Ok, so it's been 4 months and my good friend (best actually) has been riding me to get my birth story written so here we go. Try to bare with me.....
To clarify a couple things, my "guess date" was on 6-14-09. Well needless to say that day came and went as uneventful and miserable as all the ones leading up to and following it. (hehe) So on the 18th I saw my midwife and she decided to scrape my membranes again (2nd or 3rd time) to really "stir things up" a bit for me. She declared me a "generous 4 and 80% effaced". I still don't know how this poor baby didn't just fall on out or how my water didn't break sooner? Somethings I will never understand. So she scrapes my membranes and tells me to go walking at the mall. I couldn't since I had left my 4 other kids at home with a sitter and couldn't really afford a luxury walk while I paid someone to be with my kids. So I explained that I had to get home she said to stay up as long as I could walking, but not to over exert myself. Not to forget that I still had an hour drive home, that I was nervous about. But with her advice I had brought along my supplies and a dear friend of mine "just in case". So she scrapes me, lots of mucous and blood and some decent cramping and then we get in the car and head home (me driving). We make it home very smoothly with baby kicking me like crazy as a repayment for the scraping and there is even more blood and mucous. Some more cramping but it never seems to go anywhere. That is thursday evening. My best friend comes up (30 min drive) and we go walking around town. Getting decent ctx, but can still walk, talk and function through them. So at around 10 pm we call it a night and she heads home. I go to bed only to be up about every 13 minutes with another ctx. Friday morning rolls around and my dh gets up and asks if he should call in to work (for the last 3 weeks he did this) or if he should go. I, again, tell him he is less than 20 minutes away and I will call if I need him. So he heads out, and my sister calls and offers to come on over for company. I tell her that I don't feel like today will be any different than the rest so she says to call her if I need her. My best friend calls or texts me about once or twice an hour to see if there has been any changes (she was super stoked to be able to see a homebirth). So friday goes off with ctx off and on but never really going anywhere. Friday night I do my ritual of pacing the sidewalk outside our house (which my 2 yr old still makes me do with him) and again answer my neighbors "how are you doing?" that comes nightly. I tell her still contracting but not thinking this baby is ever coming out. Friday night I finally go to bed disappointed and telling this baby to just get out, its lease is up! Again ctx every 13 minutes keep me up most of the night. By saturday morning, I talk to my best friend and we decide that come hell or high water this baby is coming today!! So she packs up her kids and comes on down, we walk try castor oil (I gag as I type that) and then we walk some more. We do that for several hours along with my birth ball and laying around resting and snacking. At about 7ish we decide that they have tapered off so maybe I need sleep? I lay down and try to rest while they kill time downstairs. My sister comes over and comes up to my bedroom and lays in bed with me rubbing my hair (which I love) and soon my friend joins us. They are trying so hard to talk softly and think that I am asleep, but in reality I was challenging myself to relax and make it through the ctx's without alerting them. Well I must have done good because a half hour later I just can't keep my eyes closed for another minute and I open them and announce what had been happening. They laughed at me and told me I was a dork for not sleeping and for tricking them. I felt much better and decided to walk a little more. So back out to the sidewalk to pace, wanted to stay close to home just in case things changed quickly. The ctx picked up to about 3-5 minutes apart and they are to the point that I need to stop and concentrate. We are all really excited and think it is finally starting. It goes on for a couple hours and we decide to fill the birthing pool. My hubby sets to work, we run out of hot h2o in no time flat. So while I am working on each ctx they are boiling water and adding it along with some cool water to balance it. About 1.5 later it's about half full, very slow going, and the ctx seemed to have peetered off again. We eat some food, though I find I am not very hungry, I know it is necessary in this process. We walk some more and I finally announce at about 1130 that its just not happening today. So once everyone clears out I go to bed at around 1230 to try and get some sleep. Yet again every 13 minutes a dang ctx wakes me up, by this point I am about to cry. I just needed a little sleep before our lives made this huge change of adding a new baby to the equation again. I made my way through the night, I think that I may have squeezed out an hour solid of sleep. Which did wonders for me. We sleep in (or should say stay in bed late) the next day which is