Hello world! I’m back! Of course, “back” is a loose term with the way life goes, but since my last post sharing our amazing maternity photos and announcing my maternity leave, A LOT has changed! I’ll try and cover it all one day, but today I get to share the biggest highlight of 2021 so far, the arrival of our newest family member!

Barrick Alan Magers

January 22nd, 2021 // 5:52pm
7lbs. 6oz. // 20.5in. long

His due date was January 24th, 2021. Following the miscarriage of our last baby, this pregnancy was a roller coaster of emotions, and it felt so long and so short all at the same time. Days of worry would drag on and on while the last two trimesters flew by in a flash from excitement. As we approached our due date, it seemed this little being was pretty darn comfortable where he/she was. We didn’t know what we were having so mom, dad, and sister were anxious to find out – along with many friends and family members!

At our last 39 week OB appointment the Monday before, stress levels were high as we had just been in the hospital with Bexley, but more on that later. Anyways, our amazing doctor (shout out to Dr. Sarah Young at Christie Clinic!) asked us at that Monday appointment if we wanted to talk about induction. I’m a believer in my body, believing that my body was built with instincts and knowledge and would tell me when it was time to have this baby, so scheduling an induction without risk factors and just for convenience wasn’t really my wish. So Brandon and I left the appointment with our doctor pretty much telling us “you pick a day and we’ll have a baby if you’d like.” Brandon was voting to schedule an induction for that Friday so we would have the weekend, but I still wanted to see what my body would do with the last week of pregnancy. Looking back I know Brandon wasn’t pushing (he was and is always a “your body your choice” guy) but I know he just wanted something good to happen after having a shitty couple of weeks leading up to this point (again, more on that later).

Finally, Thursday night, contractions began. I hadn’t experienced any Braxton Hicks contractions with either pregnancy, but none of my contractions were ever really strong. Instead, the time between them was getting shorter and shorter, until finally they were just a few minutes apart. It had been FIVE years since the last time I gave birth, and you wouldn’t believe what you forget in that amount of time, so I was texting with a dear friend and past bride (shout out to Morgan!!) for help remembering how this whole labor thing worked! Once we hit the timing she recommended we get to, we called my dad to come stay with Bexley for the night, grabbed the hospital bags, and headed to OSF Hospital in Champaign/Urbana!

We arrived at the hospital around 1:30am on Friday, January, 22nd and after getting admitted and settled in, contractions subsided a bit (as they also did with Bexley, if you recall her birth story) and I was only dilated about 3cm. We really didn’t want to have to go home and wait things out (not only is the hospital about a 40 minute drive from home but we had everything ready, lined up, and in motion to take care of Bex) and as I mentioned, Brandon was thrilled with the idea of having this baby on Friday! Luckily, we knew our OB Dr. Young was going to be on call at 7am that very day, so we had asked about the possibility of at least staying until she was on, knowing good and well that with our “you pick the day” plan, she would be good with starting things up since we were already there. They allowed us to stay so it was back to bed for the both of us before we awoke to have a baby!

Around 8am Dr. Young came in and discussed our options to further along labor, and we all had decided Pitocin was the route to begin with. Thank heavens for Dr. Young though because she recommended we wait until I could get breakfast before starting anything (which was the hardest part of Bexley’s 29 hour labor – I had had nothing to eat since the wedding dinner the night before my water broke) so I gladly ordered food!

Once Pitocin was started, it was simply a waiting game. We had taken our Chromecast into the hospital with us to watch some Netflix, so I was able to binge Schitt’s Creek for probably the 4th time (Brandon was not thrilled 😂) and of course I colored to pass the time. Eventually, they asked about an epidural which I had decided after Bexley’s birth was a good idea, so we started the fluids and around 2pm I received the epidural. This epidural was a dream. I could feel no pain from the belly button down, but could still move, lift, and feel my legs and abdomen. Once again, epidurals make for great nap times and I fell asleep HARD. I truly believe that after the previous week of stress we had just gone through, this nap was needed. I slept on my right side, and woke up a couple hours later feeling movements on my left, which can happen with gravity controlling the fluids from the epidural, so I turned on left side to shift things back, but only 20 minutes after rolling over I was feeling movement lowwww. It didn’t hurt one bit, but I could tell that things were progressing to the point I would need to push! The doc came in and didn’t even need to check me, saying she could see the baby was RIGHT THERE. 😳 Within a few contractions the nurses and doc were ready to go and simply told me that whichever contraction I felt like pushing with would be the one and she felt like I would have a baby with just a handful of contractions and pushes, which is a nice feeling to have let me tell ya!

ONE CONTRACTION.

That was it! Within that contraction I pushed once until doc told me to pause (his cord was wrapped around his neck so she needed to flip it before proceeding) and within the next half push, we had a BOY! I couldn’t believe it! He was absolutely perfect! I couldn’t believe how much HAIR he had and how DARK it was! Bexley was juuuust about bald and what little she did have was red, so this came out of left field. Although since our trip to Mexico I had suffered with heartburn in the last trimester but even STILL! He was beautiful and pink and so soft and reminded me soooo much of Bexley. We enjoyed a couple hours of skin to skin before the nurses grabbed him to get weighed and measured – and of course photographer momma had to capture it so I was up and waking 30 minutes after they removed the epidural! 😂

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Now, this blog post is going to look a bit different than you’re used to. Thanks to COVID hospital guidelines I was only allowed to have Brandon in the room with me. Because of that, I missed out on bringing a birth photographer in with us, which broke this photographer’s heart almost as much as not being able to have our parents in the hospital with us (though that was tough). So about a week before having Barrick, I rented a GoPro, because if I couldn’t take my own photos at least a GoPro would record what we could and with a pretty good auto settings feature I hoped to catch some photo stills to have some photos from the moment we found out what we had. I am so thankful again to Dr. Young for allowing me to record during such a special moment in our lives. Our video is all in thanks to the most amazing Tori Beach with Tori Beach Videography. We went from chatting via text one minute to having such an amazing video that I was in absolute tears. We are truly grateful to be surrounded by such loving and talented individuals.

Enjoy 🖤

*this video has been slightly censored but does contain real life birth events!*

And of course now for some photos I took while in the hospital!

 

One of my past brides, Morgan, was one of the first people we knew to meet the little man, and it was so special to have her there! Plus, she really helped me out answering all sorts of questions both before and after having him! I’m so grateful for her!

 

Mr. Barrick LOVED his first “bath”!

 

I did the best I could with setting up my camera on a window ledge and although we only got a few, I will still cherish them forever!

Of course I had to get him something to remember our rainbow baby with – and I’m obsessed with these knot gowns from Caden Lane!