Change of Plans: B + C & Baby

While I'm in the hospital and home recovering/taking care of Miss Charlotte, I have a few people scheduled to blog for me. I hope you enjoy them while I'm away! Don't worry, I'll be back soon with stories and tons of photos of our little one! =)

Hi everyone! It’s Chantal from B + C & Baby  here guest blogging while Sarah is off with her new little baby!

I’ve been in the exact same spot as her and not too long ago. My baby, Penny, was born on December 16, 2011. She came on a Friday at 1:05am. 6 pounds, 12 oz and 18 inches long, a perfect little baby with a head full of hair.

My birth went completely different than what I expected. My husband and I planned for a natural birth. We did the Bradley classes, researched researched researched, and decided that we wanted as little intervention as possible. We wanted to labor at home, go to the hospital at the latest point possible, no epidural, sit in the tub, have a baby, skin to skin contact, delayed cord clamping… you know, the whole natural deal.

People warned me that things could change. I brushed them off and was stunned when plans began shifting suddenly.

At my 39-week appointment I had the midwife check me. I wanted to see if I was dilating, since I had another week. Well, we found out instead that our little baby had turned around – she was breech! It was what we had been dreading. Babies in my family like to be breech and up to 38 weeks, we thought we had avoided it. Then sometime between 38 and 39 weeks, she switched around!

For the next week we did everything possible to try to spin her around. I did handstands in the pool, I hung upside, I played music on the bottom with a cold pack on top. We hoped, we prayed, and we decided that we weren’t going to schedule a c-section so we could give her up to the last possible moment to turn around.

I went into labor on December 15, a day after my due date, and went into the hospital around dinnertime. She was still breech, they confirmed it several times, and my natural childbirth turned into a semi-scheduled c-section early that morning.

But hey, while I was disappointed going up to the birth, once our baby was in our arms, it all just melted away. She is here and she is ours.

I know Sarah is being treated well – she’s giving birth in the same hospital I did just three months ago! I hope everything went just how they envisioned it, and I’m sure you all are thinking the same as me: you can’t wait to see this little baby of hers!