birth story.

Charley D Kliewer

8 pounds 10 ounces

21 inches

1:07 pm

April 24, 2014

Wednesday morning, April 23rd

early in the morning i went & slept in Bentley's bed because he had crawled into ours & I was feeling too squished. I remember at 9 am having a contraction that lasted about a minute, but then didn't have another one until about 20 minutes later. they were fairly intense, but always about 15-20 minutes apart. shawn stayed home from work. it was cool & rainy & he made a big breakfast of eggs & bacon & toast & oatmeal. i can't really remember what we did the whole day, i know i took it easy, i was scared to go on a long walk or something in case i would tire myself out before labor would really start. since it was wednesday, shawn & bentley went to eat dinner at church before puggles. shawn brought me back the meal & a small pepsi from buckys. the contractions had stayed about the same intensity, lower back pain & some burning, but never were closer than 15 minutes apart. my mom & siblings brought bentley back to us after puggles & i went to bed maybe about 10 pm or so because i was feeling sleepy & didn't know how sleep would go. i didn't sleep much, the contractions were now about 12-15 minutes apart & laying down made my back so tight. for a while, shawn would press on my lower back & that would help relieve pressure, but eventually i got up & walked around. I spent the rest of the night bouncing on the exercise ball, walking around the house, sitting in the recliner, & i even took a few hot showers. ( side note: the power was out for a few hours, just like when I was in labor with Bentley!) the contractions were slowly, very slowly, getting closer together, but by 5 am the closest they were, were about 5 minutes apart. and that wasn't consistent, sometimes it would jump back up to about a 7 or 8 minute spread. my mom & caroline came over about 9 am. i don't know when we left on our walk, but soon after they arrived my mom took us on a tour of the entire town! it was cold & damp. we saw a ton of blue items; robins egg, bottle cap, baby sock, gatorade bottle. i didn't time contractions very well during the walk, but they were much closer together.  we came back home & all i wanted to do was sit down. mom said no, we are going back out so i said ok, fine, but i want to go to the bathroom first. i had a contraction while in the bathroom & when i stood up my water broke everywhere! this would have been about 11 am, maybe a few minutes after. my mom said that it was a good sign, and boy was she right! by 11:45 we were ready to leave for the birth center! contractions had basically gone from 3 minutes, to 2 minutes, & were on top of each other in that time span. when we got in the car i had a contraction right away, but then they slowed down during the drive & i was praying the whole way that this labor was real & happening (one of the few times you are actually praying for intense contractions). the drive took less than 20 minutes & when we got to the birth center i had another contraction right away that i could only stand through (in the parking lot). after it stopped, we walked in & got into our room & they took my blood pressure, etc while i continued to have contractions. the midwife came in & checked me to see how far i was dilated,  8/9! she was even surprised because i was still so calm. i was so relieved to be able to get into the tub. i remember the water felt so warm & relaxing, even my fingers felt relaxed. i was worried it might slow things down, but didn't care. i was just going to enjoy it for a while. but good news! the labor continued, & i felt pushy right away. i had them turn down the lights because i felt like they were blaring in my eyes. the midwife, my mom, & shawn were the perfect team for me. the midwife would give me a few instructions--breath for the baby, go with the pushes. my mom--relax! shawn--well he was in charge of the important cold wash cloth, drinks of water in between pushes (he thought i wasn't aware of how much i was drinking, but i was THIRSTY!), & letting me squeeze his hand, which really is a major pain reliever. we calculate the real pushing was about 30 minutes. i could feel so much, if that makes sense. i felt unsure of what more i could do in order to push the baby out. it was like i could feel the pressure of the baby from inside. but pretty soon shawn was really cheering me on & the midwife said a last key phrase "embrace the burn" & soon enough she reached in the water & pulled that baby right onto my chest! it was amazing! i had tears of disbelief that it had happened so soon! we thought we could tell it was a boy right away, & like with Bentley, I didn't really care, but we checked again after a minute so that shawn could go out into the waiting room & bring Caroline & Bentley back into see the baby! (Caroline said she knew the baby was born based on Shawns cheering) They came in & Bentley was quiet but excited & when we said this is your brother, Charley he said "Charley is a much better name than Michael" (which had been the name he wanted us to use). he came over & saw his new brother while we were still in the tub while Caroline took pictures to be able to send to my sisters who weren't there. While we were recovering it was a pretty emotional time...for Bentley! anytime Charley cried, Bentleys eyes would well up with tears. But then when he was happy, he was wildly bouncing off the walls. He left after a while with my mom & Caroline & when they walked out he said "isn't it so great God just gave a baby to us? He knew we didn't want to pay for one so he gave us one!"


