Jude's Birth Story

“But you, dear friends, as you build yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting expectantly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life. Have mercy on those who waver; save others by snatching them from the fire; have mercy on others but with fear, hating even the Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.” - Jude 20-25

the name

Before I get into talking about the story of Jude’s actual birth, I want to take a minute to talk about Jude’s name, why we chose it and why it means so much to us.

I was reading my SheReadsTruth bible the other morning and I felt God nudging me to turn to Jude (the book of the Bible, not my baby) and give it a quick read through. Of course I have been through this short book of the Bible several times, it being our son’s namesake, and I have studied it many times over trying to understand the meaning and depth of Jude’s words so that I can feel the significance of what it means for our son to carry the name. It wasn’t until I read it again this most recent time that I paid attention to the devotional that was on the next page to accompany the chapter. As I made my way through it, it brought tears to my eyes. How had I missed this before? How had I not noticed this when we chose this as his name? Then I realized that I was meant to overlook this page and then see it a year later.

The part that struck me the most:

“It’s precisely the pandemic of evil that makes good shine brighter. God’s ability to protect us, hold us up, cleanse us from sin, and fill us with joy stands in stark contrast to the darkness around us. In his closing benediction, Jude reminds us that evil was no match for God in the time of Enoch, nor the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, not the time of Jesus’ murder. God’s glory, majesty, power, and authority prevails over evil - any day, any year, any age.”

I was so emotional, unhinged and scared back at the end of my pregnancy with Jude that these words wouldn’t have meant much to me. Being in the midst of it all, I was so sad and anxious about what the future held for me and my baby, that these words were not going to impact me in any way. In fact, I probably would have resented them and their encouraging nature. Reading through this now however gives me an incredible amount of peace and clarity when I reflect on everything we’ve been through.

If there’s anything that my pregnancy with Jude taught me, it’s to wholly lean on Jesus and his words of blessed assurance. Being pregnant and having my baby during the pandemic was the scariest thing that I have ever experienced. I did my absolute best to be strong and brave. But some days were difficult to get through. The words in this devotional though speak to me and my past fears so deeply. The evil that has been this pandemic and the fear and chaos that come along with it, just make the good gift that is our Jude bug shine so much brighter. God protected us, filled us with joy and struck down the darkness that surrounded us. Truly, evil was never and is never a match for God in any times that we live in. A global pandemic included. He prevails over everything always. I can read this now and know that we were meant to go through those difficult times to learn how to be resilient parents and learn how to love even deeper as we more fully appreciate our sweet baby boy and the bright light of joy that he is. His name was always meant to be Jude, as Jude 20-25 still speaks to me, brings me so much comfort, and brings me right back to the times we were living in when I had him. How desperately I needed this reminder to persevere.

Jude challenged his peers to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ and to help others who were wavering in their faith. Jude in Hebrew means “praised” and our prayer is that Jude will spend his life giving praise to the one who delivered us from evil and will lift up and encourage others who may need reminded of God’s love for us.

We chose the middle name Lee as it is Brian’s middle name but it is also Brian’s uncle Gary’s middle name and my great grandpa’s name. So we were able to honor many with the name Lee.

Alright, now let’s get into it!

The story

Revisiting this moment in time is going to be such a trip and it’s going to make me so emotional. It’s been over a year since I had Jude, so it’s probably time to finally reflect on and document this sweet boy’s arrival Earthside. I wanted to jot these memories down a lot sooner but every time I thought about it I decided that I would rather spend that time with him and take a little longer to reflect on the gift that was his birth. I struggle often times with expressing how I feel about things in the moment. I usually need some time to take it all in so that I can process and reflect back on everything with more mental clarity. With that being said, I can’t wait to take a walk back down memory lane…

It was about 8:30pm on the evening of Wednesday, June 3rd and Brian and I were sitting in the living room with our TV trays eating a Sam’s Club pepperoni pizza and I was struggling to fit my belly in between the tray and where I was sitting on the couch. I was 38 weeks pregnant and we were relaxing together eating dinner while watching Catch Me If You Can. I finished up eating as the credits started rolling and a sudden feeling of pressure releasing/peeing myself caused me to stiffen from my previously relaxed state and sit straight up alarmed.

