Long to the point of self-indulgence. 
I just wanted to write one version with all the details so I won't forget.
***************
On Wednesday, the 13th, I had an appointment for antenatal testing. While there, the midwife told me that since I was over 41 weeks by the date we were working with, that I really "needed" to schedule an induction for that Friday. Their protocol was to not go past 42 weeks and since my theoretical 42 week date was Sunday (and no inductions on weekends), Friday was the day. She offered to strip my membranes, and I really wanted to do everything to avoid an induction with pitocin, so I agreed. I was 2cm at the time.
Immediately after, it felt like the baby moved down a bit and I definitely felt different, but not like labor was around the corner. I tried lots of talking to the baby that day telling her to come soon! After my appointment, I drove my husband to work, since he was already running late waiting for my appointment to finish. We discussed whether or not that was a bad idea, since there was a chance I could go into labor and there was no way I could pick him up if I was in labor that night. But we decided to take the chance. I figured things couldn't get started *that* fast.
I took a walk with my older daughter that afternoon, made a real dinner for a change (after a week of take out) and took a nap. I felt my first real contraction, one that made me stop and take a breath, at 7:25pm. They didn't come in a regular pattern, but I had a few on the way to pick up husband and I definitely felt myself slipping into labor at that point. It's kind of a strange feeling...sort of other-worldly. I felt really closed off to everything except experiencing what my body was doing.
We got home from picking up DH and he made me put on his stop watch timer so I could keep track of contractions. By 9:30, I had had a good hour of strong (but not really painful) contractions about 10 minutes apart. I also started having some bloody show. It seemed like things could be happening finally! I took a shower and told DH to get some sleep and stayed up a bit longer with DD, working through contractions and spending time with her. We finally went to bed at 12:00 and I was still having regular ctx. They woke me up periodically throughout the night and I felt them getting a bit more painful. But I was able to sleep until 5am which was such a gift! I needed that sleep the next day!
At 5am, I woke up put on my ipod and just labored quietly by myself in the living room for an hour. By that time the ctx were getting closer together and a little bit more painful. I could still breath through them fine and moving my hips in circles helped so much. It was weird to be having exactly the kind of labor I envisioned and hoped for! Someone in my due date club on MDC mentioned imagining the contractions as waves and so I had loaded up our Nature Quest Classical Guitar CD onto my ipod in advance, since the entire back soundtrack on there is the ocean. This helped SO MUCH!!
At 6am, DH woke up and I told him what was going on, we decided to wait another 30 minutes and then call his mom. I actually went back to bed with him and slept until 6:30. At 6:30 I woke up and the contraction I had at 6:38 was the one where I knew that it was time to get to the hospital. It was strange, I had worried so much leading up to labor that I wouldn't know when it was time to go and yet, I knew. I knew exactly at that second that it was time to get things in the car and leave. DH's mom got there pretty fast and I have no idea what went on around the house in between except that I went into the bedroom to get a few things and absolutely lost it when I bent over to kiss DD goodbye. She was still sleeping and suddenly I was totally overwhelmed by how big a change it was going to be to have two children. After not crying about anything more than a sappy movie my entire pregnancy, I was completely sobbing. Hilarious and sad. I'm glad DD woke up a few minutes later so I got to kiss her goodbye for real and tell her we were going to the hospital to get our baby.
I was very worried about the prospect of driving in the car during labor and thankfully, it wasn't that bad. I had about five contractions during the 20 minute drive, by this time I had to moan my way through them. In between, DH and I took guesses at how dilated I was. He said 4, I said 5.
When we got to the hospital at about 8am, they of course didn't believe I was really *that* in labor, so I got sent to one of the triage rooms for the obligatory strip of monitoring, plus an internal exam. Our nurse, Auyumi was really sweet and we later found out that she had been a professional midwife in Japan. The baby was great on the monitor (of course) and I remembered how much I hated those stupid telemetry things they use for monitoring. I made it clear to our nurse that I wanted them off as soon as possible. She checked my cervix and told us that I was 5 cm. It didn't really set in that I'd already been able to achieve so much of what I wanted for the birth...I wanted to labor at home, and I had!
