When I went looking for my notes on Sebastian’s birth, I was amazed to realize I’d never really written it out, not in full anyway. That’s surprising to me because it was by far my best birth, but it’s also not surprising because at that point in my life, I kind of had two babies to keep me busy.

It makes me even more glad I’m doing this series. It’d be a shame not to have such a good birth down in writing somewhere. 🙂

Coming just nineteen months after Alec, I feel like in some ways Sebastian got the short end of the stick. When I try to remember being pregnant with him, I don’t remember much.

I feel like I remember even less about his tiny baby days. It was such a blur of low sleep and high needs, always.

But when it comes to the birth story, Sebastian’s was the best by far.

I woke up at 3am on a Tuesday morning, April 23^rd, with what felt like period cramps. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was going into labor. I tried lying in bed for the first hour or so, but the contractions kept getting worse, and the only thing that made them bearable was to sway with them, so I got up and literally wandered back and forth through my house till 5:30am.

Eric’s alarm went off then, and I met him in our room and told him I didn’t think he was going anywhere that day. I think Alec woke up right after that, possibly while Eric was still getting ready for the day, because I was the one who fought contractions to get Alec out of his bed. I could’ve let Eric do it, but there was something special about doing that for my first baby one last time before another baby came along. I changed his diaper and got him dressed, and that was about all I could handle.

I don’t remember when we called the midwives or when exactly they showed up, but they came after Alec was up and eating breakfast. I think Eric got Alec breakfast, but it could’ve been my mom as well. I had texted my dad maybe about 6am or so and told him he didn’t need to wake my mom up just yet but that she should maybe get up fairly soon cause I needed her to come watch Alec for me. I don’t know when she arrived either, maybe around 6:30am or 7am. The idea was to have her watch Alec so that Eric could be with me back in the bedroom, but Alec wasn’t having it.

I was in our room, working through contractions, and Eric was in and out, trying to help Alec be okay. Then someone said Dora could actually come over as well if I wanted her to, and I hadn’t known that she didn’t work till the afternoon that day, so I said by all means, have Dora come! I was so relieved, and it really felt like an answer to a prayer I hadn’t even prayed. Between her and my mom, Alec was kept pretty happy, and Eric was eventually able to come be with me.

By that point though, I had run my own tub full of water and had already settled down into that focused, surreal space of steady labor. I don’t use the word empowered much, but there’s no other way to describe how I felt in that labor. I was alone for most of it, and so focused, and so able to deal with the contractions, and it was just exactly how labor should be. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so in tune with my body. I was able to visualize what was happening inside me and what was stretching and releasing and how the baby was moving and what was widening and which muscles were doing what, and it just took so much of the fear and anticipation out of it. I was able to press into each contraction and let it do what it was supposed to do.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful. It was. But I felt so able to do what I needed to do. It sounds silly now, but I felt powerful. Capable. Unafraid and excited.

The contractions came like waves, and instead of stiffening up under each one, I embraced them, and I relaxed my muscles, and I moved into them and through them, and it was painful, but it was also beautiful.

And I was so alone. I wanted to be. I didn’t want that solitude with Alec’s birth, and I certainly didn’t with Emmett’s, but with Sebastian’s it was just the thing, and it was so perfect. Just me in the water, letting contractions wash over me, wanting it to be over, but feeling like I could do what I was doing all day. Alone and capable and powerful.

I know I keep saying that, but it was just so crystal clear and so unlike who I usually feel like I am. I can’t quite even put words to that feeling, and I hope I get to experience it again someday with another birth.

I also wanted Eric out making sure Alec was okay. I wanted to know my first little boy, still so much a baby himself, wasn’t afraid or sad while I labored to bring my second little boy into the world.

My midwives arrived sometime while I was in the tub, and like I said, I have no idea when that was, but sometime between 7am and 8am. It was just Liz and Julia this time, no students.

It wasn’t long after that that I just wanted my bed. I always get to that point, no matter what people say about how wonderful water births are. When I got out of the tub, I had a pushing contraction, but it wasn’t till I’d been out and in bed for a bit that I really got the urge to push. I expected my midwives to want to check me and make sure I was fully dilated before pushing, but they didn’t even mention it.

Can I just say how amazing it was to have gone through not just an entire pregnancy but an entire labor and delivery as well without ever once being poked and prodded? Midwives for the win, for sure.

