Remi's Birth Story

I'm laughing at how I thought I'd keep up with this blog once a year. My previous post titled "Pregnancy" was written a few weeks before Remi was born (Nov. of 2021) and I just published it in 2023.. hahaha killin' it over here!

Lil life update. We had our cute baby boy and named him Remington Weston Wilkins after Caiden's little brother, Weston, who passed away. Now he is 14 months old and has a spicy attitude with as much flare as I think we can handle. At birth he was 7lbs 9oz, 21 inches and was born on Sunday, 11/21/2021 at 4:02 PM. 

Here we are at the end of January in 2023 expecting our second baby boy come March. Went from posting about being pregnant with our first to being pregnant with our second. Whew. Time flies. and just like I said in my previous post, I've been feeling the need to write about Remi's birth so I can open up some space in my mind and heart to welcome our second baby and all that is in store the next few weeks. 

LABOR AND DELIVERY

What a whirlwind labor and delivery is, especially with your first! I had taken hypnobirthing courses throughout pregnancy and was shooting for an unmedicated birth, though, as long as I felt like my voice was heard in the decisions being made, I was open to anything that came my way. Due to having Gestational Diabetes, they would not let me go past 40 weeks, so I had an induction date scheduled for 11/22/2021. I reeeeealllly did not want to be induced and wanted my body and baby to let me know when they were ready so the last few weeks before delivery, I was trying to figure out the best way to 'induce' my body as naturally as I could. The Thursday before my induction I decided I would get my membranes stripped to see if that would put me into labor. There's a lot of different opinions out there as to if this actually works. Who knows? All I know is that night around 2am I started cramping and contractions started. 

I knew that this was common within 24 hours of having your membranes sweeped so I went out to the couch and labored on my own the whole night as I knew Caiden had an early meeting at work. Around 5am and very little sleep, I woke Caiden up and asked if he could miss work and stay home with me for the day to help me through my very uncomfortable contractions. Of course he did and little did he know that he would be working out the next 3 days as he was there to apply counter pressure almost every contraction (not an easy job). Friday night came and I hopped in the bath to try and make myself more comfortable. Funny side note, we lived at BYU married housing on campus at the time and our apartment got very little hot water. So Caiden literally boiled pots of water to try and keep me comfortable that evening hahah what a time. Thanks Wymount for the memssssss!

Friday night was another sleepless night filled with contractions. Saturday morning I finally called it and told Caiden we needed to go to the hospital to at least see if I was progressing. To my disappointment I was still only 3 cm dilated and 85% effaced, exactly what I was at at my appointment 2 days prior😭. They gave me a shot of morphine in my hip and we ran to good ol' Walmart to get some carby foods to help us get through the evening (Gestational Diabetes who??). By the time we made it home, I was FEELIN' GOOD! That morphine shot was amazing and I finally was able to sleep for a solid 4 hours. I woke up to those pesky contractions, but they definitely felt a bit more painful. We labored at home with more intense counter pressure for the next 4 hours until around 8pm I was almost in tears through my contractions. We headed back to the hospital and I was finally 5cm dilated and 90% effaced. Woohoo. We were havin' a baby!!

My best friend and unofficial Doula, Jazmin, (and in Caiden's words, "a literal angel") met us at the hospital and was there to help take some of those counter pressures off of Caiden's shoulders and help me with pain management. It was another all nighter at the hospital and Jaz stayed up with me all night. She forced Caiden to go sleep since we had basically been pulling all nighters the last 2 days. She was literally an angel as she had been at home being a wonderful mother and wife all day, to come spend an all nighter working out with me. I sat in the tub at the hospital for awhile that night to help with the discomfort but after awhile that warm water made me realize how exhausted I was. We all started to notice that my contractions were slowing down and getting farther apart which we felt wasn't a good sign. Jaz tried to encourage me to walk around with her, to try different things to get contractions to pick back up, but I knew that if I did those things, it would only bring more pain and exhaustion. I started to cry to her and Caiden as I really wanted to get through this but felt like I didn't have anymore energy in me and that I would need more energy in order to push Remi out when the time came. (At that time, we had no idea when pushing would even be happening.) Jaz and Caiden told me to get checked and see how much I had progressed the last 10 hours and if I wasn't very far, I should get an epidural. So around 5am they checked me and I was only at 6.5cm. I was so disheartened but also chuckled and said, "Yeah, get me that epidural" within the next hour my anesthesiologist was there to place my epidural. 

