Ah – the fourth birth story. It’s taken me over 2 years to get this thing written out and recorded on the podcast. Not surprisingly, that long gap in time has everything to do with the absolute chaos – and joy(!!) – of having 4 young kids in our home. But I’m here! You’re here. We’re doing it. Let’s get into my fourth birth story.

Want to play catch up before you read any further? I always recommend you do, because our first stories definitely inform the ones that come after! You’re certainly going to hear me reference “what I always do” once or twice in this story.

• Read my first birth story here or listen to it on the Lo & Behold podcast here.
• Read my second birth story here or listen to it on the Lo & Behold podcast here.
• Read my third birth story here or listen to it on the Lo & Behold podcast here.

If you don’t want to hear or read those – I get it. Quick summary? I have babies fast, I have them unmedicated, and I usually go into labor around 39 weeks!

Who is The Labor Mama and Why Am I Here? 

Hey friend! I’m Lo – also known around here and social media as The Labor Mama. I’ve spent my nursing career in labor, delivery, and postpartum, have birthed 4 of my own babies, have labored thousands of mamas at the bedside, have taught thousands of students online, and have even delivered a few speedy little babies with my bare hands (oops).

Here at TLM, I offer online classes to empower you the way everyone should be. The education + support I offer gives you experience, evidence, and empathy; you’re getting all of my years of “clinical” RN knowledge, beautifully combined with my real experiences as a mama and a nurse. These are not your average hospital classes (those won’t do it, I promise), and honestly, birth, postpartum, and breastfeeding don’t follow a textbook or protocol anyway. You need to know so much more than that!

If you want to connect with me further, head to Instagram or Tiktok. There are hundreds of thousands of us over there learning together daily.

A note: This post may include affiliate links. This means if you make a purchase after clicking a link, I will earn a small commission (thank you)! Rest assured, this comes at no additional cost to you. You can read TLM’s full disclosure here.

Deciding to Have a Fourth Baby

Our longest gap between kids is between our third and fourth baby. Actually, our gaps got bigger each time. It makes me laugh when I say that out loud, because it makes sense to me! Each time we had another baby, it definitely took us longer to feel ready to do it again.

When it comes to having four kids, I’ll be honest and tell you that it wasn’t something I was planning on. I had always thought I’d have three. That seemed like more than enough, but also not too few. I’m also one of three girls, so that likely impacted my feelings. But growing up, four seemed like a lot. The families that choose that got a “whoa, that’s wild” thought from me.

Obviously, you know we decided to go for four. I usually tell people it’s something we “parent-ed our way into.” We enjoyed having kids, I LOVED being pregnant and having a baby, and we felt marginally good at it and mostly enjoyed the chaos as our family grew. Additionally, when we had our third, I didn’t feel that clarity or sureness that it was our last. I had thought we would, especially since we had a boy after the two girls.

I know some feel that, and some do not. But, since I didn’t (and neither did Kelvin!), we basically tabled the conversation until we’d let some time (and COVID) go by.

Life in Haarlem

These two years of not knowing what we may choose about a fourth baby also ended up being some of THE MOST amazing years where we got to move to Haarlem, Netherlands with our three kids! We moved over there for work, and the assumption was that we’d come back to the US in two years. So our thought process was: “let’s enjoy Europe without thinking about growing our family and then we’ll address it when our return to the US is on the calendar.“

Side note: The Netherlands has AMAZING maternity and postpartum care, so I would’ve happily had a baby there! Look up the Kraamzorg. SO INCREDIBLE. I would’ve loved that.

As we wrapped up our first year or so in Haarlem, we took the lid off of the “do we want another baby” convo. Like I mentioned when we started, our gap had gotten longer and I definitely was at a place where I felt like I had margins again. I (mostly) had a handle on raising the three (6, 4, and 2 at the time). So I was all in. Kelvin was too – so these convos ended up being surprisingly easy.

