Ok so I had been having bouts of contractions every other night or so for a week or so...so on the evening of the 9th DH and I had some lovely time relaxing, which led to some much needed 'alone time' wink wink nudge nudge :) . We had both been so busy lately it was so nice to just reconnect and I kept thinking about Ina May Gaskin's saying that the loving vibe put the baby in there and it's the same thing that gets the baby out.(paraphrasing of course!)
So I went to bed with sporadic contractions, woke promptly at 2 am with strong ones about 8 mins. apart...I woke dh (my girls are night owls and they were still up. My oldest dd is a midwifery student and this was to be the first official birth she attended and assisted at) and told him I had a feeling these were different. So we waited two hours and in that time they got to about 6 mins apart. DH checked me and said I was stretchy, looser...so we went ahead and called the midwife and doula.
Everyone got to the house around 8 am.
Labor progressed and got heavier but felt hung up. So late in the afternoon I had the mw check and my cervix was sort of...hung up, lippy...so she gave me a bit of a stretch and I opened pretty well. Things got heavy, I had the most amazing birthteam and felt sooo loved!
I decided to take a quick nap (one hr) got back up, things kicked in hard-and as I was leaning over the birth ball (I love my birth ball!) all of a sudden I felt a huge pop inside-then another-then my water broke. That was really cool! Contractions got heavier and I felt pushy but didn't realize it-I have never really had to think about pushing before-my body just sort of did it but this time it was like I had to question whether my cervix was open, whether I really needed to push-way too much in my head.
I got real 'transitiony' at this point-yelling, screaming about the pain being overwhelming, the midwife and doula were fabulous (as was dh and my dd) and kept the right amount of humor and heaviness and spiritual guidance I needed.
So I was sprawled on the bed and I just remember yelling something to the effect of 'i don't care if i rip everything from stem to stern I am pushing this baby out!!!' He was born in three minutes- at 11;54 pm...I screamed like a bullmoose!!!!!!
He's a big boy!
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