sunday. With everything thats taken place since Thursday, I am so ready for it to be over to stop for now even. Once we get up I realize that my girls are to come back later that day (visiting their dad) and that even worse, my dh has to return to work on monday. Which leaves me potentially laboring at home by myself with 4 kids needs' to be met. Oh buddy was I nervous. I call my midwife and tell her I hate to sound like a whiner, but something has to be done. I am now a full week past my "guess date" and I don't care if she breaks my water or gives me a pill/shot to stop my labor, just that I have been very sleep deprived and am dreading the week ahead of me. She says to call back at noon if there is no change after taking a benadryl and trying to rest, I say ok but will probably be calling at noon. She planned to come up and do a check for dilation and maybe break my water to get things going. I wasn't happy but there wasn't a whole lot more we could do. I get off the phone and my in-laws are here. (we get along very well), I join them on our porch for some conversation. I have a few more ctx that I have to breathe through and my fil asks me where this baby is, my mil tells him not to ask that question as its not like I have any control on it. I chuckle and tell her its ok. They stay for about 30 minutes or so, once they leave I go pee and waddle back out to be met with a ctx. I breathe through it, with some lovely counterpressure from my dh (wonderful job btw) on the edge of the kitchen counter by the sink. The next ctx comes 11 minutes later (longest gap all morning) and that one I am by the microwave when it starts, this one just doesn't seem to be ending or even peaking for that matter. My dh again comes and does counter pressure for me, it is at that moment that I hear that oh so familiar *popping* sound. And the rest of that ctx just takes off!!! Dh then asks me why that one seemed so much longer/stronger than any of the other ones. I look at him as I walk out of the room and tell him, I think my water just broke. (it's 11:04) He gives me a blank stare for a second then asks, should we call the mw? (He's a farmboy, so takes a lot to startle him) I tell him that I want to wait a little to see if the ctx get any more regular. The next ctx is 4 minutes later while I am peeing, I finish that one and go to call my best friend (30 minutes away) to tell her what I think has happened. While on the phone (5 minutes later) I have another whopper of a ctx, takes my breath away and I am left on my knees holding on to the lawn chair on our porch swearing as the stupid thing is trying to slide out from my grasp. My dh is doing counter pressure and my friend is on hold sitting on the chair listening to these events unfold. Man was she confused
I get through that one and pick up the phone to which she replies, "you need to call your mw!". So I get off the phone, work through one more then call her. (the time is now 11:22) I tell her I think my water has broken and I am getting in the shower. I tell her how the ctx have changed and what they feel like now. She says she is 2 hours or so away, and is getting in her car now and will see me when she gets here. She then hangs up on me. I go in the bathroom, get the shower running and get in. (its 11:25) Man the water feels good!! Almost makes the ctx bearable again, my sister calls and dh tells her what is going on, she asks if she should cancel seeing the potential apt and come straight over. I said no, go ahead, if this is like the rest of it's been, we have a while yet. I then tell dh to call my friend and tell her to get her butt in gear. She starts asking a bunch of ?'s, like are you sure, I won't be in the way, and how have the ctx changed since? I think I yelled at my dh "tell her to get her butt over here or not, but don't say I didn't give her warning!!" to which she replies "this is it, I am on the way". She hits the road, lines up her cousin to take her kids while she helps here, and drives 80 the whole way here. (didn't get pulled over thankfully). Now everyone has been called and told, I am in the shower and my dh is running between myself and our almost 2 yr old and 4 yr old. So he calls his mom and sister to come in please, they say they will be here in 10 minutes or so. He keeps running between the two rooms and says to me that the boys seem oblivious to what is going on in the bathroom. That makes me feel better (between ctx that is). Shortly after they get here, I feel that familiar urge to throw up. I have my dh hand me the pitcher that was meant to spill water on my belly, as I have ditched the shower and am now in an almost full tub of warm water. I grab the pitcher and throw up over the course of 2 or 3 ctx. When I get done, I think to myself "oh no, this is going faster than I thought". I look at dh and ask him if he remembers what me throwing up means, he says no. I remind him that I hit transition, which means that pushing is next and tell him to be ready, it's getting close. (no clue of time by this point) A couple ctx later and I calmly tell him to call the mw and tell her that I am going to start