It still seems sort of unreal that I have my own birth story to tell. For so long I've read about and cried tears of joy over other women's stories, and now I have my own! And it's something I'll never forget.
From the beginning, I knew I wanted to approach the birth of our baby as naturally as possible. We met with an area midwife, researched home birth vs. birth centers vs. the hospital, talked to other moms from our church, and met with a couple doulas. In the end, I decided I would feel most comfortable at the hospital and I felt confident that a natural birth would be possible at the hospital. My doctor was on board with our wishes from the beginning, which was very important, and our doula helped us write out a specific birth plan to bring to the hospital to keep the nurses informed about what I wanted and what I didn't. There are lots of scary hospital-birth stories out there, but I can honestly say I had a great experience. The nurses were considerate and helpful and the room was warm and inviting. Tim had to be my advocate and speak up and ask questions when they wanted to do something I wasn't on board with, but they were always obliging. And the deep jacuzzi tub filled with steaming hot water they have waiting for you after you give birth…amazing.
On November 14th, I had my 39 week appointment and everything was looking great – I was dilated about 3cm and the doctor said the baby was sitting very low. I felt great and even scheduled a 41 week appointment just in case. I felt really encouraged that I had already started dilating, which I attribute to all the 1-mile morning walks I took since very early in the pregnancy. I went to bed that night as usual – a back rub from Tim before crawling into bed surrounded by four different pillows. But for some reason my lower back hurt and I couldn’t get comfortable. Early in the night, Tim moved to the downstairs bedroom because I was snoring. I woke up about every hour to either pee or from being uncomfortable. In the middle of the night, I warmed up the bed buddy because the pain in my back was getting a little intense. Around 5:30 in the morning, I got up to pee, went back to bed, and as I laid back down, it felt like I was peeing my pants. I ran back to the bathroom and realized my water was breaking! We were going to meet our baby soon!
I walked downstairs and woke Tim up around 5:40 and said, “I think my water just broke.” And with that we both sprung into action. Contractions hadn’t started yet, so I went back upstairs and put on the clothes I wanted to labor in, finished packing my bag for the hospital, and made a piece of peanut butter toast for breakfast because I knew I would need the energy later on. I even washed my face and put make up on. When the bags were on the table, the camera was set out, and I had called my mom and texted my sister, I plugged in my iPod, set it to the Baby Time playlist, and prayed with Tim in the kitchen, knowing that today was going to be a big day. I felt very excited, but calm.
Around 7:30am I started to feel contractions – nothing major, but they were definitely there. I started walking all around the house and doing laps up and down the stairs. Since we knew it’d be awhile, Tim made a big breakfast of eggs and hash browns because he knew he’d need some energy later on, too.
The back pain that I had all night only grew more intense with the contractions. I was a victim of back labor and it wasn’t pretty. I ended up throwing up a few times because of it. If Tim rubbed my back really hard for a few minutes, the pain would subside for awhile. When the back labor was not very intense, I would walk. When the back labor would set it, I would lean over the back of the recliner. And when my legs got tired from leaning and swaying, I bounced on the yoga ball. The contractions were consistent – around 25 to 30 seconds long and coming about every 5 minutes, until 11:00am when they would come about 10 minutes apart. I was afraid I was stalling out, so I called Annie, our doula, for some advice. She asked if I was tired – yes! I hadn’t slept very good the night before and I had now been laboring for 5 hours. She said it was my body telling me to rest. So we queued up Parks and Recreation on Netflix and I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up about an hour later to contractions that were much stronger. Progress!
From noon until 3:00pm, I started needing Tim with each contraction. Sometimes I would just grab his hand, sometimes I would sort of hang on his neck and sway. At this point contractions were lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and sometimes even longer, and coming on every 3 to 5 minutes. We called our doula again around 3:00pm and to let her know we would be heading to the hospital soon so she could meet us there.
The car ride to the hospital was surreal and seemed to take forever. At one point, we were stopped at a red light and there were two kids walking home from school, waiting on the corner for the light to turn green. I was so scared that I was going to have a contraction right then and they’d see me looking like a crazy woman, breathing heavy and clutching the door. We pulled into the parking ramp at the hospital and were trying to figure out what bags to bring in right away, and I puked…again. As that was happening, a nurse just getting off her shift happened to walk by. She asked if I was okay and Tim explained that I was in labor. Just a few seconds later, a security officer drove past, so she asked him to have someone get a wheelchair so I wouldn’t have to try to walk all the way to the Family Birthing Center. Thank you, Jesus!
Annie was waiting for us up in the Family Birthing Center. After checking in around 4:00pm, they took me to a labor triage room where they monitored how the baby was doing, took my blood pressure, and checked to see how I was dilating. I was so sure I’d be somewhere between 5 and 7cm since just the day before at my 39 week doctor appointment I was already at 3cm. At this point, I had to be fairly focused during every contraction. After checking me, the nurse said I was between 3-4cm dilated. I was pretty disappointed, to say the least. In my head, that meant I had soooooo far to go.
(to be continued…)
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