Mae Mitchell

My birth with Mae wasn't quite as puppies & rainbows as Cal's was, but we are oh so happy that she is here. She has been with us for 4 days and she has been such a dream baby. I can't believe that before she was born I was worried about loving this baby as much as I do Cal... but somehow I do. I am so grateful for her in our family. Here is a too-detailed story of how she was born.

I was still 3 weeks from my due date on Thursday, October 3rd. I had a routine doctor's appointment earlier that day where she told me that I was dilated to a 3, but I still didn't have any reason to believe that she would come before her due date. Around 6 p.m. we left to drive to St. George/Pine Valley for conference weekend. I kept having contractions on the way there until finally we turned around. I don't think that either of us really thought that I was in labor, but my contractions were consistent enough for us to turn around and drive back home.

This photo was taken earlier that day

I felt like my contractions calmed down a little bit once we got home, so we put Cal to bed and planned on driving to Utah in the morning. I thought it was weird that my contractions were still so consistently every 5 minutes, but they didn't hurt enough to go to the hospital. Dallin and I distracted ourselves by playing skip-bo. I won once and he won once. Dallin fell asleep on the couch around 11... but I was too anxious to sleep because my contractions still hadn't gone away. I passed time by cleaning the house for a few hours, until the pain started getting stronger and closer together. Around 2 in the morning my contractions were really strong and about 4 min apart, so we woke Cal up and drove to the hospital.

Leaving for the hospital with my Diet Coke

We had a fiasco with finding a door that was open at that hour and we basically walked around the entire hospital grounds twice, which was quite the site at 2 a.m. with my crazy contractions and our sleepy toddler. When we got up there we were informed that Calvin wasn't allowed there, so we decided to have Dal wait with him in the waiting room until we figured out what was going on. They hooked me up to the monitor and, after a while, the nurse told me that I wasn't actually having contractions, just 'irritability' and that I would have to go home. She checked me and was really surprised to discover that I was dilated to a 5. She still wanted to send me home because of my lack of contractions on the monitor. She told me to come back as soon as I felt any contractions because I would come really fast since I was already at a 5. I was really confused since I felt like I was already having contractions so I asked to see a doctor. I wasn't really anxious to have the baby that night necessarily, but I wanted to figure out how to stop the 'irritability' and how exactly I progressed to a 5 while "not having any contractions". He instructed the nurse to make me walk around for an hour and a half, then check me again to make sure that I was not progressing.

Since everyone had me convinced I was going home, I didn't want to wake someone up at 3 in the morning to watch Cal when we would be leaving anyway. Dallin hadn't been able to get Cal to fall asleep in the waiting room, so they went down to the car and got him to sleep in his carseat. I told him to just stay down there until they sent me home. This was not a pleasant part of my labor experience because I was all alone, walking around in circles at the hospital at 3:30 in the morning and in a lot of pain. There were 2 other women walking around with their husbands who kept falling on the ground and screaming in agony every 5 minutes. The nurses told me that I need to come back to the hospital when that was happening to me. I thought that was a strange way to measure.They kept making fun of me because I was "skipping" around. I was seriously in pain, but I sort of able to still walk through them. It was a reaaaally long hour and a half. After I was done walking, the nurse hooked me back up to the contraction monitor and brought my discharge papers after I "still wasn't having any 'real' contractions". She talked to me about how my contractions need to be harder and longer before I come in again. I was feeling pretty defeated since I sincerely felt pain and they still weren't going away. She checked me and was REALLY shocked to discover that I was at a 7, and immediately admitted me. Here is where I felt the pain get exponentially worse, and it was super hard not to have Dal there. I made him come up so that I could tell Calvin goodbye, but when they came in I was in so much pain that I couldn't really talk. They came to give me my epidural when I was at an 8, and it was then that my friend Amy came to pick up Cal. Calvin was suuuuuch a trooper all morning long. We woke him up at 2 a.m. and he wasn't able to sleep for more than an hour after that- but he was so pleasant the whole time.

By the time Dal got back up I was at a 9, and pretty soon later I was fully dilated and ready to push. I was uncomfortable and throwing up, but felt much better by this point. We waited about 20 min for Dr. Lewis to get there, then she broke my water and we started pushing. I had to push through 3 or 4 contractions and she was here! She weighed 5 pounds, 15 oz and was 18 inches long.The pushing hurt much worse than last time, but I think that it was helpful for my recovery process that I actually could feel what I was doing to my body with my pushing because my recovery has been so great so far. I was pretty exhausted when they first put her on my chest, so I don't think that I was able to fully comprehend what was happening. They took her over to clean her off and called someone from the NICU over because they heard 'grunting' in her breathing. I waited in my bed while they worked on her on the other side of the room for 45 min. They were still worried about her breathing, so they said they would take her to the NICU until the grunting stopped so that they could monitor it. They let me hold her for 5 minutes first and it happened to be right when Lauren got there with Cal. We had the happiest 5 minutes there as a family of 4 and Cal was really cute with her. 

I am not proud to admit that I was not in very good spirits for the next 7ish hours. Dallin was with Mae in the NICU (where he should have been)... so I was alone in the hospital. again. I didn't feel well and it felt so weird to have gone through that whole labor with no baby in my arms. Around 4 I was able to go see her and she was doing really well. They let me feed her and she did awesome, so they let her come back to us around 5! It was a long day, but it has been smooth sailing ever since. She has been such a dream baby and I honestly could not love her more. She brought such a sweet spirit with her and we had such a lovely weekend listening to conference in the hospital. Lauren drove down as soon early on the morning that Mae was born and watched Cal the whole time we were in the hospital. It was soo helpful! She rocks. And it was even her birthday.

It is a trippy thing, this 2-kid business. Cal has been in St. George with the Mitchells so that we could get settled with Mae. I thought that it would be nice to have him gone so that we could bond with our baby. I was glad to have one-on-one time with Mae, but I reeeeally missed Cal. It is crazy that I can love both of them so much. I don't know why my babies are so anxious to get here, but I am so grateful that they were both really healthy for being so early. I wish that I were a better writer... I am not sure exactly how to word how obsessed we are with our new baby. She is perfect.

We really really love you, baby Mae.