Jethro's Birth Story

We weren't expecting to see little Jethro so soon. He was due on the 6th of December and the past three normal, vaginal deliveries were fashionably late. I was thinking he would come around the 10th.

At 37-38 weeks pregnant I may have been doing too much. Taking care of four kids, doing laundry, helping to host a worship retreat, playing and singing at church on Sunday mornings and Monday nights... doing yoga, going on walks. I may have over extended my boundaries. But I thought after Simeon's delivery being a week late several years ago and me going on walks every day that how could I possibly overdo it? Maybe it's because I'm older. I'm all of 33 come Friday and I was more like 29 then. You twenty somethings, you don't know this but your body changes when you hit the big 3-0. I'm sure if you're 40 you're thinking, "you have no idea Jody Hefner" ... totally. I will someday though. Lord, help me to age well. Teach me to love aging and to be gentler on my body as it ages. Teach me to work hard at every age and to follow Your Spirit as You lead me where to go and what to do.


Anyways, on Tuesday night Ben had to go work on some website stuff with one of our pastors so I put the kids to bed and started to head to bed myself. It was about 9:30 so I decided to do some bedtime prenatal yoga. I was about 3 poses in when I felt a gush. Oh no, I must have broken my water. I went to the bathroom and was even more shocked to find that it wasn't water but blood. If you are easily queasy, don't read the rest of this paragraph. It was seriously so much that it looked like I had just started a very heavy period. I kept bleeding and started to panic so I called the doctor.

The doctor said to head to the hospital as soon as possible so they could check me out and make sure I was okay. I called Ben and told him to meet me there. This is when living with eleventy billion people has it's perks. I asked Dan, an elderly man who lives with us, he's very much like a grandpa, to drive me to the hospital while LauraMae and Veronica stayed with the kids. Our other two girls who live with us would be home soon and they have been home, holding everything together since. I am so thankful for each of them and the role they fill in our household.

When we got to the hospital I wasn't in any kind of labor. I've been in natural labor three times before (I never made it into real labor with Levi since he was breech) so I knew what labor actually feels like. I honestly just felt a little crampy but no real contractions.

They didn't know why I was bleeding. It could be the cervix, it could be my placenta detaching from my uterine wall, it hopefully was not some sort of uterine rupture. This birth seemed to be laced in fear. So much fear of the unknown of what could happen to me or my baby.

Having to VBAC means you have to keep monitors on your belly the whole time. One to monitor your contractions and one to monitor the baby's heart rate. Uterine rupture is a big deal, I mean like there are tons of risks, one of them being death of you and/or your baby.

Thankfully a lot of our friends and family were praying for us.

We opted for me to spend the night and be monitored.

In the morning I had slight progress from 1 to 2 cm and from 30-70% effaced. If you don't know what this stuff means, it basically means I took a baby step towards climbing a mountain of labor. Yippee.

It didn't appear to be uterine rupture since Jethro's vitals were awesome all night and I didn't have any abdominal pain. The bleeding decreased but didn't go away altogether.  We decided the best option was to get Jethro out of me as soon as possible since there were so many unknown factors.

So they put me on pitocin. Super fun drug that starts your body into labor and tends to make contractions pretty painful. It didn't work so they decided to break my waters. That definitely worked. I do not recommend it. I felt a lot more pressure at that point but then started to have real contractions that I had to stop and breathe or moan through (yes, I moaned, don't judge me).

I'm sure I've said this, but the only say to describe labor pain is that it feels like your body is trying to rip itself in half starting with your pelvis. There you go. I'm sure you wanted to hear that.

During all the struggle of dealing with contractions, dealing with an IV and being monitored I turned on this song: Upper Room This is How I Fight My Battles and it ministered to me. All the fear that was surrounding the unknown of Jethro's birth. Then all these other songs were coming on about how Jesus overcomes our fears and how we can rest in Him. There were many moments when I was in tears, many moments when I wanted to get off the train, but I knew there would be a reward at the end.

The time for pushing was coming near after a few hours. Even after pushing out 3 other babies I still don't feel comfortable knowing when to push. I think I always want to push too soon, mostly because I want to be done. My midwife checked me and I was only 8 1/2cm and you need to wait until you're 10. So I needed to wait and labor down. This is the hardest thing because there is no comfortable position to be in. I basically wanted to flee from my own skin. I wanted to get off the train and not have a baby anymore. My midwife was so perfect though cause she would smile at me and say, "Jody, you can do this, you're gonna have your baby so soon!" I was totally freaking out, wishing I wasn't a hardcore natural birther. Several times I thought, "why don't I get an epidural??" It was too late by then. Also, I don't get epidurals because of all the risks, I'd rather just endure a ridiculous pain level in order to avoid those risks.

Finally, I pushed little Jethro out. Ben caught him. Every time I see my baby come out I think in my head, "This human was inside of me? I can't even believe it." It's like they are so tiny and so big all at the same time. I even had lies of thinking he wouldn't be okay or that he wouldn't be alive. Seeing him and knowing he was okay, this was a huge relief. I laid back in the bed and they put him on me and there we were. I had my reward.

They looked at my placenta later on and found that it had been separating from my uterus. This explained the bleeding I was experiencing. If we had left it unchecked it could have separated all the way and Jethro could have died.

I'm thankful that we chose to induce labor. It definitely did not go the way I would have chosen. But when do we ever get to special order these things? Out of five births now I can really only look back at Simeon's and go, yeah, I would totally do that again. But the Bible is true that when that baby comes the laboring woman forgets the agony as she holds her new little baby in her arms. Literally, that's what I'm doing today. I'm so thankful for this new little addition to our family. I'm looking forward to seeing how he will change our family and the role he will play. I am also looking forward to seeing the man he will become.

Lord, Thank You for this precious gift!