Harrison's Birth Story
Well I should start with Tuesday… I had had a midwife appointment at 11am and everything looked great. Harrison was engaged (hooray) and I asked them to do another stretch and sweep as I was feeling really anxious about having this little guy ASAP. I was so happy when around 2pm I started to have contractions. Nothing too painful but they were feeling pretty productive. I sat in the armchair in the living room reading for a bit and then thought that if I’m really going into labour I should lie down and have a nap. So I called my midwife to give her the heads up that we may be giving birth tonight and went to lie down. About 15 minutes later Alias joined me in bed and unfortunately having to turn on the mommy part of my brain caused the contractions to start to peter out. I went out for a walk in hopes that I could get something moving again but nothing. By about 5pm the contractions were back to feeling like BHs and had spaced out to a couple an hour. So I had to call the midwife to let her know to stand down and ended up feeling really grumpy and miserable the rest of the night. I had really thought that that was it.
Around 4:15am I woke up to a good contraction. Not wanting to get my hopes up I continued to just lay in bed and see were things went before I woke anyone up. So for about 2 hours I just lay in bed timing contractions. They felt productive and were coming about every 10 minutes or so. Around 6:30 am I decided that if this was really it I should get up take a shower and have something to eat. Took a nice long warm shower, had a bowl of Cheerios and a banana and then woke Dh up to tell him I thought I was in labour. The contractions were still about 10 minutes apart and weren’t really growing too much in intensity. Alias woke up around 7am and I turned over contraction monitoring to Dh so that I could get Alias some breakfast and go wake up my mom. The morning went pretty smoothly. Alias had breakfast and got dressed. I called my midwife to let her know that I was having contraction again. My mom started to make plans for a “big adventure” that she and Alias could embark on. And all four of us went out around 9am to just get a few snacks for the hospital and return some movies to the video store. I felt like a walk would help speed things up. I so hoped this was it. Got home a little before 10am and still my contractions were fairly erratic in intensity and spacing, ranging from anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes.
My midwife called to see how we were doing as she had a home visit she was just finishing up and wanted to know if she had time to go to her home and have a meal. Dh let her know about the contractions and I let her know that Alias and my mom would be leaving in a few minutes to go have a special fun day together. My midwife said that things sounded good and that my contractions would probably get “cracking” once my mom and Alias left home. So I got Alias’ back pack all geared up with diapers and snacks and a bit after 10:30am mom and Alias had set off.
I was feeling pretty hungry so Dh made me a bagel and cream cheese and a big glass of apple juice and I settled myself on the couch to relax and watch a movie. Well it didn’t take long for things to really start moving. By 11 my contractions were strong and painful and rapidly moving to 5 minutes apart. Dh called the midwife and she told him she’d get her stuff and come right over (lucky for me she only lives a few blocks away). The midwife arrived a bit before 11:30am did a check and told me I was 9cm dilated and that we should probably head off to the hospital.
I should pause here for a minute and let you now that the night before my midwife had told me that St. Paul’s, the hospital I was to deliver at had had a burst water pipe in their maternity ward and half of their birthing rooms were closed. So if St. Paul’s was full then we’d have to be sent to BC Women’s hospital to give birth. We talked about it a bit, I have nothing against BC Women’s, but I decided that I really didn’t want to go to BC Women’s (it’s a 20 minute drive, and their birthing rooms are very medical, and they only have a few single occupancy rooms and I really didn’t want to share a recovery room…) so Dh and I said that if couldn’t get into St. Paul’s we’d just stay home for the birth. Back to the actual birth…
We’re getting ready to leave for the hospital and it’s just about noon, the midwife calls ahead and they have one room left so my midwife tells them to hold it for us ‘cause we’re on our way. I stand up to get my pants on and all of a sudden I’m just hit with a major contraction and I realize that I am NOT going anywhere! Dh calls my mom on the call phone to tell her not to come home anytime soon as we’re doing a home birth. My midwife calls the student midwife, who we’d invited to the birth to let her know to come on over and she also calls her partner, the other midwife I’d been meeting with, to see if she was free to also attend. I don’t know how everyone got here so fast but within 10 minutes I am pushing through great strong contractions and I have 3 midwives cheering me on. Dh is being a fabulous coach helping me relax and focusing my breathing and making sure I’m getting fluids. It all happened so fast. I was having contraction after contraction and I could really feel that with every push I was really making progress. Around 12:30 Harrison was crowning and by 12:40 I had my little man in my arms. It was amazing. I was so stunned at how fast everything went. There was no way I would have made it to the hospital.
Harrison was so beautiful and came out crying. He then promptly pooped and peed on me and the midwife so we knew right away that all systems were a go with this little guy. Harrison was nursing with a couple of hours like an old pro and Dh and I had another perfect little boy join our family.
Alias and my mom returned home a bit after 3pm and Alias was so thrilled and excited to meet his new brother. For the rest of the evening he showed Harrison almost everyone of his toys, brought his baby brother a few presents, and insisted on holding him every 20 minutes or so. It was so sweet.
As I now write this it’s after 3 in the morning, I slept for a few hours but of course I’m still riding the birth hormones so it’ll be a few days before I’ll really be able to get a good rest. I’ve got my wondrous 2 year old boy snoring away in his toddler bed and my sweet perfect baby boy curled up next to his daddy. It really doesn’t get any better than this!
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: much much good powers to you and ur baby 
i guess it was so much nicer at home...
