Piper Bailey: Starting The Legacy

We finally made it to parenthood and what a journey it was. Our family legacy gets to be passed on to another generation because we are now a family of three (humans) and we couldn’t be happier. Everyone’s birth story is unique, so here is ours for Piper.

Check out the previous blog to understand our road to getting here, but for the most part, the pregnancy was a pretty enjoyable process both for Lindsey and I. Her morning sickness didn’t get too extreme and she really liked the flutters/kicks during the middle and then throughout the third trimester, since our baby was measuring ahead, we assumed she would be born a couple weeks early, so we had been mentally ready for about a month. There was heavy nesting going on around the house during March, we even demoed and installed new floors in February. Toward the end, we would go on walks almost every night and tried all the different wives tales to speed things up, but apparently she wasn’t ready yet.

Piper Bailey Campbell was born at Mercy Gilbert Hospital on Sunday, April 25th at 3:27am, which means Lindsey was pregnant for 41 weeks, but her labor actually started at 5am the day before. Lindsey was woken early Saturday morning and started feeling contractions by 6am that were pretty consistent, so we went to the hospital a couple hours later to only be sent home because she was dilated half a centimeter. She had an appointment Sunday at 4pm to be induced but that seemed so far away. The contractions continued all day, making it very difficult for her to nap and rest her body. After taking a bath to try to relax and laying on the couch, she felt as she described a balloon bursting inside her, which was her water breaking and meant we could go back to the hospital! We got admitted around 9pm but watching Lindsey writhing in pain as the contractions intensified was hard to see. She had been in pre labor for 14 hours but thankfully she was dilated 3 centimeters at this point so at least things were progressing. Lindsey opted for an epidural because she had fought the fight so long and wanted to save energy for the pushing. A couple hours later she was dilated 5 centimeters and still feeling the pressure but at least was not in excruciating pain. Her heart rate dipped a little as did Piper’s so Lindsey had to be on oxygen for a bit, just when we thought we had time to sleep, the nurse told us she was dilated 10 centimeters and was time to push.

I got to unexpectedly be a part of the whole process, I had one leg and a nurse had the other leg, helping Lindsey push and keeping her breathing under control. The doctor that night got called away to do a c section so a midwife was going to do the delivery but also juggling other patients that were just as far along as Lindsey, luckily the midwife came to our room as Lindsey was in the final stage of her delivery so she didn’t have to stop pushing. 

Piper greeted us after 2 hours of Lindsey pushing, looking kind of blue and needing attention to suction out the meconium she had swallowed in the womb but she cried pretty quick and did skin to skin time with Lindsey. It was such an awesome experience to be so involved, cutting the cord and seeing our baby for the first time, we were so happy and relieved the hard part was over. 

By that I mean, the hard physical part is over, but now we are going down a whole different path we have never been on before. Our routine and lives before the birth is now a thing of the past. Days of getting a full 8 hours of sleep and doing what we wanted have been replaced to sleeping in 2-3 hour chunks and revolving around a tiny baby dictating our time.  This has already been so rewarding, feeling a completely different level of love, we are overjoyed to now be parents. We fought for this new role so hard and for so long, we are sure to appreciate it even during the sleepless and frustrating times. Lindsey and I are both getting time away from work to bond with Piper and figure out this parenting thing, it’s unlike anything else we have done but we wouldn’t change it for the world.