Raiyah's Birth Story: My Labour and Delivery Experience As A Soon To Be Mom of 2

Heading into the birthday process the second time, I had certain expectations for my labour and delivery experience. I thought that my water would break and I’d go into labour naturally at home, and have a short labour. I figured that my body should know what to do the second time around. Turns out setting birthing plans and expectations doesn’t increase your odds of achieving them, even if it’s the second time around.

If you’ve read my third trimester article, you’d know that this pregnancy has been very different from my first. I was mentally and physically done being pregnant at like 37 or 38 weeks. Being as this was my second pregnancy, I thought that I would likely go early, since that’s common for second pregnancies. I think that’s part of the reason I was mentally ready to be done at 38 weeks, because I thought she might arrive around that time. I had an OB appointment at 38 weeks and then again at 39+4 weeks (due to my 40-week appointment falling on Christmas Day) and received the same news. My cervix was ready, and I was 2cm dilated but with no dilation progress between those two appointments, no Braxton Hicks contractions, and no loss of my mucus plug or water breaking, he said that natural labour was still possible but that I might still need to be induced. With Christmas and the New Year rapidly approaching, my OB set a time to meet me on Dec 27th to check me again and discuss induction options for after the holidays if I hadn’t gone into labour naturally before then.

Christmas Day rolled around and still nothing. I was incredibly disappointed that my baby girl wasn’t here for the holidays like I was hoping, but I am very thankful that I wasn’t away from Thalia on Christmas! It was special that we got to spend one more Christmas together as just the two of us so I crossed my fingers that labour would start soon after... like maybe 12:01am on Boxing Day. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. We stayed up until almost 3am Christmas night playing board games as a family and STILL NO CONTRACTIONS.

Early afternoon on Boxing Day I received a call from the hospital. I figured they needed to reschedule my appointment with Dr. Roe since hospitals traditionally aren’t used for drop-in visits, but it was the only day and location he was working over the 2-week holiday period, and was making exceptions for a few of his very pregnant patients. Turns out, it was Dr. Roe himself asking if I’d like to be included the next day instead of just coming in for a check up and scheduling something for later. WHAT?!?! I won’t lie, it threw me very off guard. I knew from conversations with him that inductions are not scheduled until a patient is between 41 and 42 weeks pregnant unless there are health concerns for the mom or baby and apparently, they were being really strict about these rules because of COVID. As far as I knew I was a very low risk pregnancy so I was quite shocked they would offer me an induction on Dec 27th at 40+2 weeks. I was just starting to adjust to the fact that baby girl might not be arriving until the new year via induction, and so I asked to call him back in an hour after I had time to think about it.

I was torn. I was very ready to not be pregnant anymore, so having an induction the next day would completely solve that problem! However, there are side effects to induction like an increased chance of a c-section, infection, longer and more difficult labour and recovery. I had the image of labouring at home to reduce my hospital stay time in my head and being induced was the exact opposite of that. Since I wasn’t having any real pregnancy problems it seemed selfish to take an induction just because of my discomfort. On the other hand, given that I was technically induced for Thalia, I figured that my body might not cooperate again this time and I would end up getting induced anyway, so why not end my discomfort early? With Thalia, after my water broke, I wasn’t contracting, so they induced me to avoid infection. Since Thalia’s delivery and recovery wasn’t that bad, I was hoping that being induced a second time would be similar, just shorter. My Mom is all about the natural birth thing, especially waiting for baby to tell us she was ready to come out so I could tell already that she wasn’t overly impressed that I was considering induction. She kept asking our Google home about the side effects and length of delivery after induction (a few hours to a few days in case you were wondering) hoping, I think, to encourage me to say no. When she could see I was still leaning into saying yes, her last-ditch attempt was to suggest calling my Aunt to ask if either of her two daughters were induced and what their experience was with the induction process. I put my Aunt on speaker so Mom couldn’t say I was just telling her what I wanted to hear, but it turns out they had a mix of natural births and induction but neither had a bad experience with induction.