I think that about sums it up! we arrived at the birth center a few minutes after noon, he was born at 1:07 pm & we left for home at 5 pm! We stopped & went through the Runza drive thru before coming home & after that it was so great to just rest in my own bed!

thank you to andrea for rushing over to take pictures! i remember saying it felt so relieving to have someone to just be able to take pictures of all that was going on, so i could look back & remember it all.

it ONLY took me four weeks to get this all together. whew! so i apologize for how poorly its written, it was pieced together. life with 2 has been an adjustment. and we are fine if that means just sitting around in our pj's all day. it's when we add in...well anything else where things get a little tricky. but Charley is such a good baby! and Bentley such a good big brother, so we will get better at doing things & going places.

birth story, part 2.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 /  Thursday, June 24, 2010

Contractions were time-able from about 6 pm on. They were consistently about 9 minutes apart.  Shawn & I took a walk. This relieved tension in my lower back. My lower back was very tight & that is where I felt most of my contraction.  It would also come around into the front.  If I sat down, most of everything would stop. Or at least spread out really far apart. If I laid down on my side, I almost instantly got a contraction.  Mom & I took another walk while shawn went & got pizza from Casey’s for dinner for himself.  My contractions were pretty regular, we used a blue stopwatch to time everything, but they were still probably 8 minutes apart. Slowly, as the night progressed, they got longer & closer together.  I finally had to quit sitting or lying down & just walk around to easy the pressure plus keep them coming.  I would rest my head on shawns t-shirt rack in his closet & close my eyes a lot. If my eyes were closed I felt like I could breath through & focus. I eventually was having contractions that were lasting longer, over two minutes. my biggest problem here was that i couldn't really lie down. i got tired of standing. at one point i remember thinking "maybe this will be our only child" (after it was all said & done, i looked at my baby in the hospital & thought "that was it?" i would go through a lot more to get such a great prize.)  They also began to get closer together…about 4 minutes or less. Eventually we decided that we could pack up & go to the hospital. This was at 3 am. Shawn gathered everything & put it in the car. Thankfully it wasn't raining anymore! One error we made is not packing a sweatshirt for Shawn (or should I say we only brought one, and he let me wear it).  He grabbed last minute snacks & pillows & my soft blanket.  I got in the backseat. Sitting was very uncomfortable so I got on my knees & leaned over the back seat with a pillow. The ride was bumpy & pretty uncomfortable.  The pressure in my lower back was increasing & un-relievable.  We got to the hospital quickly & then walked around in the parking lot for a while just to keep stress low & keep the contractions regular.  They were pretty much on top of each other so we went into the ER entrance (our only option). This was at 4 am. A nurse came with a wheel chair & wheeled me to our room. i felt really excited and it was totally surreal. Were we really at the hospital?! the one we had toured? dreaming of the day we would actually be having our baby?! and this is that day?! Checking in & getting to the room was very quick & easy. Once in the room, they hooked me up to monitor my heart rate & the baby. Everything was good. I was still having contractions about every 2 minutes or less. When they checked me I was at a 7, we continued to labor & they checked me again (probably about 20 minutes or so) I was at an 8. They checked again and I went to 9 -10 quickly. I had to do two more contractions to move the uterus out of the way. I had the strong urge to push & these contractions were the most intense. I was laying on my side the whole time. I had been cold so I had shawns sweat shirt on.  With the last contractions I got hot so he helped me take it off. I couldn’t really talk because I was keeping my focus on breathing & relaxing & I kept my eyes closed. I never even saw the nurses who were checking me.  My nurse was Kelly, who turned out to be the greatest nurse we could have possibly asked for (direct answer to prayer.  She only worked 2 days a week. God put us at the hospital at the exact time she was about to come on duty so it worked out that she could stay with us through the entire labor) after I made it though those last two contractions we got ready to push. I was most comfortable on my side and so for a pushing contraction or two we did it on my side. The nurse was very gracious in letting us choose positions, while also offering ideas. We then decided to utilize the bed so we sat it up in a throne position so that I could be in a more squatting type position. We did this for a while (now mind you, this all starts to run together, we had visualized the baby being born between 7-8 am since we had been there for a few hours and everything else had progressed so quickly), we then moved to a standing squat. I would lay down & fall asleep between pushing contractions & wake up going straight into pushing. The problem was that the contractions had