Her Story.

Her story started a long time ago.

How long exactly depends on which part we're talking about.

Part of it started five and a half years ago when her sister was born.

Part of it started two and a half years ago when we lost their first sibling.

Part of it started the day she wanted to come into the world.

Her story and her sister's started the exact same way: my water broke in the middle of the night in the true Hollywood fashion of a "pop" and a gush after an absolutely inadequate amount of sleep before needing to perform the herculean task of pushing out a baby. It was obviously their first sister-gang-up-on-me moment.

Just like her sister's labour before her, my contractions started within moments. The main difference this time was that instead of rushing around packing things and throwing tags-still-on-unwashed sleepers into the washing machine because we were unprepared for an early birth, I kicked it into cleaning mode, thinking about who might be coming into our house while we were gone and not wanting to greet them with a mess. At one point while tidying the living room, I said to John, who was begrudgingly complying to my request of doing the dishes we had left from dinner earlier, "these contractions are getting pretty intense," to which he tersely responded by throwing his exasperated soapy hands in the air and exclaiming "then stop fucking cleaning and let's go to the hospital!"

We did eventually make it to the hospital at 1:40 am as the parking receipt informed me two days later when I saw it. My water had broken at midnight and I thought we had made better time than that. Oops. I was group B positive, yet again, so the rush to the hospital was necessary to start the first of two rounds of antibiotics needed to keep babe safe. This was the same as with our first.

Where her story differs from her sister's is the ending. I got to labour, and spoiler, I got to have my dream of a VBAC (a vaginal birth after a caesarean).

And it was magical.Why her story started with her sister's birth is because of how Big Sister came into the world: through an emergency C-section. I had read and read and read about births while pregnant so I knew I didn't want drugs and only minimal interventions, if needed. I had wanted to labour using a squat bar and maybe even birth her in a primal position. It is fun to look back at the naïveté of myself and so many first time moms in thinking we have it all figured out. Just like the parents who have parenting all figured out before they even have kids. We can all just nod and smile smugly and wait for reality to hit them hard.

Well, reality hit me as hard as a semi during our oldest daughter's labour when I was told there were toes coming through my cervix and as my vision tunneled into the void of disbelief, plans were set in motion for an emergency C-section. And just like that, my dreams of an unmedicated, un-medical birth, were destroyed. Within an hour of those first words, I was numb from the armpits down, tethered to a bed in the OR, there was a gaping hole in my abdomen, and the first view of our babe was of her flailing wildly over a blue curtain as a masked doctor held her up for us to see.

Not exactly the birth I had envisioned.

And that's where our second daughter's story begins.It took until our oldest daughter was 26 months old for me to come to terms with her birth. I'm really not joking. I had had a lot of hopes built up around what her birth was supposed to have been and yes, I am fully on board with the "at least she's healthy and safe" sentiment and would have never compromised her safety for anything, but the trauma of it all left me fairly broken mentally. It really was a lot to process. And, of course, there was the physical aspect of having a C-section that left me in pain for months.Having a VBAC was more than just having a baby: It was true healing for my mind and spirit. Her birth closed the circle of pain I had mentally experienced from her sister's birth years earlier. It felt like the gash of my C-section had created in me an open never-healing wound and her birth closed it. I had been missing something, and suddenly I was complete.

And it really was sudden.

As soon as she came out of me in one last push, the relief, the healing, the absolute completeness of my soul engulfed me in a tidal wave of bliss.

That bliss hasn't left me weeks later.

Maybe it never will.

It's a strange feeling, though, this feeling of contentment. It's the absence of anxiety, depression, or that cloak of victimhood that I've had draped around my shoulders for years.

Her story also started with our first loss. That loss was the hardest for me to take and it still haunts me. With the loss of that babe, a cycle of hopefulness and hopelessness was created. Throw in a dash of self-hatred and sprinkle it with anxiety and it's no wonder I turned into a monster. Looking back at the last two and a half years, I don't recognize myself in that person at all. When she was placed on my stomach and they wiped away the blood and excess vernix, they also wiped away this clouded veil I had been wearing with it because I could finally see the world clearly again.