pushing, he looks at me calmly and says "ok". He calls her, and while explaining it to her I get another ctx. She says at that point that I should try to breathe through a couple more of them, which I say "NO!". She said ok let her do her thing and keep me posted! (12:14) So I start pushing with the next ctx, this is my 2nd drug-free birth, but first h2o birth. I push for a couple ctx's and then my friend walks in right as babes head is starting to crown, she looks at it and says "it's beautiful" to which I replied "It doesn't feel beautiful". She just laughed and said I was doing great. My sister walked into the bathroom right on her heels. And says she was glad she came when she did, she almost waited to hear from me, but was glad she didn't. The phone rings (its 12:24) and its the mw. At this point the babe has crowned and is one push away from the head being out completely. I push and it comes out, in a glorious sense of relief, we start trying to get the cord off from his neck only to find its wrapped twice and its tight enough that my dh can't get his stubby fingers under it to pull it off. So I take a go at it, still not having much luck. My dh is holding the baby under the water, so that he won't try to breathe before we get it resolved. I finally ask if I can just push the baby out and somersault him to unwrap it? The mw says if I feel comfortable doing that to go ahead. So I push him out all the way and do just that, I flip him then pull him up to me, force my finger under the cord and wrestle it off him. I am handed a towel to cover him. The mw is starting to sound worried on the phone since he hasn't cried, but I am not sure why she is. I tell her he is pinking up nicely and has his eyes wide open looking around. She still wants me to make him cry, so I had to rub him with a towel to stimulate him, to which he makes a protest. She is happy and pronounces the birth to be at 12:26! At that time, I finally take a look to see the gender and we are all very shocked to see its a boy!! We all thought it was a girl, since only a girl would make you wait so long 
. I am beside myself with happiness, I would have loved a girl too, but I was really hoping for another little boy. So I was very happy at the gender! I start to bleed and they are instructed to take me out of the water to the bed or couch. We move to the couch and around 1:45 the mw arrives. Baby Forrest Brayden is weighed in at 6 lbs 13 oz, 19.75 in long. And very healthy and alert. It is basically what I envisioned my first homebirth to be, and wouldn't change any of it for the world!!! If you held in there and read this whole story, thank you!
To clarify a couple things, my "guess date" was on 6-14-09. Well needless to say that day came and went as uneventful and miserable as all the ones leading up to and following it. (hehe) So on the 18th I saw my midwife and she decided to scrape my membranes again (2nd or 3rd time) to really "stir things up" a bit for me. She declared me a "generous 4 and 80% effaced". I still don't know how this poor baby didn't just fall on out or how my water didn't break sooner? Somethings I will never understand. So she scrapes my membranes and tells me to go walking at the mall. I couldn't since I had left my 4 other kids at home with a sitter and couldn't really afford a luxury walk while I paid someone to be with my kids. So I explained that I had to get home she said to stay up as long as I could walking, but not to over exert myself. Not to forget that I still had an hour drive home, that I was nervous about. But with her advice I had brought along my supplies and a dear friend of mine "just in case". So she scrapes me, lots of mucous and blood and some decent cramping and then we get in the car and head home (me driving). We make it home very smoothly with baby kicking me like crazy as a repayment for the scraping and there is even more blood and mucous. Some more cramping but it never seems to go anywhere. That is thursday evening. My best friend comes up (30 min drive) and we go walking around town. Getting decent ctx, but can still walk, talk and function through them. So at around 10 pm we call it a night and she heads home. I go to bed only to be up about every 13 minutes with another ctx. Friday morning rolls around and my dh gets up and asks if he should call in to work (for the last 3 weeks he did this) or if he should go. I, again, tell him he is less than 20 minutes away and I will call if I need him. So he heads out, and my sister calls and offers to come on over for company. I tell her that I don't feel like today will be any different than the rest so she says to call her if I need her. My best friend calls or texts me about once or twice an hour to see if there has been any changes (she was super stoked to be able to see a homebirth). So friday goes off with ctx off and on but never really going anywhere. Friday night I do my ritual of pacing the sidewalk outside our house (which my 2 yr old still makes me do with him) and again answer my neighbors "how are you doing?" that comes nightly. I tell her still contracting but not thinking this baby is ever