Hello, all! I'm just adding this note to the top of the story to remind new readers that this is actually an older birth story. It got bumped up recently, and thank you so much for the new comments (I love to get them!), but I don't want anyone mislead--my beautiful Kira is now almost a year old! (And any of you in the Kern County area are welcome to come to her party at the park--check out the Kern County/Bakersfield thread in Finding Your Tribe.) Also, the links to pictures won't work right now, as our server is down. Oh, and I believe I left out a couple interesting points to this story. 1, Ethan broke my water by jumping on my belly. 2, There was a tour of high school students that missed viewing Kira's arrival by about 10 minutes.
Okay, back to the regularly scheduled post:
Here's my daughter's birth story! It is really long, but it has an exciting ending!
I'd been in prelabor for the last week or so, with painless Braxton Hicks. I started leaking amniotic fluid at about 9:30 Tuesday night, which was followed by bloody show and an increase in contractions. We figured labor was starting, but I still wasn't having contractions that were that strong or regular, so we dropped our DS off at grandma's so he wouldn't need to be woken in the middle of the night, and then I went to bed to try and get some rest before things got going faster. I was hoping I might even get to sleep through most of the night and start labor reasonably well-rested.
I was aware of relatively mild contractions but was able to sleep most of the time until about 3:30. At that point, I gave up on sleep, but decided to labor as long as I could without waking my husband, as I wanted HIM as well-rested as possible so he could be good support when labor got stronger. The contractions at this point were still 8-10 minutes apart, and not lasting a whole minute. I just lay in bed, holding onto him, and I practiced relaxing through the contractions. My last labor, I panicked and tensed up through them, which led to my receiving pain medications (something I'd really wanted to avoid), a lot of other interventions, and basically a really unhappy and traumatic birth experience. This time I was more prepared for and committed to an unmedicated birth, but I still had a lot of fear I wouldn't be able to do it. So each contraction was a challenge. A challenge to focus just on that one contraction and not try to project how long the labor would be. I tried to keep in mind birth affirmations I'd read about here on this board. I tried to focus on what my body was doing, on how it was normal, healthy, and something I could do. I would breathe in, taking a deep abdominal breath, reminding myself to relax and embrace the intensified contraction (breathing in deeply made them feel stronger) because a stronger contraction is what I needed to move my baby down and out, and then breathe out with loose lips, because I remembered reading that loose lips mean a loose bottom, and help you relax the rest of your body.
By about 6:30, I was starting to get a little worried about handling the contractions by myself. I suspected I was only at about 4 cms, at best, because I felt about how I'd felt at 3 or 4 last time, and I was even a little disappointed in myself that I couldn't handle things on my own a little longer. In retrospect, I think I was underestimating how much the pain was reduced by my ability to realax through the contractions this time around. But I woke DH up, asking him to help me breathe through contractions. He woke up and started massaging me, telling me how great I was doing, and I immediately felt better. I got up and around the house, hoping walking would move things along, and I labored standing, on the toilet, and leaning over our dryer. I still figured we had quite a few hours ahead of us, and debated whether we should head to the hospital yet or not. I wanted to labor at home as long as possible so I could have the more comfortable environment, without all the interventions and temptation of pain medication. I thought I would probably progress more quickly if we took a walk, or a shower together, etc., but I finally decided I wanted to get the traveling done with and settle down at the hospital. So an hour after I woke Dh up, we called our doula and asked her to head to the hospital to meet us. (Poor doula wasn't able to arrive before our baby, as it turned out!) We packed up our birth ball, massage supplies, etc., and I walked around the grass out front while DH loaded up the car. The bids were singing, there was dew on the grass, and I wished I could stay walking around out there longer. As it turned out, it was a good thing we didn't!
We started the half-hour drive to the hospital, and I started having a REALLY hard time with the contractions. I figured it was because of the bumps we were going over, acceleration and too-sudden of stops, etc. I suspect now it was because I was entering transition! I got through them by focusing on whatever car was ahead of us, breathing through them as I had been, and having DH count through them for me so I could know I was nearing the half-way point when he got to 20. I was starting to get really scared that I wouldn't be able to make it through the labor without pain medication though, since they were getting so difficult for me so "early" in labor. I started thinking maybe I should set some kind of guidelines for myself, like if I hadn't made it to 7 cms in the next 4 hours, or something like that, that I could accept pain meds, but that I would labor without until then.
I continued to successfully get through the contractions by taking them one at a time. About halfway to the hospital, I started feeling like I needed to poop, which was odd, because I'd had the loose bowels common of earlier labor and thought everything was cleared out. My legs started to tremble some, and I started to worry a little that I was further along in labor than I realized. But the contractions, as hard as they were, were still manageable to me, which made me assume I couldn't be past 4 cm (as that's where I'd found myself unable to cope before). I then had 2 contractions back-to-back and started feeling the urge to push. I told DH to drive faster.
