It has been a while since a post has appeared. But I have an excuse. A new person appeared in my life. Here is his birth story. More posts, hopefully about things other than how people make their way into this world, to come soon.
On my due date, Aug 5, I woke up thinking my water had broken. Or was leaking -- there wasn't much coming out, but it wasn't normal. I waited around most of the morning to see if I had any contractions, but I didn't. In the afternoon, we went to the birthing center to make sure and Ros was there, the same midwife who had delivered F. She determined that I had probably lost my mucus plug, not broken my water, but that the baby was moving down and I would likely be in labor that evening. We called my in-laws when I started having contractions at dinnertime. But ... the contractions went away at bedtime and I didn't go into labor at all. Boo.
On Monday, the in-laws came over to play with F. and nothing much happened to me. On Tuesday, however, after I had sent them back home, I started having contractions probably around 1:30pm. At 3pm, I called my husband and asked him to come home. At five-ish, we went to the birthing center and midwife Samantha checked us out -- she said I was dilated to 3cms, which isn't much, and we went back home. The contractions continued. I went to sleep until about 1:30am, when they became harder to sleep through. At 3am, we went to the birthing center again. Now, I was dilated to 5cm. It wasn't as much progress as I wanted. And the contractions were already getting very uncomfortable.
I got into the tub and managed to doze through the contractions for another hour or so. Then I hopscotched around the room, trying out different equipment. I was afraid the contractions were getting too powerful, so Sam gave me some herbs to calm me down. One of the herbs was valerian root, and I think that made me drowsy. So drowsy. I slept in the tub again, I slept on the toilet, and I slept in the rocking chair. I would wake up every five minutes or so for a contraction, and then fall right back to sleep. It wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation -- I was very disoriented when I woke up and would nearly panic nearly every time, because the pain would increase so quickly.
At 8am, Ros came on duty. I hadn't had any idea she would be there, but when she saw me, she laughed and suggested that the baby and I had been waiting for her to arrive. She suggested I try to lay on the bed and labor down that way. I could tell after a while that things were progressing, because I could almost feel the baby moving lower with each contraction. These were very different contractions than what I remembered with F. With his birth, the contractions were quick and frequent and powerful until I became overwhelmed -- that was transition -- and then the pushing was like a relief to my system because the sensations were so different. This time, however, I felt immense pressure on my lower body, almost like I had to fart or poop to a very extreme and painful level, the whole entire time I was having contractions. Basically, it was like the end or the transition of F.'s labor was the whole labor this time. By the time the baby was laboring down and I was in the bed, I felt panic set in at every contraction.
And still, I was falling asleep between every one and waking up as crazy waves of pain fell in on me.
But Ros was onto bigger and better things, telling Ben to grab my leg back and me to dig in and start pushing. I was not ready for this, but she made me do it. I cried and whined the whole time, just wanting her to leave me alone (probably to go to sleep again) but she wouldn't let me. I managed to give her three really good pushes and by then I could tell there was no going back. I could feel him right at the edge of coming out. Another two pushes and his head was out and I could hear him starting to cry. I thought they would just pull the rest of him out, but Ros kept telling me to keep pushing. The pain was intense, but suddenly it popped like a little bubble and the baby was out and on my chest.
The baby and my husband took a nap before we went home, but not me. I was surprisingly well-rested.
I also felt like it was taking forever. Finally, at 10am, I decided to quit watching the clock because it was just making me crazy. My contractions were still only five minutes apart, and Ros was convinced they weren't really doing a whole lot of work. She was ready to make me work it out -- I could tell when she came to check my progress that she was going to make me walk around the room or something
dreadful. But instead, she said I was 9cm and asked if I would like to try an experimental push. She still
had her fingers wedged up there and I think she helped break my water at that point. She said the baby was right there, his head already molding -- and that was a good thing, I remember thinking, because that meant he was actually in the birth canal part way and maybe I would only have to push him part way.
We named him D. and he weighed 9 pounds, 1 ounce. Ros declared his feet looked like a 39 week baby, not a 40plusafewdays baby, so I guess I just need to cook them a little longer. He looked a lot like F. looked when he was born, just fatter. He pooped all over the place in the minutes after his birth. His fingernails were so long we had to trim them that same night. He had four sucking blisters, two on each hand.