Ctx were definitely getting closer and stronger by this point and they moved us into our L&D room. I was the only patient in labor and the whole floor was nice and dark and quiet. Auyumi asked right away if we had a birth plan and we gave her a copy. At this point we also found out that the midwife on call was the one (out of six) midwife I hadn't met from the group. God completely blessed us in this respect because when we met her a few minutes later, it was clear that she was absolutely the most perfect midwife we could have asked for. She was gentle and had the most soothing voice and she had already gone through our birth plan and told us that she was totally on board with helping us get everything on the list.
From then on, it's sort of a blur, I tried to avoid looking at the clock...we discussed the possibility of setting up the labor tub, but decided against it since it was going to take an hour just to get it filled up. DH was amazing. I'd made up a list of labor coaching tips for him beforehand (which he "studied" the night before during dinner) and he was so great at doing everything I asked. He helped me breath and set the tone for my moaning during contractions (he knew just the right pitch), he helped me keep moving and gently prodded me to keep moving when I got too comfortable. Somehow he knew (without reading Ina May) to do silly things like give me kisses and little love bites on my neck during contractions which helped soothe me and made me laugh a little bit.
I took a shower at some point which felt great, but I probably got a bit too comfortable, so DH helped me get out and keep moving. I avoided looking at the clock, but was feeling like my labor was going longer than I expected.
Throughout the day, the midwife, our nurse and DH all encouraged me to eat and drink, so I was frequently munching on Cliff bar and some fresh fruit that I'd brought with us and gatorade.
Contractions continued to get stronger, but I was grateful to still have pretty decent breaks in between. The midwife mentioned she could break my water if I wanted and that it would probably speed things up, but I was scared (wimp) and turned down the offer.
The turning point I think was after my shower, DH suggested I do some deep squats holding on to side of the bed, which we'd raised up to be almost chest-level with me. Wow, did those ever work! I would do two or three and then have a giant contraction, and after about three or four contractions, I started feeling like I wanted to push a little bit. It wasn't the massive pushing urge that I'd felt with DD#1, but it was definitely an urge. So the midwife set up the bed so I could be in a sitting/squating position (with the bar) and then she checked me. I was 9cm and she said it was enough that if I pushed a bit, I'd go to 10. She just told me to push as I wanted. I'll admit, at this point, I did push, but I was not really putting a full effort into it. I was probably resting a lot more than I needed to and in the back of my head, I knew I was probably making my labor longer than it needed to be. After about an hour of that, I had to pee so the midwife recommended we go and do just that.
The change in position really kicked things into high gear. I freaked out a bit on the toilet because the baby dropped down and the urge to push was frightening. That was the first moment during labor where I said "I don't want to do this any more." My midwife, bless her heart, said "This is good! We want you to feel that!" She told the nurse to bring out the birthing stool and explained that it would help me bring the baby down. It definitely did! I really had to pull myself together during pushing at that point because I was starting to lose it. After promising myself that I wouldn't, I was already screaming bloody murder during each push (and I definitely know the words "Get IT out of me!!" unceremoniously escaped my lips more than once). It's a good thing no one else was in labor on the floor. My water still hadn't broken by this point and we discussed breaking it, but when the midwife checked me before inserting the amnihook, she told me that the baby could actually be born in the caul, which she said was really special, so we agreed to just continue with the bag of waters intact and see what happened. When I put my fingers down to feel my progress, I could feel the bag bulging like a giant bubble. It was pretty weird. I had a few more pushes that ended with that awful burning feeling and I felt like I was getting the hang of it again, but the worst is pushing hard and then feeling the baby move those two or three inches right back up the birth canal. At this point, I was leaning against DH who was on a chair behind me and holding on to the birth stool handles during pushing. A few more strong pushes and DD was crowning for real. My water broke right before she crowned and Auyumi, our sweet nurse, got my attention long enough to tell me that the water was clear and that we were going to be able to spend as much time as we wanted with our baby immediately, without any interference from other medical staff. The midwife helped me grunt her out slowly which hurt like crazy, but it went by fast. (This was the only "management" she did to prevent tearing and it worked like a charm! No massage or anything, but I didn't even have skid marks afterward! )Then they said "Reach down and catch your baby!" And I did!! My catching her was totally not part of the plan but it was absolutely the best, most sweetest part of the birth. I just pulled her up into my arms and she snuggled on my breast while she loudly announced herself to us. Unlike DD1, who made almost no noise when she was born, Chloe came out screaming and didn't stop for awhile. She was covered in vernix and bright pink and had long little fingernails. I was able to check to see that she was a girl (we didn't know what we were having) and tell DH. It was amazing.
