Nova’s Birth Story

Nova’s Birth Story 

At my 39 week check up, my OB mentioned induction as an option . The end of my pregnancy was pretty miserable and my OBGYN saw no reason to continue the pregnancy beyond 39 weeks, she even suggested some studies say it’s better to induce-given my history of big babies. 

Now —I’m normally a person who tries to stay away from intervention, but because I was induced with Lucy, I was much less afraid. Secondly, when my OB brought up induction I felt a calm peace that this was the right decision. Maybe it was the pelvic girdle pain speaking, but I do believe the spirit was telling me, yes this is a good plan. 

Next thing I know Dr Northey says, “why not tonight? “ The birth center is low on admission so it’s the perfect time. This was overwhelming but I agreed, signed some papers and planned to head to the birth center at 5 pm. 

5 pm we get there, they check us in, I get an IV and monitors on my belly (probably the most annoying thing about induction) 

To my surprise the nurse gets my IV in on first poke, very rare for me, so I feel things are going well.

I order dinner from the amazing kitchen and enjoy my food. Dustin goes to get Taco Bell and groceries for snacks because he was too cheap to buy the hospitals food. (Mine were included in my stay)  

Dusty ended up caving and buying food half way through our stay though. 

I get cervadil placed at about 7 pm, and get some minor contractions the whole night. Cervadil placement sucks and removal sucks, doesn’t feel good. 

My hospital induces really slow to mimic natural labor, waking up with nothing happening was not a surprise. The next day they gave me Misoprocital (miso) which is a drug I also took with Lucy’s induction that helps labor get going. 

They cut it into pieces so as to not make contractions too strong. 

I get the Miso every two hours all day that say and things are not progressing as fast as I’d like. But I’m relaxing- eating breakfast lunch and dinner, trying to treat it like a vacation. With Lucy, the Miso got me into fairly active labor by 3 pm and I had her by 7. 

The whole day passed by and nothing - this stressed me —-until I found out, the policy for Miso had changed since 2020 and they were giving me half the dose that they gave me with Lucy. (Lucy came out like a rocket)

They said this change was made to avoid rocket births and again better mimic natural labor. 

I felt relief but still had a worry of , what if they send me home ? I’m already here , I refuse to leave with out a baby! 

The nurses assured me, no one was getting sent home and I’m not leaving until I had my baby—-however I had a little bit of a pessimistic attitude- maybe it was being in a majorly uncomfortable bed+monitors+super pregnant that influenced my attitude. 

The contractions started to get rhythmic on the monitors and it’s funny because the nurses were asking if I wanted to get in the tub for pain etc but I was like “these contractions are hardly anything-“ definitely not worth the effort of entering the tub. 

The nurses assured I was having contractions and things were progressing. 

I kept taking the Miso every 2 hrs until I had 8 doses. It’s middle of the night by now. After 8 doses if things need a bit more of a push, you get an IV of Pitocin. 

Pitocin used to scare me but again, I felt an overwhelming trust of the people taking care of me so I was calm. Around 5 am the nurse started Pitocin and man it worked quick. I immediately had contractions that I had to breathe/moan through. I laid there in bed trying to get some rest and they came every few minutes. Around 7:30 AM I had a contraction and my water broke, this is when I decided to wake up Dustin because traditionally things get a lot more painful after water breaks. 

I began to panic slightly when my water broke because with Lucy after my water broke I had non stop pain - zero breaks from contractions until she shot out. (This was because I was given the old drug dose, the nurses nicknamed Miso-rocket ).

To my surprise my water broke and I wasn’t immediately in excruciating pain- this was a shock for me- I actually thought maybe I wasn’t progressing normally.  I started to have some nausea and dry heaving this was not fun at all. The nurses thought maybe some juice would help but just hearing them mention any sort of food going in my mouth made it a million times worse. 

I got a short break and then the contractions came and they came hard. 