Happy as can be even though it's in the middle of the night haha

Pure exhaustion

At that same time he was prepping me, there was a mother that had just gotten admitted that was 7cm dilated and just screaming. Like literally from the movies. I was like... YEAHHH get that needle in my spine. hahaha I really loved my anesthesiologist. He was so encouraging and comforting to talk to, which people find funny that I loved him cause it took him 3 times to get my epidural to work 😆. The first time, he couldn't get the catheter to thread, the second time my pulse skyrocketed and he thought he may have hit a blood vessel or something. He and the nurse seemed a little shocked and confused by it but he got it on the third try and honestly, the whole time, I didn't even care. I was so ready for some pain relief and sleep. After my epidural was placed, I started to feel really lightheaded like I was going to pass out, so he came back in and turned the medicine down stating, "You're a small petite woman and this is some strong medicine, I'm going to turn it down a little bit." haha after that it was great. I finally got some much needed sleep. They broke my water a few hours later and around 1:30pm on Sunday I was finally 10cm and ready to push. My Midwife was at another hospital delivering another baby so we just chilled for an hour letting Remi work his way down on his own. When she got there it was go time. 

I forgot to mention, once I got my epidural, I told Jaz to go home and see her baby/husband and get some sleep. She had helped so much but I knew she was needed at home with her family. My sister was elated to receive a call from me a few hours later to see if she wanted to come and be there for my delivery. I think she even made her husband get breakfast to go and drop her off at the hospital so she wouldn't miss it. Grateful she was able to be there and that she was able to document a lot of my birth. 

My Midwife finally got there and I pushed for an hour and a half until Remi made his big arrival. Although I was unmedicated for 2.5 days prior, that hour and a half of pushing was somethin' else! haha but glad he made it here safely. Remi, who was "Buddy" for the next 24+ hours cause we didn't know what to name him, was placed on my chest and I just cried. It was such an exhausting and painful few days, to have him finally on my chest was such a surreal feeling. I was proud of myself for working so hard to get him here. 

        Caiden encouraging me to keep pushing

About 30 minutes later I realized that my body was shaking uncontrollably and I couldn't hold onto Rem. I had Caiden take him and I just remember feeling sooo cold. I kept telling the nurses that my legs were so cold but they just kept piling blankets on the upper half of my body. Little did I know at the time, but I was hemorrhaging from 2 internal second degree tears and my body was going into shock. I vaguely remember them telling me that Remi's blood sugar was low and that they would need to take him to the nursery for a little bit, which I had instructed Caiden to never leave our baby's side. Luckily my sister was there to stay by mine. I also vaguely remember a nurse telling me they needed to draw my blood to run some tests to see if I would need a blood transfusion. I passed the tests so I guess that's good haha

My sisters words while taking this 

picture, "I know you hate this now, but we'll 

look back and laugh at it someday"

3 was my lucky number that day because it took 3 different tries to stitch me up. Internal tears can be hard to detect and they bleed a lot more so it's hard to see the complete tear. My Midwife stitched me up the first time and didn't get the whole tear, so the on-call OB and her stitched me up a second time and still didn't get all of it... so after undoing those stitches, they finally got everything cleaned up on the third try. I think I was sitting there for like an hour while they stitched me up? Idk. Time was such a blur once Remi arrived. 

Caiden sitting at the foot of my bed while they stitched me

The next few days at the hospital were also such a blur. I didn't really feel super connected with Remi, which I wasn't concerned about and knew we'd bond over time. I also think my body was in a state of trauma after everything (probably like most women's bodies are after delivering a baby haha.) I was so grateful to have Caiden by my side as I was so dazed with just the healing of my own body. Postpartum was a wild ride but I won't get into that on this post.. which means I probably won't get into it at all seeing the trend of my life updates on this lil' blog of mine. haha

I'm so grateful for my nurses throughout my hospital stay. They were so sweet and helpful. Seriously, cried on the way home from the hospital and told Caiden, "I'm going to miss all our friends" hahaha they were the best and just so fun and loving. 

