Seay Emery Lucius

The Labor and Delivery Story of Seay Wallace

The backstory

Monday the 2^nd

We left our midwife appointment feeling optimistic. She had checked me for dilation and said we probably had another week to go before Seay would make his arrival, to us this was great news. Our new home was not up and running electrically yet and we had no place to go if he came before then, we were hoping he would wait as long as possible since we had no control over when the electrical stuff got finished. (Sadly I am not an electrician, and neither is my husband)

Thursday the 5th

I had a rough night, waking up randomly, not really sleeping at all. I had mild back pain and some crampiness that I just blamed on being near the end of pregnancy and on the babies position.

Friday the 6^th

I finally made myself get out of bed at 7:30am because I just knew sleeping was futile and I had some things I could do around the house.  I went to the bathroom and to my surprise, lost my mucus plug, and had bloody show. This kind of startled me, not going to lie going so long without bleeding and then seeing blood was pretty intense for me.

I immediately text Cathy (my amazing midwife) and let her know what was going on so that she would be aware if anything were to progress throughout the day.

I woke Robb briefly, although I doubt he remembered it, and told him about the early labor signs and he shrugged it off. We had learned in our birth classes that losing your mucus plug, and seeing bloody show can mean that labor is moments or days away. . .so thankfully his reaction helped put me more at ease and I tried to spend the rest of the day in bed sleeping.

Robb was working a half day that day so I was not concerned about him being home at all, especially since I needed to sleep anyway. I slept soundly for about 4 hours until he woke me an hour after he got home at 5:00.

I was having heavy emotional moments after waking up from sleeping, as we went about our day normally we got in the car and started driving toward Brenham for our one on one birth class with Cheryl. We started to argue on the way there, as I was having contractions and telling him about them.  My sweet darling husband has such a heart for his family that the thought of our little one coming before our home was ready had him stressed. While thinking about delivering our son so soon seemed so giant a task for me that I was emotionally trying to prepare myself for labor at any minute. I was in tears just overwhelmed with fear and doubt. Uncertainty gripped me as my darling husband told me that he just couldn’t come this soon.  

I immediately pulled myself together, talking to God and telling him that whatever his will was for Seay that I wanted it to happen. I was willing and open to whatever that was. Even if our house was not ready for our little man’s arrival, God had taken care of timing thus far, and I knew that his plan was the best plan. We arrived at our birth class on much more stable ground than we started, as we walked in and I sat down I watched my stomach get solid with every contraction. The instructor noticed and asked me about the contractions I told her I wasn’t timing them because they were just random and I wasn’t sure if it was the real thing. I think the reality of it was that I was scared to admit that I was going into labor soon and I really didn’t want to know if they were regular or not.

Our birth class that day centered on Robb and how he would be my support system during labor and delivery. I was very nervous about his role in Seay’s birth. His boredom during the birth was my main concern. I seriously didn’t want my husband to be bored.

Looking back now….I don’t know what I thought he was going to do, but the thought of boredom during that labor is laughable to me now. Isn’t it funny how God takes our past worries and throws them at our feet later letting us see them for the foolhardy things that they were? I should have had more faith in my husband, and more trust in God’s plan.  Also let me point out that once again the timing for this class was impeccable. God always knows what he is doing.

As we were leaving our class we watched a beautiful home birth video…it brought me to tears watching it and it gave me the courage to face the fear I had been bogged down with again and rely on God and the beauty of natural birth. Watching and reading natural birth stories has always given me peace and strength…Something about mentally pulling the power from the women who have been there and done that was the best tool that I used during my pregnancy to prepare for labor.

We were going to go shopping for groceries and necessities for after baby came, but Cheryl looked at me during a contraction and asked me how I felt. I told her like I was having a bad period but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I mentioned our trip to the store and she looked at Robb and said, "you need to take her home and put her to bed. I think you will have a baby before the weekend is over"  He nodded and we drove home.

 I started getting regular contractions when we were still about 10 minutes away from the house, Robb encouraged me to try to take a bath to see if we could stop or slow labor at all. I started relaxing in the tub and I knew in that moment that this was not stoppable.  The bath helped sure…the pain was eased…but contractions still coming every so often. I watched my belly go from one soft form to a hard shaped oblong square. 

With every contraction I gave God a fear or worry . . . I gave him the worries about the house, the worries about not having gotten food for us to live on after the baby arrived, the worries about money, the worries about being strong enough, the worries about my husband’s boredom, the worries about my doula Kristyn leaving for out of town, the fear about my son and his health, the fear of how I was going to be a mother very soon and I felt so underqualified.

