Baby Ezra

Ezra Koop
April 8th, 2013, 2:58 am
7 lbs, 10 oz, 21 inches

Ezra was born five days before his due date. I thought the day would never come, but now that he’s here, it seems like we’ve had him forever. Labor and birth was such an incredible experience. Intense, hard work—yes, but so rewarding and productive. I can say with all honesty that I loved it.

I woke up on Sunday morning with some crampiness accompanying the Braxton-Hicks contractions I had been having for weeks. I didn’t think much of it. Chase made eggs while singing “I got a feeling….. that tonight’s gonna be a good night….” Little did we know it was going to be a GREAT night. We decided to walk the 40- minute trek to church as we sometimes do. During the service, I noticed that the crampiness was getting a little stronger, and at one point I went to the bathroom and leaned over the sink. Chase also noticed my deep breathing during the sermon. This is interesting, I thought, but may or may not be labor. We walked home from church, trying to ignore the contractions, but also getting a little bit giddy that today could be the day.

We got home and reheated some spaghetti with red sauce. It was just plain old spaghetti with sauce from a jar, but all during lunch I couldn’t stop talking about how good it was. "Chase, isn’t this the best spaghetti you have ever tasted?" It was as if my body knew it was gearing up for the most challenging physical feat it would ever endure and was loading up on carbs to get ready. As we wrapped up lunch, we decided to start timing the contractions just for fun, and they were 3-4 minutes apart and lasting a minute. I was doing some deep breathing during them, but was still a pretty normal person in between. We tried to ignore it as much as possible until they started getting a little stronger, probably around 2 or 3 pm. At that point we called our midwife, Mary, and told her we were getting some action. She encouraged me to eat, drink, rest, vary my activities, and to call her back if things changed or we needed more support.

We weren’t totally sure at this point if I was actually in labor or not, but we decided to get things prepared just in case. We changed the sheets, set out the birth kit supplies, and I requested that Chase scrub the sinks and vacuum the floors, which he willingly did (I think you just do whatever your wife wants when she is in labor). He also rigged our window shades so we had a little more privacy, seeing as I could be traipsing around the house naked for the next few hours/days.

I was still having regular contractions and we went for a walk on Moore Mesa around 4 pm. It was slow going, and during every contraction I would hang over Chase’s shoulders and moan. We asked a random passerby to take our photo (left). We also passed our friend Paige Chase, who was out jogging and saw us during a contraction. “Go, labor, go!” she shouted as she ran by. It was very encouraging!

We purposely didn’t tell many people we were in labor because we didn’t want to create pressure and expectation if it was a long one. I did call my mom and texted three girlfriends asking them to pray for us (which they did, all through the night!). When we got home from the walk, I tried different things: I got in the shower, sat on the bouncy ball, and tried to take a “nap” (which was a total joke—see picture below). I also got in the bath and asked Chase to put on the techno music I had selected for the occasion, to which he replied, “Tech-YES!”. At one point, I was in the bathroom overhearing Chase talking to his friend Jeff, who was asking how I was (and didn’t know we were in labor). “Cassie’s doing great!” I overheard him say, just as I vomited approximately 3 quarts of liquid into the toilet. This was the first of three vomiting sessions, which I had grown so accustomed to during pregnancy. I was worried I would feel nauseated during labor, but I didn’t—instead, the throwing up seemed to move things along quite nicely. After the second vomit (again, it looked like 3 quarts of liquid), I lost my mucus plug—a bloody slimy thing that was dribbling down my leg--lovely. This was around 8 pm. We also decided to call for reinforcements since it seemed like things were picking up.

The contractions were pretty intense at this point. They felt like a period cramp times 50. During each one, I just repeated Open, open, open up interspersed with the occasional Jesus! and Baby, come out! The Open mantra really helped me channel my focus instead of being all over the place, and each time I imagined my cervix opening and a smiley little baby coming out. It was enormously helpful. Chase was right by my side the entire time, whispering "You are doing great. Relax. I love you." I felt so supported and safe with him there.

