My little love is one week old today so I figured it was about time to write her down her birth story. Truth be told, I was really scared for her labor up until the day before she was born. It wasn’t necessarily because my last birth proved to be an exceptionally tough experience, it was actually an incredible experience. I think more than anything I was just afraid for the unknown; that it might be harder than my other labors or that I wouldn’t be mentally prepared or equipped to work through the inevitable pain that comes with labor.
But before I dive into Luci’s story, let me back up a bit.
Just days after Lincoln was born I felt really strongly that there was one more baby waiting to come to our family and that this baby was a girl. I had a couple very special experiences in the time following that confirmed the earlier impression and despite the fact that we had a very new baby in our home, I had never felt an impression like that before and was elated at the thought that there was a little girl waiting to come to our family. However, with each passing day I began to fall into a rhythm with my kids. We got in a groove that felt comfortable and the idea of having another child and going through another pregnancy slowly began to fade into the very, very, VERY back of my mind. :)
If you know Logan, aka Nog, you know that he would be happy with any number of children we had. “A baker’s dozen,” is always his response when asked how many kids he wants. He is the sweetest man ever and has always wanted a really big family but has never ever once pushed me into having more kids than I was ready for. Months after Lincoln was born, I told him several times that I wanted to be done and although he remembered me telling him of the earlier feelings I had experienced, he never once even brought it up. He gave me time and let me get there on my own and for that I am forever grateful to him.
All of our kids are almost exactly two years part, give or take a month, and we had decided that we wanted to keep this spacing if we were to have a fifth, but as this timeline approached, I still felt absolutely nowhere near ready to have another baby. I would see pregnant women and think, “Man, I am really glad that’s not me,” and I told Nog that all the time, too. Pregnancy is really hard on me, of course not as difficult as it is for SO many other women, but truly for me and for what I know, it’s really tough. My back goes out all the time and very frequently gets to a point where I can’t walk and have had to literally crawl on the ground crying at times both from the pain and frustration of it all. It’s hard on me emotionally, hard on my marriage because I am so hormonal and hard on my body because it hurts all the time. I just feel broken.
Over time I would find out various close friends and family were pregnant and never once did I want it to be me too…until one sister in particular got pregnant. Her pregnancy was not planned in the slightest but for the very first time hearing her make her announcement made me want it too. I had been praying about it a lot over the months in secret and as much as I denied it I knew deep down there was one more. But I also knew that as soon as I admitted it to myself and to Nog that it would be real, that the pregnancy would be right around the corner and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
This next paragraph is a little TMI so you may want to skip through it but it’s my favorite part of the story so I’m going to share anyway. :) On December 2nd (my birthday) I was saying my prayers in the morning and I was praying about having a baby. I was brought to tears with an overwhelming feeling of peace, love, and calmness about it that I had not felt before and I immediately knew it was time to get that little girl here. I remember so clearly getting up from my knees and walking out to the kitchen where Nog was making food and telling him I wanted to start trying. We were both laughing and I was crying still because literally just the day before I was still in denial that we would have another. He of course was immediately 100% on board and we decided to try for the first time pretty much right then, haha. Later that day, I checked to see when I was ovulating and my ovulation app told me I had missed my window already for that month. After the two weeks went by waiting for my period, my hopes were definitely not up because I thought I had missed the window buuuuut apparently I hadn’t because I WAS PREGNANT!!!! I was shocked because with Kolli It took a few months, with the twins it took one full year and with Lincoln it took 6 months to get pregnant so this was amazing to me and I just felt like this sweet babe was so ready to come down and was just waiting for me to get over my stubbornness. I have a hard time waiting on anything so we told our families right away and we were both soooo happy to have it out in the open!
This pregnancy was actually my hardest yet. It tried me many times and I shed many tears during the nine months with being really sick, to back pain, leg pain, and being so incredibly HOT. haha. Really though, it tested me beyond what I had even initially imagined and I asked Nog for several blessings along the way to get through it. I turned to those blessings often when I was struggling and they brought me so much peace and comfort until the very end.