I did not have any pain medicine so I was able to walk around and have that freedom. I had an amazing nurse and a nursing student who stayed with me the whole time after my water broke. The nurse liked that I was willing to do whatever she said to ease my pain. She said most women don’t want to move or be touched during labor and the stiffness makes things worse. 

In my past births I haven’t moved around much  because I did not feel In control. I felt like labor was happening to me, not that I was in labor. Taking the control back really helped me physically and Mentally. With this birth, despite the excruciating pain, I was calm, collected and could control my body. I sat on the toilet, I stood up - I walked around , did squats -sat with the peanut ball, crouched on all fours. I was careful not to tense up, or do high pitched screeches as all of this worsens the pain. 

Dustin held me as I squatted through contractions- I swear all of this made her drop so fast! I really feel natural labor is 95% mental! The nursing student braided my hair through contraction as it was a disaster. 

The OB came in around 8:40 to check my cervix , she told me I was dilated to a 6 but only 50% effaced. So about 2 hours from water breaking now. This irritated me - but I knew it could still happen really fast. 

A stark difference between this labor and Lucy’s is I actually had breaks between my contractions, all the way up until pushing time. This made everything a million times more manageable-whereas during Lucy’s my body was in shock from the constant pain- hence why I had shaky legs during her labor. With Jetsons labor it was all really new to me so I had no clue what was going on or when the pain would end so I was a bit panicked as well. 

Around 20 minutes later , I’m telling the nurses— I freaking need to push - the nurses/docs never believe me right away because I “seem calmer than I should be” (they even said this with Jetson and I held him in for way too long while his head was coming out because they thought I was not fully dilated due to my demeanor and a past cervical check  ) The doctor was skeptical to come in because she just checked me 20 minutes prior. But I was adamant and Dustin was like “this has happened before like, she’s probably not wrong”

The nurses are like “yeah given her history -she probably needs to push.”

Suddenly the doctor, the on-call midwife, a few nurses and about eight more medical students came rushing in. They turn on bright lights and get my legs in stirrups. At this point I’m practically holding the baby in, and waiting for the go-ahead to push. The ob is like “eh she still has a tiny bit of cervix over the head and starts to walk out and the nurse is like “dude. NO.” The nurses and midwife agree that cervix is going to “melt away in seconds” 

The midwife decides to give me the go ahead to push because the urge was overwhelming. 

Two little pushes and one big scream later, Nova was out! They placed her on my chest, and the first thing I said was commenting on the large amount of Jet-black hair she had! 

As I started to gather awareness I started to think who the heck are all these people in here? 

As we awaited the afterbirth , the midwife says “I know things seem a little hectic in here - because I am still in training so the OB had to be here to oversee the birth- and these are all our medical students! It’s their last day on the labor/delivery rotation and due to the slow week we are having, you were their last chance to see a live birth! “

This was hilarious to me, because Dustin and I were planning a birth with less people/more intimate (in the past I’ve had friends/family there ) yet we still had a room of like 15 people! 

Looking back, I’m happy it happened, all the students were super grateful and it was all their first birth they’ve ever seen! Hope I didn’t scare them because natural labor is not a picnic that’s for sure. 

The after birth comes and the midwife stitches me up . These were probably the most painful stitches I’ve ever gotten. I’m guessing it’s because I had zero medication in my system, whereas with Jetson and Lucy I got an IV pain reliever during stitches. 

I had skin to skin with baby girl and she started to breastfeed a bit . One of the sweet nursing students helped me get cleaned up in the tub and she was crying she was so touched by the birth of Nova. 

Nova Christina Batistich came at 9:07 AM on April 20, 2022, to a seemingly quiet empty maternity ward, but nonetheless there were many kind strangers excited to welcome her to the world. . Throughout the pain I thought of Christ’s face and my Heavenly Father- I felt the sacredness of them passing her to us to care for here on this Earth. Whether the medical students recognize it , I know this sacredness was what touched and excited them in seeing new life be brought to Earth. We are so blessed with little miss Nova. 

***Funny side note: all of our cute nurses were shocked to find out that we wanted more kids after 3, apparently not super common in Santa Cruz, CA. 