Mom still didn’t seem all that impressed but it is my body and my baby (kind of Gray’s too but he didn’t seem against induction when I texted him), so ultimately it was my decision. With all this in mind and with confidence in my OB to not offer me something that would be harmful to me or baby girl, I called back and said yes! They told me to call at 6:30am to confirm that an arrival time of 7:30am still worked. Way to set women up for success! Get them up at the ass crack of dawn after likely not having a good night sleep due to nerves or discomfort, and then physically drain their body giving birth, and then spend the next year getting basically no sleep but you know, why not 7:30am?

I hung up the phone and the reality of the situation set in. I was going to meet my baby girl tomorrow! Subsequently, I needed to get the rest of my to-do list done since I was officially out of time! We ate leftovers from Christmas for dinner while Mom and I ran around starting laundry, packing hospital bags (click here to see what I brought), talking about names since I still hadn’t decided, and showering. Mainly, what we spent our time doing was preparing Thalia’s childcare team for our absence. My brother was less than enthusiastic to hear that Mom was coming with me and that we would be gone for likely 2 days, meaning he would be required to support my Dad in watching Thalia, cooking, cleaning (we wish) and watching his own dog (something he wasn’t good at in the first place). My Dad was quick to lay down the ground rules of no video games for my brother, probably because we told Dad he wasn’t allowed to watch TV. They both get too focused on the screen and then Thalia wreaks havoc on the house. Thankfully, my Dad had been home recovering from surgery and had been helping with Thalia so he was more familiar with having to feed her, play with her, and help at nap time which is the only reason I was comfortable having Mom be my birthing partner.

That being said, there were still lots of things that had to be prepared for them to make our absence less traumatising. I laid out clothes for Thalia to wear, fully stocked the diaper changing area, and gave them a demonstration on how to change the diaper genie and use the sound machine if she gets cranky at night. We reviewed a list of foods she could and couldn’t have at mealtime, walked through how to prep her bottle for nap and bedtime, but most importantly, we needed to show them how to change a diaper because that’s the one thing my Dad refuses to help with. He looked like a lost puppy but hopefully got it because I went to bed shortly after putting Thalia to sleep for the last time as an only child. It was bittersweet. I was so excited to meet my second daughter but at the same time I knew that meant less time for Thalia, for the first little while at least, and I’ve talked before about the mom guilt that brings.

I was very excited and also nervous, so I spent more of the night tossing and turning and getting up to go pee than I did sleeping. I gave up at 5:30am and played on my phone a bit to pass the time before calling the hospital at 6:30am. Naturally, Thalia decided she wasn’t able to sleep at the exact same time so after a brief phone call confirming that 7:30 was in fact go time I spent 15 minutes trying to get her to go back to sleep, unsuccessfully of course, and then went downstairs to wake my Mom to get ready to go and my Dad to put Thalia back to sleep. I felt so guilty getting ready to leave while her crying in the bedroom and my Dad, who was also unsuccessful in getting her to go back to sleep. Grandma to the rescue! She managed to get her back down at 7:30am so we were already off to a bad start by being late to the hospital and having me leave worried that my Dad was in way over his head. I almost almost told my Mom she couldn’t come with me. But, I know if I had said that, she would have stayed and said she wasn’t upset about it, but I knew that she would be truly heartbroken that she missed the birth of her second grandbaby. So off we went, hoping for the best!

Arriving at the hospital and getting to our room was easier than I expected given that we were officially in lockdown. They had a few questions for us at the door and gave us new masks but that was it. One of the first things they did when I got to my labour and delivery room was a COVID test. It was less painful than I was expecting given everyone’s complaints. It was more briefly uncomfortable than painful and made me feel like I needed to blow my nose but if I had to do the test again, I would survive. Since my results weren’t likely to come back before I was discharged the nurses were required to wear a gown when in my room, and Mom and I weren’t allowed to leave but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that neither of us were required to wear a mask, so I didn’t. I was very excited to know that I would be able to take lots of pictures after baby girl arrived (because who wouldn’t want to) and I wouldn’t be wearing a mask in them! I hope one day soon we’re able to look back on COVID and talk about the crazy time that it was, but I’d prefer to minimize the reminders and take every opportunity I can to avoid pictures with masks! Anyway, they hooked me up to oxytocin at 8:30am and we started the waiting game. My nursing team was amazing! I would highly recommend giving birth at the hospital in St. Thomas. I chatted with Mom and the nursing staff, tried to sleep a little bit, caught up on Instagram backlog and various other things to help pass the time.