coming out. Friday night I finally go to bed disappointed and telling this baby to just get out, its lease is up! Again ctx every 13 minutes keep me up most of the night. By saturday morning, I talk to my best friend and we decide that come hell or high water this baby is coming today!! So she packs up her kids and comes on down, we walk try castor oil (I gag as I type that) and then we walk some more. We do that for several hours along with my birth ball and laying around resting and snacking. At about 7ish we decide that they have tapered off so maybe I need sleep? I lay down and try to rest while they kill time downstairs. My sister comes over and comes up to my bedroom and lays in bed with me rubbing my hair (which I love) and soon my friend joins us. They are trying so hard to talk softly and think that I am asleep, but in reality I was challenging myself to relax and make it through the ctx's without alerting them. Well I must have done good because a half hour later I just can't keep my eyes closed for another minute and I open them and announce what had been happening. They laughed at me and told me I was a dork for not sleeping and for tricking them. I felt much better and decided to walk a little more. So back out to the sidewalk to pace, wanted to stay close to home just in case things changed quickly. The ctx picked up to about 3-5 minutes apart and they are to the point that I need to stop and concentrate. We are all really excited and think it is finally starting. It goes on for a couple hours and we decide to fill the birthing pool. My hubby sets to work, we run out of hot h2o in no time flat. So while I am working on each ctx they are boiling water and adding it along with some cool water to balance it. About 1.5 later it's about half full, very slow going, and the ctx seemed to have peetered off again. We eat some food, though I find I am not very hungry, I know it is necessary in this process. We walk some more and I finally announce at about 1130 that its just not happening today. So once everyone clears out I go to bed at around 1230 to try and get some sleep. Yet again every 13 minutes a dang ctx wakes me up, by this point I am about to cry. I just needed a little sleep before our lives made this huge change of adding a new baby to the equation again. I made my way through the night, I think that I may have squeezed out an hour solid of sleep. Which did wonders for me. We sleep in (or should say stay in bed late) the next day which is sunday. With everything thats taken place since Thursday, I am so ready for it to be over to stop for now even. Once we get up I realize that my girls are to come back later that day (visiting their dad) and that even worse, my dh has to return to work on monday. Which leaves me potentially laboring at home by myself with 4 kids needs' to be met. Oh buddy was I nervous. I call my midwife and tell her I hate to sound like a whiner, but something has to be done. I am now a full week past my "guess date" and I don't care if she breaks my water or gives me a pill/shot to stop my labor, just that I have been very sleep deprived and am dreading the week ahead of me. She says to call back at noon if there is no change after taking a benadryl and trying to rest, I say ok but will probably be calling at noon. She planned to come up and do a check for dilation and maybe break my water to get things going. I wasn't happy but there wasn't a whole lot more we could do. I get off the phone and my in-laws are here. (we get along very well), I join them on our porch for some conversation. I have a few more ctx that I have to breathe through and my fil asks me where this baby is, my mil tells him not to ask that question as its not like I have any control on it. I chuckle and tell her its ok. They stay for about 30 minutes or so, once they leave I go pee and waddle back out to be met with a ctx. I breathe through it, with some lovely counterpressure from my dh (wonderful job btw) on the edge of the kitchen counter by the sink. The next ctx comes 11 minutes later (longest gap all morning) and that one I am by the microwave when it starts, this one just doesn't seem to be ending or even peaking for that matter. My dh again comes and does counter pressure for me, it is at that moment that I hear that oh so familiar *popping* sound. And the rest of that ctx just takes off!!! Dh then asks me why that one seemed so much longer/stronger than any of the other ones. I look at him as I walk out of the room and tell him, I think my water just broke. (it's 11:04) He gives me a blank stare for a second then asks, should we call the mw? (He's a farmboy, so takes a lot to startle him) I tell him that I want to wait a little to see if the ctx get any more regular. The next ctx is 4 minutes later while I am peeing, I finish that one and go to call my best friend (30 minutes away) to tell her what I think has happened. While on the phone (5 minutes later) I have another whopper of a ctx, takes my breath away and I am left on my knees holding on to the lawn chair on our porch swearing as the stupid thing is trying to slide out from my grasp. My dh is doing counter pressure and my friend is on hold sitting on the chair listening to these events unfold. Man was she confused
