Birth Story for first baby

I think it's about time to share with you my birth story from my first baby. I love it so much, I had such a fantastic birth. Yes, it was an easier birth, but please don't think that my support of natural, out-of-hospital births would be any less if it were harder. This was a path I chose assuming that I would have a long, long first labor. (And I had a difficult pregnancy and postpartum, so it more than evened out!) (I wrote this for a previous on-line post)

First things first: #1 was born at 3:21am on 9/8/08 weighing in at 7 lbs, 12 oz and 20 inches long.

Secondly, I just want to say how proud I am of my husband. When we first started talking about getting pg, he was all about a medicated, hospital birth and couldn’t imagine anything else. With all that we went through, he did a full 180 and was 100% behind a natural childbirth in a birth center. And after the birth, he is 110% behind a home birth next time. I’m just so lucky to have a man who can grow and change and not get stuck in his own ideas without considering other options.

Okay, here are the details, up close and personal. I don’t think there’s anything that will scare the potential breeders. It really all started early Sunday morning. I woke up for my one am potty break and saw there was some spotting (bloody show), evidence that my cervix was dilating. Since I’m with a midwife practice, they don’t do any internal checks since you can start effacing or dilating weeks before giving birth and that can just give a false sense of urgency. I was a bit excited, but also knew that this just meant something was happening, not that something was happening soon. I woke up at six am to more bloody show, but no cramping or contractions, so I suppressed my excitement (a bit) and went on with my day (garage sale! Yeah, we really live it up here).

The day was busy and around six I was catching up with a friend in DC on the phone. After about an hour of talking to her, I realized I’d been having contractions the entire time. Not necessarily a bit deal, since I’d been having Braxton-Hicks for about two months. I decided to let her go and start timing with the stop watch we’d finally bought three days before. My husband came inside from mowing the lawn a little bit later to my announcement that I was having light, painless contractions 8-14 minutes apart. We decided to have dinner and see if they would stop. We ate, the contractions continued, but didn’t speed up or get any more intense. We discussed my husband working from home the next day, but decided to see how I would feel the next morning. I took a warm shower and the contractions finally did stop. I thought I was going to be fine, and would be able to go into work the next day and get a few things done.

When I woke up for my first potty break, I realized that I’d had a few contractions, but I thought it was the middle of the night, so I could probably just go back to sleep. Then I looked at the clock. I had been in bed for less than an hour and had had several mild contractions. This was not false labor. I wanted to let my husband get as much sleep as possible, so I just lay there for a while, the contractions starting to get more intense and some back pain with them. Baby was also moving non-stop in between contractions, so there was no chance of me sleeping between them. I made an effort to relax during and between, rubbing the small of my back when it was hurting. It wasn’t much longer when I needed to start vocalizing to help me get through the contractions. They hurt, but they weren’t so bad that I couldn’t cope. But the moaning finally woke my husband up. At first he thought I was just moaning in my sleep, but soon realized I was wide awake. As soon as he was up, I told him to go get the Bradley book so I could see where I was. He couldn’t find that, or the midwife manual, so I got up to go look in the nursery. I made it in there just in time to drop to all fours for the next contraction. As soon as it was over, I felt nauseated and rapidly went to the bathroom to get sick. I crawled into the tub and had my husband call the midwife. Getting into the tub was fantastic. I turned on the water for each contraction and just had it run over me. Sitting there wasn’t terribly comfortable, but the running water made up for it. My cat also sat on the edge of the tub with me, worried about what was going on. Considering what a pain she normally is, it was so touching to see her worried about me.

It was around 1am when we got in touch with the midwife. She listened to me have a contraction, determining that I was in active labor (you think?) and told us she’d meet us at the birth center at 2am. I couldn’t imagine waiting that long! My husband ran around to get everything into the car. Then I hit transition. I let out a scream for that first one, not realizing that it was transition. But the first one was by far the worst, and staying in the tub calmed me down. When I was time to leave, I didn’t want to. I was worried that by changing position and getting out of the tub that I’d be in more pain. What I was dealing with was still within the realm of coping, but I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Then I started to feel a small urge to push. My husband: “We are going RIGHT NOW!”

I finished the contraction, threw on underwear and a robe, and he got me down to the car in record time. Fortunately, the contractions slowed down and were much easier in the car. My husband would only go 5 miles over the speed limit, mentally getting ready to have to explain to a cop if we got pulled over. Fortunately, someone else was pulled over ahead of us and we made it to the Birth Center in about 15 minutes. I walked in the door, meeting my midwife and her two assistants with “I’m ready, now!” They thought this was amusing, until they checked me. The women got me into the room, soft music playing and candles lit, while My husband got our bags out of the car. I lay down in the bed and felt much better. I was so exhausted, all I wanted to do was rest. They had the tub ready for me since I had originally planned for a water birth, but laying on my side was so comfortable. Then they checked me, and could see the baby’s head. I was ready to push, so they told me to go ahead and listen to my body. My husband kneeled by the bed and I held (squeezed) his fingers. I had one assistant at my head, putting cool compresses on my forehead and rubbing my back and arms. I had one assistant putting warm compresses on my perineum and holding my leg up with each push. The midwife oversaw everything and made sure that I had a drink of water during each break. I pushed with each contraction and rested in between. The rest made such a difference in my stamina. I was refreshed and (somewhat) ready to go each time. The pushing was really intense, but it wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it would be. The first couple I was vocalizing really loudly and the midwife told me to take that energy and use it to push instead, keeping the vocalizations lower in my chest. This made pushing so much more effective. About fifteen minutes before birth, my water finally broke. The feeling was actually quite nice, with the rush of liquid feeling comforting. I had completely forgotten about it so I was surprised when it happened. Before I knew it, I could feel Baby’s head. I wanted him out! He started to crown with one push and I felt him slide back inside. I said, “No, I want you out now!” and the midwife told me it was okay, give myself some time to stretch. Well, I was ready to push a few more times, but I could feel his head coming out with the next push, so I just kept going and my husband was right there when I pushed him out entirely at once. It was so fast, there wasn’t even time for a picture. My husband put him on my belly and my son and I looked at each other for the first time. As soon as I could talk, all I could say was “That was it? I could totally do this a few more times!”

Because he came so fast, and his hand was up near his head, I did have a second degree tear that required stitches, but I didn’t (and never did) feel that. I also had a nasty hematoma (like a blood blister). And I lost a lot of blood, making me really light-headed any time I stood up for the first day. But I am so happy with how the birth turned out. A little extra healing time is so worth how easy labor was. I was fully prepared for a multi-day marathon and instead ran the marathon in a sprint. I took Bradley Method classes beforehand, and while I forgot half of it during labor, I feel as though they had me fully prepared on what to expect at each stage. What I took away from them that helped the most was trying to relax as much as possible during labor. I feel like it made a world of difference in my stamina and the level of pain. And also for the general philosophy of this is what our body is made to do, so we can handle it. While I know that natural childbirth isn’t for everyone, I really do encourage everyone to at least explore if it is an option.