We got to the hospital, and as I was trying to get out of the car, I felt the baby moving down, along with a gush of fluid. At that point, I finally realized exactly how urgent things were. I jumped out of the car and started heading to the hospital doors, even though I was still in the middle of a contraction. I had another before I could even get through them and started panting to keep myself from pushing. I also had been laboring really quietly up until then but started vocalizing pretty loudly at that point through the effort of trying not to push. After that contraction I practically ran for the hospital doors, and we made it into the elevator, where I got another one. Even though I was in the middle of another contraction, I lunged through the open doors when we got to the 2nd floor, so we were at least on the right floor and wing for labor and delivery. At this point, I felt the baby coming out. Two nurses walking by asked if we were okay, and I shouted "the baby's coming out!" and dropped to the floor. As you can imagine, we had quite a scene. About 20 nurses were soon there, including the one who'd taught our birth preparation course. A passing doctor was there as well.
At first they didn't believe me that the baby was really "coming out" and tried to get me into a wheelchair. When they pulled my pants down and saw the head crowning, though, they gave up on that and prepared for a birth right there on the floor outside the elevator. Baby came out in 1 or 2 pushes, once they told me to go ahead. They whisked her away for warming, and I quickly realized that warming with blankets against my chest (something I'd been planning on asking for) wasn't really an option in that situation, and I accepted that this was another part of the birth experience not really in my control. By the time I got into the room she was in, they were already performing the newborn precedures I'd planned on having them delay. (She was SOOO healthy though! She came out bright pink and screaming. She got a 9.9 on her apgars.) They were concerned I was not "firming up" quickly enough and the doctor wanted to give me cytotec (!!!) to stimulate more contractions, but I firmly refused that and agreed to some iv pitocin instead. It was amazing how many interventions I was getting just from those few minutes in the hospital. When the iv interfered with nursing, I convinced the nurse to turn it off for a while so I could nurse my baby. That firmed up my uterus just fine.
Anyway, it wasn't exactly the birth experience I'd planned, but I was sooo much happier with it than my last one. I felt so happy and energized and victorious when I realized I'd given birth to a healthy baby without any interventions at all, that I'd made it through labor without pain medication. (And without my birth ball, our massage stuff, the shower, or our doula, too!) And it's given everyone such a great story to tell!
We named our daughter Kira Rose White. She was 9 pounds 4 ounces. She seems so much better off than Ethan did. He had seemed groggy and drugged up from the pain medications I'd had, even though I'd refused them later in labor to give them a chance to wear off. Kira has been much more alert and a better nurser.
If anyone has read all the way through this, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my experience! We're definitely going to either leave for the hospital earlier or plan for a homebirth from the beginning next time (we might have considered that if we had any certified midwives in our area).
Okay, back to the regularly scheduled post:
Here's my daughter's birth story! It is really long, but it has an exciting ending!
I'd been in prelabor for the last week or so, with painless Braxton Hicks. I started leaking amniotic fluid at about 9:30 Tuesday night, which was followed by bloody show and an increase in contractions. We figured labor was starting, but I still wasn't having contractions that were that strong or regular, so we dropped our DS off at grandma's so he wouldn't need to be woken in the middle of the night, and then I went to bed to try and get some rest before things got going faster. I was hoping I might even get to sleep through most of the night and start labor reasonably well-rested.
I was aware of relatively mild contractions but was able to sleep most of the time until about 3:30. At that point, I gave up on sleep, but decided to labor as long as I could without waking my husband, as I wanted HIM as well-rested as possible so he could be good support when labor got stronger. The contractions at this point were still 8-10 minutes apart, and not lasting a whole minute. I just lay in bed, holding onto him, and I practiced relaxing through the contractions. My last labor, I panicked and tensed up through them, which led to my receiving pain medications (something I'd really wanted to avoid), a lot of other interventions, and basically a really unhappy and traumatic birth experience. This time I was more prepared for and committed to an unmedicated birth, but I still had a lot of fear I wouldn't be able to do it. So each contraction was a challenge. A challenge to focus just on that one contraction and not try to project how long the labor would be. I tried to keep in mind birth affirmations I'd read about here on this board. I tried to focus on what my body was doing, on how it was normal, healthy, and something I could do. I would breathe in, taking a deep abdominal breath, reminding myself to relax and embrace the intensified contraction (breathing in deeply made them feel stronger) because a stronger contraction is what I needed to move my baby down and out, and then breathe out with loose lips, because I remembered reading that loose lips mean a loose bottom, and help you relax the rest of your body.