BACK TO PRESENT DAY

So. Here we are a few weeks away from delivering another boy. I've felt a lot of anxiety with the thought of labor and delivery, but also, tried to combat that with the hope of having a better experience. This pregnancy has been so different from Remi's in good and bad ways. No Gestational Diabetes, hallelujah! I'm excited to meet our cute babe in a few weeks and hope all goes well. 

If you made it this far, congratulations! 

-Aubrey

Pregnancy

I'm really bad at keeping a diary and as you can tell, I'm really bad at keeping up with blogging, but I feel like this is kind of my diary and I feel the need to write in it every so often.. looking at my history, it's looking to be about a once-a-year type deal. haha I'm okay with that. 

My last post was about my first anniversary being married to Caiden and here we are having been married for 2.5 years and expecting a baby boy in a few short weeks. It's so surreal. I think with life about to change in a major way for us, I've been feeling the need to get my thoughts down on paper (aka the internet lol). It's like my brain knows that a lot is about to go down and so I need to write about pregnancy so that my brain can dump it and open up some space for this next phase in life. 

Baby Wilkins

Our first year of marriage I would talk to Caiden about when to start our family. I felt like I was pushing for earlier rather than later because I have endometriosis and wasn't sure what our experience would be like when trying to grow our family. Caiden was not on board due to school and work being crazy, understandably so. At the beginning of Covid, we were able to sit down and really talk about what we want our future to look like and we both felt it was time to start growing our family. We started trying early on in 2020 and received negative pregnancy tests every month. It was disheartening, but I also felt like I was prepared to have issues due to my disease. 

After months with no luck, my doctor put me on Clomid. After so many blood draws to track anything and everything, we still never received that positive test. Disheartened still, but trusting in God's timing, I tried not to let it get me down. We ended up putting a pause on fertility treatments as the holidays were fast approaching and we were headed to Missouri for a few months. Mind you, we didn't say a word to our families about the difficulties in growing our family. We wanted to surprise them! It was hard not having family support through this time but I found comfort in a few friends and knew that the surprise to our families would be worth the lonely times of dealing with infertility. 

A little background, because of my endometriosis, I'd been on birth control since I was a sophomore in high school. When I went off of it, my cycles were all over the place. Definitely not regular. *Is it weird that I'm talking about my menstrual cycle for everyone to read about?? Is that TMI?? hahaha oh well*  

A few months after stopping our fertility treatments and feeling like I was a few days late for my irregular cycle to start, I once again received a negative test and ended up starting my period the next day. 

At least.. what I thought was my period..

I guess why I feel like it's important for me to point out my irregular cycles is cause it leads me into things I didn't know about pregnancy. 

I had some irregular spotting/bleeding for 3 weeks. So one day I woke up and just felt like I should take another test even though the timing of it made no sense. To my surprise (see beautiful Aubrey at 8am below) the test was immediately positive. 

So why do periods have anything to do with this? Well, what I thought was an extremely abnormal cycle, was actually a subchorionic hematoma that lasted me till about halfway through pregnancy. The reason I look so completely shocked/scared/stressed in the picture above was cause my first thoughts were that I was miscarrying because I was bleeding so much. I had never heard about consistent bleeding throughout pregnancy. Just some spotting at the beginning. 

First Trimester

My OB was definitely concerned about the bleeding so I was able to get an ultrasound and more blood draws a few days later to help confirm I was pregnant. Ultrasounds that early on in pregnancy are not super duper fun. I got ultrasounds every 2 weeks my first trimester and had so many blood draws to look for rising progesterone. Those first few weeks were so stressful. My ultrasounds weren't showing much because I was only 6 weeks along and my blood work wasn't showing consistent numbers. Although I was experiencing morning sickness, nothing compared to the stress of not seeing a heartbeat and not knowing when the bleeding would stop. 