They were—I guess talking about it a lot. Dustin mentioned to one that I graduated from BYUI and a few minutes later our midwife who delivered me comes running in - she says “I was just talking with the nurses and they were like “they want alot of kids because they’re Mormons! That explains it!” And she was like, “I am Mormon too!” So the midwife that delivered us was a member of our church and we had no idea! So fun. 

Nova Christina Batistich 

9:07 AM APRIL 20, 2022

7 lbs 8 oz 19 inches 

Lucy’s Birth Story

Lucy’s birth was extremely special. I can’t help but cry when I think of the vivid raw memories I have of it. With my first son, Jetson I gave birth to him without the epidural but I did use some pain medications while in labor. The medications wore off by the time it came to push but my brain was still a little foggy while having him. 

With Lucy I didn’t not use any medication at all, this allowed me to be very present and I was in awe at how perfect my labor went! I had nurses sent straight from heaven. Everything was perfect. 

I’ll start the story by saying, at 41 weeks I was completely done being pregnant, I could not fathom the thought of another week. My doctor felt it would be a good idea to induce me at 41 because of my history of big and late  babies —-she felt there was no reason to wait until I was 42 weeks. 

So with lots of prayer and anxiety I made the decision to be induced. They had to reschedule my induction date twice which was frustrating but I had faith it was going to work the way it was supposed to. 

My birth center is all about natural birth, so I knew going into the induction, that the process would be rather slow. The last thing the birth center wanted to use was Pitocin. I was only dilated to 1cm when I got to the hospital. 

The doctor on call was really nice, she had me get comfortable and she placed a little pill near my cervix called Cervadil. This pill is supposed to help ripen the cervix over the course of about 8 hours. 

After this I just relaxed. Because the medication was placed, they had to monitor the baby and I to ensure we didn’t have any adverse reactions. So the plan was to just relax, order dinner and spend the night in the hospital. It was like a mini vacation before the baby was born, had food brought to me in bed, I was chilling. The Cervadil caused some smaller contractions through the night but mostly,  I just slept like normal, the only issue was the monitors were hard to sleep with. 

In the morning I got to have breakfast and the doctor came to see how the Cervadil did, it helped to completely efface me, but I was not dilated. The doctor assured me this is typically what happens and not to worry but I couldn’t help but be disappointed . She assured me the Cervadil did it’s job and that it was time for the next step. 

She said the next step is a pill that they will give me in two different doses. The first dose was tiny-and they cut it in half. I was worried it would get stuck in my braces, it was so small, a crumb.  

This crumb sure had power. Almost instantaneously I started to get some pretty good contractions but nothing crazy, I still ate lunch. After lunch the second dose came and this time it was a full pill. This pill again really got them going and within  a couple hours I was in hard active labor . My nurses were happy because it looked like my body was progressing without Pitocin.  

At this point I was excited about the stronger pill and stronger contractions but still felt like everything was going to take forever! 

Suddenly the pain got pretty intense and I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself— I got restless. I sat on the birth-ball for about an hour. This is when my amazing nurse came in and got mad at me because I hadn’t been drinking enough-she said the babies heart rate had been up and down and it was because I was getting dehydrated, she told me to drink up. I started drinking as much as I could but it wasn’t changing much. She decided to give me an IV of fluids to get my body back in shape that did just the trick. She stayed in the room with me for what seemed like an hour, helping me breathe and moan through my transitional contractions. She could tell I was close at this point but I did not know how close I actually was. 

She left for a few minutes and I was breathing through my contractions. My mom, Dustin, aunt Connie and Kelly were just talking with me as I filtered through contractions. I would be in excruciating moaning pain one minute and then the next I was talking to them or joking . 

At one point I had just finished a pretty painful contraction, and Dustin yawned loudly right after. His yawn sounded pretty similar to my birth moans/groans and everyone laughed because it seemed like he was mocking me even though it was completely unintentional. 