We talked finances, the future, visions of later years, education and our home (back in the US), margins, and work/life balance. We obviously weren’t sure that all of it would be prefect or that we were fully prepared for it. But we both really wanted that vision of 4 kids, teenagers, or young adults around our dinner table. We were also in agreement that if there were any reason we weren’t able to get pregnant, we would take that as a sign that three was what was intended for us.

My Fourth Pregnancy

I will always be grateful that we were able to get pregnant, with both this baby and the three that had come before. A couple of months later, that little pee stick said “yes” and I cried like a baby, so grateful for the chance to do this one more time. I told Kelvin we were pregnant a couple of days later (I know, I’m weird and sit on the news for days sometimes, all by myself), the night of our 10th anniversary.

We had road tripped to Lake Como, Italy with the kids. He and I were sitting on a patio overlooking the lake, the 3 littles asleep inside the air BnB. It was a pretty gorgeous little moment, truly. I think we both felt so blessed to have navigated the absolute dumpster fire of COVID, to have gotten this wild opportunity to move our family abroad, to have had such a good and beautiful 10 years, and then to have this little moment of “one more baby, more good to come.”

Being a Pregnant American in the Netherlands

The pregnancy was mostly uneventful physically, of which I am also SO grateful. Our biggest challenges came in navigating a foreign healthcare system. As I mentioned prior, NL takes amazing care of pregnant women and treats pregnancy as a very normal life event (aka not so clinical and medical as the US often feels). But there were definitely still language barriers and confusion around their fragmentation of care facilities.

I had multiple midwifery appointments where they were unable to find the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler. In the US, they would typically bring an ultrasound in and quickly see what was going on. Not so over there! The midwife clinics were standalone, and did not have that type of equipment. So, they’d make me an appointment (hours later!) at an imaging clinic. I’d have to jump on my bike and ride home, then to the appointment, with no idea of what was going on. Not my favorite experience.

Bloodwork, appointments, and ultrasounds were all at different locations. It was tough to figure out what the “orders” were, and there were many times I could NOT figure out my insurance, where I was supposed to go, or who I should see! None of this was awful – not at all. But it definitely made for a really interesting first half of my pregnancy!

Back to the United States

When I was about 20-weeks along, we moved back to the US. They repeated my 20-week ultrasound because they wanted their own (I was fine with this), and there was some confusion about my dates and the baby’s cord insertion. The US bumped my due date back 5 days (I agreed with this due date anyway!), told me that the cord insertion was actually fine, and that was that.

Over the next few months my biggest challenges were related to transitioning back to the US. It was hard to re-engage with the country after being gone for so long. There were many things I missed so much. Our house had been an air BnB while we were gone so it was kind of a mess. Our kids were adjusting and struggling as well as they tried to assimilate back. It was just a lot!

Unlike my third pregnancy, I was thrilled to feel amazing physically. Aside from the baby being hilariously low, I was not struggling with back pain or SPD. I attribute feeling so great to the years of riding a bike everywhere and eating healthier European food 🙂 Who knows if that’s true, but I felt so good, and had ZERO feelings of “get this baby out of me, I’m so uncomfortable” as the end got closer.

My Fast & Furious Fourth Labor

If you know my full story, you know that my mom died months after my first daughter was born. You can read or listen to that story in my first birth story. Unfortunately, the end of her life and her death are kind of interwoven all over that pregnancy and birth (and all my stories and days that have followed).

I bring it up here because she died on April 29th. The Dutch had given me a due date of April 28th. The U.S. had given me a due date of May 5th. The differences between those two dates don’t really matter, because due dates just aren’t that important. But, I really did not know if I was okay with a baby being born on or around the 29th (not that I had the choice).

My first was actually born on my mother’s birthday – so that day was already so complicated. It felt like my mom’s heaven day was now going to be complicated too, and I just wasn’t sure I wanted both of those days covered by my kids’ births…but then also, it seemed magical and gorgeous a little bit too?

