Gerrit’s birth story started the day I hit 37 weeks, and Berend’s story started the day I hit 38 weeks… weird! That’s about where the similarities end though.

The night before I went into labor, I was having a fair amount of cramping and lower back pain. I ate my late night snack on my birthing ball to try to get some relief, but eventually I decided to just try to go to bed in case things got going. I was able to get some sleep despite Gerrit waking around 1am and getting up to use the bathroom a couple of times. Gerrit came to my room around 8am and crawled into bed with me. Sometimes he falls back to sleep with me for awhile, and sometimes he just wants me to get up and get him breakfast. This was a morning that he fell back to sleep with me.
I couldn’t really get back to sleep with G in bed with me once I got to a certain point in my pregnancy, and as I was laying there with my not-so-much baby boy, I realized that I was having contractions. After about 40 minutes, I carefully grabbed my phone to start tracking contractions with an app I had downloaded while Gerrit slept. I realized that the contractions were actually fairly regular. They were coming roughly every 4 minutes and lasting at least a minute each time. When I realized this might be actual labor happening, I decided to take a picture of Gerrit snuggled up with me, knowing it could be our last photo together with him as an only child.

When Gerrit woke up, I helped him use the potty and get some underwear on, then went to the living room with him. We both got some cereal to eat, and I ate mine on my birthing ball as I kept tracking contractions. My mom later said that she knew these contractions were different because I couldn’t deal with Gerrit and the contractions at the same time. Around 9:30, after almost an hour of tracking contractions, I decided to text Andrew to come home and called my OB’s office to see if his nurse thought I should head to the hospital. The combination of being almost 4 cm dilated the week before and having regular contractions led to the nurse telling me to head to the hospital to get checked on the monitors at least.

So Andrew came home and started packing what he wanted to bring to the hospital. I was slowly putting in last minute items in my own bag. I decided I was doing okay enough to put on my “weekly picture dress” and get a quick 38 week photo between contractions before we left for the hospital.
We finally left the house just after 10am. I kept timing my contractions on the way to the hospital and just breathed through my contractions as best I could. When we arrived at the hospital, it took us awhile to actually get into the hospital. I had to stop and lean on Andrew for every contraction I had from the parking lot to the building. Andrew had offered to drop me off at the door, but I didn’t want to be by myself at that point.

We got to Labor & Delivery and found out that apparently everyone wanted to have a baby on May 15th. They didn’t know where to put me! I finally got checked into a triage room around 10:30.
By this point my contractions were getting more intense. I was sitting on the edge of the bed for them, except for when the nurse had to hook me up to the fetal monitor. Laying down was definitely not comfortable though. I feel like I waited in the room for a long time before they checked to see how far dilated I was. Around 11:20, I was checked and told I was 8 cm dilated already! I was definitely in pain, but I really didn’t think I would be that far into labor that quickly. About half an hour later, my water broke. It was the big gush like in the movies. I just remember saying, “My water… my water…”

Around 11:55, they moved me into a labor and delivery room. I can’t remember if I tried laboring anywhere but the bed once I got into the L&D room. I was tired, and  I ended up laying on my side in the bed. I had said I wanted to try using a birthing ball or a peanut ball, but when we tried the peanut ball, it hurt way too much. I’m guessing it was the SPD from pregnancy: having my legs that far apart just felt so painful.
At 12:05, about 10 minutes after my water broke, I was checked again, and I was 10 cm dilated. Despite me not wanting to lay on my back to push, the doctor insisted on it. I’m still a little irritated about that! It took me awhile to actually start pushing well. I feel like I went through the same thing with Gerrit: not realizing how hard I actually had to push to get anything accomplished! Andrew later told me that the baby’s heart rate was starting to drop every time I had a contraction, so they had to get me to push him out ASAP. He also said that when I really tried, I had the head out in 2 pushes. I ended up tearing a bit because Berend came so fast. Andrew was able to deliver our baby again, but the doctor had to unwrap the cord, which was wrapped twice around the neck.

At 12:34pm, our baby was born! I didn’t know if I had had a boy or a girl at first because the focus was on getting the cord unwrapped from the neck. Then Andrew announced that we had had another boy!
I honestly can’t remember what I was thinking or feeling as our baby was laid on my chest. I think I was surprised by all the dark hair actually! Gerrit surprised me by coming out blonde, so part of me was expecting another blondie to come out. My other thought was what we were going to name him. I was sure Andrew wasn’t going to go with my top choice, so I was trying to decided if our little boy looked like our name option.
One thing that just amazed me was seeing our little guy do the “breast crawl.” He was so alert and just focused on getting to the nipple to nurse. And once he got there, he just latched right on like it was his job!

We had at least an hour (but I’m pretty sure more) of skin-to-skin time in the delivery room before getting moved to a recovery room. It took them awhile to have a room ready for us on that end too. But I was more than happy to just lay in bed with our new baby! We also ordered lunch since I was starving.

Once we were in the recovery room, Andrew and I finally decided to talk about what to name our baby boy. We basically were down to two names: one that I really liked and one that we both kind of liked. Andrew told me that I should decide the name, since I had put the time and energy into finding something meaningful. So we agreed on Berend Glenn Kiel.

Berend is the Dutch form of Bernard, which was my grandpa’s name. He passed away last summer, and I really liked that we were honoring his memory with our baby’s name. Gerrit is also a Dutch name that I came across in my mom’s family tree, so I liked that our boys’ names “went together” in a sense. Glenn was Andrew’s grandpa’s name. We spent a lot of weekends at Andrew’s grandparents’ house and cottage while we were dating, and we have a lot of great memories there. Using both of our grandpas’ names for Berend seemed like a perfect fit.

A few hours after Berend was born, a huge storm tore through North Little Rock. All of a sudden the room got dark, and there was a torrential downpour of rain. We could hear it hailing outside, and then the power went out. It was in the mid 80s and humid that day, so it got warm in our room! I don’t think the power came back on until that evening.

Andrew had messaged my mom telling her that we were getting hit with a storm so they could hold off on driving down, but she and Gerrit were already on their way to see us. They had stopped at a store to buy a little gift for Berend, but the power went out while they were there. Stopping at least kept them out of the storm for a bit though!

Gerrit was interested in Berend when he arrived, but I think he was more excited to see us. He only wanted to hold Berend for a few seconds ha. My mom was more than happy to hold him though. 🙂 
So here we are, a family of four! Me with all my blue-eyed boys… a boy mom, just as I predicted. 

Berend was born on May 15th at 12:34pm weighing 6 lbs 15 oz and was 19.75″ long. I still can’t believe how fast labor and delivery happened: about 4.5 hours! He had dark hair and blue/gray eyes, and his face looked so much like Gerrit’s.

I’m so thankful I was able to experience labor naturally vs being induced. I would say that the contractions were still pretty intense, but I could feel them start and end unlike the contractions I had with Pitocin. And I feel like natural contractions progressed my labor more quickly too. It was such a different experience!