I distinctly remember lying in bed, about to the end of myself, and both my midwives and Eric giving me unrequested updates on Alec, and that meant so much to me. I was the one in labor, and I was focused and in pain, but my little boy was still in the back of my mind, and the fact that they knew I would want to know how he was doing was really special.

Anyway, I don’t think I was in bed long before it was time to push. Some people talk about what a relief it is to finally be able to push, but it’s not ever a relief for me. I feel like I can handle contractions all day, but the pushing is what feels so desperate and awful and utterly endless.

It wasn’t endless this time though. My water broke at some point soon after I started pushing, and I pushed for eight minutes, a far cry from that hour and a half with Alec. I do think though that my midwives didn’t quite know when I actually started pushing because to me it felt much longer than eight minutes.

And suddenly, there he was. Another wet, grey, terribly cute baby boy.

Sebastian.

I took one look at him and said, “He’s so cute.”

And you know, with Alec’s birth, I was so out of it, and it was the middle of the night, and I was exhausted, and it really felt like an otherworldly event. Like something sacred. And that was amazing, but it was also amazing to be able to lift my head and see this new tiny person and say he was cute and just be present, fully present.

Sebastian was born at 8:49am, just five hours and forty-five minutes after I woke up with cramps and knew he was coming.

An unbelievably bearable and quick labor.

I learned later that when Eric’s mom heard that I was in labor that morning, she’d predicted the baby would be born by noon. I beat her estimation by three hours and eleven minutes. 🙂

I don’t know if my time stamp on my pictures was off or if it was really three hours before we took a single picture, but I do remember needing to pee so badly and not being able to because my midwives wanted to get me stitched up first, but Julia had to run to Salem for a sterilized scissors or something. That was almost as torturous as the birth! Not really, of course, but that part definitely remains a core memory of the whole experience. 🙂

Eventually they weighed and measured Sebastian. 8lbs 13oz. 21 in.

I don’t even know when I realized that he had been born the day before his due date, just like Alec before him and just like Emmett would be after him. So neat how that worked out.

After I finally got my stitches and finally used the bathroom and finally got some semblance of dressed and back in bed, Liz or Julia asked me if I wanted to let my mom and Dora come in and see the baby, and I said I thought I’d just take the baby and walk out there and show them, and they were like, Oh, no, you don’t. So I didn't.

I wanted Alec to come see his new little brother before anyone else saw him, and I’ll be honest, when Alec came running in and had eyes only for the baby, I was a little taken aback. It had felt like ages to me since I’d seen him, and I thought he should miss me more and want to see me as much as the baby, but in reality, it’d only been a few hours. I still kick myself that we didn’t video Alec seeing Sebastian for the first time. It was so sweet.

Then my mom and Dora got to see Sebastian, three hours after he’d been born. And by the time Eric’s parents and sisters came by a few hours after that, I still hadn’t showered and was still very haphazardly in bed, and it’s so funny to me now that I let people come in my room and see me and my baby that fresh from labor.

Anyway, by 12:30pm, my midwives were gone, and my mom and Dora were gone, and Eric took both the babies, and I went to sleep.

This is what Eric did with the babies. Super dad, right there, putting both boys to bed right off the bat. 🙂

I wasn’t in the hospital, but that didn’t stop me from getting a very late lunch in bed when I woke up.

Eric showed me some darling pictures he'd taken while I was sleeping . . . Little Alec holding Baby Sebastian for the first time. Alec called him "Basha." 🙂And that's how we got two. 🙂 Alec and Sebastian, destined to be best friends from the very beginning. Neither of them remember a life without the other one, and that's kind of how we wanted it. Two little boys, not quite nineteen months apart.

(What actually happened is I told Eric that we might as well have another one while I wasn't getting any sleep anyway cause if I ever got sleep again I might not ever be ready to have another one, knowing the sleep-deprivation that would come with it! That was obviously not the case though, because three years after Sebastian came Emmett, and I had a long, luxurious period of getting some semblance of sleep in there.)

Stay tuned for another April throwback, this one from 2022, when our third little Baer arrived on the scene. 🙂

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If you read Alec's birth story, you know that my friend Liz Lapp and I are trading birth stories on our blogs, and her first birth with her daughter Ida is up on her blog now. 🙂

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