“Oh my god”, I stated in a weirdly calm tone. Brian still jokes that I said it as if I had forgotten to turn the oven off, not like my water had just broken all over our living room couch.

“What’s wrong?”, Brian inquired.

“I think my water just broke.” I replied.

“Really? That’s awesome! You think it did or it did? I think you should know if it did. Well, alright, let’s do this! Here we go!”

If you couldn’t tell from Brian’s response to my water breaking, he is definitely the kind of person you want around when a stressful situation presents itself. He made sure I was okay first and then calmly helped me make all of the preparations to leave for the hospital.

I waddled upstairs, amniotic fluid still dumping out in buckets (how come nobody ever talks about how much there is??? It was literally leaking out of me until I arrived at the hospital and even as they sat me on the bed it just kept on coming). I stepped into the shower to change clothes and then decided to go ahead and just take a shower. My water had broke, but no contractions had started yet, so I figured I had some time to at least clean up. Hey, when was the next time I would be able to take a shower? Better get it in while the getting was good!

Well, I ended up showering and doing my hair and makeup while Brian put away our food, gathered up our things for the hospital stay and Rug Doctored the couch cushions that I left my mark on. We were nice and relaxed and took our time leaving the house.

As I was finishing up getting ready, Brian drew my attention to Cooper’s paw as he noticed something bizarre. A giant flap of his paw was hanging off revealing raw pink skin underneath. He seemed okay other than the fact that his paw was cut and Brian’s parents were on their way to KC to watch Cooper while we were gone, but I was still so worried about leaving him alone most of the night until they arrived. Our friend Carolyn’s dad is Cooper’s vet, so Carolyn ended up being one of our first phone calls informing someone that we were in labor. We asked her about Coop’s paw and she said she’d ask her dad about it. Turns out, we had went to the Shawnee dog beach earlier that day to take Coop swimming and the 94 degree heat on the sidewalk had burned the skin off of poor Coop’s foot pad. She said he should be okay waiting to be seen until the next morning, but leaving the house that night for the hospital, I had such a hard time leaving Coop. This would be the last time it was just us and Cooper and on top of that he had an injury. Poor buddy, I was so emotional about it. Man, of all times for him to have an injury!

We made some more phone calls on the way to the hospital after calling our parents, letting as many of our close family know as we could that baby O was coming! Some of our family thought we were joking since A.) Brian tends to joke around to the point where our family thinks we are making a joke out of our labor happening and B.) He was coming about a week and a half early, my due date being June 14th.

We arrived to Overland Park Regional, called my doctor to let her know we were in labor and gathered up all of our things. Hospital regulations were pretty tight back at this time with covid and my maternity navigator recommended that we bring all of our things with us from the car on the first trip in because Brian wouldn’t be allowed to leave the hospital once we were checked in. So we lugged all of our bags into the lobby and waited to be taken back to triage.

It was about 10pm once they got us back and situate, and a nurse came in to check my dilation and effacement. The first nurse tried three times and wasn’t able to feel anything. Finally she called in another nurse that she claimed had, “smaller hands” but it seemed to me like she just wasn’t super versed in checking cervixes 🤷🏼‍♀️ Hey, it was late and she was over it. She also had a hard time getting my IV inserted which wasn’t the most fun experience considering it was my very first IV. She eventually had to remove it and reinsert it and the whole time I was hooked to the IV it felt tight and uncomfortable. BUT. My whole entire attitude from the moment my water broke was trying to be as calm as humanly possible and take everything as it comes. And this was included in that!

I wasn’t even dilated but maybe 2 cm so it was pretty clear that labor wasn’t going to easily start on it’s own. When the nurse reached in to check my cervix, she told us that Jude was tucked up underneath my pelvic bone and so it was going to take some time and effort to get him to move down. She also told us that when she reached in to feel for him, she felt the top of his head and could feel a head of hair! I was so excited to hear that he would have some good hair, haha. I think that is the moment when everything became a lot more real for me. There was a human baby, our son, in there and we were about to meet him for the first time.

We got checked into the delivery room around 11pm. Looking back at these photos of Brian and I is so special to me because they are the last photos we would take as just Brian and Mikayla instead of mom and dad. We knew that our lives were about to flip upside down but we were so ready for it and you can tell by how excited we look even while I was having contractions.

