I traveled up to alaska at just about 36 weeks pregnant (the airline had no policy and my midwives said if i felt comfortable, to go, and i had a GREAT time 
). i got home ten days later, on the 28th, and when I stepped off the plane I felt this palpable sense of relief: "Good, I can have this baby now." I had been saying since about 5 months pregnant that I thought I was going to have the baby 2 weeks early, and that new year's day sounded reasonable. 
I was due the 15th of January.
I emailed my mom on the 30th and told her that if she wanted to be there for the birth she had better hop on a plane, pronto (she was planning to watch my two year old during the labor and had helped mucho at the homebirth of my first).
I started contracting lightly the next morning around ten. My husband went off to work hoping (or at least knowing) that he might be called home suddenly.
I stayed busy, cleaning, playing with my son, generally nesting for several hours. By around 2 in the afternoon my contractions had gotten to the point where I couldn't interact with my son, but they were still ten minutes apart so i wasn't worried. I was really trying to relax into each one, breathing into it, imagining water swelling up into a cave, receding as the contraction left. I felt like I fought my first labor, which was very long, and was determined to handle this differently.
My mom's plane came in around 1 and she called from her hotel room at three (she was planning on staying for over three weeks and we didn't want to drive each other crazy. In retrospect, I don't think we would've anyway )
She came right over, but they had eased off a bit by that point. They maintained their eased-off state but stayed pretty steady at ten or 15 minutes apart. I felt like I was making progress, though. At 11 pm they stopped entirely. I told my husband I might very well wake him up at some point to, you know, help ripen my cervix 
and he readily agreed
Around 3:30 I woke up with some good strong contractions, 7 or 8 minutes apart. I stayed in bed and welcomed them until 5, when I could no longer handle them by myself. I woke dh up and whatnot-ed (ahem) and from there my labor TOOK OFF. whew!
I draped myself over the big ball in the living room, which I had previously regarded as an inconvenient and never used exercise ball, but was now the only place i could imagine being. Around six I decided I was starving and had a little hot cereal, which I started wanting to vomit up at about 6:45.
DH called the midwives and my mom at around 6:30, and DS had just gotten up. He sat in the kitchen and calmly finished my breakfast, watching me bellow and puke, cool as a cucumber.
Through all of this I was doing really well. DH would squeeze my hips with his knees and press on my sacrum during the contractions, which helped immensely. At one point I turned to him and said, "If this is transition, I sure am cheerful!" It was.
As soon as he got off the phone with the midwives my stomach involuntarily started in with pushing. I never had the urge to push with my first baby, so it was amazing! it was also freaky, because the midwives live 30-45 minutes away. This inspired DH to race around the house between contractions, trying to prepare himself to deliver the baby. the first midwife got there around 7, and my mom walked in a couple of minutes later. Ten minutes later the whole party was there and I moved to lovely hard birthing chair, just what i needed. I got a little breather a few minutes later, a break for a couple of minutes. it took me a good 45 seconds of the break to relax my hands off the handles of the chair. Then whamo. I moved the baby down with two hard pushes and on the second my water broke. One more push, the baby's head was out. One more, and there he was, a boy!! he drew in his first breath and howled right away. They tried to give him to me, but I couldn't quite detach my hands yet, so they gave him to his daddy. I heard my little boy in the background, "A baby!" A few seconds later I had pried my hands off and could take him. He stopped crying immediately and nursed right away. 
DS came running out of the kitchen to see and was totally fascinated. A couple of minutes later the MW took the babe to do whatever she had to do, and DS got upset for the first time: "No! Momma's baby!"
Seirid Eoin weighed 7#, 5 oz., and was 21" long - almost a pound less than his brother. I'm so glad he did the next two weeks worth of growing on the outside! He was the first baby born in the county, at 7:41 a.m. New Year's Day.
). i got home ten days later, on the 28th, and when I stepped off the plane I felt this palpable sense of relief: "Good, I can have this baby now." I had been saying since about 5 months pregnant that I thought I was going to have the baby 2 weeks early, and that new year's day sounded reasonable. I was due the 15th of January.I emailed my mom on the 30th and told her that if she wanted to be there for the birth she had better hop on a plane, pronto (she was planning to watch my two year old during the labor and had helped mucho at the homebirth of my first).
I started contracting lightly the next morning around ten. My husband went off to work hoping (or at least knowing) that he might be called home suddenly.
I stayed busy, cleaning, playing with my son, generally nesting for several hours. By around 2 in the afternoon my contractions had gotten to the point where I couldn't interact with my son, but they were still ten minutes apart so i wasn't worried. I was really trying to relax into each one, breathing into it, imagining water swelling up into a cave, receding as the contraction left. I felt like I fought my first labor, which was very long, and was determined to handle this differently.
My mom's plane came in around 1 and she called from her hotel room at three (she was planning on staying for over three weeks and we didn't want to drive each other crazy. In retrospect, I don't think we would've anyway
)She came right over, but they had eased off a bit by that point. They maintained their eased-off state but stayed pretty steady at ten or 15 minutes apart. I felt like I was making progress, though.
At 11 pm they stopped entirely. I told my husband I might very well wake him up at some point to, you know, help ripen my cervix and he readily agreed Around 3:30 I woke up with some good strong contractions, 7 or 8 minutes apart. I stayed in bed and welcomed them until 5, when I could no longer handle them by myself. I woke dh up and whatnot-ed (ahem) and from there my labor TOOK OFF. whew!
I draped myself over the big ball in the living room, which I had previously regarded as an inconvenient and never used exercise ball, but was now the only place i could imagine being. Around six I decided I was starving and had a little hot cereal, which I started wanting to vomit up at about 6:45.
DH called the midwives and my mom at around 6:30, and DS had just gotten up. He sat in the kitchen and calmly finished my breakfast, watching me bellow and puke, cool as a cucumber.
Through all of this I was doing really well. DH would squeeze my hips with his knees and press on my sacrum during the contractions, which helped immensely. At one point I turned to him and said, "If this is transition, I sure am cheerful!" It was.
As soon as he got off the phone with the midwives my stomach involuntarily started in with pushing. I never had the urge to push with my first baby, so it was amazing! it was also freaky, because the midwives live 30-45 minutes away. This inspired DH to race around the house between contractions, trying to prepare himself to deliver the baby.
the first midwife got there around 7, and my mom walked in a couple of minutes later. Ten minutes later the whole party was there and I moved to lovely hard birthing chair, just what i needed. I got a little breather a few minutes later, a break for a couple of minutes. it took me a good 45 seconds of the break to relax my hands off the handles of the chair. Then whamo. I moved the baby down with two hard pushes and on the second my water broke. One more push, the baby's head was out. One more, and there he was, a boy!! he drew in his first breath and howled right away. They tried to give him to me, but I couldn't quite detach my hands yet, so they gave him to his daddy. I heard my little boy in the background, "A baby!" A few seconds later I had pried my hands off and could take him. He stopped crying immediately and nursed right away. DS came running out of the kitchen to see and was totally fascinated. A couple of minutes later the MW took the babe to do whatever she had to do, and DS got upset for the first time: "No! Momma's baby!"Seirid Eoin weighed 7#, 5 oz., and was 21" long - almost a pound less than his brother. I'm so glad he did the next two weeks worth of growing on the outside!
He was the first baby born in the county, at 7:41 a.m. New Year's Day.