slowed down to about 8 minutes apart. I would get 4 pushes out of each contraction but was not making much headway. We continued to do this for hours. I was also still leaking amniotic fluid this whole time. I stayed pretty rested because of all the sleeping I was doing between contractions. After a while I started walking around the room to try & get the contractions to speed back up. Nothing was changing. Shawn & mom would either sleep when I slept, or read & then when I would have a contraction, I would sit up, say ‘ok’  and they were there, right by my side. Counting, telling me to breath, push, etc. I actually remember feeling bad for them because they would be snoozing too, and it is hard to keep waking up & falling back asleep when you aren’t the one having something actually happen to you. I eventually tried getting in the shower which felt really good. The water was hot. This was ironic because I had made sure to have my hair & makeup done everyday but then I just stood under the water. priority’s. The doctor that was on call (mine was busy or something at the time) came in to check on me, he was encouraging saying he thought things would progress quickly.  It was encouraging at the time & the nurse that had been on call with me the whole time, as well as the head nurse, stayed positive. When the doctor came back in a while later he was a bit more hurried and really, we are going to sugar coat over this part because I won’t let him ruin my story. He was a jerk.  But God always has a plan, and Shawn took this small road block in stride & stood our ground and kept his cool.  We eventually asked him to leave the room so we could discus some options we wanted to try.  We consulted with the head nurse + Kelly, our nurse. They were both very knowledgeable…and had had babies of their own! We decided that we would try hooking up to a small dose of pitocine. This is a syntehcie version of oxitocin which your body produces to help with your contractions. Since mine were still so far apart the goal was to get them to speed up so they were closer together + more intense. We (me, Shawn & my mom) all felt peace with this decision. It wasn’t the route we had envisioned, but we also thought I wasn’t going to be pushing for about 10-ish hours.  They hooked it up through the iv tube that was already in my arm (standard hospital procedure). This totally worked! My contractions slowly started coming closer together which meant when I felt the urge to push it was more productive! The whole time I felt like I was in good hands. I can’t say I felt entirely at peace because I was surpressing stress that they were going to try to c-section the baby. I knew I could do it, and just wanted to hurry up & have this baby! With the encouragement of the two nurses, Shawn & my mom, I worked hard! I was laying in the bed/semi-reclined. They gave me two handles that when the contractions came I would hold onto & crunch forward (side note: days later my arms were so sore i could barely move them!), just like doing a sit up. Everyone would count out loud, forcing me to push hard for 10 seconds. My mom kept telling me to breath & would rub my face because I was scrunching it up so tightly. She didn’t want me to burst any blood vessels in my face (giving myself a black eye, which I didn’t). Everyone kept telling me how good I was doing (I just felt like it was routine encouragement). I never wanted to look to see progress because I felt like I would be discouraged. They could see hair (I didn’t believe them). I just kept going through the motions, a lot of times closing my eyes & counting. Eventually things were really picking up (about 45 minutes after the pitocin) and they called to see if my doctor would be able to come in to deliver they baby (we begged them to just “accidentally” deliver the baby but they said it was to much red tape.|)  She made it. This is where it also gets a little hazy but Shawn says he got stressed because there were a lot of machines beeping (the baby’s heart rate slows as it enters the birth canal, but that also means its monitor goes crazy) and I was so focused and needing to breath that they put an oxygen mask on me so that when I wasn’t pushing I would get a lot of good air. I still felt like every push was the same. I didn’t really feel like it was all about to happen. And then it did. At 3:41 pm. The push that shot that baby out. It hadn’t felt any different then the million before. There was a burn as the baby came out but as soon as I felt that I also saw her pull out a baby. So all was ok. Shawn said “anna, it’s a boy!” I didn’t respond. But in my head I thought “I actually don’t care. I’m just so happy our baby is born!” My mom was so anxious to know the name! “Well, can we FINALLY hear it?” Shawn said Bentley Von. They put him right up on me & he cried. But I didn’t care or really try to stop it. It was such an amazing sound. They let him lay on my chest for a while & didn’t clean him up except for a little rubbing around him laying on me. After I got over the initial excitement of the birth being over (and after I was stitched up. Um, kind of the worst part. But then again, WHO CARES! I’m holding my baby!)  I was super interested to see how much he weighed! That is when my mom came over & told me how proud of me she was. And I cried. I was overwhelmed with relief that everything was ok. We had made. I had a baby.