By about 6:30, I was starting to get a little worried about handling the contractions by myself. I suspected I was only at about 4 cms, at best, because I felt about how I'd felt at 3 or 4 last time, and I was even a little disappointed in myself that I couldn't handle things on my own a little longer. In retrospect, I think I was underestimating how much the pain was reduced by my ability to realax through the contractions this time around. But I woke DH up, asking him to help me breathe through contractions. He woke up and started massaging me, telling me how great I was doing, and I immediately felt better. I got up and around the house, hoping walking would move things along, and I labored standing, on the toilet, and leaning over our dryer. I still figured we had quite a few hours ahead of us, and debated whether we should head to the hospital yet or not. I wanted to labor at home as long as possible so I could have the more comfortable environment, without all the interventions and temptation of pain medication. I thought I would probably progress more quickly if we took a walk, or a shower together, etc., but I finally decided I wanted to get the traveling done with and settle down at the hospital. So an hour after I woke Dh up, we called our doula and asked her to head to the hospital to meet us. (Poor doula wasn't able to arrive before our baby, as it turned out!) We packed up our birth ball, massage supplies, etc., and I walked around the grass out front while DH loaded up the car. The bids were singing, there was dew on the grass, and I wished I could stay walking around out there longer. As it turned out, it was a good thing we didn't!
We started the half-hour drive to the hospital, and I started having a REALLY hard time with the contractions. I figured it was because of the bumps we were going over, acceleration and too-sudden of stops, etc. I suspect now it was because I was entering transition! I got through them by focusing on whatever car was ahead of us, breathing through them as I had been, and having DH count through them for me so I could know I was nearing the half-way point when he got to 20. I was starting to get really scared that I wouldn't be able to make it through the labor without pain medication though, since they were getting so difficult for me so "early" in labor. I started thinking maybe I should set some kind of guidelines for myself, like if I hadn't made it to 7 cms in the next 4 hours, or something like that, that I could accept pain meds, but that I would labor without until then.
I continued to successfully get through the contractions by taking them one at a time. About halfway to the hospital, I started feeling like I needed to poop, which was odd, because I'd had the loose bowels common of earlier labor and thought everything was cleared out. My legs started to tremble some, and I started to worry a little that I was further along in labor than I realized. But the contractions, as hard as they were, were still manageable to me, which made me assume I couldn't be past 4 cm (as that's where I'd found myself unable to cope before). I then had 2 contractions back-to-back and started feeling the urge to push. I told DH to drive faster.
We got to the hospital, and as I was trying to get out of the car, I felt the baby moving down, along with a gush of fluid. At that point, I finally realized exactly how urgent things were. I jumped out of the car and started heading to the hospital doors, even though I was still in the middle of a contraction. I had another before I could even get through them and started panting to keep myself from pushing. I also had been laboring really quietly up until then but started vocalizing pretty loudly at that point through the effort of trying not to push. After that contraction I practically ran for the hospital doors, and we made it into the elevator, where I got another one. Even though I was in the middle of another contraction, I lunged through the open doors when we got to the 2nd floor, so we were at least on the right floor and wing for labor and delivery. At this point, I felt the baby coming out. Two nurses walking by asked if we were okay, and I shouted "the baby's coming out!" and dropped to the floor. As you can imagine, we had quite a scene. About 20 nurses were soon there, including the one who'd taught our birth preparation course. A passing doctor was there as well.
At first they didn't believe me that the baby was really "coming out" and tried to get me into a wheelchair. When they pulled my pants down and saw the head crowning, though, they gave up on that and prepared for a birth right there on the floor outside the elevator. Baby came out in 1 or 2 pushes, once they told me to go ahead. They whisked her away for warming, and I quickly realized that warming with blankets against my chest (something I'd been planning on asking for) wasn't really an option in that situation, and I accepted that this was another part of the birth experience not really in my control. By the time I got into the room she was in, they were already performing the newborn precedures I'd planned on having them delay. (She was SOOO healthy though! She came out bright pink and screaming. She got a 9.9 on her apgars.) They were concerned I was not "firming up" quickly enough and the doctor wanted to give me cytotec (!!!) to stimulate more contractions, but I firmly refused that and agreed to some iv pitocin instead. It was amazing how many interventions I was getting just from those few minutes in the hospital. When the iv interfered with nursing, I convinced the nurse to turn it off for a while so I could nurse my baby. That firmed up my uterus just fine.
Anyway, it wasn't exactly the birth experience I'd planned, but I was sooo much happier with it than my last one. I felt so happy and energized and victorious when I realized I'd given birth to a healthy baby without any interventions at all, that I'd made it through labor without pain medication. (And without my birth ball, our massage stuff, the shower, or our doula, too!) And it's given everyone such a great story to tell!
We named our daughter Kira Rose White. She was 9 pounds 4 ounces. She seems so much better off than Ethan did. He had seemed groggy and drugged up from the pain medications I'd had, even though I'd refused them later in labor to give them a chance to wear off. Kira has been much more alert and a better nurser.
If anyone has read all the way through this, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my experience! We're definitely going to either leave for the hospital earlier or plan for a homebirth from the beginning next time (we might have considered that if we had any certified midwives in our area).