I even had the sense of humor to laugh as well. While I was laughing I felt a big gush -I was super confused at first but then realized that must have been my water breaking! Dustin broke my water. 

We called the nurse in. They all rushed in to check me, I was dilated at about a 6 or a 7. This news frustrated me because I was in some crazy mind boggling pain. 

The midwife assured me that since this is my second baby this would most likely go pretty fast. 

This is when things got extremely intense, my legs were uncontrollably shaking with the contractions, body sweating and I was just not having it. 

The midwife had me go on all fours for a little while and that helped a ton- my water broke at 4:30 PM , I was in this painful state for about 2 hours. This really didn’t feel like two hours though because in between contraction you feel practically dead  so time goes by faster. Either way it still felt like it was taking way too long! My mom and aunt were rubbing my head and back in between contractions which helped a ton to relax me. The midwife suggested I labor a bit sitting on the toilet, the walk to the toilet was brutal as a contraction came on, Dustin was there and he held me and applied counter pressure, being held by him really helped ease my heart because at this point I was freaking out! 

That short walk to the toilet and back really seemed to seal the deal. I felt I needed to push- the midwife said she’d allow me to without checking if I was ready. She assumed it would be obvious at this point if I was or not. I was going nuts at this point shaking, convulsing, squeezing the nurses arm, I knew she was coming and that I HAD to push. Before I began to push Lucy’s heart rate got lost on the monitor so they had to attach one to her head. This scared me a lot and so I felt an even bigger urgency to push, I thought something was wrong with her. Primal crazy mommy instincts kicked in and I was going to do whatever I could to get her out and know she’s okay. In reality, I shouldn’t have worried this much because nothing was wrong, but I was not totally in my right mind lol. 

The midwife told me to start pushing and that my baby had black hair! I was happy to know she was finally coming out! 

So I gave one big push and boom her head was out-and then one more big push and wallah the shoulders and the rest of the body were all out. TWO PUSHES.  The midwife allowed my mom to catch Lucy and put her on my chest. It was super cool. 

They placed her on my chest and I just wanted to know if she was okay. The nurse said of course she’s okay! 

I got to just relax at this point after delivering the placenta and after birth. I did tear once and so I had to get stitches. I was kind of amped up/in shock at how fast she came out. My awesome nurse realized I was a bit tense with the stitches. She asked me if I wanted a little cocktail just to feel relaxed since I seemed a little in shock . She was like “you just pushed that baby out with nothing, you deserve to relax a bit while you get stitched.” She gave me a small dose of fetinol and I got a little goofy. Some people might wonder what the point was since I had just done a natural labor— but that little bit of medicine for the stitches helped me so much! The biggest issue was that my legs wouldn’t stop shaking after pushing her out (body was in shock) and the fetinol helped bring my body out of the fight or flight mode and my midwife was able to do my stitches. I could feel the numbing shots they gave me before stitching me up but the actual stitches were not very painful.  I remember joking to Kelly during the stitches about how you could feel the string coming in and out and trying to gross her out. 

During this time baby girl latched and breastfed for a good half hour! This was super cool because it took quite a while (like about a week)  to get jetson to latch properly. 

I couldn’t have done it without the support I got from my family and husband in the room with me. They were cheering me on and I feel I got a true taste of what heaven is like, everyone cheering you on. My nurses really were literal angels. 

Lucy’s birth was super perfect! And was overall less painful this time around- because I was in hard labor for a much shorter period of time. She was also much smaller than jetson and that helped for sure! 

Lucy Valentine Batistich came at 6:55 PM on February 10, 2020.

She weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces at birth. 

Funny enough just like with Jetson I got exactly what I wanted out of her birth. I feel really fortunate that both my births so far have been so smooth. 

I had told my mom I hoped to have Lucy around dinner time so after I had her I could eat a nice yummy dinner ahah! 

And that’s what happened . With jetson I told everyone I wanted to have him around 12:30 PM and he came 12:36. I am so thankful for Heavenly Father, that he has trusted Dustin and I with another one of his precious spirits. We love you Lucy babe!