It’s Time to Be Ready

Regardless, right around 39 weeks (based on the US date) and based off of my labor history, I was definitely thinking that I better be okay with the baby coming any day now. And we were – we all were. I was nostalgic already to not be pregnant anymore, but I was also so curious about who this little human was! We’d kept the gender a surprise again, so obviously I was dying to know that too!

My biggest anxiety was honestly going into labor and my other kids. We had a mash up of people who could potentially help up, but my labors had always been so fast. I was definitely wishing we had a grandparent who could be there no matter what, as soon as we called.

I went to bed on a Saturday night, mostly comfortable and with zero signs of labor coming. I’d had no cervical checks in the office – I never do. So I really had no idea what was going on in there, aside from knowing that this baby was soooooo low. As I slept, I think my body was throwing some contractions at me, I maybe felt 2-3 or so? Mostly I just remember briefly waking up at night, maybe feeling a twinge, but then going right back to sleep.

I woke up about 0600 for the day, 39 3/7 weeks, and thought “hmm…wonder if I’ll go into labor today” and then started doing all the mom things. My 5 year old daughter woke too, and she hung in the bathroom with me while I got ready for the day. I woke Kelvin about 0700, and just let him know that I’d had some random contractions, that nothing was going on, but that I thought he should get up for the day just in case things turned fast.

It was a Sunday morning, which I was SO grateful for. This meant our cousins would be available for the kids, so if labor really started, I had so much peace about them being ready for us! We did give them a call sometime in this hour and we let them know that I might go into labor and had had some contractions. She basically laughed at me, because both she knew (Kelvin def did too) that this actually meant “I’m going into labor” and my mind just doesn’t believe it until my body proves it. (I definitely did this with my 3rd baby too).

I had some occasional contractions between 0700-0800 or so, but there was no pattern at all. And I was definitely not really hurting, calling parents, loading the car, etc. It wasn’t labor, not yet, but I knew it might turn into it.

It Might Be Labor

Between 0800-0900, I’d had enough contractions to think that I should probably start paying attention to them or see if they were actually in a pattern that indicated early labor. So I decided to start tracking them. Kelv and I decided to just ask Alyson to come over and get the kids. We were very much in a place of “we’re not in real labor, but what if it happens too fast?” I was also hoping that a quieter, more peaceful home might lead to my body actually being able to go into labor.

We also texted Monet, (Monet Moutrie, the dream!!) our photographer, to let her know. She was supposed to go to Colorado Springs that afternoon, so I felt so bad interrupting her plans, but I knew we needed to let her know, just in case. Her commute from Denver to my hospital was about the same as ours. So if we had to move fast, so would she.

The kids left sometime before 0900 or so and per my contraction timer, I’d started to have a few contractions that were 5 minutes apart. At this point, I was willing to say “okay, I think I’m in early labor.” We headed down to the basement, where it was dark and quiet. Contractions got a little closer, maybe a little stronger, and then I had 2-3 in a row that were close and felt stronger. That little set of contractions made me say “let’s go.” I was definitely still unconvinced that I was in active labor or very dilated, but I just did not want my water to break at home or in the car.

Side note: With all 3 of my other kids, they were coming out immediately after water breaking. We had packed the car with some supplies just in case, because we knew it really could happen in the car if the waters broke!

To the Hospital

Kelv was so ready to go at this point, especially since our drive to the hospital was about 25 minutes or so. He does a great job trusting me in this choice, but he KNEW that this was real and I needed to get to the point where I believed it was real and worth going in. We told Monet she should probably head out and we left the house about 0930.

As soon as we started driving, it felt like labor went straight to active. Contractions were finally consistently every 4 minutes or so. They were hard. It hurt. My brain was slowly admitting to myself that I was in labor and was likely having a baby at some point today.

When it comes to pain management tools, it was all breath work. Truly, my lungs are my best friend – and I make them work for me when contractions hit! They’re how I stay calm, how I get through, how I chill in between – breathe, breathe, breathe.

