Dream come true - Halloween baby! 👻

Kimberly

This is a long one but it’s become one of my favorite stories(rightly so!)so if you get through it, thank you! My due date was 11/13, the same day as my oldest son’s birthday! Fortunately he is the sweetest little (almost) 4 year old so he maintained that he’d be happy to share his birthday with his newest baby brother throughout my whole pregnancy lol 🥰. Yet still, mama was not about that... my babies were getting their own special days!

So I had it in my head that I wanted a Halloween baby, but the closer the day came the more I had to ease myself into the idea that baby boy might cook a few more weeks as projected. Okay, no worries, it is what it is. Until I woke up at 3am October 30th with consistent contractions and demanded my husband wake up with me just to be with me lol. We got up, ate a bowl of cereal, and binged season 2 of Making A Murder until our 3 littles woke up around 7. I had hubby stay home from work just in case since baby #3 was almost born in the car and we didn’t know how quickly to expect this to go. I spent all day fixing my hair, deep cleaning, cooking, taking care of the babies while my husband napped and played with the kids here and there 🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️. Finally around 2pm the contractions had been consistent all day but not any stronger, so after calling my dr he suggested I go to L&D in case labor sped up quickly like before. My MIL came over to watch the kids and off we went, but not before stopping for a quick hamburger on the way lol. We got to L&D and I was at a 3-4, so they monitored me for an hour then left it up to me if I wanted to labor at home more or be admitted. We opted to head home so we could put the kids to bed and try to get some restful sleep. My MIL spent the night in case we had to rush out of the house 🙌🏻.

I pretty much woke up every hour to go pee and try to monitor my contractions while my husband slept on the living room floor for whatever strange reason(so much for restful sleep!). Finally at 3am I told him we should head out so off we went.. again! We arrived, were admitted, and at 8am my dr arrived to check up on me. I was at a 6 finally but contractions were not intense at all. He attempted to break my water, which was excruciating since it wasn’t bulging yet and he was really digging around in there. The only way to describe the feeling to my husband was exactly what it was- someone shoving a stick up my vagina! Ouch! So that failed (obviously) and he wanted to start me on a little pitocin to try to jump start some more effective contractions. I decided to walk around and bounce on a birthing ball for another half hour first, and then went ahead with the pitocin. It was only at a 2 and already the contractions picked up. Woohoo! I was breathing through them and quite honestly killing it! My husband was cracking me and the nurses up with his little jokes until all of a sudden he wasn’t because holy moly contractions picked up fast! Then I honestly just wanted him to be quiet so I could breath and focus. After all that I was only at a 7, and I convinced myself I was miserable, so I asked for an epidural 🙈. The anesthesiologist showed up a minute later and placed the catheter into my back, and said he’d be back in 5-10 minutes to actually start the epidural, but I already knew my body had begun involuntarily pushing while he was placing the catheter. The nurse laid me down and I looked her dead in the eyes and said, “My body is pushing and I have no control so please don’t ask me to stop”... and then I grunted and pushed while squeezing and trying to bite(sorry!) my husband’s hand lol! She called my dr and the on call dr, about 5 nurses rushed around me and started flipping me from side to side trying to find my baby’s heartbeat. The on call dr walked in, they set up the stirrups, and told me to push! I pushed once and heard the anesthesiologist come back in only to be told it was too late. I pushed 2 more times while my husband yelled, “He’s got a head full of hair! Keep going!!” and met my sweet son! It’s supposed to be a happy moment, but it felt so surreal.

They put him on my chest and he was purple and limp, no cries or movements whatsoever. Lifted his tiny arm only for it to fall limp. Every nurse had a hand on him trying to stimulate him, and I just watched in horror with tears beginning to well... the room was completely silent for what felt like eternity, before that beautiful cry rang out and we could all breath again! Thank you God!

October 31st Baby boy was born at 12:06pm, 6lbs 15oz and 17.5” long ❤️

The next day and a half were spent trying to name him lol. Eventually I was so tired of talking about it that I told my husband to name him and let me know what he picked(I know, I’m such a good mom! 😂) Ironically the same thing happened with my son who would have been happy to share his bday lol. Hubby came totally out of left field and named him Castle Thomas!

Ladies. I spent the next day crying over his name while my husband’s parents and brothers bashed my sweet son’s name via text message. My heart was broken. He was not getting the attention and love I felt he deserved! Is this because he’s baby #4?? Ugh. It took me another day to ride out the hormones and now I LOVE HIS NAME and my husband’s family can go suck an egg! Thank you for reading! 😘😘

This was my husband’s explanation for the name Castle and for real I read it about 10x a day because I love it so much!