Hayes's Birth Story

Hello, friends! I am so excited to document the birth of our second baby boy, Hayes! He is proving to be the sweetest little brother, and we are so excited to see Graham as a big brother.

Without going into too much detail, I want to document Hayes's birth story because I love looking back on this space of mine and reading old posts. It has been really helpful to go back to Graham's old posts and see what he was doing at certain ages.

You can read Graham's birth story here. Hayes's story is a lot less exciting, in the best way!

If you've ever lived in Texas, you know summers can be brutal. Now, imagine yourself nine months pregnant and chasing around a very active toddler. R O U G H. Honestly, my pregnancy was really great and I felt great most of the duration, but the last few weeks leading up to Hayes's birth about did me in. So, when I went to my doctor's appointment at 38 weeks and 6 days we asked the doctor when could we have this baby. Much to our surprise he said, "Well, when do you want to have him?"

That was Wednesday, July 10th, and the next morning we were checking in for an elective induction. Now, elective inductions are not everyone's choice, but I felt EVERYTHING with G (epidural didn't work), so I did not have the desire to go through that again. It is 2019, and I used that to my advantage and chose to have our baby on July 11th.

We checked in around 5:30am after driving around trying to find some breakfast. We found an open Dunkin' Donuts and I stuffed myself knowing it would be awhile until I could eat.

At 7:15am the sweetest nurses came in, got my IV started and hooked me up to all the monitors. I was already having pretty consistent contractions, so elective induction or not, I'm sure baby boy would have made his arrival soon.

At 7:45am they started me on a very low dose of Pitocin. I was not in pain at all, which was amazing.

I got my epidural at 9:35am. The only, ONLY, horrible part of the whole experience was when the epidural started to kick in. My blood pressure suddenly dropped, I felt so nauseous, and started sweating like crazy. That also happened to be the moment Chris and the nurse left the room, so I really thought, "Welp, this is it! I'm not going to make it!" Luckily, Chris walked back in and started fanning me and got me water (my nurse allowed me to have water!). After about ten minutes I started to feel normal again, other than feeling nothing in my lower half.

My doctor doesn't like to break your water until after you've had your epidural. I appreciate that because, with G, I went from being in a lot of pain to excruciating pain once they broke my water! This time, nothing! It was a breeze. The plan was for him to come in at 10:30am and break it, but he was backed up at his clinic, so he didn't make it in until 1:00pm. I probably could have had Hayes sooner, but I still can't complain with how things went!

Once he broke my water I was dilated to a 7. He predicted I'd have him by 3-4:00pm, but my body was ready to go much sooner than that! Almost instantly I started feeling Hayes drop into the birth canal with every contraction. He would drop so low that the monitor or could no longer pick up his heartbeat when I was having a contraction.

The nurse set me up on my side with a peanut ball between my legs and we just waited! I still was in no pain, so I just watched TV and relaxed. My mom massaged my feet because they kept tingling and felt freezing, but she assured me they were warm.

Finally, around 2:20pm the nurse came in and said they'd called my doctor because she knew I was close due to his heart rate not being read. She checked me and instantly said, "Oh ya, we are ready. I bet you'll have him out in three contractions."

From there it was go time. The doctor got there and got all set up. This experience was SO different than with G. I felt like I was totally 'in the moment' this time around. It didn't feel chaotic and it was so peaceful.

I let me mom in the room this time. I am her only daughter and wanted her to have the option to be in there with me if she wanted, and she loved it! She was right there...if you know what I mean!

At 2:45pm I started to push. I pushed for 3 - 10 second rounds during one contraction. Then, my doctor told me on the next contraction to gradually push (so don't go full force), and then push at 50% (whatever that means...ha!). So, on the second contraction I hardly pushed for 10 seconds and then pushed at 50% (again, whatever that means) and BAM, he was here!

Hayes Ross Tucker born at 2:51pm weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces and 19 inches long!