I could see everything that I hadn't seen in years. Joy, happiness, forgiveness.

Her due date was within a week of our first loss', but a year later. Everything we are experiencing now, we should have gone through a year earlier. Her birth once again completed a circle.

That's really the theme of her story: completion. She completed my wounded soul, she completed our journey for another babe, and she completed our family.

She spread magic before she ever opened her eyes to see this new world she made better just by her existence.

Her journey to joining us, as I said, was magical. Maybe it feels like this for all mommas giving birth, but there was something absolutely transcendent about her entrance to this world.

As I said, my water broke, contractions started, I cleaned (or "fucked around" as John describes it), then we made it to the hospital. We had both harboured not-so-secret wishes that I went into labour in the middle of the night as parking at the hospital is horrendous during the day. It was actually relieving to pull up to the empty hospital and know that John wasn't going to miss her birth because he was busy circling the parkade looking for a parking spot. I had been in and out of L&D enough times in the previous three weeks to know that parking was only available at night. Legit though, that was a concern.

All of those visits to the maternity ward were thanks to contractions that would come and go, a cervix that would open to almost 4 cm only to shrink back down to 2, and a babe who was sitting so low that she was past engaged in a +2 station. That meant she was just hanging (literally) in the birth canal, waiting for my cervix to move forward enough to fully engage and get things going.

I was supposed to be induced on the 8th (her due date), which I was dreading and she must have sensed it because thankfully my water broke at midnight on the 7th. By 2 am, my contractions were three minutes apart and sustaining for 40 seconds and it was at that point that I turned inwards and refused to engage with the outside world, closing my eyes and closing my external sensations off.

It was like an outer body experience, but inside my body. I was disassociated from everything happening to my body but at the same time, so very deeply engaging with it.

I laboured on my side laying on the bed (which I never in a million years thought I would want to do), holding John's hands, and just surrendering to each wave as it went through me. I was conscious and actively thinking within my mind but I was not responsive to requests made to me. I could hear my husband, my doula, and the nurses speaking, but I refused to answer with more than just one word whispers. I was in a completely primal place and speaking seemed like a sacrilege against the state I was in.It was almost physically painful to talk.

As intense as each contraction was, at no point did I think I wanted medication. At no point did I think, "I can't do this." I had wanted this birth for so long that it was cathartic and freeing to feel each sensation, painful or not.

Then my body wanted to push with every fibre of my being and the doctor wasn't there yet. Shouts of "no, no, no!" infiltrated my mental cocoon I had built around myself.

My doula, the absolute dream that she was, guided my breath to control the urge and I managed to hold off pushing until the go-ahead was given from the doctor. At that point I pushed for 45 minutes, growing so tired as I had only had two hours of sleep before it all started.I could not believe the fatigue. I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life.

At one point, babe's head was stuck in the birth canal for 10 minutes because I just couldn't muster the strength to get her through, but as her heart rate didn't change at all, no interventions were used. Then it started to feel really weird. Like weirder than you might think pushing a babe out of your vagina might feel.

Then everyone started gasping.

She was turning her head while she was stuck there, swiveling and rotating in bitter protest of being stuck.

I think I'll always remember it as the strangest sensation of my life.

After that, I girded up the rest of my strength and after some insanely strong pushes (as the broken blood vessels in my eyes, face, and chest could attest to) she emerged and I got to hold our deeply-loved babe at last.

And suddenly it's been 8 weeks.

Yet it seems like she's always been here.

So that is how her story began.I can't wait to watch it unfold for the rest of my life.

Welcome to the world, our sweet Rainbow.

All of these breathtaking photos were taken by my dearly loved doula and birth photographer, Krista Evans, without whom I don't think this perfect birth would have happened.