And BOY. Did I have contractions. All. Night. Long. Unfortunately they were super sporadic and unpredictable, ranging anywhere from every 20 to every 30 to every 40 minutes allllllll through the night. They would get closer together and then space out again and again and again. My doctor really wanted my body to go into labor naturally on it’s own if it could, so they told me that if labor didn’t start on it’s own by 8am the next morning, they would go ahead and induce me. I knew I had a long night ahead of me.

I tried to get some sleep when I could but it seemed like every time I fell asleep my body would jolt awake with a contraction. A nurse came in a few times throughout the night to wake me up and ask me to walk the halls to encourage my body to start moving and grooving. Brian was so incredibly supportive and encouraging through the whole night. Helping me get in and out of bed, holding my hand and rubbing my back every time I had a contraction in the hallway and I would double over in pain clutching onto the wall handrail. It was such a long night but we spent it talking and fantasizing about what our son would be like and who he would look like. I was willing to do every possible thing I had to do to bring my son into this world calmly, lovingly and safely.

This picture below was taken at 2:15am. Still excited! I was hooked up to a belt that monitored Jude’s heartbeat and it would go off every so often and freak us out. A nurse would come in and tell me to shift positions because the blood circulation to the fetus could be cut off if I didn’t.

Here we are at 5:40am. We almost made it through the night and I was still having the craziest, most unpredictable contractions. Brian had been sleeping in a chair all night by my side and was woken up a million times by my labored breathing as I worked through my onset of contractions but was being such a trooper for me. By 7am I was still only about 3cm dilated and my contractions were averaging about 12 minutes apart.

I was finally induced around 8am, things were starting to get more and more real!! We were going to have a baby today!!

Here we are at 11am, contractions starting to pick up a little more since the Pitocin was administered. At this point I was 4cm dilated and I had just gotten my epidural in. For me personally, the epidural was the most frustrating part of the whole experience. The anesthesiologist had the hardest time administering the needle. She was getting so upset and frustrated with me, using a stern voice and acting like I was ignoring her instructions. I was bent forward on the side of the bed grasping onto Brian’s hands, praying that another contraction wouldn’t come over me. Every time one did I warned her, “here’s another one!”. She just kept telling me to hold still and arch my back like a cat. It took many frustrating attempts to get it in, each time it missed, sending a zing of shooting pain up the nerves of my spine. She finally got it and we breathed a sigh of relief as we got through the last hurdle until we could meet our baby boy.

Not too long after they administered my epidural, I started feeling not the greatest. They told me before they gave it to me that I might get a little woozy since I naturally have low blood pressure and the epidural lowers your heart rate. Sure enough, I started feeling super light headed and nauseous and my vision and hearing started coming in and out. I felt like I was going to vomit while floating around in space. I was in a full body sweat and feeling pretty miserable. They give you a button and tell you that you can push it every 30 min or so to administer yourself another dose of the epidural to fend off the contractions. However, I was terrified to push the button because I was so scared that I was going to get too sick and didn’t want to be feeling this lousy when I was pushing. To this day I still think that I felt a lot more of my delivery than I should have with the epidural because I only pushed it once or twice. They ended up having to add another drug to my IV drip to counteract the effects of the epidural on my heart rate and help to raise it up.

A couple of more hours passed and not much had changed or transpired. My contractions were still sporadic and not close enough together to start pushing. I was in so much pain, even with the epidural. I could feel a deep painful pressure pushing down on the back of my pelvis and tailbone. Almost like when you have to poop but 10x worse. It felt like time was standing still.

Around 2:45pm my doctor gave me the option to push to at least feel like I was doing something. I was finally about 10 cm dilated but there were signs showing that I wasn’t ready to push quite yet. My contractions weren’t close enough together to warrant pushing. Essentially, if I starting trying to push now, it would take longer to have the baby but it would make it feel like I was doing something to help with the intense amount of pressure on my pelvis and might help the contractions to start moving closer together.