By early afternoon I was jokingly getting heat from my nurse that the first-time mom next door who was also scheduled for induction was getting ready to push and I still wasn’t having painful or regular contractions. As much as my nurse was confident that baby girl was going to be here by 7pm (shift change, and she insisted that needed to happen or the night shift would complain she didn’t do her job) I was not. Knowing how long I was on the meds last time before anything happened, I was pretty sure baby girl was not arriving before the midnight nurse, but I’m not a doctor or a psychic so I thought that anything was possible. If I could choose her arrival time, before 7pm sounded great to me but I knew it was all a waiting game until she decided she was ready to come out! Around 3pm, the anesthesiologist wanted to go home so he came to set my epidural. I wasn’t really feeling a lot of pain from contractions and probably wouldn’t have asked for it that early if he was working all day, but if my options were taking it early or not getting it at all, they could have set my epidural up at 8:30am and I wouldn’t have complained. I was barely 4cm dilated before my epidural was administered, but similar to my labour with Thalia, after getting it, I seemed to dilate much quicker. My nurse checked me again at 5pm before going on break and I was 6cm. I was really happy to hear that I had progressed 2cm in 2 hours and was thinking that my baby might be here before midnight, which to me was very promising given how long I was on oxytocin the last time!

Around 5:30, I woke up from a brief cat nap (pain meds are great for sleeping. It’s so much easier when you’re not in pain every 3-5 minutes!) and felt uncomfortable for a minute. It was weird for me given that I didn’t have a lot of feeling from my waist down, so I mentioned it to my nurse. The feeling was just uncomfortable but then I felt pressure, like baby girl had dropped. They kept saying that she was too high so I thought I would let them know that I thought she was moving. They weren’t planning to check my cervix again from another hour given that I hadn’t had a lot of progress so far that day, but the nurse covering break seemed excited and wanted to see if my baby had in fact dropped a little bit. She checked me and declared that she had in fact dropped! I was fully dilated and ready to deliver my baby girl! Given that I only pushed for 30 minutes last time, they called my OB right away and told him he needed to head to the hospital. Apparently, he lived 10 minutes away, so my nurses started putting me in the stirrups and preparing for delivery.

We were just talking about doing some practice pushes when we heard he had arrived at the hospital. We waited for a contraction and then I started pushing. I kid you not, I pushed for 2 seconds and the nurses panicked and told me I had to stop. I started laughing because I thought they were joking, we were on a timeline after all! They wanted this baby out before 7pm and it was almost 6 now. Turns out they weren’t joking. I was then told I couldn’t push, laugh or sneeze until my OB arrived because the baby was so ready to come out, and they didn’t want her arriving before my OB. I wasn’t trying to push but baby girl wanted to come out and when the contractions hit she was kind of pushing her way out. I could see the panic in the nurses eyes as they repeated their ‘don’t push, don’t laugh instructions’. I legitimately thought one of them was going to come over and hold baby girl in so she didn’t arrive before my OB because they seemed that concerned but thankfully,he walked into the room a few minutes later. After he took a quick glance at me he told me not to do anything until he had a chance to gown up. I thought they were being a little ridiculous. I know most women labour and push for hours before a baby arrives. I know I only pushed for 30 minutes last time, but I wasn’t expecting my second would be here that quickly. Regardless, I cooperated and hoped she wouldn’t come out on her own because I could feel her pushing even without me doing anything. My OB must have been dressed and ready to go at 6pm because at 6:08pm after 3 sets of pushing they announced that my sweet baby had arrived! 8 minutes. I pushed for 8 minutes. I didn’t even know that a baby could be delivered that quickly! It was the easiest delivery, and it was basically painless given that I had an epidural so early which was great because she was bigger than Thalia weighing 8lbs and 4oz!

