I’ve started this post any number of times, but let’s see if I can finish it this time, shall we? If you’re just interested in the birth part, skip down to the bottom.
The morning of March 15, 2015, I woke up and knew I was pregnant with my third child. I was terrified. I was bewildered. It had taken 6+ months to get pregnant with our first two. It was not a part of our plan at all; we were living in Scotland, far from family; and we had decided earlier that year that we would wait until we moved home to have a third. It was a Sunday morning, and Mother’s Day to boot, so all of the nearby stores were closed. I managed to come up with an excuse to duck out to the corner store across the street where I bought a pregnancy test and three Kinder eggs from a smirking clerk. I came home and took the test, which confirmed what I somehow knew already. I gave Thomas the eggs and told him there was one for each of our kids. It took him a minute to catch on but the shock factor was unbelievable. In fact, we didn’t have our first real conversation about “it” for three days. We went off to church and then to lunch at the Porteous’. I remember looking at myself in their bathroom mirror and feeling the most unbelievable surge of blinding panic about the unknowns stacked in front of us.
Once we came up with a plan and the news settled in a little, the timing of this pregnancy suddenly seemed perfect. We had already planned a trip home to the States about six weeks later, meaning that we got to give our news to family and friends in person, along with the news that we would be delivering in Glasgow and moving home a few months after that. Being pregnant in the UK fulfilled so many dreams I’d had for pregnancy and birth. Given my low key pregnancy and birth history, I was “green light-ed” through the system and had the minimal number of appointments and tests. I remember getting on the bus with Thomas and the kids after our 12 week scan and just feeling the most amazing sense of God’s peace. We were on track to have a healthy baby in a country we loved–what better reminder of our time abroad could we take home with us next year?!
My monthly midwife appointments were in a building scheduled to be torn down in December 2015 (a few weeks after my due date), but this particular building was only .5 miles from Lillian’s nursery. Elliott often fell asleep on the walk to nursery, so I would walk her into class, then hit Tinderbox, my favorite coffee shop, and head a little further down the road with a sleeping toddler in tow. Urban living at its finest. (As I’m fondly reminiscing though, I should definitely add in a little more rain and wind to my memories of those walks, as well as accurately recalling how hard it is to hold a hot beverage and push a pram at the same time.) The midwife team was very encouraging of my desire to have a natural birth, something I had definitely not found in the States. (There is a much higher percentage of natural births in the UK–cheaper/better/safer as the thinking goes–but I also had plenty of friends there who had epidurals and never looked back.).
We also chose to not find out the sex, something I had always wanted to do, but was much easier to choose this time since we weren’t decorating a nursery and we already had “one of each. ” I was absolutely certain we were having another little boy. All the “gender neutral” clothing I bought during those months confirms this.
Elliott and Lillian were both born at exactly 39 weeks, 3 days gestation. So of course I was expecting #3 to follow suit. No matter how many people told me that third babies are unpredictable, I could not help but expect to deliver a few days before my due date of November 21. However, when the NHS scheduled Lillian’s tooth extraction for November 14–the day I was 39 weeks–I began to hope that maybe this baby would come closer to its due date. L’s oral surgery day tops my list of Difficult Parenting Days but I knew it would have been infinitely harder if I’d had a newborn or been in labor. Once the trauma of that event was over, and by the time the next weekend rolled around, I was more than ready to have this baby. I was determined not to buy a winter maternity coat but it was getting quite difficult to zip my jacket up. Also, my parents were arriving and I did not want to sit around staring at my stomach waiting for things to get going. So that Friday, we did all the normal things that worked to start labor the other two times (yes, THAT), and lo and behold, it seemed to work! The contractions were steady and strong for a few hours, so we called our dear friend Laura to come hang out with the kids so we could get a good walk in. I think we walked up and down every street in our part of the West End that night. It even snowed on us a little. I had my first taste of the white chocolate cheesecake that I still dream about and during that little break, everything slowed down. Discouraged, we decided to head home and see if bouncing on the exercise ball for a little while moved things along at all. Laura was asleep in our bed (or maybe we sent her up there when we got home? Fuzzy on the details of this L…) and Thomas and I ended up sleeping on the couch for a few hours. I woke up exhausted and so bummed out to still be pregnant.
