concern; meanwhile I was doing all I could to convince him that we really didn’t need to go to the hospital yet. Unfortunately I’ve discovered that before any big event or anticipated day, I become very pessimistic in attempts to prepare myself for it to be not as wonderful as I dreamed. This day was no different. Everything in me was convinced that it was too good to be true, that I had simply put myself into false labor and that the doctor would send us home to wait longer with defeated hopes.

Still, we loaded the car, I hugged my puppy extra tight and cautiously buckled into a drive that would take us to the place where our lives would forever change. Caleb smiled the whole way and his positivity started to wear on me. Through each contraction my excitement grew.

We got to the hospital at 8:30pm. They set me up in a temporary room and checked my progress; I was 2cm dilated. They told us to wait two more hours and they would check me again and if I got to 4cm, then they would admit me. They hooked me up to the monitor and we settled in. While we waited we snacked on muffins and peanut butter sandwiches and I prayed under my breath the whole time that this would be the real thing.

An hour passed and the contractions went from being mostly bearable to stop me mid-sentence uncomfortable. At the two hour mark, they checked me and I was in fact at 4cm dilated! They admitted us and got us set up in our new spacious and comfortable room by 11:40pm.

My sister-in-law showed up at midnight, we ate more snacks, worked through the pain on an exercise ball and watched “Father of the Bride 2”. At this point my excitement and adrenaline were charging and I couldn’t even wrap my head around the fact that it was all really happening.

Throughout the night we each napped for ten minutes here and there but between the pain and the nurses coming in to monitor me every 20 minutes it was hard to rest.

At 5:00am the doctor came to check my progress again. Almost seven hours had passed so I was fully expecting her to spew out a much higher number but was shot down when she announced that I was still only 4cm dilated. She scheduled to check me again at 8am and told me try and move around as much as possible to help my progression.

For the next three hours I bounced, swayed, walked and squatted as much as I could but at 8:00am I was still at a 4. The doctor offered me pitocin, a drug to induce and speed up labor, but because of all the horror stories I’d hear of people getting pitocin we decided to put it off until noon to see where I was at then.

Another four hours dragged by; my husband and sister-in-law offered great massages, encouragement and entertainment but at my 12pm check I still hadn’t budged even a millimeter. Becoming discouraged, I agreed to start on a very low dosage of pitocin to hopefully jump start things and then let my body take over.

Nothing really changed until I had been on the medicine for almost an hour when suddenly the contractions went into a whole new level of pain. Up until then I had been handling the waves of pain pretty well but the intensity of the new contractions shocked me. The breathing patterns I’d learned in the birth class became vital and I instinctively had to make a deep, shuddering noise to pass through each contraction.

After three hours of pitocin I was checked yet again. This time I was utterly convinced I was about to deliver because the pain had been so intense and contractions were consistently every two minutes, it only made sense. With an exhausted face I looked to the doctor for good news. She quietly told me I was at 4.5cm. Within a second I broke down sobbing, completely defeated and broken. I genuinely didn’t know how to keep going at that point.

It was decided that since the medicine wasn’t helping me enough that they would take me off it and see how I did on my own for a bit. The pitocin was out of my system within a half hour but the contractions didn’t slow down at all, they actually seemed to intensify with each one. In normal labor that would be a good and hopeful sign but since my body wasn’t cooperating at all, it just felt like torture.

After being 4cm for 24 hours and maybe a combined 30 minutes of sleep and no solid food, at the 27 hour mark I decided to try some pain medication.

They hooked me to my IV and it didn’t even take five minutes for it to kick in. Though it didn’t take any of the pain away, it did make me sleepy enough between contractions that I could rest a bit.

Not only did it make me sleepy but just to spice things up it also made me high and hallucinate. That whole part of labor is a blur; I just remember seeing everything in triples, thinking like I was floating and falling all at once and generally feeling like I was losing my mind. My finest moment though was at the end of a contractions, Caleb was rubbing my back when I started to laugh hysterically and told him that there was a little raccoon in my bed… clearly it was a pretty fun time.

A few hours passed on the pain meds but since it wasn’t even touching the pain, they took me off of it and told me my only other option was to get an epidural.