I get through that one and pick up the phone to which she replies, "you need to call your mw!". So I get off the phone, work through one more then call her. (the time is now 11:22) I tell her I think my water has broken and I am getting in the shower. I tell her how the ctx have changed and what they feel like now. She says she is 2 hours or so away, and is getting in her car now and will see me when she gets here. She then hangs up on me. I go in the bathroom, get the shower running and get in. (its 11:25) Man the water feels good!! Almost makes the ctx bearable again, my sister calls and dh tells her what is going on, she asks if she should cancel seeing the potential apt and come straight over. I said no, go ahead, if this is like the rest of it's been, we have a while yet. I then tell dh to call my friend and tell her to get her butt in gear. She starts asking a bunch of ?'s, like are you sure, I won't be in the way, and how have the ctx changed since? I think I yelled at my dh "tell her to get her butt over here or not, but don't say I didn't give her warning!!" to which she replies "this is it, I am on the way". She hits the road, lines up her cousin to take her kids while she helps here, and drives 80 the whole way here. (didn't get pulled over thankfully). Now everyone has been called and told, I am in the shower and my dh is running between myself and our almost 2 yr old and 4 yr old. So he calls his mom and sister to come in please, they say they will be here in 10 minutes or so. He keeps running between the two rooms and says to me that the boys seem oblivious to what is going on in the bathroom. That makes me feel better (between ctx that is). Shortly after they get here, I feel that familiar urge to throw up. I have my dh hand me the pitcher that was meant to spill water on my belly, as I have ditched the shower and am now in an almost full tub of warm water. I grab the pitcher and throw up over the course of 2 or 3 ctx. When I get done, I think to myself "oh no, this is going faster than I thought". I look at dh and ask him if he remembers what me throwing up means, he says no. I remind him that I hit transition, which means that pushing is next and tell him to be ready, it's getting close. (no clue of time by this point) A couple ctx later and I calmly tell him to call the mw and tell her that I am going to start pushing, he looks at me calmly and says "ok". He calls her, and while explaining it to her I get another ctx. She says at that point that I should try to breathe through a couple more of them, which I say "NO!". She said ok let her do her thing and keep me posted! (12:14) So I start pushing with the next ctx, this is my 2nd drug-free birth, but first h2o birth. I push for a couple ctx's and then my friend walks in right as babes head is starting to crown, she looks at it and says "it's beautiful" to which I replied "It doesn't feel beautiful". She just laughed and said I was doing great. My sister walked into the bathroom right on her heels. And says she was glad she came when she did, she almost waited to hear from me, but was glad she didn't. The phone rings (its 12:24) and its the mw. At this point the babe has crowned and is one push away from the head being out completely. I push and it comes out, in a glorious sense of relief, we start trying to get the cord off from his neck only to find its wrapped twice and its tight enough that my dh can't get his stubby fingers under it to pull it off. So I take a go at it, still not having much luck. My dh is holding the baby under the water, so that he won't try to breathe before we get it resolved. I finally ask if I can just push the baby out and somersault him to unwrap it? The mw says if I feel comfortable doing that to go ahead. So I push him out all the way and do just that, I flip him then pull him up to me, force my finger under the cord and wrestle it off him. I am handed a towel to cover him. The mw is starting to sound worried on the phone since he hasn't cried, but I am not sure why she is. I tell her he is pinking up nicely and has his eyes wide open looking around. She still wants me to make him cry, so I had to rub him with a towel to stimulate him, to which he makes a protest. She is happy and pronounces the birth to be at 12:26! At that time, I finally take a look to see the gender and we are all very shocked to see its a boy!! We all thought it was a girl, since only a girl would make you wait so long . I am beside myself with happiness, I would have loved a girl too, but I was really hoping for another little boy. So I was very happy at the gender! I start to bleed and they are instructed to take me out of the water to the bed or couch. We move to the couch and around 1:45 the mw arrives. Baby Forrest Brayden is weighed in at 6 lbs 13 oz, 19.75 in long. And very healthy and alert. It is basically what I envisioned my first homebirth to be, and wouldn't change any of it for the world!!! If you held in there and read this whole story, thank you!