Fast forward a few days (insert mental images of grumpy, hugely pregnant Ashley at church/nursery/grocery store/etc). I had a midwife appointment on Monday where she stripped my membranes (the first cervical check of any kind I’d had) and yes, this is as pleasant a process as it sounds. The time with my parents was wonderful, and the kids especially were so happy to have Mimi and Papa around. Tuesday morning my parents, the kids and I headed out to a favorite museum, the Transport Museum, while Thomas went to work (thanks babe). Its location made it tricky to get to without a car, so by the time we had taken the bus and subway and walked a good bit, my contractions were coming steadily. I stayed quiet though, as I was feeling a little like I had already used up all my credibility. We ran into my friends Steph and Seonaid. Steph had her two littles ones with her, the youngest who was just a couple of months old, and Seonaid was due a couple of weeks after me (we had taken some Aqua Natal classes together–imagine a pool full of pregnant women jumping around). It was funny to figure out later that Seonaid and I had been at Steph’s house the morning before she had Ollie that evening. The day progressed as normal and so did my labor. By the time Thomas came home that evening, I was starting to feel some pretty serious amounts of pain. During dinner I told my parents what was going on–my mom was THRILLED to have been in the dark all day, ha–and sent them to get their overnight stuff from their air bnb. By the time they got back to ours, I was in a lot of pain and we immediately headed out in search of a taxi.
Here is where the intervening two years will benefit you, O faithful reader. I don’t remember what time we checked into the hospital–around 8 or so–and while I know the whole process was pretty different, I can’t recall the exact details. I remember that once I finally got to a bed, I wasn’t as far along as I’d hoped, but they were willing to keep me in the room where women labor next to each other (with curtains for privacy). I stuck with my plans for a natural birth though I did fully enjoy the awesomeness that is gas and air. Yes, just like on Call the Midwife. L and E were both sunnyside up babies (basically, still head down but facing the wrong direction which makes labor really painful for your back), and at least in this instance, #3 was following suit. The pain was really intense, and not at all like my first two births. At one point I was laboring on my side and then suddenly everything…shifted…and it was game on. Somehow we moved floors, with me sucking on the gas and air as if my life depended on it even though it wasn’t connected to anything at the time, and about 5 minutes after we got into a private room, the delivering midwife shouted “they don’t let you do it this way in America!” in the thickest Glaswegian accent and baby #3 came rocketing into this world. We’d been at the hospital for a little over two hours. It was the most amazing and empowering feeling I’ve ever experienced.
Thomas was the one to announce that the little boy we were expecting was actually a girl. Shocked and thrilled, we name her Isabelle/Isabel/Isobel Eilidh and eventually decided on spelling #3. Actually I shamelessly used the “I just delivered our baby” to cast the deciding vote. I was stitched up and showering within about 30 minutes, which is when the less fun part of delivering a baby in Scotland begins.
Early in the wee hours they wheeled baby and me down to recovery and told Thomas to go home. I was sharing a room with two other women and it was just…hard. Isobel cried a lot and I felt terrible for how much I knew she must be disturbing my roommates, plus I was tired, hormonal and lonely myself. Introducing my parents and the kids (and my friend Jen who snuck in!) to Isobel the next day was wonderful of course, but the two nights I spent in the hospital were incredibly difficult.
Thomas came to pick me up–in a taxi, woohoo!–on November 26, 2015. So we headed home from Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on Thanksgiving Day, in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, to start our life as a family of 5. God’s abundant grace and provision were (and are) visible every step of the way, from those first days of panic to a straightforward pregnancy to an amazing delivery. We can’t wait to see who our little Scottish surprise grows up to be.
Team Grooms 