As They Grow Up

We mothers love to share our birth stories. The peaceful ones, the easy ones, but also our triumphs over the harder ones. This birth, my third and final falls under the later. My son's birth was peaceful, and not too bad pain wise until it was time to push. At that point I discovered the miracle that is channeling your energy into that life giving effort, and how pain goes to effort to joy. My older daughter's birth was by far the easiest. I walked between contractions, danced with my husband through them, but never felt pain. My midwife didn't believe me that I was in labour, and when we finally convinced her to check me I was 8cm and we barely made it to the hospital. Left at 5:45, arrived at 6:10, born at 6:25.

 For my younger daughter, my birth was as different as the pregnancy. I gained half the weight, leaned out over all, and was all belly! Everyone commented on how great I looked, how low baby sat, and how big he or she was going to be! I was not prepared for the intense cramping contractions. My son's contractions were like bad period cramps, but these were crazy! I felt them for 2 days at varrying regularity and intensity. We went in to the hospital on Friday, June 22 around 7pm fully expecting to progress and bring home a baby! Baby had other plans, so home we went to wait it out.

At this point it was already 48 hours, but more like my older daughter's labour so not horrible by any means. Saturday morning at 1am I started contracting more regularly, more intense, and again we called our midwife. Again she went home after I was only 2 1/2cm. Saturday we patiently waited for things to pick up, restart, common! But nothing happened, and we figured baby had been getting her occipital posterior position sorted out (our midwife confirmed the frontal fontanel was now at 5 o'clock Friday night) and we were in for the wait again!

Sunday morning, I woke up around 2:30/3am and laid in bed debating whether to get up and move to ease the cramping again setting in. At 3:30am I did get up and started rocking, pacing and timing. 5min, 35-40sec... Not enough to call back the midwife. I woke Matt up at 4am, and he was watching me labour, obviously in more pain than with our older daughter, and asking when I wanted to call our midwife. I had said 5/5:30am, and I stuck to that. I called her at 5:30am.

She came and assessed me by 6am, and I was only 3 1/2-4cm. She noticed that my contractions were intensifying and getting closer though, so we packed up and headed for the hospital. My brother and sister-in-law were down for the weekend, so they stayed with the kids. The plan had been to bring them with us to see the miracle of birth, but also for my older daughter to see that birth doesn't have to be painful. This was not a birth that illustrated that! This was a painful birth, that while it only lasted from 3am-9am was hard work and made me a potty mouth.

We got to the hospital shortly before 7am, and I paced, danced through contractions and tried to keep my pain under control chanting 'down' as hypnobabies had taught me for my older daughter. It certainly moved baby down, and by 8am I was feeling pushy. A check found I was only 6cm, and I was seriously disappointed! With my older daughter I felt pushy, pushed, water broke, and baby.  No such luck this time!

That last hour was awful. I danced but my left calf cramp was still hurting, so I laid on my side for a bit. That made things worse. It helped get a good read on baby who was happy through contractions though. At this point I did my typical every few minutes gotta pee. At one point, I got stuck. I had 5 back to back to back contractions of extreme intensity on the toilet squatting and couldn't get up. Finally a peak passed and I was helped because I was still mid contraction, but we needed to get me up!

Shortly after, my midwife reassessed me to be 7cm, and called the second midwife. When she arrived I consented to breaking my water. Big mistake. It confirmed meconium in the water (three for three) so the respiratory therapy team was put on standby, but it made me need to push and I was NOT dilated enough! I fought my body the best I could to he-he-who through contractions to get fully dilated, but I lost. My midwife tried pushing my cervix aside so I could push, no go. It was a battle of body over will and body won. A lot of 'open your eyes and focus' with me shouting 'no!' and 'you're going to hurt yourself, focus!'

Finally (really only a few minutes but an eternity in that situation), I was fully dilated and given the go ahead to stop fighting the urge. I felt baby's head click (yay occipital posterior), and push I did! 3 minutes later baby was born. She had the umbilical cord around her neck (two for three) but loosely so after a quick slip I was told to 'Push, let's get this baby out!'

Only after baby was on my chest did I ask Matt if it was a boy, which I had thought the whole time, and after being late (like her big brother), labour being tough (like her big brother), the cord (yep, like her big brother), I was surprised (like I said I'd be), to find that there was a little girl on my chest! And a LITTLE girl! 7lbs, 7oz and 19 3/4"! I had fully expected at least 8lbs, but happy, healthy and perfect. :) She got cleaned up by daddy, nursed for an hour, and after a shower we went home! ❤