Kelsey's Birth

*Warning: The 24 hours surrounding her birth were insane. Here's the summary: Our fourth child, a beautiful girl named Kelsey Colleen joined our family on leap year at 7:41 p.m. She weighed 8 pounds, 1 oz. and was 20 inches long. Both mom and baby are doing great. For all the crazy details, read the novel below.

A few things to preface this leap year day, February 29^th. Our stuff was supposed to get here this day, and we would move it all into our new house. We had been really looking forward to that day for weeks. We had originally signed a 2 month contract with this vacation rental we were staying in, but when we knew our stuff would be here, we let our landlord know that we would be out by the 1^st. So she started looking for someone to fill the month of March, and we were hoping that she found someone so we wouldn’t have to pay $2,000 for nothing. But on Monday, the 27^th, the movers informed us that they wouldn’t be coming on Wed. after all and that it would, in fact, be another week before they got here. So we were disappointed, but grateful that so far, our landlord was only able to fill the house for half of the month. I was thinking how perfect that we only had to pay half of the month’s rent, and we still had somewhere to stay while we waited to get into our new house. It was all going so smoothly…

Wednesday morning at 7:30, Kenny calls me from work and informs me that he just got an e-mail from our landlord. She had found someone to fill the contract for the entire month of March, and we needed to be out by the end of the day. !!! We now had 5 days of limbo where we’d stay in a hotel before we could move into our house. So I immediately got to work.  I started packing up everything of ours in the house and cleaning it. Kenny came home a few hours later to help me get it loaded up into the cars. I was having contractions off and on throughout the morning. I attributed it to the work I was doing and just kept going. By lunch time we were pretty close to being done, but we said we would come back that night and finish up. All we had left was the floors, and clearing out the rest of our stuff, mostly food. We were waiting to turn on the fridge and freezer in our other house before we took it out of this one. So we got a hotel with 2 adjoining rooms and checked in; Kenny went back to work which is conveniently the building next door to this hotel. I kept having contractions, but they weren’t too bad, and I was distracted with the events of the day so I didn’t think much of it. I talked to my mom and 2 of my sisters on the phone (kim and laura) and once I got off the phone, I started to think maybe I should watch the clock on these contractions. I realized they were getting pretty consistent, and they were coming about every 20 minutes. I called Kenny and told him that I was pretty sure we were going to be having a baby that night. But the timing of it all was throwing me off, because we had things to do so I was still kind of in denial about it. But I felt like I should get a bag together, you know, just in case. So I got one of the hotel laundry bags and put in some sweats and an outfit for the baby and called it good.

Kenny got back here at 5:00, and we picked up a pizza on our way over to our new house. We had a walk-thru to do with our new landlord, and we were getting the keys to our new place. But now they were every 10 minutes, and I was getting pretty uncomfortable. So I stayed in the car with the kids and we ate our pizza while Kenny did the walk-thru. They came outside and I met and talked with him for a few minutes. Then Kenny says, well my wife is thinking she’s in labor, so we’ve gotta go hahaha. Mark was a little shocked, but they were down to like every 6 minutes, so I wasn’t really in the mood for small talk. I remember thinking we didn’t have as much time as we’d thought. I had called my midwife and told her we were coming in, so she was on her way in, too. There’s actually 2 of them that attend each birth, and Lena pulled up to the birthing center right as we did, which was good timing. It was about 6:30 p.m. I was still trying to get my mind wrapped around the fact that this was really happening. We had the kids with us, of course, because we still don’t know a single person here. Thankfully, I had chosen to have this baby delivered at the birthing center, and not at the hospital. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to bring the kids in at all. Here they have a whole room full of toys and stuff for the kids to play with because it’s very normal for parents to bring the other siblings to watch the birth. I wasn’t up for that, (I’m not against people that do that, I just don’t think it would work for our family). There was one lady in the ward that had called before and offered to help if we needed anything. So I had Kenny call her (I wasn’t really able to talk through the contractions anymore) but she was gone and although her husband said he could help, they have a lot of kids of their own to worry about. Not to mention they would have had to come and pick them all up, which would require 3 extra places for car seats…you get the idea. It just wasn’t working to have them go there. I was stressing out about it and feeling pretty helpless and out of control. The midwives started calling people they knew, other doulas or women that worked with them with teenage daughters and somebody (unfortunately I don’t know who it was and never got to thank her) but someone came and played with the kids in the other room so that they would stop coming in and out and asking questions, etc.

I had gotten in the tub shortly after we got there, and my contractions were progressing pretty quickly. It was SO much nicer to be able to move around and change positions and not be strapped to some stupid IV in a hospital bed. This was my first time doing an out-of-hospital birth and I really loved it. I couldn’t believe how fast things were progressing, though. We hadn’t been there that long and I still had no idea how far along I was so after a contraction I said, I think I want you to check me, but I’m worried that it’s not going to be very good news and I’ll feel like such a wuss because these are killing me! They laughed and told me not to worry, I was having this baby soon! After the next contraction she said, reach down and see if you can feel your baby’s head. And I could! I was shocked and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that she was coming so quickly. I felt like I didn’t even have a chance to think about it or accept it, or plan for it. Kenny joked that she had been in there for 9 months and I said, “well I needed one more week!” The irony is that my sister Laura was coming the next night, but Kelsey obviously didn’t want to wait. I also didn’t want to have yet ANOTHER February birthday. She was supposed to be March, but oh well. 4 of the 6 people in our family now have Feb. birthdays. Is that weird or what?