So I pushed. And I pushed. And puuuuuushed. I pushed for 2 full hours trying to get Jude out into the world. I pushed in every possible position you can push in. My doctor guided me in the typical breathing techniques. When a contraction would come on, I would breathe in for so many seconds and push as hard as I possibly could for so many seconds, taking breaks in between. It was exhausting. My doctor kept coming up with different ways for me to push to change things up. She had me grab my legs, had me try grabbing the sides of the bed and finally she ended up getting out some rope while she held one loop and I held the other for leverage as I pushed. With every push, I gave it everything in my being while visualizing seeing my sweet boy’s face for the first time.

Well, after those 2 hours, Jude’s little head of hair finally popped out and made an appearance. At 3:45pm Jude started crowning. Down at the end of the bed, Brian looked up at me with pure joy on his face and tears in his eyes. He was so excited to catch that first glimpse of our baby. He would end up having plenty of time to take in the top of his head because Jude was crowning for 45 minutes. His head was literally stuck in my cervix. The pressure I was previously feeling intensified more than ever before since his weight was resting right on the back of my pelvis/tailbone. I continued pushing with all I had left. At one point, to boost my motivation a little, my doctor asked me if I wanted to reach down and feel the top of Jude’s head while he was still crowning. I will never for the rest of my life forget what that moment felt like. Here was the little life inside of me, that I had housed for 9 months and that we had dreamed about for years, in between two worlds, about to change so many things for so many people. And I had just physically made a connection with him in the outside world for the first time. There was his soft sweet head and his soft sweet hair. That was all the motivation I needed. I was more ready than ever to meet this boy.

I was still pushing and then around 4:15pm, my doctor asked me if I wanted to keep pushing or if I wanted her to try using the vacuum/suction to assist in pulling him out a little easier. Up until this point, she had been assisting my pushes to help make them more productive by using her hands and fingers to push back the skin around Jude’s head but it wasn’t quite enough to get him out. She said that the suction would help ease up on the pushing but that it may leave a bruise on his head. I said absolutely not, I would push for another 2 hours if it meant that my sweet baby would be able to avoid having a bruise on his head! Well, luckily for me, it only took about another 15 minutes.

After 2 hours of pushing, 45 minutes of crowning, and an overall labor time of 20.5 hours, Jude finally decided to come out and say hello. I felt the release of intense pressure, could feel him slide on out and before I even heard the cries, I knew my son had arrived. Our lives would never be the same in the most beautifully wonderful way.

I talked a little bit earlier about how throughout the entirety of Jude’s birth/labor, I was more calm and at peace than I had ever been in my entire life. Which is a stark contrast to how I had been feeling throughout the end of my pregnancy, full of worry and anxiety over the unknown. This calm I think was a deliberate choice I had made for myself going into everything and also God answering my prayers for everything to be okay. I wanted to go into everything with an open mind and not overthink anything as that is what my natural tendency is. I wanted to sit back, let the doctors tell me what to do and soak in every single moment so that I could remember this moment forever.

When they laid Jude on my chest, covered in goop and blood, the most immense sense of calm and peace enveloped my entire being. He was the most perfect, beautiful thing I had ever seen. But there was this feeling inside of me, overwhelming me, that I couldn’t describe. You always see photos of moms after they give birth, holding their babies while sobbing and weeping hysterically, overcome with joy and happiness. And of course I felt all of those same emotions. But for me, that deepest sense of peace and calm I was feeling, the only way I can explain it is that it felt like I already knew him. Like there was this ancient, primal relationship with him where our paths had crossed before. I had spent my whole pregnancy wondering what his little face might look like, but when I saw him for the first time, it truly felt like I had known him my whole life and he had just come home to me. Like our souls had been reunited.

I couldn’t stop staring at him. I stroked his little back and face. And tears of happiness kept streaming down my face. I kissed his little fingers for the first time and finally understood a mother’s love.

Jude LEe Obermeier

8lbs 4.4oz

June 4th, 2020 4:30pm

Even more so than myself, it was so incredibly touching for me to see Brian with our son. I have been waiting so long to make him a daddy. I kept telling him, “That’s your son! Can you believe it?” And I kept telling Jude, “That’s your daddy, do you see your daddy?”. It means the world to me to be able to give Jude the best daddy and such a kind, God-fearing man for a role model. It makes me so incredibly proud.