I got out of the tub 2 hours later and walked to the bedroom. I felt significantly better, so I lay down to sleep. I texted Cathy and Kristyn before I fell asleep letting them know about my contractions.

Saturday March 7^th

entering active labor

 I slept for what felt like a long time….got up and texted Cathy letting her know I was unable to sleep now. I was starting another bath. I was shocked that it was only 12:30am because I thought I had actually slept much longer than just an hour and a half.

My body started cleansing itself, and I noticed more bleeding before I got in for my second bath.  This time the bath didn’t stop or ease the contractions at all, it did however make it easier for me to handle them, as they continued to get stronger I sat in the tub from 12:30 to 2:30. Around 3 am I began to notice the intensity change in the contractions, they grew in a way that resembled stairs within a single contraction. The pain would intensify, and then sit for a second, then increase, and rest.  The contractions continued to build in that manner until 6am. This is where I started active labor, losing more mucous plug, and bloody show every time I peed.

I asked Cathy when to come in and she told me to come get checked for dilation at 9am. I text Kristyn, my doula and let her know to meet us there. Robb was unsure if I could handle the contractions for that long, but I told him that because 12:30 to 6:30 went by so quickly that I knew I could handle waiting till 9am to get to the birth center.  This is around the time that Robb really seemed to grasp that this was the real deal, he asked me if he needed to pack some stuff together and I told him yes please. As he walked around the room making sure we had everything we needed, I told Cathy that I didn’t want to come to the birth center just to leave and have to come home. From the beginning of my third trimester, my Braxton hicks and contractions always got worse in the car, I was very anxious about the car ride to the birth center because it was a 45 minute drive and the contractions had me in tears at some points.

The Car Ride

As expected, the contractions got more intense in the car. Robb started playing my labor playlist in the car when we left the house but  i was in tears…literally cursing through every contraction. He joked and said I could say whatever I wanted in the car but once we got to the birth center I needed to watch my mouth around the midwife. I smiled at him and told him I didn’t know how else to handle the pain…for some reason saying curse words in that moment of crazy active labor helped ease the pain.

At some point in the drive Kristyn called us and Robb talked to her, she offered us her home for our first week after Seay was born since they were leaving for out of town that day and our electricity was still off. (She was supposed to leave the day before I went into labor and since I texted her about my contractions she was able to make the decision to stay one more day before leaving.)Thankfully The Lord has perfect timing in all of our life.

I was tense in the car, having trouble getting through the contractions. Robb at one point changed the labor playlist to ksbj. I noticed him start tearing up in the driver’s seat, he tried hard to hide it from me…but I knew he was emotional about the fact that I was in pain and he couldn’t help.  Somehow I pulled from his sensitive heart and got strength from his emotional response. I also gained strength from the songs playing on the radio. I started singing through my active labor. I have no idea how I could sing through those contractions, but something about the emotions exposed in that car, and the need to be strong for my husband . . . along with the recognition that he knew me so well he knew what I really needed in that moment was Christ, not Coldplay. The rest of the car ride was much easier, we arrived at the birth center and I had a contraction on the way up the stairs. I stopped to breathe through it and then we walked inside and cathy met us in the hallway.

At The Birth Center

9:42am

We had arrived a lot later than intended, the car ride was very hard, and every bump was difficult so my sweet husband took his time getting us there. The active labor I went through in the car made me so exhausted I was really quite tired when we got there. I laid back on the examination table for her to check my cervix and it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I expected it to be between contractions. She was very excited and said I was fully effaced and already 5cm dilated. We were having a baby today that much was certain. Relief poured over me in that moment…I was so worried about having to go back home, about not being far enough in labor to stay…but thankfully that hard labor in the car…those painful and difficult moments are what brought me far enough  to stay.  I have absolutely no doubt in my mind about that.  The happiness I felt along with the excitement that I was already halfway through with labor made the next few hours easier to get through…