At this point there was no way I was moving from the tub to the bed. Kenny held me under my arms from behind, and I clung to him for dear life. Oh my heck I can’t even explain what a strength he was to me. He always says he didn’t do anything and he feels so useless during those times, but he has no idea how much I need him and depend on him. He is definitely my rock that pulled me through. After 6 minutes of pushing, she was born at 7:41 p.m. only an hour after we got there! The cord was wrapped around her neck a couple of times, but Kirsten was very quick to get her unwrapped and place her on my chest. But she wasn’t breathing and it was freaking me out. She looked purple so they quickly placed her on a little board and gave her a couple of breaths. She started breathing on her own just fine, and then they handed her back to me. Those moments are the most incredible, when the veil is so thin. The love and joy that I felt for this new baby and for Kenny and for God and for life in general is just so overwhelming and incredible. It’s experiences like that that make up our mortal existence and I don’t think I could ever forget. We are given these incredible bodies that do amazing things and we have the chance to really feel. Bringing a baby into this world you hit the lowest of lows and the highest of highs and I’m just so grateful I get to go through it all.

I had mentioned to Kenny as we pulled into the birthing center that I was sad we hadn’t even had time for him to give me a priesthood blessing. With the other 3 he’s always been able to give me a blessing before we left for the hospital and I was wishing we had that. But I had been praying for the assistance of angels to help bear me up through the delivery, and I honestly felt them there. I am grateful for family, even when they can’t physically be there. I knew that they were praying for us and sending positive thoughts our way, and it always helps to have so much love and support.

The kids were able to come in and meet her once I got all cleaned up and onto the bed. They were so sweet and so excited to meet her. That is seriously one of the best things in life is watching my children interact. Even little Madi just adores her new baby sister and they all just want to hold her and love on her all the time. Love is such a beautiful thing. I know I’m getting probably overboard cheesy, but these are emotional days J. They weighed/measured her and found out she was 8 pounds, 1 oz. and 20 inches long! She is our first baby to not be in the 7 pound range. Also good news…I didn’t tear!

Kenny took the kids out for ice cream even though it was really late because he had told them he would earlier if they were really good. And boy were they good. I love my kids so much and they are such troopers! We also realized we didn’t have the baby’s car seat in the van. So he had to come back to the hotel, get his keys, go to the parking garage and get the car seat out of his car, and then come back. The baby nursed wonderfully and my after-birth pains started promptly and powerfully. I swear that’s the meanest thing in the world. You go through all that to have a baby, and you don’t even get to rest afterwards. I honestly felt like I was in labor with another child, and they’re still not gone totally. But it was the next 24-48 hours that they were really bad. I’m pretty sure it’s gotten worse with each child. Anyway, I was hungry so I ordered a Belgian Waffle Combo meal from the Village Inn (next door) and it came with a free piece of chocolate peanut butter cup pie, which I split with Kenny in celebration of what we just did. J Kenny got back and Ty and Bryn had fallen asleep in the car, thank goodness. It was late. Thank heavens I’m only required to stay there for 3 hours, I was worried about getting these sweet kiddos back to the hotel and put to bed. So once I ate and had peed and everything, we got to go home, or rather to our hotel room. We stopped at Walgreens to pick up my pain killers and got here at 11 p.m.

Kenny is superman and continued to take such good care of us. We pulled up to the hotel and realized there were 3 kids that were going to want to be carried into the room, and I couldn’t do any of them. So I stayed in the car while Kenny carried up the baby and Tyler walked. Then he came back and carried Madi in one arm and Bryn in the other, and me lumbering along. Madison wasn’t going to make things easy to go back to sleep and she screamed and cried for the next 45-55 minutes until we gave up and put her in bed with me, too. So I had Kelsey on one side of me and Madison on the other. Once they were all asleep Kenny left again (it’s like 12:30 at this point). Because, remember that house we were supposed to go back to that night? Yeah…we still weren’t cleared out of the rental place. So Kenny pulls an all-nighter and transfers all of our food and crap over and finishes cleaning it and putting everything back in its place. He got back to the hotel around 4:30 a.m. and crashed. I sure love that man.

At some point during the night we decided on her name, Kelsey Colleen Weston. We just think Kelsey’s a really pretty name, and Colleen is named after my mother. She has dark hair and is so perfect and beautiful. She sort of has a dark complexion like Tyler did when he was born. At first we thought she had her own look to her, but now I’m thinking she looks a little more like Brynlee did. It was definitely the most insane 24 hours of our lives, but I’m so glad that she’s here and that we’re both healthy and doing so well. The Lord is so good to us and my heart is so full.