After a few minutes of holding her, I began to feel pretty faint, so I asked the midwife to cut the cord so we could hand Chloe to her Daddy and I could move to the bed. I delivered the placenta almost immediately after getting into the bed and it actually hurt, a lot more than I remember with DD1. That thing was enormous! The nurse said it weighed like 3 lbs and it did have some calcifications on it, confirming our "overdue" status even more.
After that everyone left us alone and DH and I were able to just spend time enjoying our new little girl. She latched on great after about 30 minutes. Eventually the nurse came back to help me get cleaned up and to weigh and measure our girl. She was 8lbs exactly, which was my guess, 20 3/4" long. Let me tell you, there is a big difference between pushing out a baby that weighs 6lbs and a baby that weighs 8lbs. Pushing was NOT a relief this time.
It was such a different experience from my first birth in so many ways. Great ways...we had the same two people attending us the entire time which made things very intimate and secure and not at all distracting. The lights were dim and our room stayed dark during the entire labor and delivery, it was soothing and quiet. I had breaks during contractions throughout my labor. Even during transition, which I could really only identify because I started shaking badly, I had nice breaks which kept me from getting too exhausted or defeated. I felt like I was able to embrace and welcome the pain of labor and just let it do it's work in my body instead of resisting it like I did last time. I didn't vomit!! Which was so great! I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one because I puked a lot during DD1's birth and it was so awful. I just expected that it would happen this time and was so overjoyed to not have to deal with it this time. And I felt like DH and I were both educated enough to truly assert ourselves during the whole process, our wishes were totally embraced by the people taking care of us and DH especially was respected as my advocate during the whole process (vs. being completely marginalized by the nurses during my first labor).
I'm so delighted with the experience we had, so blessed and grateful and I do believe it has made my whole post-partum outlook so much better. It's taught me that I really can do it, despite my lack of confidence going into the whole thing...and who knew? It is possible to have the birth you want in a hospital!
Nursing is going great now, 9 days later. DD1 is having her share of adjustment issues and attitude problems, but she does love her new baby sister very much and is doing great with her. We're so in love with our precious little second born, there's no other way to describe it. She's bliss.
I just wanted to write one version with all the details so I won't forget. ***************
On Wednesday, the 13th, I had an appointment for antenatal testing. While there, the midwife told me that since I was over 41 weeks by the date we were working with, that I really "needed" to schedule an induction for that Friday. Their protocol was to not go past 42 weeks and since my theoretical 42 week date was Sunday (and no inductions on weekends), Friday was the day. She offered to strip my membranes, and I really wanted to do everything to avoid an induction with pitocin, so I agreed. I was 2cm at the time.
Immediately after, it felt like the baby moved down a bit and I definitely felt different, but not like labor was around the corner. I tried lots of talking to the baby that day telling her to come soon! After my appointment, I drove my husband to work, since he was already running late waiting for my appointment to finish. We discussed whether or not that was a bad idea, since there was a chance I could go into labor and there was no way I could pick him up if I was in labor that night. But we decided to take the chance. I figured things couldn't get started *that* fast.
I took a walk with my older daughter that afternoon, made a real dinner for a change (after a week of take out) and took a nap. I felt my first real contraction, one that made me stop and take a breath, at 7:25pm. They didn't come in a regular pattern, but I had a few on the way to pick up husband and I definitely felt myself slipping into labor at that point. It's kind of a strange feeling...sort of other-worldly. I felt really closed off to everything except experiencing what my body was doing.
We got home from picking up DH and he made me put on his stop watch timer so I could keep track of contractions. By 9:30, I had had a good hour of strong (but not really painful) contractions about 10 minutes apart. I also started having some bloody show. It seemed like things could be happening finally! I took a shower and told DH to get some sleep and stayed up a bit longer with DD, working through contractions and spending time with her. We finally went to bed at 12:00 and I was still having regular ctx. They woke me up periodically throughout the night and I felt them getting a bit more painful. But I was able to sleep until 5am which was such a gift! I needed that sleep the next day!
At 5am, I woke up put on my ipod and just labored quietly by myself in the living room for an hour. By that time the ctx were getting closer together and a little bit more painful. I could still breath through them fine and moving my hips in circles helped so much. It was weird to be having exactly the kind of labor I envisioned and hoped for! Someone in my due date club on MDC mentioned imagining the contractions as waves and so I had loaded up our Nature Quest Classical Guitar CD onto my ipod in advance, since the entire back soundtrack on there is the ocean. This helped SO MUCH!!