Transition

There was a point when the birthing tub got filled with water and was finally warm enough, I was entering transition when I entered the tub, and this is where the hardest of my contractions hit. I remember very little from this stage…it was one of those moments where I didn’t know what I wanted…or how to tell anyone what I wanted. I had developed insane nerve pain in my outer thighs during active labor, this felt like flames burning the outside of my legs during every contraction in transition. We determined that Seay must have had a knee or elbow hitting a nerve every time my body contracted. If I hadn’t had the nerve pain the labor process would have been much easier during transition than it actually was. This nerve pain along with double peaking contractions was the main source of my exhaustion.  At some point during transition Amanda showed up, I had never even met her and her assistance to Cathy and Kristyn was so amazing. She literally walked in and got to work. She massaged my back in such a way that I just melted through some of the hardest contractions. Cathy was excellent at helping me through the nerve pain as best she could, she brought out this black pepper essential oil and just the scent of it made the pain somewhat easier to bear. But she rubbed that down my outer thighs and every time the pain got to be unbearable she arrived with it again. My husband helped as well, putting pressure on my thighs and drawing out tension with his hands. He told me to imagine his hands stroking the pain out of my body and he would do this every time I would cry out from the pain. Kristyn was doing counter pressure on my back and hips helping my pelvis to relax and open allowing my body to open up for Seay to come down.  I had my husband get in front of me for some of the harder moments, looking into his eyes and drawing from his strength in those weak moments just gave me the courage and strength to keep going.

At one point I got out of the tub to try using the tens unit and get seay to move into a better position to try to stop the nerve pain, this was VERY hard for me. I felt I had no consciousness here, and getting in and out of positions was hard because with every movement I felt my body threatening to contract all over again. There were back to back contractions, and lots of movement. I went from the toilet, to the couch, to a position called inversion, to the couch again. I labored on the couch until my contractions subsided for a moment so that I could move to the bed and try to rock on my side.  They had me lay on the bed and she checked me for dilation and that time it did hurt, but I heard her say I was a very stretchy 8cm. Unfortunately the nerve pain never went away, I was too exhausted to move much and the contractions were coming so strong and so fast that I could hardly stand any position they tried to get me into due to the nerve pain being so incapacitating, seay never did move that elbow or knee.

He still made me smile through the labor process.

And he was my rock when i needed him most.

praying over me through a tough contraction.

After being checked I was rocked back and forth on my side between contractions, which was very hard since they were coming so close together at this point I could hardly tell when they ended and began. I did many different labor positions during this time, I can hardly remember all of them. I know the ball was on the bed at one point, I was on my back for another, on my side again, my foot was up by the head of the bed and I rocked my body weight back and forth in a lunge position....Then they wanted me to squat on the bed, I was very unsure of this because I had been feeling really odd pressure and I had no strength in my legs at all. The nerve pain made me feel like I was going to collapse from sheer pain, but thankfully my husband and Kristyn held my weight up and I was able to be in the position they wanted me in. At this point I know I had been checked for dilation in there somewhere again, Robb told me after delivering that they said that I was a 10 and had a bulging bag of water (because my water still hadn’t broken). I remember saying that I felt a lot of pressure in my pelvis building up, and I heard someone mention feeling pushy…I don’t even remember who it was.

This was where the excitement started for me.  

Robb helping me to focus through a hard contraction during transition.

At 1:30pm

Pushing begins

I waited until the next contraction and I went with the pressure, Kristyn whispered in my ear to listen to my body and do whatever it told me to do…so I did. I pushed for the first time and my water burst everywhere. I felt instant relief and release of pressure at this point; mentally I was ready for another two hours of labor. Someone mentioned that I could move in to the tub for delivery if I wanted but my body told me differently. I felt like I needed to push over and over and over again. It came so naturally, my body had a great instinct and I followed it. I was so surprised at how fast it went from there; I think everyone else on my support team was too. My vocal sounds were way more primal at this point; I just remember that growling seemed to work way better than breathing for me at this point. I remember saying I can’t do this, and my husband drew my focus to the Matthew West song playing in the background that was saying

“You must
You must think I'm strong
To give me what I'm going through

Well, forgive me
Forgive me if I'm wrong
But this looks like more than I can do
On my own

I know I'm not strong enough to be
everything that I'm supposed to be
I give up
I'm not strong enough
Hands of mercy won't you cover me
Lord right now I'm asking you to be
Strong enough
Strong enough
For the both of us

Well, maybe
Maybe that's the point
To reach the point of giving up

Cause when I'm finally
Finally at rock bottom
Well, that's when I start looking up
And reaching out

Cause I'm broken
Down to nothing
But I'm still holding on to the one thing
You are God
and you are strong
When I am weak

I can do all things
Through Christ who gives me strength
And I don't have to be
Strong enough
Strong enough


I know I'm not strong enough to be
Everything that I'm supposed to be
I give up
I'm not stong enough
Hands of mercy won't you cover me
Lord right now I'm asking you to be
Strong enough”

Hearing those words, being reminded that I was not alone, and not only was I not alone, but I had strength when mine ran out. I got a surge of energy and even though It was hard work it felt way better than my contractions had felt before. I was leaning on Robb and holding on to the headboard. At this point the only thing I was really conscious of was my body’s urges to push and Cathy stretching my perineum around and around as I pushed the baby down. My body knew what to do, and I let that feeling guide me. I heard someone say to feel his head and I reached down and, that was all I needed, suddenly my body and mind were a team with a common goal. This time the goal was obviously attainable. In the background I heard constant encouragement and awe about how well I was pushing, so I knew I could do this. I was born able to do this, this was my moment and I was going to get my son out NOW. 