I was put on pelvic rest and told to take it easy. I worked from my couch and only got up to get food or use the bathroom. I can't tell you how stressful it was to think the bleeding was stopping just to experience more a few days later. I wasn't able to lift anything heavy and when I did, I would know I overworked my body by the next day. As challenging as this first trimester was, looking back, I feel very grateful for the opportunity to see our baby boy grow and change every other week. Seeing him as a little circle to a pulsing little circle to sprouting little fingers and toes, it made me believe in a God of miracles so much more. It made me appreciate my body and the way God made me. I felt so dang cool when I'd ask Caiden what he did that day and I got to respond to with, "I made vocal cords" hahaha *TOP THAT CAIDEN* 😂

Second Trimester

Wowie is the second trimester a gift from God. Finally started to feel normal again and get my energy back. I wasn't as exhausted and I was way more comfortable with my growing body than I was in the first trimester. I was sleeping better and halfway through my second trimester that stubborn hematoma resolved and I was able to function a little more normally. 

That's really all I got for this trimester. It was just that much better than the first.

Third Trimester

Now here I am, One week from delivering our baby and I am FEELIN' it. Not in the best way haha. People say to sleep now before the baby gets here and I'm flustered cause I try to sleep and I can't! It's so dang uncomfortable! I wake up to use the bathroom multiple times a night only to lay back down and get kicked in the ribs until I move...again...and again..and again. Everyone says it gets harder once they're here and I believe it, but boy am I looking forward to sleeping comfortably again... even if it's for a limited amount of time. 

I had heard so much about the dreaded glucose test and the terrible drink you have to consume, but as I completed this test, I was pleasantly surprised. The drink was not the best but definitely not the worst thing I've ever tasted and my blood draw went fine. I talked to my phlebotomist about what would be done if I didn't pass this test and she shared quite a few horror stories with me about the 3 hour (more like 4 hour) glucose test. She ended with "avoid it at all costs". The next day I received my results and I did not pass. My Iron was also so low that they were considering doing Iron infusions. 😅😭 This news stressed me out and there I was needing to get Iron supplements stat and scheduling my 4 hour glucose test. A few days later I went to my glucose test and got 2 out of the 4 blood draws done before I threw up. That second glucose drink is twice the amount of the first one and that's A LOT of sugar. My body rejected it 2 hours in. Unfortunately, if you throw up, you have to do it all over. So I found myself back in the doctors office 3 days later to try again. Luckily I got through it without getting sick but boy are those first 2 hours tough!

I received the call a few hours later that I indeed do have Gestational Diabetes and that I would need to take on a new diet with 4 finger pricks a day to test my sugars. Feeling completely defeated and overwhelmed with the news, I cried a lot and tried to stay calm about it all. Google is not your friend when you receive news like this, but I wanted to know how this would affect the remainder of my pregnancy as well as our little boy. 

Gestational Diabetes is no joke. I now meet with a dietician once a week and I have to log my sugars, food, activity, and fetal movement everyday. On top of my Midwife visits, I have visits every few weeks at a different clinic to monitor babies growth. I had another anatomy scan to make sure baby isn't measuring too big. Welp. He's lookin' like he's gonna be a chunky lil' guy. Who knows though. We'll find out once he gets here. 

When I first got this diagnosis, I felt like it was my fault and that my eating habits were causing harm to me and my baby. Which, yes our eating habits are important and do affect us but this just felt heavier to me. I was embarrassed and felt uncomfortable letting people know for fear of them thinking I was at fault. After learning much about this diagnosis though, I've learned that it truly isn't my fault. My placenta is managing and releasing a lot of hormones and this is causing my insulin to be weaker than normal. It's actually common within diabetes to see certain sugar numbers rise even though you're following the diet. It's because as the placenta is growing in pregnancy, it is releasing even more hormones making my insulin even weaker. 

Some days are really overwhelming for me... its just been a whirlwind of emotions these past few weeks and I didn't want to forget all that I went through to get our baby here. Maybe in a few weeks I'll feel the need to write another post talking about labor and delivery and the very special moments that await us once our lil' turd gets here💙

but also...maybe not. 

hahah 

Till next time