At 6am, DH woke up and I told him what was going on, we decided to wait another 30 minutes and then call his mom. I actually went back to bed with him and slept until 6:30. At 6:30 I woke up and the contraction I had at 6:38 was the one where I knew that it was time to get to the hospital. It was strange, I had worried so much leading up to labor that I wouldn't know when it was time to go and yet, I knew. I knew exactly at that second that it was time to get things in the car and leave. DH's mom got there pretty fast and I have no idea what went on around the house in between except that I went into the bedroom to get a few things and absolutely lost it when I bent over to kiss DD goodbye. She was still sleeping and suddenly I was totally overwhelmed by how big a change it was going to be to have two children. After not crying about anything more than a sappy movie my entire pregnancy, I was completely sobbing. Hilarious and sad.
I'm glad DD woke up a few minutes later so I got to kiss her goodbye for real and tell her we were going to the hospital to get our baby.I was very worried about the prospect of driving in the car during labor and thankfully, it wasn't that bad. I had about five contractions during the 20 minute drive, by this time I had to moan my way through them. In between, DH and I took guesses at how dilated I was. He said 4, I said 5.
When we got to the hospital at about 8am, they of course didn't believe I was really *that* in labor, so I got sent to one of the triage rooms for the obligatory strip of monitoring, plus an internal exam. Our nurse, Auyumi was really sweet and we later found out that she had been a professional midwife in Japan. The baby was great on the monitor (of course) and I remembered how much I hated those stupid telemetry things they use for monitoring. I made it clear to our nurse that I wanted them off as soon as possible. She checked my cervix and told us that I was 5 cm. It didn't really set in that I'd already been able to achieve so much of what I wanted for the birth...I wanted to labor at home, and I had!
Ctx were definitely getting closer and stronger by this point and they moved us into our L&D room. I was the only patient in labor and the whole floor was nice and dark and quiet. Auyumi asked right away if we had a birth plan and we gave her a copy. At this point we also found out that the midwife on call was the one (out of six) midwife I hadn't met from the group. God completely blessed us in this respect because when we met her a few minutes later, it was clear that she was absolutely the most perfect midwife we could have asked for. She was gentle and had the most soothing voice and she had already gone through our birth plan and told us that she was totally on board with helping us get everything on the list.
From then on, it's sort of a blur, I tried to avoid looking at the clock...we discussed the possibility of setting up the labor tub, but decided against it since it was going to take an hour just to get it filled up. DH was amazing. I'd made up a list of labor coaching tips for him beforehand (which he "studied" the night before during dinner) and he was so great at doing everything I asked. He helped me breath and set the tone for my moaning during contractions (he knew just the right pitch), he helped me keep moving and gently prodded me to keep moving when I got too comfortable. Somehow he knew (without reading Ina May) to do silly things like give me kisses and little love bites on my neck during contractions which helped soothe me and made me laugh a little bit.
I took a shower at some point which felt great, but I probably got a bit too comfortable, so DH helped me get out and keep moving. I avoided looking at the clock, but was feeling like my labor was going longer than I expected.
Throughout the day, the midwife, our nurse and DH all encouraged me to eat and drink, so I was frequently munching on Cliff bar and some fresh fruit that I'd brought with us and gatorade.
Contractions continued to get stronger, but I was grateful to still have pretty decent breaks in between. The midwife mentioned she could break my water if I wanted and that it would probably speed things up, but I was scared (wimp) and turned down the offer.
The turning point I think was after my shower, DH suggested I do some deep squats holding on to side of the bed, which we'd raised up to be almost chest-level with me. Wow, did those ever work! I would do two or three and then have a giant contraction, and after about three or four contractions, I started feeling like I wanted to push a little bit. It wasn't the massive pushing urge that I'd felt with DD#1, but it was definitely an urge. So the midwife set up the bed so I could be in a sitting/squating position (with the bar) and then she checked me. I was 9cm and she said it was enough that if I pushed a bit, I'd go to 10. She just told me to push as I wanted. I'll admit, at this point, I did push, but I was not really putting a full effort into it. I was probably resting a lot more than I needed to and in the back of my head, I knew I was probably making my labor longer than it needed to be. After about an hour of that, I had to pee so the midwife recommended we go and do just that.
