Hey Guys! I’m thrilled to announce the birth of our beautiful little love button, Sebastián Anthony Cahue. He was born on August 11, 2018 at 5:08pm and we couldn’t be more in love and happy. He is officially 3 weeks today (OMG time flies). Everyone has asked me to share my birth story so here it goes….

My Birth Story:

Sebastian’s due date was August 7th and if you follow me on IG you know I was waiting and waiting for him to be born. Everyone gave me tips on how to naturally induce labor. I’m not going to lie I definitely tried some things but each day past his due date it became very clear that nothing was working. By the fourth day, I didn’t even want to look at a pineapple let alone eat one…and sex, well that definitely made it to the list too. I stayed active throughout my entire pregnancy so it was interesting when people said to go for walks I laughed because I legit walked so much as my daily routine and in addition I would either do Pilates, SoulCycle or circuit train so I was convinced that he would come before his due date but he had other plans. My last OBGYN appointment was on August 9th and my doctor checked me and told me I was only slightly dilated so he said he thought we may have to induce at 41 weeks if nothing happened naturally. He guessed that this would be the case and I remember leaving the office saying I don’t think he is right and we will have the baby that weekend. For some reason I was really nervous to be induced even though so many women give birth this way. I don’t know, I guess I was just disappointed that I wouldn’t have the excitement and anticipation of him coming on his own. Either way I never had a birth plan because I believe in just having a healthy baby so no matter how he came I trusted that it would all be ok.

Friday August 10th started like any other day. Adrian, Ginger and I went for our daily morning walk. I also woke up SUPER energetic, happy, and honestly I let go anticipating the arrival of our little love button. I told Adrian let’s just not think about it and enjoy the weekend since it was going to be our last weekend with just the 2 of us. I even started dancing to a new song I love on my IG stories…haha. I tell ya I was that pumped that day. After the walk we went to the gym and I walked on the treadmill on an incline, did squats and an arm workout (photo above taken that morning). After that I decided to go play dress up in my closet and wear a new pair of Fendi shoes I bought myself. I also wore my favorite ribbed midi dress that day, which I had planned to wear to the hospital. I guess I was manifesting it happening that day in a weird way. BTW this dress is legit a must-have pregnant or not.

As luck would have it at around 6:30pm I was chatting with my mom on the phone. We literally speak daily so we were talking about the day and I told her that today would have been the perfect day to have the baby because I felt so good, positive, strong and just ready. Within a few minutes I felt a wetness and got up from the chair because I didn’t know what it was. I told my mom I would call her back since I wasn’t sure if I had peed myself..LOL! I went to the bathroom and discovered that my water broke because it kept flowing, well more like a trickle as opposed to the huge puddle of water like they show in the movies; the trickle was constant. I can’t tell you how excited I was at that moment. I screamed to Adrian, “it’s GO TIME!” He cracked me up because he started cleaning like obsessively and I kept asking him “what the hell are you doing?!?”. He was anxious for sure and I guess the adrenaline kicked in. After calling our doctor they suggested I have dinner, take a shower and get my stuff ready to head to the hospital once contractions began. So we ate dinner, pizza to be exact since I wasn’t sure when my next meal would be and I wanted something filling and Adrian suggested I would need the carbs for the energy. After my shower, I got the rest of my things together and a few hours later my contractions started. At this point the contractions were not strong but when I called the doctor again to tell her that they had started she suggested to make our way to the hospital.

We got to the hospital at around 10:30pm and at around 11ish they admitted me to labor & delivery, hooked me up to the IV, and were monitoring my contractions and the baby’s heart rate. They checked me later that evening and I was still not dilated. My doctor gave me Cervidil which is a string-like medication that helps labor by softening the cervix. My doctor said one dose would take 12 hours and she can administer up to 3 doses and I almost passed out at the thought of being in labor for 36 hours, at that moment I was determined and optimistic that our baby boy would arrive on August 11th. I tried to get some sleep but it was impossible. I was having pretty strong contractions and at that point the baby’s heart rate was a little on the high end so they had to give me fluids and oxygen which seemed to work. My nurse came in frequently to check vitals, etc. so this made it even more challenging to get any sleep. At around 5:00am I began to have the most painful contractions. The nurse offered to give me meds but I kept refusing since I knew I was most likely going to get an epidural and I would much rather just wait it out until I could no longer take the pain. She told me I was so brave and strong because she could see I was in so much pain. I waited and waited…then my doctor came in to check and see if the first dose of Cervidil worked and it did within 8 hours so she was confident things would move rather quickly since she said most people get a second dose. I was so happy to hear this news but I was still only dilated 3cm and the goal was to get to 10, which most people dilate about 1cm every hour; Adrian looked at the clock in our room and figured that the baby would be born around 4-5:00pm if all went according to plan.

Contractions became so unbearable that my nurse, whose name happened to be Cinderella (no lie!), called the anesthesiologist to administer the epidural at around 1:00pm.  To speed the process along my doctor gave me a small dose of Pitocin.  I was already contracting every 4 minutes but didn’t really feel much pain due to the epidural. When my doctor came in to check my cervix one last time I was officially 10 centimeters and ready to go into the last phase which was music to my ears after anxiously waiting with my hubby, mom and dad in my delivery room.

So for the pushing phase…which in my opinion was the most intense and hardest part. I was under the impression that I wasn’t going to feel much given that I didn’t have a lot of feeling from the waist down from the epidural but I was wrong.  The pushing was intense alone but since I didn’t eat for almost 24 hours and was in labor the entire day I was exhausted even before I started pushing. My mom and hubby along with the nurse and doctor were there coaching me with every push, which started at 4:00pm. At 4:45pm my doctor said let’s set a goal that at 5:00pm we would reach the point where she scrubbed up and got the baby out. I legit watched that clock like it was my job and made it to 5:00pm. Also when Adrian said he saw the baby’s hair it seriously gave me so much motivation. It was a very emotional, out of body experience. My mom and Adrian were so emotional and so happy that I felt their energy, which I needed given I had zero at that point. At 5:00pm everyone scrubbed up and the baby literally came out so quickly and arrived at 5:08pm weighing 8 pounds 11 ounces (yeah I still don’t know where I was carrying him…LOL).

I can’t really describe that feeling when they place the baby on your chest as soon as he came out. I felt relief it was over, happy that my beautiful child was here and beyond emotional. Adrian was extremely happy to meet his son and he said he has never been more proud and impressed by the strength it took for me to give birth. Sebastian is nothing short of an angel. I truly believe he arrived at the exact perfect time…11 is the angel number:) Even though it felt like my body had just been through hell it all faded away the second I stared into his eyes and when he immediately started breastfeeding we were bonded forever. I also could not wait to eat…haha, no literally at this point I was past starvation.

The recovery was pretty tough but I feel super grateful the baby and I are as healthy as can be. Now at 3 weeks I feel great and have even added in light workouts. I have to say the single best thing I did during my pregnancy was eating healthy and keeping active because my recovery has been speedy and I dropped 20 pounds in 2 weeks with breastfeeding alone. I’m not at my pre-pregnancy weight but I honestly don’t care about the number. I just want to fit into my clothes again. I will say if there was one thing I would suggest to anyone that is pregnant right now it would be to keep as active as you can throughout your pregnancy because the proof is in the pudding.

Thanks for reading and thanks for following along on this amazing journey. You guys have been so kind, loving and supportive. Every day I receive such thoughtful messages. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Stay tuned as I share more and more of my life as a mommy. You can find these posts filed under “Sebastian” and for more of the things he is loving right now, shop “Sebastian’s Faves.”

xoxo,
Lisa D.

SHOP THE POST: