So I am woefully late writing down my birth story and pregnancy seems blissfully long ago now, but I wanted to share it anyway. We took a Hypnobirthing class in January and were the only ones in the class who were NOT birthing in a hospital (we went to a birth center), and I remember being a little freaked out by that, but the class gave me so much confidence in my baby's ability to be born and my body's ability to have a natural birth (though it was much tougher than I realized).
My last pregnant picture (38 weeks, I think):
I was 39 weeks pregnant on the dot when I woke up March 17 at 7 am with "gas pains," and they kept waking me up every hour to poop. I ended up staying home from work but felt very well-rested and was able to nap and eat and relax the whole day in between the cramps (which I thought could be Braxton Hicks since I hadn't experienced them yet). We had a baby appointment at 5:30 pm, where they checked me and said I was 90% effaced, 1 cm dilated, and the baby's head was "right there" (but she had been low down and engaged for a long time). The midwife told me, "Girlfriend, you look like you're in early labor!" However, I didn't get excited because I was in denial--I had mentally prepared myself for a 42 week pregnancy, ha ha. After we got home, the contractions got more intense. I still had good energy and had made it through most of the day just fine with slow dancing/low moaning/very little discomfort at all, but around 7 pm I began needing Matthew to do hip counter-pressure on me to help me through each one. We timed them, but they were pretty sporadic. I had tried eating a little bit in the evening but threw it up. Believe it or not, I still wasn't 100% convinced this was true labor until about 11:15 pm and I went from moaning to screaming (I was trying to muffle it by screaming into pillows, but our landlady told us later she could hear me and was glad to see when our car disappeared, oops) and feeling overwhelming pressure. We called our midwives - in between screams/groans, I was trying to tell them that we hadn't really effectively timed the contractions (because we were both focused on me and not on the timer), but the midwife said, "I'm timing you now and you've had two a minute apart, so you should come in!" Ha!) and after the phone call I started to get bloody mucus, which excited/panicked me, because it finally seemed like proof with a capital P, I guess, that something was actually happening (no duh).
We drove to the birth center, which in spite of being 5 min away from our apartment, felt like an alarmingly long way to go. I had to do one contraction in the car by myself without any help from Matthew, and I remember yelling as loud as I could and nearly fainting from pain because I had no one to do counter-pressure on my hips. When we got there, I tried to talk but had a contraction in the middle of the front door and just doubled over. A midwife immediately came and started rubbing my hips and it felt SO good. They checked me and I was dilated to a 6, so they told me to get into the tub, which was warm (not scalding hot, like I would have wished), but at that point, I was too far gone to feel helped out by anything other than counter-pressure.
Every contraction was intense and frightening but the rest periods and the midwives' encouragement combined with the fact that I did not feel tired at all (in sharp contrast to the miscarriage, when I was completely exhausted and just wanted to sleep) let me keep going. Among all the thoughts that went through my head what helped me the most was remembering from class the affirmation of "Yes" instead of "Oh no" when each contraction started, accepting that we were having a baby tonight and that "the only way out of this is THROUGH," and complete confidence that my body was taking care of my baby and I did not need to worry about Baby at all.
I wanted them to check me but didn't want to have not made any progress, so I was so grateful that when they checked me again I was dilated "all the way" and just had a cervical lip to get Baby's head past. Picturing the toy baby in the pelvis from our class and the way the teacher curled her body around to breathe it under the pelvis helped me envision what I needed to do with my body--things got more intense when I focused on pushing this way but the midwives said I was making amazing progress and I finally reached in and felt her head, which gave me a huge boost of excitement and much needed reaffirmation that things were progressing. By then I was feeling "ripping" and "burning" and was definitely screaming (I was hoarse the next day) through the contractions but the progress and my energy helped me through. My water broke with a big pop and I remember screaming to everybody, "My water broke!" and looking at Matthew like "oh wow this is really happening" when Baby's head was just a hand's length away. It was only 2-3 contractions later that Nancy Louisa came out all in one whooshing surge. She looked very roly-poly - like a Mr. Potato Head-sized doll, I remember thinking, but then she uncurled and my goodness, limbs everywhere! I knew I was torn up pretty bad (2nd degree... yay...), and it still hurt, but everything afterwards was much, much easier to bear. The placenta came out SO easily with the slightest push from me and I felt nothing. Peeing was harder - it took me maybe 15 min and I was shaking like crazy from adrenaline but that was it. Being stitched up for 45 min for vaginal tearing was NOT fun at all but they gave me laughing gas and I was still on an oxytocin kick from the 2 hours they gave me to recover and bond with Nancy and Matthew first) and I was SO HAPPY to no longer be pregnant and that Nancy was healthy. I never questioned that she would be, which I know was a tremendous blessing.
Nancy weighed 7 lbs 9 oz, was 20 inches long, and was (and is) absolutely perfect.
Me the day after giving birth (I sweat off about 20 pounds over that weekend--crazy!):
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In the tub, I really wished there were a chain hanging from the ceiling I could yank on while squatting. My mind was very frustrated that no one had thought to supply this - it seemed so reasonable, so doable, so simple, and yet it was not there. It seemed like just a few minutes but was actually an hour that I labored in the tub--I remember the midwives scurrying around a lot, trying to get me the GBS antibiotics, but as it turned out I barely got an hour's worth because we arrived at midnight and Nancy was born at 1:49 am. One of the midwives told me I had beaten her record by giving birth less than two hours after arriving at the birth center. So it was a rather quick labor, but those almost two hours sure felt like a long while.
I wanted them to check me but didn't want to have not made any progress, so I was so grateful that when they checked me again I was dilated "all the way" and just had a cervical lip to get Baby's head past. Picturing the toy baby in the pelvis from our class and the way the teacher curled her body around to breathe it under the pelvis helped me envision what I needed to do with my body--things got more intense when I focused on pushing this way but the midwives said I was making amazing progress and I finally reached in and felt her head, which gave me a huge boost of excitement and much needed reaffirmation that things were progressing. By then I was feeling "ripping" and "burning" and was definitely screaming (I was hoarse the next day) through the contractions but the progress and my energy helped me through. My water broke with a big pop and I remember screaming to everybody, "My water broke!" and looking at Matthew like "oh wow this is really happening" when Baby's head was just a hand's length away. It was only 2-3 contractions later that Nancy Louisa came out all in one whooshing surge. She looked very roly-poly - like a Mr. Potato Head-sized doll, I remember thinking, but then she uncurled and my goodness, limbs everywhere! I knew I was torn up pretty bad (2nd degree... yay...), and it still hurt, but everything afterwards was much, much easier to bear. The placenta came out SO easily with the slightest push from me and I felt nothing. Peeing was harder - it took me maybe 15 min and I was shaking like crazy from adrenaline but that was it. Being stitched up for 45 min for vaginal tearing was NOT fun at all but they gave me laughing gas and I was still on an oxytocin kick from the 2 hours they gave me to recover and bond with Nancy and Matthew first) and I was SO HAPPY to no longer be pregnant and that Nancy was healthy. I never questioned that she would be, which I know was a tremendous blessing.
Nancy weighed 7 lbs 9 oz, was 20 inches long, and was (and is) absolutely perfect.
Me the day after giving birth (I sweat off about 20 pounds over that weekend--crazy!):
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