Serena’s Birth Story — Healthy Alibi

Writing this blog post feels utterly surreal. I truly can’t believe I am a mom of 2 beautiful babies born 20 months apart. I feel so blessed and my current reality of having time to write this is with Serena attached to my boob. #breastfeedingmomlife

Serena’s birth story starts on Saturday, March 13th around 9:30pm. My husband and I had just turned off the lights to go to bed when I started feeling very slight contractions. I thought these were Braxton Hicks because I had been having so many false contractions in the days prior so I tried to just close my eyes and sleep. I realized about 15-20 minutes later when I had a few more contractions that I may be in labor. I didn’t want to wake my husband yet incase it wasn’t actual labor so to be safe I started packing up the remainder of things that needed to go in my hospital bag. About 15 minutes went by and the contractions were getting a bit more intense so I woke him up and said IT’S TIME. I was so excited because by the end of my pregnancy I had a condition called Sympheseal Diastasis, where the pubic bones actually separate in preparation for labor, making it extremely hard & painful for me to walk, bend or get up/down so I was very happy that I seem to be going into labor early.

If you follow me you know we are temporarily living with my in-laws on Long Island so it was important that as soon as my contractions started we head into NYC to labor at my parents apartment which was near to the hospital. We quickly packed up the car and headed into the city. At this point my contractions were about 10 minutes apart and insanely painful but my goal was to wait as long as possible before heading to the hospital this time as I went way too early with David and they sent me home.

Laboring with my peanut ball at my parent’s house

We finally arrived at my parents apartment and by this time I was in a great deal of pain and my contractions were about 8 minutes apart so we ordered food and tried to wait it out. My husband helped me labor by massaging my hips and squeezing them together through each contraction, a technique he learned from my doula during our first pregnancy.

My contractions were becoming increasingly more painful and closer together so I called it and said we gotta go now. We got to the hospital around 2am, they put me in triage and had my husband wait downstairs until I was admitted. I was already 5 cm dilated so they immediately admitted me (as I was wailed out in pain) and allowed my husband upstairs. I asked for the epidural and by the time they gave it to me I was about 9cm dilated. One thing I wanted to make sure I didn’t do this labor was to overdo it on the epidural, which I felt with D affected my ability to push. As soon as the epidural entered my body my muscles relaxed a bit and I felt a newfound sense of energy. Then my doctor told me it was time to push (felt like 3 seconds after my epidural) and the baby was VERY low it was going to be super fast. 3 enormous, gut wrenching pushes later I felt her teeny little body literally come through the birth canal. It was amazing and so fast- she was out. My doctor put her on my chest and we cried with everything that we had. It was a beautiful, powerful, out of body experience.

Serena was born at 5:31am on March 14th and she was perfect. I am so grateful to my doctor, the medical staff at Mount Sinai and my amazing husband. Serena Paige is a dream baby and we are so blessed to have had a healthy pregnancy and a beautiful healthy baby girl who has already changed our lives and made us a family of 4.

Xx A