Giving birth a second time, also earlier in the day with less pain, I was more alert and aware of what was going on. I could listen to my OB and nurses and hear that everything was fine, no excessive bleeding from me this time. I remember baby girl crying right away when they placed her on my chest, and she peed all over me almost immediately after her arrival, so I knew at least some of her parts were working properly! Thalia arrived with quite a bit of hair after 2 full trimesters of heartburn, and I had quite a bit of heartburn in my third trimester this time and was really hoping that she would have some as well. When I saw her, I realized my worrying had been for nothing! She had even more hair than Thalia and it was super dark! She has very dark brown, almost black hair. I think it’s strange given that my brother is the only one with dark hair on either side and his hair was lighter when he was younger. She looks adorable no matter what her hair colour is, but I was amazed for a while by it! Even though it had only been 15 months since Thalia was born, I had forgotten how little babies were when they first arrived! I spent the better part of the night staring at all her adorable little features, her nose, her eyes (which I know will likely change colour but are currently a dark blue), and all her little fingers and toes. She reminded me so much of Thalia, especially when I look at newborn pictures of Thalia! I think they share quite a few facial features which is really funny to me because everyone says she looks a lot like me but everyone said Thalia looked like Grayson. I think they look like each other and less so like either of us but that’s just me. While Mom and I were oohing and aahing over our newest family member, my OB and nurses finished up doing whatever they needed to do post birth and congratulated me before heading home, given that it was now after 7pm. They did manage to get the baby out before shift change so hopefully that made them happy! I was overjoyed that she was here and that I didn’t labour or push for as long as last time! Before leaving my OB did say that if we had waited to induce me, my baby would have only gained a few more ounces which made me feel much better about my decision to bring her out a little earlier than we had both anticipated. I found out then that he had offered me the induction early because he was worried about my fluid retention, so mystery solved.

Naturally, the rest of the night was spent taking pictures, telling friends and family she arrived, and saying more times than I would like, “No, she doesn’t have a name yet”. All that was mixed with breastfeeding and getting breastfeeding help from the nurses. I really wanted my breastfeeding attempt to be successful and less painful this time around (Thalia’s breastfeeding journey is a story for another time) so we were practising different positions, checking her latch etc. every time she was feeding. Mom and I both tried to get some sleep that night knowing it might be our last for awhile but the nurses kept coming in to check on me and baby, so it wasn’t very restful. My COVID test results came back in the middle of the night as negative (yay!) which meant that Mom was free to come and go from the hospital, but given that the boys didn’t have any large catastrophes the day before, she opted to stay with me for the rest of the day. The nurse we had the next morning insisted that Mom and I wear masks while she was in the room which I thought was odd given that my COVID test came back negative the night before, but aside from that, the baby's delivery was very similar to her sister’s which I appreciated.

Our first morning with little baby started at 6:30am with a visit from the hospital’s pediatrician. Baby girl got a clean bill of health. I was told we would be discharged around 6pm as long as her test results came back clear, but I was feeling fine and baby girl seemed to be doing well so I wasn’t concerned. As great as all the help is at the hospital, I missed Thalia, so I was eager to go home as soon as possible! Before going to the hospital, I told myself that I was going to leave having selected a name for my daughter. I figured if I made it home from the hospital still calling her baby girl that might end up being her name indefinitely, so Mom and I spent the rest of the day talking about names and rereading the baby name book for inspiration. It took hours but I finally settled on a name!