Now I can’t even express enough how much I did not want an epidural. Honestly, my entire pregnancy I was more scared over the possibility of an epidural than the actual labor itself. My birth plan even specifically stated to not offer me one because I did not ever want it; a giant needle in my spine was just too much for me.

I hit hour 30 of labor; the contractions were so intense and so on top of each other that I didn’t know how to function anymore. Through unexplainable exhaustion I just kept grabbing for Caleb, crying that I couldn’t do it anymore. After some convincing, he ultimately made the decision for me in my delusional state to get the epidural.

The procedure of the epidural itself was so unpleasant, even thinking about it now still makes me queasy. I went from being in agonizing pain to being overwhelmingly nauseous to almost fainting. Complete numbness from my waist down set in about 10 minutes after they finished and about a half hour after the whole thing I felt human again. Contractions turned into simply a lot of pressure and hardening of my stomach but the excruciating squeezing was gone.

Before letting me get some much needed rest, they checked me once more and I had finally progressed to 6cm dilated. In an instant I felt so much relief and renewed determination. Those 2cm meant the world to me in that moment. At 12am I finally was able to sleep.

I woke up at 4am and had only been awake for a couple minutes when I felt the strangest sensation I’ve ever felt in my life. Baby was wiggling around when suddenly I felt him do three giant head butts to my pelvis and half a second later, what felt like 10 gallons of water broke and gushed everywhere. I yelled for Caleb who was dead asleep, he jumped up panicked and searched for the nurses as I squawked that my water broke.

After another check, at 5am I was 9cm dilated. The next hour sped by as my body started feeling the urge to push. Nothing can prepare you for that feeling nor can you really understand the word urge until you’re experiencing it. You can do absolutely nothing to stop your body, the force just takes you over. With all the determination in the world, I had to vehemently breath through each contraction that begged me to push until I reached the full 10cm.

Up until that point, my coping mechanism had been to close my eye through every wave of pain, I couldn’t keep them open. But during that last hour, with every contraction that came, Caleb would grab my hand and put the oxygen mask to my face and I would solely focus on him. Keeping full eye contact with my undoubtedly strong and stable husband was the only thing that got me through that final stage.

An eternity later I reached 10cm and was able to start pushing. Never has anything felt more painful or more relieving at the same time. The nurses kept telling me to rest in between contractions so to keep up my strength since first time moms tend to push for upward to an hour and a half but I was having none of that.

It only took twelve minutes and he was out- my doctor even let Caleb deliver the baby himself and hand him to me! At 6:39am indescribable amounts of relief and joy flooded me and I sobbed uncontrollably, even more than I did when those two pink lines showed up on November 9th , as I held my son for the first time and my husband held us both.

On July 16th, 2019, after 37 hours of labor, my prayer-come-true-baby was placed in my arms. Cade Benjamin Olvera was born and he was more perfect than I could even have dreamed. Weighing 7.2lbs and 20 inches long, he is an exact clone of his superbly handsome dad and potentially has my dark hair.

Though I was skeptical, all the sayings are true that the moment you deliver you forget the pain and nothing else matters anymore. On this side of it all I would do it over and over and over and over again. Call me crazy but it didn’t deter me in the least from wanting more babies, it actually excites me even more because I now know how amazing the pay off is.

Once all the chaos died down, all the logistics were completed and the nurses quietly ducked out, we turned on the song “God you’re so good”. As it played softly behind us, Caleb climbed next to us in the bed and we thanked God and prayed over our son through choking tears of gratefulness. It was a moment that I dreamed of, begged and ached for and was speechlessly in awe of actually receiving. It is the dearest moment that my heart holds and I will treasure it forever.

My birth story didn’t go the least bit how I expected or planned but looking back, I cherish how it played out. I am endlessly thankful for my husband and his support through the whole thing, for an incredible hospital staff and for the bravest sister-in-law who was an incredible help and stayed through the entire thing, even delivery.

We were sent home two days later and fell into our new, crazy normal of little sleep, obsessing over the most incredible kid in the world and falling so much more in love with each other than ever before. In 4 short weeks we’ve faced our challenges but I wouldn’t trade this new life for the world.

. . .

Welcome to our newest adventures with Cade Benjamin.

“You are the God who works wonders; you make your power known among the people.” Psalm 77:14