My blood pressure started going up around week 34, but with no other symptoms of toxemia. My midwife suggested eating more protein, taking garlic & calcium/magnesium supplements, swimming and rests every 2 hours to try to keep it stable. I followed the advice faithfully, and though my blood pressure did stabilize it was still too high. We agreed that if the BP didn't go down we would probably want to do an induction before I got seriously sick and that it would be a good idea to do what we could to make sure an induction would succeed. I started using evening primrose suppositories (and had sex) to ripen my cervix. I had strong feelings that if we tried an induction before the new year it would fail. My midwife went along with that reluctantly. On the morning of January 1 she showed up at my house and used a little water balloon to help start opening the cervix (the EP oil had worked to make it soft).
So, at first nothing. But when the MW phoned to check on January 2 I was starting to feel that same little ache I feel when I get my period so I told her let's give it a day and see what happens. That evening at 5:00 I went out to a dinner party. The feeling was getting stronger, but nothing like labor. Around 7:00 I started feeling a little shaky, and since I was worried about my BP I decided to go home and lie down. By the time I got home I had the shakes as if I were freezing though I wasn't cold and I was definitely havng contractions. I lay down in bed and told my husband to call grandma to come get our 3 yo, and when my mom saw me she suggested that we needed to stop timing contractions and tell the midwives to come over right away.
So the MWs came and I told them that I just wanted to be left alone in the dark and do my thing. Every now and then they came in to listen to the baby and they said when you get ready to push, tell us to come in. And after a while the contractions let up and I came back to a kind of sharp awareness of my surroundings and everything shifted directions from muscles pulling upward to pushing down. My husband sat behind me on the bed and held me up and I pushed for a while and then I said “it's not enough.” So the MW felt and said there was still a rim on my cervix. She suggested getting me upright on a birthing stool and breaking my water to bring the baby down, so that's what we did. Shortly I felt a kind of tingling in my crotch and a surge of joy because I knew that meant the baby was about to be born. I gave one big long hard push and suddenly the MW laid a little baby in my lap. The first thing anyone said was “look how pink that baby is”, the second thing was “what beautiful hands” and the third thing was, what kind is it? So we looked and saw that she is a little girl. The MW offered to let dh cut the cord and he said no, he didn't want to.
The whole birth took less than six hours, start to finish. My little baby was born on Jan 3 just after midnight. She weighed 6 lb 14 oz.
--AmyB
So, at first nothing. But when the MW phoned to check on January 2 I was starting to feel that same little ache I feel when I get my period so I told her let's give it a day and see what happens. That evening at 5:00 I went out to a dinner party. The feeling was getting stronger, but nothing like labor. Around 7:00 I started feeling a little shaky, and since I was worried about my BP I decided to go home and lie down. By the time I got home I had the shakes as if I were freezing though I wasn't cold and I was definitely havng contractions. I lay down in bed and told my husband to call grandma to come get our 3 yo, and when my mom saw me she suggested that we needed to stop timing contractions and tell the midwives to come over right away.
So the MWs came and I told them that I just wanted to be left alone in the dark and do my thing. Every now and then they came in to listen to the baby and they said when you get ready to push, tell us to come in. And after a while the contractions let up and I came back to a kind of sharp awareness of my surroundings and everything shifted directions from muscles pulling upward to pushing down. My husband sat behind me on the bed and held me up and I pushed for a while and then I said “it's not enough.” So the MW felt and said there was still a rim on my cervix. She suggested getting me upright on a birthing stool and breaking my water to bring the baby down, so that's what we did. Shortly I felt a kind of tingling in my crotch and a surge of joy because I knew that meant the baby was about to be born. I gave one big long hard push and suddenly the MW laid a little baby in my lap. The first thing anyone said was “look how pink that baby is”, the second thing was “what beautiful hands” and the third thing was, what kind is it? So we looked and saw that she is a little girl. The MW offered to let dh cut the cord and he said no, he didn't want to.
The whole birth took less than six hours, start to finish. My little baby was born on Jan 3 just after midnight. She weighed 6 lb 14 oz.
--AmyB
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