so that's it. my story. i wrote it in a couple different sessions. so sorry if it is choppy or runs together. a few days after B was born i sat down & typed up most of it but literally stopped mid-sentence because as much as i loved having a baby & would do it again in a heartbeat, i was also so relieved to be moving on from that point that it was hard to go back & relive it all! i can't believe that it actually took me 9 months to finish it. oh well, i also can't believe that my newborn tiny baby is almost 9 months old.

birth story, part 1.

i needed a deadline. i decided that it would be bentley turning 9 months. so here is my birth story! i kept a journal the 4 days leading up to the actual labor & delivery. this is it. i didn't edit it because i felt like a) that would take to long b) who likes ever likes the edited version better. unless it is a dirty rap song...but that's another subject. my labor was slow, and spread out over a couple of days. probably pretty typical for your first baby. we chose to stay home as long as possible because we a) knew the baby was safe even though my water was leaking & b) we knew i would be c-sectioned if we went into the hospital. i was going to do all i could to avoid that. so without any further disclaimers, enjoy.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

8:30 woke up b/c felt like I was wetting the bed…ran to the bathroom. Peed. Couldn’t decide if my water had just broken or maybe baby kicked my bladder & I lost control? Woke up Shawn & talked through possible options. We both wanted to lean towards it not being my water breaking because I was having no other real signs of labor. Tried to call mom for her opinion, no answer. Went back to bed.

9:00 same thing happened again. Tried to call mom again. Still no answer. There was one tiny spot of blood. Took a shower.

9:40 same thing happened again. Mom called us back, came over.

Just leaking. Did laundry, cleaned kitchen. Was having period type cramps in my lower stomach, but nothing to serious.

11:00 laid down for a nap

12:30 got up, leaking a lot, more mucus now.

1:00 watching Bonanza now---shawn is going to make eggs. It is pouring rain outside & has been. Also low thunder.

2:45 did more laundry, shawn is napping. Cleaned the kitchen, took out the trash. There is a cool stream of water running down the water & I found a dime.  Called andrea & maddie---maddie answered the phone saying, what you are in labor? Yes. Still leaking a lot. Baby is moving around…so far I have eaten 2 pieces of toast, scrambled eggs with cheese, the remains of my banana bread & a berry popsicle. I also put on some makeup, and maybe will straighten my hair.

3:08 straightening my hair, making raspberry leaf tea. I have Parent Trap on…again.