The change in position really kicked things into high gear. I freaked out a bit on the toilet because the baby dropped down and the urge to push was frightening. That was the first moment during labor where I said "I don't want to do this any more." My midwife, bless her heart, said "This is good! We want you to feel that!" She told the nurse to bring out the birthing stool and explained that it would help me bring the baby down. It definitely did! I really had to pull myself together during pushing at that point because I was starting to lose it. After promising myself that I wouldn't, I was already screaming bloody murder during each push (and I definitely know the words "Get IT out of me!!" unceremoniously escaped my lips more than once). It's a good thing no one else was in labor on the floor. My water still hadn't broken by this point and we discussed breaking it, but when the midwife checked me before inserting the amnihook, she told me that the baby could actually be born in the caul, which she said was really special, so we agreed to just continue with the bag of waters intact and see what happened. When I put my fingers down to feel my progress, I could feel the bag bulging like a giant bubble. It was pretty weird. I had a few more pushes that ended with that awful burning feeling and I felt like I was getting the hang of it again, but the worst is pushing hard and then feeling the baby move those two or three inches right back up the birth canal. At this point, I was leaning against DH who was on a chair behind me and holding on to the birth stool handles during pushing. A few more strong pushes and DD was crowning for real. My water broke right before she crowned and Auyumi, our sweet nurse, got my attention long enough to tell me that the water was clear and that we were going to be able to spend as much time as we wanted with our baby immediately, without any interference from other medical staff. The midwife helped me grunt her out slowly which hurt like crazy, but it went by fast. (This was the only "management" she did to prevent tearing and it worked like a charm! No massage or anything, but I didn't even have skid marks afterward! )Then they said "Reach down and catch your baby!" And I did!! My catching her was totally not part of the plan but it was absolutely the best, most sweetest part of the birth. I just pulled her up into my arms and she snuggled on my breast while she loudly announced herself to us.
Unlike DD1, who made almost no noise when she was born, Chloe came out screaming and didn't stop for awhile. She was covered in vernix and bright pink and had long little fingernails. I was able to check to see that she was a girl (we didn't know what we were having) and tell DH. It was amazing.After a few minutes of holding her, I began to feel pretty faint, so I asked the midwife to cut the cord so we could hand Chloe to her Daddy and I could move to the bed. I delivered the placenta almost immediately after getting into the bed and it actually hurt, a lot more than I remember with DD1. That thing was enormous! The nurse said it weighed like 3 lbs and it did have some calcifications on it, confirming our "overdue" status even more.
After that everyone left us alone and DH and I were able to just spend time enjoying our new little girl. She latched on great after about 30 minutes. Eventually the nurse came back to help me get cleaned up and to weigh and measure our girl. She was 8lbs exactly, which was my guess, 20 3/4" long. Let me tell you, there is a big difference between pushing out a baby that weighs 6lbs and a baby that weighs 8lbs. Pushing was NOT a relief this time.
It was such a different experience from my first birth in so many ways. Great ways...we had the same two people attending us the entire time which made things very intimate and secure and not at all distracting. The lights were dim and our room stayed dark during the entire labor and delivery, it was soothing and quiet. I had breaks during contractions throughout my labor. Even during transition, which I could really only identify because I started shaking badly, I had nice breaks which kept me from getting too exhausted or defeated. I felt like I was able to embrace and welcome the pain of labor and just let it do it's work in my body instead of resisting it like I did last time. I didn't vomit!! Which was so great! I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one because I puked a lot during DD1's birth and it was so awful. I just expected that it would happen this time and was so overjoyed to not have to deal with it this time. And I felt like DH and I were both educated enough to truly assert ourselves during the whole process, our wishes were totally embraced by the people taking care of us and DH especially was respected as my advocate during the whole process (vs. being completely marginalized by the nurses during my first labor).
I'm so delighted with the experience we had, so blessed and grateful and I do believe it has made my whole post-partum outlook so much better. It's taught me that I really can do it, despite my lack of confidence going into the whole thing...and who knew? It is possible to have the birth you want in a hospital!
Nursing is going great now, 9 days later. DD1 is having her share of adjustment issues and attitude problems, but she does love her new baby sister very much and is doing great with her. We're so in love with our precious little second born, there's no other way to describe it. She's bliss.
Great birth story, I really enjoyed reading it! Congratulations again mama!
