Travis Baker Gilliland: Birth Story

Life is a collection of moments. There are moments that you can’t put into words, but here I am about to try. That moment. You know the moment where you know you’ll never be the same. Well 11:37pm on February 6,2018 was a moment that forever marked me; delivery of my sweet, sweet baby g.

It’s no secret that pregnancy and I were not friends. I had “morning” sickness until week 20. Huge amounts of weight gain. Swelling. Oh and the beast- preeclampsia.

When I hit 36 weeks my doctors were concerned that I had preeclampsia. My blood pressure (that is normally low) was getting higher and higher at each appointment. We did blood draws and urine tests to look for protein. Every appointment I was prepared to be sent over to the hospital. It was a roller coaster of emotions. The Friday of week 38 I had to take a second 24 hour urine test and had a follow-up Monday morning for an ultrasound to make sure baby was still doing okay. The threshold to send me to the hospital was a protein level of 300, mine was 800. My doctor told me to grab my go bag and report to the hospital… it was time to get the baby out. I looked at my mom and husband and instantly started bawling; it was time to have a baby.

So we go home, (I’ve never seen my husband move so fast- it was sweet) got everything loaded in the car), and headed to the hospital. We got checked in, on the monitor, and induction began. We had to start with cervical gels to ripen, as my body wasn’t ready for Pitocin. It was 1:00pm when we started the first gel and the gel process took us until around 9:00pm. My brothers came by the hospital and we took lots and lots of walks. The good labor started around 10:00pm- the “I can’t talk through these” contractions started and were there to stay all night. It was the fullest night of everything you can think of besides laying in bed because that was the most painful. The nurses were amazing, especially my night nurses, and helped me try everything through contractions. By morning I was exhausted from zero sleep and by 10am hadn’t made much progress with dilation but contractions were coming in hot, about every 2-3 minutes. They told me my induction could be three days long… and in that moment curled into a ball in pain.. I opted for an epidural. My anesthesiologist was incredible. It was perfect. I could move and feel my legs, but the pain was relieved. I managed to get a few hours of napping in. I finally started to progress dilation wise and was having 5 contractions in 10 minutes so they couldn’t start Pitocin because I was contracting so much. By 2pm the contractions slowed so they started the Pitocin.

I progressed through the afternoon and by 6pm I had dilated to a 5! By change of shift I was getting ancy and excited that we were having this baby soon! My night shift nurse came in around 7 and said that I likely was not having this baby until the next day. We were all bummed out. All my family went home because it was going to be a long night again and no sign of baby coming soon.

At this point, I’m starving (dreaming about In-N-Out for whatever reason) frustrated, exhausted and getting more and more uncomfortable. The pain was starting to ramp back up- I asked my nurse to call anesthesia back for medication because wow was I uncomfortable. I told her things were changing and sorry for TMI, but to keep it 100 honest…. I kept telling everyone, “wow it feels like there is a bowling ball in my butt and I NEED to push.” That got my nurse’s attention. She checked me and sure enough- 100% effaced, 10 cm dilated, 0 station. I was having this baby. She called my doctor frantically who came in and confirmed- it was baby time. She had me do some practice pushing then left and let me labor down for 30 minutes and would come back in for game time. That 30 minutes was the most intense leading up to pushing. We called all my family back! Oh and it was too late for more medication so that sweet epidural got turned OFF. It actually was perfect. My sensation was coming back in time to push so I got to feel delivery like I had wanted to all along. My mom & husband were in the room and my MIL was in Hawaii and Facetime-d in!

I am struggling with finding words for how amazing delivery was. It is hard to explain until you do it, I guess. The most exhilarating, intense, excruciatingly painful, exciting, overwhelming, beautiful, amazing experience of my whole life. I loved every single second. I could feel contractions and my amazing team of doctors and nurses let me tell them when I needed to push. They coached me and cheered me on as another team scrambled to get the room ready for the baby’s arrival. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. So…. I pushed for 45 minutes, again best 45 minutes of life. It felt like 10 minutes. Pushing relived the pain and I knew we were getting closer to meeting sweet baby g.

There were some scary moments. My doctor is amazing, she is so calm and soft spoken but during some pushes she kept saying, “he’s just too big” and I wasn’t progressing. There were moments I felt for sure I was going for a C section. I was exhausted and didn’t think I had much left in me but my doctor looked me dead in the face and said with seriousness, “Vanessa, I need a baby on this next push.” They were losing his heart rate on the monitor and I could feel how imperative it was to get him out, ASAP. Its crazy how your mama power kicks in and you bet I got that baby out in the next push. The minute they put him on my chest, shoot I cry just thinking about it, was perfect. Every sound in the background went silent and all that mattered in the whole world was that second. That second I met my son for the first time. That second that marked me. That second I became a mom. That second I had no clue I could love so deep. It was in THAT second that I was forever marked and will never ever be the same.

The euphoria of the moment came to a quick end as little man didn’t cry as much as they would have liked so the nurses swooped him up and over to work on him. He was fine, just alert and taking in the whole world. They riled him up a bit and that sound of the loud cry was so comforting. Meanwhile… the doctor worked on me. You mamas that have had babies know… and my baby was 9 pounds 5 ounces, so yeah there’s that. Again, my sweet soft-spoken doctor was yelling for more sutures and saying “there’s too much blood, theres too much blood.” How comforting, right? I could definitely feel myself hemorrhaging. I glanced over at the table of buckets of blood and gauzes soaked in blood- poor choice. I kept asking my doctor, “Am I okay? Am I okay?” BUT, my sweet husband grabbed my face and looked at his and I remember we just kept saying the name of Jesus. We concentrated on the music playing and it was just declaring the name of Jesus. Peace came. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I’m serious, there’s serious power in His name. They gave me some medicine, massaged my belly, and who knows what else but the bleeding stopped. PRAISE. I was reunited with my baby on my chest as my doctor finished up- what a good distraction that was. It was so surreal. We had our golden hour of sweet skin-to-skin and bonding time and my family came in to meet our baby. (My brother was the sweetest and brought that In-N-Out at 1am. BEST. MEAL. EVER.)

Postpartum has been full of sweet snuggles and amazing getting to know our boy, but its also been a rough recovery; I hurt my hip and back in delivery and found myself in physical therapy. That’s all for another post so stay tuned for our postpartum road and maybe some stuff no ones tells you about that 4th trimester.

What is absolutely INSANE, is that pregnancy was no walk in the park for me, labor and delivery was HARD WORK, postpartum was a ROUGH RECOVERY, but I’d absolutely do it cllllll over again. You, my Travvy, were worth it ALL.

Congrats you made it through my longest post ever. <3

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