3:50 shawn got up from his nap. I drank my tea.

4:16 shawn is going to hy-vee. We have no food. Baby rolled around, my belly button sank all the way in…haven’t seen that look for a while. Have TCM on now…

6:36 back from a walk. I carried an umbrella because it was sprinkling. The colors outside are so vibrant! It is dark blue sky, green grass. Now we are eating the watermelon shawn got at the store.  It also just started to pour, like ‘the rainforest’.  Shawn brought me colorful crazy daisys! He also got snacks & magazines for either at the hospital or when we get back home.  We have the college world series on. The swelling in my feet & ankles is considerably down!

6:51 it is pouring. Shawn is messing with the carseat. He was going to go put it in…but to much rain.

7:04 kami texted me. She had a dream, baby is a girl. I have been texting with andrea, we are prepared to eat crow b/c so far this whole labor thing is easy. Aunt kerri has also been texting me & she isn’t worried that my water is leaking but I am not going into the hospital. That is very encouraging & comforting.

9:56 we ate bowtie pasta w/ alfredo & broccoli & chicken. I am pretty hungry. Also ate some baby carrots. We started 7 brides for 7 brothers…I fell asleep on the couch for a while…

Monday, June 21, 2010

Last night, at 11:00 Shawn ran to McDonalds to get a strawberry shake in celebration of Fathers Day. A few minutes after he left the electricity went out! I sat in the dark for like 10 seconds and then he called me…I thought he knew the power was out, but he didn’t. I almost had him turn around & come back home but then it flickered back on. I quickly got the flashlight from under the bed & started lighting candles. The power went back out. It was out until about 5 am.

Mom came over & brought a few snacks. We talked for a while & then she went home.

We had the windows open in the bedroom & it was raining pretty hard. We had candles lit and it was very relaxing. I slept pretty well, getting up a few times to go to the bathroom. When the electricity came on shawn got up & turned the a/c back on & shut the windows.

I got up about 11:15. I showered. I was on the computer for a while but feeling very emotional. I ate some cantaloupe & then had some cereal. Shawn woke up about an hour or so later, I was still very teary & decided to lay back down to calm down.  I napped for a while while the FIFA soccor game was on. Shawn went outside & laid out. Then he mowed the lawn…I got up & ate some toast & more cereal. I didn’t do to much, I felt like laying in bed so I dozed off & on. Grease came on which was good.

Andrea texted & she came over to watch the Bachelorette. That got me up & cleaning. Shawn went to wal-mart to pick up a few things. Dean, Kerri, Maddie, & Dylan came over & brought me a tiara & outfit to wear after I have the baby. Mom came over & brought me some black & blue cohosh. Shawn made chef salad & corn. Andrea brought watermelon that I cut up, crackers, & some garlic bread. Shawn planted the plants in his garden with mom & we ate dinner. We just hung out watching tv.—the goonies was on

At 12:00 am, Tuesday, June 22,2010 I took the blue & black cohosh.  I am going to take it again at like 2 am, or when I wake up in the middle of the night.

My contractions were semi-noticeable about every hour or hour in a half…but nothing to serious. this was before I took the b&b  so far I haven’t noticed anything else…

10:57 pm     Tuesday TODAY

got up close to 1 pm. I was having back & lower stomach contractions during the night. When I got up, I had a few more…but then they stopped. I didn’t do much…just made sure things were tidy, ate, & watched tv.  Shawn did a lot of work outside.  Tonight Dad brought over a mattress for the cradle, a cute sheep sheet, a case of toilet paper, & a sack of groceries.  Shawn went to Casey’s and got sub-sandwiches for our supper. We watched the college world series.  Dad also brought us a Bob Hope cowboy movie that we are going to start now. 

I have been carrying a stopwatch with me to time the contractions. Maybe they will increase because I am laying down.

ARE YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT?! tune back in tomorrow to hear about us deciding to go to the hospital & what happened (or didn't happen) once we got there. 

ps. thanks for indulging me.