I FINALLY got to eat after almost 21 hours of labor. If I would have known my last meal was that pizza from the night before, I would have at least grabbed an extra slice! I had to include a photo of my meal right after I gave birth because to this day it remains one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my entire life. The staff wanted to move us to our recovery room not too long after Jude arrived but I insisted on eating first, I couldn’t wait another 10 minutes lol. I’ve heard plenty of women say that the meal they had after delivering was the best thing they ever tasted, and man were they right. I know it doesn’t look like much but fireworks were going off in my brain as I ate this meatloaf. Notice the two dessert options (the chocolate cake was so good, I asked or seconds) and the diet Dr. Pepper. I took a sip of it and told Brian with zero sarcasm, “this is the nectar of the Gods.” Hormones? The loss of calories to breastfeeding? Who knows the reason why but I literally can still taste this meal. The fact that there’s photo evidence of it is also hilarious to me.

Goodnight sweet precious Jude! Welcome to the world! And look at those little curls 😭🥺

We were moved to our recovery room where we would be hanging out for the next couple of days and learn the basics of taking care of little man.

We genuinely could not stop staring at him. It is absolutely mind blowing going from the mindset of being pregnant to being a mom and looking at your child. We were in complete love and bliss. I remember not wanting to leave the hospital so that he/we could stay this way forever. We were on cloud 9 and it was the best feeling in the world.

Breastfeeding ended up being not too bad for me but still had its challenges. Jude had a difficult time latching on and I found out that I had inverted nipples so latching was always going to be a challenge unless I used a nipple shield each time I nursed him. Using the shield blocked him from making skin to skin contact with me which meant that my body wasn’t receiving the signal to produce more milk. In order to stimulate milk production, I would have to pump every time after I nursed him. So he would nurse for 20-30 minutes and then I would hook up and pump for 15 minutes or so. I did this for a couple of months, then switched to exclusively pumping until he was about 4 months old. I adored nursing Jude and it meant so so much to me which is why I toughed out the tedious, time consuming process of nursing and pumping for as long as I did. But I had to be realistic and I was getting so exhausted with exclusive pumping. We finally started supplementing with formula because my production wasn’t keeping up with his demand and I have never made myself feel bad about that.

I had been going back and forth with my maternity navigator leading up to my delivery, getting weekly updates on the hospital policies and where they currently stood since they were changing every other week. At the time we had Jude, you could have one visitor rotate in to see you at at time but they couldn’t have traveled outside of the state recently. She told me that any traveling from anywhere in the last two weeks would screen positive for covid on any forms. So unfortunately, our parents were unable to visit us in the hospital. We planned to have them at our house to meet Jude as soon as we arrived home but we were so blessed to have some of our sweet local friends stop by to meet our newest family member.

Going home

I think most people are itching to go home with their new baby but I wanted to stay at the hospital forever and freeze that moment in time. Everything so perfect, our new little family together and no interruptions from the outside world. Those couple of days in the hospital after Jude was born are some of my most precious memories. But we had to leave and look what we came home to! Cooper waiting for his little brother and a sweet sign from our family (and our neighbors probably thinking we are super extra 🤣 oh well, they know us well enough by now!)

Our parents and my grandma were all at the house when we arrived and it was such a sweet moment to get to introduce them to their first grandson/great grandson. The circle of life is such a trippy thing and God’s miracles are abundant.

If I’m being completely transparent, which is what the intention is behind my whole blog, I struggled quite a bit emotionally after returning home with him. It was a mixture of sadness that my pregnancy was over and that chapter had come to an end with overwhelming feelings of being territorial and jealous whenever someone else was holding him. I just wanted him all to myself and didn’t want to share him with anyone. I wanted every moment with him for myself. I will most likely dive more into this in a separate post at some point in the future but just wanted to include that in case anyone else might come home with their baby and have emotions that aren’t all sunshine and rainbows. I did not experience a ton of hormonal side effects during pregnancy, but after Jude came is when all of mine came flooding in. And that’s completely normal. That’s our bodies regulating themselves after creating a human life. We need to be more patient, gentle and forgiving on ourselves.

We have never felt so abundantly loved and blessed. Jude is so perfect and in the image of God in every way. Being his mom has been my life’s biggest adventure and raising him with Brian is the result of so many answered prayers from our heavenly Father.