I pushed as hard as I could, I let out a deep primal sound and just dug deeper and deeper holding on to my husband and giving it all I had. Only 17 short minutes later at 1:47pm I led my sweet babe into the world, and I felt the rush of hormones that come with natural birth. I was instantly pain free, my thighs no longer burned, the pain was gone. My baby was here my job was done. I was exhausted. So thankful. But seriously so tired.

 1:47pm

Seay Emery Lucius was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck three times. Which to me was even more proof of God being in control of the whole birth and pregnancy. God knew what he was doing when he put that baby in my womb and he decided to give him an umbilical cord that was double the normal length. his cord was 41 inches long, if his cord had been shorter things would have been drastically different for the birth. I also was very blessed to have delivered on the bed so that Cathy had access to stretching my skin around his head as he descended, this is the reason I didn't tear. (I love you Cathy….even if that hurt like hell. ) Also Cathy had access to his head and neck and was able to free him from the cord immediately and if I had been in the tub it would not have been that easy.  God really did control all of the timing in this whole situation, he had a massive hand in this birth, the peace that I had during birth, and the strength that it took to go forward with our decision to birth naturally. 

8lbs 2.6oz

20.5 in long

With a 14 inch head full of soft hair, and two beautiful alert eyes,

He is my greatest accomplishment, a miracle that I helped God create.

Some of the things I told myself during birth to keep my focus were:

“This birth is not about my comfort, but about the benefits that natural birth hold for my son.”

“They come, They peak, They leave.”  (contractions)

“This one never comes back again.” (contractions)

“It’s only going to last a few moments.” (contractions)

“Your body knows what to do “

“Many women have done this before”

 “I am well prepared and well informed in my choice to have a natural birth”

“I am going to do this”

“When I feel weak, Christ is my strength”

Some of my personal thoughts about natural birth and the experience.

Birth is hard work.  MAKE SURE YOU GET SLEEP when contractions aren’t too bad.

If you put your whole heart into it, your whole soul, and all of your mental focus you can do it.

ANYONE can have a natural birth experience. 

Don’t let anyone tell you differently, expel negative commentary about your decision, avoid people who speak down to you about that decision.

You don’t have to be rude about it, but the strength that it takes mentally to have a natural birth experience is something that you control.

You can govern what you hear about birth, if only positivity enters in your mind, you are left with a positive outlook that makes it easy to kill any doubt or fears with.

There will be moments where you will say I can’t do this anymore, and that is the moment when you know it’s almost over! SO TAKE HEART!

The support of those around you will fuel you more than you realize.

Having four people at my birth to support and hold my focus on my reasons for choosing natural birth made the hard stuff simple. Whenever I started fading, or getting fearful I had one of them speaking positive things to me, praying over me, massaging me, or talking me through a hard contraction.

After you deliver the baby you will feel amazing physically.

I felt what I can only liken to having climbed Mount Everest, looking down on the world below and collapsing in exhaustion in a pile of fresh snow.

Your whole body feels like it just had the work out of its life.

Pushing feels GREAT after difficult contractions.

Water breaking is the best/weirdest feeling ever.

The ring of fire, wasn’t as bad as I expected.

Ask your midwife to save your perineum, and as hard as it will be to bear that pain in labor…say thank you afterwards. I didn’t tear due to my wonderful midwifes work in that area during pushing.

When your body tells you that you can push, DO IT.

 Thank you for reading the very real, very raw birth story of Seay Wallace.

I hope my story gives you inspiration, I hope that it gives you a real look at birth. Not fear, not pain, but reality. I tried to share the tough stuff, the amazing things that our bodies were made to do. The feeling after having done that is like nothing I have ever felt before. I definitely have a newfound respect for my body, a newfound belief in my abilities to overcome obstacles, and a new faith and trust in my husband and my savior. I am in awe of the beauty of the birthing experience I had. Nothing can ever change how I feel about that. 

IF you are curious, will I go natural for number two?? Yes, Yes I will because I know I can do it, with support, with Christ, with positive reinforcement you can accomplish whatever you put your heart and soul into.