Rooney Jo Russell

 Since our Rooney girl is 3 months old now, I wanted to write out her birth story so I don’t forget all the details. 

My pregnancy with Rooney was my easiest one yet. I found out I was pregnant with her on November 6th. She didn’t make me sick and I didn’t throw up once! I had a feeling I was having a girl because this pregnancy was so different than the one I had experienced with Rocco where I was sick and throwing up all the time. Sure enough I was right! If you know me you know that I have a lot of medical anxiety after everything that happened with my mom. I also had even more anxiety this pregnancy since I had miscarried at 12 weeks right before I got pregnant with her. And lucky for me it was during a pandemic when no one was allowed to come to appointments with you. (Taylor is good at calming me down) Taylor didn’t get to come to one appointment this entire pregnancy! Not even the anatomy scan. The only one he came to was when we paid to have a private ultrasound done to find out the gender. (We also got to bring the kids for that, it was really fun.) Every time I would walk into the doctors office, my heart would start pounding and my blood pressure would sky rocket. I was so scared that something was wrong or I would get bad news again. There was one appointment where my blood pressure was so high, I had to have it checked 5 times before they would let me leave. Yikes. But luckily, all that stressing was for nothing and everything with her was smooth sailing. 

My doctor in Arizona wouldn’t induce me unless I went over my due date which was July 16, even though this was my 4th baby. Every time I went in to get checked I wasn’t progressing at all. I mentioned this on my Instagram stories at some point and an old friend from work messaged me and told me about a “midwives brew” that her and her friends swore by to induce labor. I didn’t really know what to think of it or if I even believed it but after I passed 39 weeks with no signs of labor I decided to give it a try. 

Sunday July 11 we were having a chill day at home. We had watched the Eurocup which Italy had won!! And that evening around 5:30 I decided to make the drink and try it out. My whole pregnancy I kept saying how I was shooting for her to be born either July 10th or 12th since the rest of us have even day birthdays in our family I wanted her to have one too. So I figured if I took the drink that night, and if it worked and put me into labor, she would probably be born the 12th which was a Monday and seemed to be a good day to have a baby. I made the drink which had lemon tea, apricot juice, almond butter, and castor oil. I blended it all together and poured it over ice to drink and honestly the taste wasn’t that bad. It was just a lot to drink so by the time I was done I kind of felt sick to my stomach. We sat down for dinner a little while later and I started feeling crampy. That lasted about an hour and then everything stopped completely and I felt totally normal. I put all the kids to bed like I normally do. Twins first, then Rocco. After Rocco and I read his book together, I got up to go to the bathroom. On the walk back from the bathroom, my water broke. This was right before 10 pm. Rocco wasn’t fully asleep yet so I went into where Taylor was and told him I was pretty sure my water just broke and we needed to go to the hospital. I told him to go sit with Rocco and make sure he fell asleep and to call his friend Brian who said he would come sit with the kids when I went into labor. I went into our room and threw a few final things into my hospital bag and called my sister & dad and let them know what was going on. Luckily Brian was able to head over right away when Taylor called him. He got to our house around 10:30, all the kids were asleep so we set him up a little bed on the couch and headed out the door to the hospital. My contractions started to get strong right before we left the house so the drive there was rough but luckily we were only about 10 minutes away. 

Once I got checked into triage, they had to “test” the amniotic fluid and make sure that’s really what it was before they could admit me. I was dilated between a 3-4 when I first got there and sure enough they confirmed my water had broken and admitted me. By the time they got me settled into my room and got my epidural it was around midnight. The nurse checked me again at that point and I was dilated to a 6. She turned all the lights down, laid me on my side and gave me a little medicine ball to put between my knees. She said it helped to open my hips up to get ready for labor. I had never had that before and it felt nice! She told me to try and sleep and she would come back to check me again in an hour and a half. I was able to sleep but woke up after about an hour and felt so much pressure I knew I had to be at a 10. I called my nurse and asked her to come check me. It was 2:00 am at this point.

She came in the room and checked me while the lights were still dimmed. She said “let me turn the lights on and make sure this is what I think I’m feeling” she turned the lights on and sure enough! It was baby’s head. Then she said “your baby has brown hair!” Haha. My doctor wasn’t there yet so they called him to tell him to hurry up. He said he would be there in ten minutes so all we could do was wait! My nurse was too nervous to even put my legs up in the stirrups because she thought the baby would come out. My doctor ran in by 2:15, put my legs in the stirrups, I literally pushed one time, and little miss Rooney was out. Her official time of birth was 2:21. It all happened so fast! While she was coming out they asked if I wanted to lean down and grab her so I said sure! I had never done that before. Then I just pulled her up to me and she laid on my chest and we got to have skin to skin for awhile and it was so magical. I had never been able to do this with my other babies and I really really hoped I would be able to this time since I knew it would be my last one. The nurses were so nice and just let me hold her and enjoy it for as long as I wanted. Finally I handed her over and we found out she weighed in at a whopping 7.6 lbs- our biggest baby- and was 19.5 inches- also our longest. 

They wiped her down and gave her back to me and we made our way to the recovery room. She kept making this whimpering sound and they were worried it was a sign of distress but when I held her skin to skin she stopped so I stayed awake and held her that way all night. Taylor fell asleep and it was just me and Rooney girl cuddling all night/morning. It was such a sweet and happy experience all around for me. So grateful I had such a good, easy, and quick delivery and that everything went to well and that we were both healthy. She has been the sweetest addition to our family and gets so much love from everyone all the time. I have to tell her siblings to get out of her face about 100 times a day haha. She is so loved! So grateful for our beautiful baby girl.