Going into the hospital, my name list was down to Ivey, Ella, Joy and Joyella, although Joy, Ella, and Joyella I was really only considering for middle names. I love them and I think they are very pretty, but I didn’t like them enough to be first names, but the symbolism is important to me. Ella is after my Grandma and Joy after my Mom. Thalia’s name means Joy after my Mom as well, so I thought it would be cute to connect the girls via their names. You can read more about my philosophy on naming here. Once baby girl arrived, I felt that Ivey wasn’t appropriate. I don’t know why but with dark hair I just didn’t think Ivey suited her. Prior to this experience, I didn’t think that babies could really look like a name but after having met my daughter I knew she wasn’t an Ivey. I had several other top contenders that I had originally crossed off like Adelynn because I didn’t like the nickname Addie. I revisited some of those like Violet, Holly, Pearl, and looked at some new names that Ariella which reminded me too much of Ariel and after a few hours of that I still hadn’t got anywhere. I kept coming back to the name Rayah which I really liked the sound of but I didn’t want her name getting shortened to Ray. I’m always bothered by people that call me Britt. That’s not my name. I know it’s easier to say but it’s not my name (that being said, there are a few people I let call me that, but they’re friends that are basically family) and I didn’t want my daughter experiencing the same thing so I was trying to steer away from names that could be shortened which is really tricky! I kept coming back to the name and at some point decided that’s what I liked and what I thought suited her best, I felt like she needed a strong but unique name like her sister and I really felt like Rayah was it. To alleviate (hopefully) some of my concern about it being shortened I decided to go with an alternative spelling, Raiyah. I’m not sure this name exists or has an origin and meaning which before would have really bothered me but I’m okay with that now. Once I decided on her first name and spelling I was at a bit of a loss for her middle name which ironically was the part I had originally felt the most confident in. I really wanted to go with one of the three names I had picked out but I didn’t think Raiyah Joy was a good fit, since it sounds so much like ‘Ray of Joy’ which I thought was a little cheesy. Raiyah Ella to me had too many ‘a’ sounds. I really wanted to go with Joyella but wasn’t sure Raiyah Joyella sounded good together either, it also had a lot of ‘a’ sounds but after much debate my mother nicely pointed out that for the most part people don’t say first and middle names together unless a child is in trouble. Excellent point Mom! So, after 3 or 4 hours at the hospital, baby girl got her name: Raiyah Joyella Miller! I quickly filled out her health card paperwork to make it final and it felt like a huge weight had been lighted off my shoulders! More texting followed as we re-updated everyone about her name, taking up most of the afternoon which meant it was almost time to be discharged!

The nurse came in and gave Raiyah a bath so we could properly see her hair colour. I was thinking after it was clean it would be a little bit lighter, but it stayed just as dark and beautiful as before! I tried to do a little blogging, hoping I would have this article up soon after leaving the hospital (that didn’t happen) but I primarily breastfed and enjoyed baby cuddles until it was time to get her 24-hour bloodwork. I wasn’t the one getting tested but that was the most painful part of the whole experience. I didn’t remember them needing so much blood from Thalia before she was discharged but I felt like my poor baby was going to be drained with how much blood the nurse was trying to pull from her. Raiyah was screaming and I was trying to do anything and everything to calm her down, I was singing and rocking her but she wasn’t having any of it. The 2 or 3 minutes it took felt like an hour and after that I was really ready to go home! I know the bloodwork test is for her benefit but damn, I wish there was a better way for them to do it! It took an hour for her test results to come back before they said we could go but they did warn us that her Bilirubin levels were a little high and that she needed to be closely monitored at home over the next few days which was a little concerning to hear.

I would say parting was such sweet sorrow, but I was excited to go home! Don’t get me wrong, my labour and delivery was a cakewalk and the nursing staff were amazing but like I said, I missed Thalia! Overall, delivering a baby during COVID wasn’t as bad as I expected, but given the choice, I would definitely tell COVID to take a hike! It would have been much easier if Mom could have come and gone to help look after Thalia, but I also missed being able to have hospital visitors, or even visitors at home. I know Raiyah has a Daddy, and an Oma and Opa who love her very much and are very excited to meet her but are being forced to wait due to health and safety concerns. I want more kids, but I hope by the time I’m heading to the delivery room again the world will be a bit less scary of a place and I can enjoy the simple things like having visitors after delivery. Raiyah and I are doing great! I feel pretty much back to normal and Raiyah is eating and sleeping so much better than Thalia did so I feel like a human being most days. We’ve been to the doctors for her check up. She was almost back up to her birth weight and her Bilirubin levels are good, they don’t actually check them again unless your baby looks yellow from jaundice but the nurse said she wasn’t concerned so that makes me really happy! I’m just soaking up all the baby cuddles and constantly wondering where time is going because she’s almost a month old already!

Tune into the Go Get Great podcast for more motherhood content, or check out the birth stories for my other kids. Thalia's birth story. Orion's birth story.