Mary and Ronda showed up around 9 pm. I just remember Mary coming into the bathroom with a big bouquet of flowers, and me sniffing the flowers and then melting into her arms with the next contraction. They checked my progress, and I guessed I was maybe dilated 2 centimeters, so I was elated to find out I was 5.5 already! I expected things to be so much worse to get to that point, but I still felt like contractions were manageable.

Time kind of lost all meaning from there on out. I was in the bath, lying down, hanging over the bed, all the while repeating open, open, open with each contraction, with my volume matching the intensity of the contraction. Around midnight, I was leaning over the end of the bed and pretty much howling. Good thing it was a windy night—I think it drowned out the sound a little. Mary told me she thought I was in transition and I was stoked! "How could I be in transition?" I asked. "I don’t hate anybody yet! Aren’t I supposed to hate everyone?" I was also surprised because I was still having short breaks between contractions, and I thought that during transition there would be no breaks and I would want to die. I didn’t want to die, but I did begin to understand why someone might want pain relief during childbirth!

My mom and Jennie showed up around that time and were so helpful, giving me sips of coconut water between contractions and putting a cool washcloth on my head, though at this point I wasn’t that aware of others around me besides Chase. Somewhere around 1 am I got in the bath and Mary told me that the next thing that would happen would be the urge to push. It was so strange because all of the sudden my body just started pushing. It was so powerful! I asked to get out of the bathtub because I really didn’t want to have the baby in the bath. I always knew I was more of a dry-land birther. Someone went to fetch my towel from the other bathroom, but I couldn’t wait. I got out of the bath and hightailed it down the hallway, dripping wet. I got into bed and was laying on my back at first. Somewhere around this time my sister, Isa, showed up as well as Dawn, the other midwife. Ronda checked me and I was completely dilated except for a little bit of cervix which she “pushed out of the way” during the next contraction. I didn’t ask questions…

I was just glad to be moving along. I started pushing on my back at first and then someone suggested I move to my side with Chase holding my leg during each contraction. He had me in sort of a half-nelson if you will, a never before seen birth maneuver (according to the midwives)! This worked well because he could support my leg while whispering encouragements in my ear. I would put a picture here, but they are pretty x-rated. My water still had not broken at this point, so the intact water sack is what came out first. They showed me in the mirror and it looked like a snow globe…. a blueish whitish balloon thing. Very bizarre.

Everyone was lined up at the foot of the bed, and every time the contractions would come and I would push they would all say, Ooh! and Ah! and Beautiful! It was like a Fourth of July fireworks show, as Chase later remarked. I have more x-rated pictures of this, which I am not including here.

When his head was about 1/3 of the way out, the water sac burst like a balloon—such a strange feeling! I reached down and felt his little head, all hairy and squishy. It didn’t feel like a head at all. Pushing felt good, though I admit crowning was a little intense (I just remember saying Wow! really loudly). The midwives massaged my perineum and put warm oil on it, which was amazing. When his head finally came out after about an hour of pushing, it was quickly followed by his little hand, just as I had felt it during pregnancy. Chase moved down to catch him and my mom replaced Chase with the half-nelson maneuver.

And then all the sudden there he was--this slimy pink little baby placed on my stomach by Chase. There are no words for how amazing this moment was. He was with us this whole time, but now we got to touch his little head and hear his little voice. And that guy had pipes too! He screamed for like 20 minutes. Quite a journey he took to get here.

He was laying on his side on me, and I caught a glimpse of a tiny penis and said, "Oh! It’s a boy!" Which was a good thing since we didn’t have a girl’s name. We got 45 minutes of family time together, and we just gazed at and stroked our son, marveling at this miracle of God—how something so complex could have been formed in just 9 short months, and how we could love someone we had just met so very much.

After an hour I delivered the placenta, whose cord was still pulsing and attached to our boy. Pretty cool! I had a small tear on the inside which got stitched up, but I could have cared less at that point. We had a baby! He was examined and weighed and then placed back in our arms. Things quieted down after a few hours and we were left in our home with our little boy slumbering on Chase’s chest. Welcome, little Ezra. We love you!

A gift from God!