Luci’s birth…
I woke up Monday morning super excited for my appointment because my midwife told me she would strip me if I wanted and oh, how I wanted! I was already at a 4 and felt so encouraged and excited to find that out! On the way home from that appointment I felt my first real contraction. I called my sister Rachel on the way home from it and was crying telling her how happy I was that I was going to have my baby here soon. After that one contraction though they were so far apart, like hardly any at all but I was hopeful that that night I would go into labor because that’s how it had happened with all my others. At 11 p.m. I laid in bed having them 7 minutes apart. It was just long enough that right when I would start to fall asleep I would have another and get woken up so I just got out of bed because there was no way I was going to go back to sleep at that point. I woke up Nog and from the second I got out of bed they went to 3 minutes apart. I thought it was going to still be a while but 3 minutes apart wasn’t far and they were getting stronger so we called our midwife and had her come over. We also had a photographer come to make a video of the birth for us and take some pictures. I was soooo excited about that part and to be able to have it documented forever and ever.
Just two weeks before I had watched my sister’s labor and delivery and her midwife had given a tip on how to push in on the hips to help dull the pain during a contraction. And ohhhh my gosh, I could kiss her for that tip because holy crap, it was life changing! I had Nog and my Mom push on my hips during contractions and it made a world of difference. Nog started getting the birthing pool set up because I had decided I wanted a water birth again like I did with Kolli. In our last house we ran out of hot water pretty fast so we had to literally boil water on the stove and dump it in the pool to warm it up haha so Nog wanted to be prepared and started creating his own hook-up from the laundry room so that it would run hot water to the pool. He was in there soldering and the fire alarm went off. ha! In between contractions I was walking around, doing lunges, and trying to move as much as I could trying to get the baby down. It was 1 a.m. now and I was at a 6 and 100% effaced so I decided I wanted to get in the water. My contractions now at this point were about 2 and a half minutes apart it felt like I wasn’t getting any breaks which was exciting to me because it only meant my baby would be there much sooner! I got in the pool and it was incredible. I think I said 20 times how much I loved the water because it totally took the edge off and it made me feel like I wasn’t as far progressed as I actually was. I told my midwife, Stephanie that and she said, “You see how there is a “no diving sign” on the outside of the pool? Well, that’s because if you get out you are going to want to dive back in,” haha, I loved that. With Nog behind me now pushing on my hips, being in the water, plus the fact that my water hadn’t broken yet, I was feeling good and was able to breathe through contractions fairly calmly still. We heard Kolli crying from her bedroom and I asked Nog to go and get her, she came in and Reesie followed since she had been woken up from Kolli crying. Since the moment I told Kolli I was pregnant she asked if she could see her little sister be born. She is such a sensitive little girl, I thought it would be too much for her to handle so I prepped her months in advance telling her what labor was like and how it might be hard for her to see me in pain.
When the girls walked in, Kolli’s eyes were red and swollen from crying, so afraid that she had missed it. Nog assured her it would still be a little while and to go back to bed and we would get her when it got closer. I gave the girls a hug and they both headed back to bed. It made me feel so good to know how bad Kolli really wanted to be there.
After they left, things picked up so fast. I asked Stephanie to check me again and I was now at an 8 and the next two contractions were haaaard. I started crying saying it was too hard and all I wanted was for Kolli to be in there with me hugging me again. I asked for someone to go get her and my Mom went in and told her to come back in. She excitedly hopped out of bed and said, “I couldn’t go back to sleep!” She came in with a big smile and I was bawling. She ran to my side hugging me so tight telling me that I could do it and that little Luci was going to be here so, so soon. I held her so tight and stroked her hair while I cried and tried my very best to just breathe. Twenty minutes later my water broke and I suddenly felt the strong urge to push. My body was literally making me push and I was going a little fast so I was doing my best to take short tiny breaths to slow it down. Six minutes after my water had broken my baby Luci was being born. Nog was behind me in the water, watching the whole thing. He has never seen any of our kids be born because he has always been beside me by my head talking me through it but since Kolli was there he got to see it all and thought it was the coolest thing ever. He reached down and caught her and lifted her up and I grabbed her and held her for the first time. I laid back on him and the tears came. The happiest tears ever, our baby girl was finally here! The sweet baby girl I had been feeling for the past two years was finally here in my arms and I had never felt so complete. Being able to have Kolli in that room along side my sweet husband was one of the most precious moments of my entire life and having it captured in these photos and on video will be cherished forever.
Luci girl, we love you more than anything. Thank you for coming to our family. We are the luckiest there ever was, you are perfect.
Luci Leone Pearce born August 22, 2017 at 2:26am weighing 8 lbs 6 oz 20 inches long.
Click here to watch her birth video.
Click here to watch her birth video.