When we got to the hospital, there was no sign of Monet. It was about 1000. I told Kelvin he could park in the parking lot, but then I got out of the car and half sprinted to the doors. I had two contractions on my way to the doors. I could still tell you the poles I stopped and bent over at during those contractions! Kelvin was running to catch up with our suitcases, because I really was moving quick.

Checking In

The ER was ridiculous, and tired to talk to us about PAYING OUR BILL at check in. Gosh, I was so annoyed. Kelvin was too. Especially later when I was processing it all. But I told them I knew where to go and I was going up – and we just walked away from their ridiculousness.

The unit was totally ready for me, as I’d called the charge nurse on the way in and had texted all my old coworker friends and let them know we were coming. It was probably about 1003 or so when we got to their front desk. Kelvin filled out some paperwork while I kept on contracting. I’m sure everyone knew I was about to drop a baby on the floor, but even in this moment, I still told one of the nurses (that I’d worked with for years) that I “wasn’t sure if I was having the baby today.” My brain is so ridiculous in labor.

Into the Labor Room

As soon as I knew my room number, I basically sprinted down the hall between contractions. I always do – just get me where I need to be! I went to the bathroom straight away to pee, and while I was in there I could hear Kelvin telling everyone what I wanted or needed and getting our space set up. Later on I was so proud – THAT was definitely how a birth partner can show up, and it’s all in my Your Body, Your Birth course for your birth partner too.

Once I left the bathroom, Monet showed up – and that was such a relief. I did NOT want her to miss it, but I also knew she might if she wasn’t hustling! I went to hands and knees on the floor (my favorite spot for transition) and breathed my way through two contractions. At some point, I reached down and could feel my bulging bag of waters. I knew as soon as that thing popped, I was meeting our baby!

The room was quiet, calm, even as the 2 nurses (one for baby, one for me) and the midwife we’re getting set up. They knew this baby was coming soon, so they just let me do my thing while they quietly did theirs. No cervical check. No IV. No 20 minutes of fetal monitoring. Everyone knew their wasn’t time (or I didn’t want it), but no one was worried about any of it.

It really was such a peaceful few minutes.

The Birth of Our Fourth Baby

At 1017, my water broke with another contraction. Everyone immediately moved to help me into the bed to deliver. Kelvin and I had both already clarified that is where I like and want to be when I push my babies out. So – the team did a great job trying to honor that wish…but I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t, even though I wanted to.

Kelvin moved around behind me to deliver. Our baby’s head delivered with the next contraction, mostly through the fetal ejection reflex! I don’t remember pushing to deliver, I simply remember the head coming out, whether I wanted it to or not. Kelvin remembers me reaching down and feeling the head; in the video from Monet you can hear me say “oh hi baby.”

Once the head was out, it was one push by me for the shoulders and body, and baby was into Kelvin’s hands (on the video, you can hear him say “oh wow” as the baby slides out; it’s so cute). I looked over my left shoulder, trying to see baby and Kelvin, and I heard him say, “It’s a girl. It’s another girl.”

I remember this minute or so being strange, because it felt like everyone was partying with the baby behind me and I was “up front” by myself! I can recall saying “can I have her?” – and wanting them to pass her immediately to me. It felt like forever, but I’m sure the hand off was basically instant.

I just remember not liking that they were back there “without me” and wanting that baby on my chest!

They did pass her through to me of course, and I brought her up to me as much as her little short cord would allow. Tears ran down both Kelvin’s and I’s cheeks as we took in this brave little screaming human (the other 3 were all quiet, she was our first screamer at birth and she has maintained that personality throughout :)).

Hello our sweet girl, our number four, our end cap. Welcome to the world.

It was always supposed to be you for us.

*All the photos that you see in here are from Monet Moutrie; she did maternity, birth and newborn for us! If you are in the Denver area, you MUST reach out!