Thanks for all your well-wishes. I'm going to try to give a brief birth story summary...dh has Soraya sleeping on him, so it could be 5 minutes or an hour!
The afternoon of the 1st, started having mild contrax. So mild that I took a nap with ds and woke up wondering if they'd gone away. They came back though so we decided to take a walk thru the neighborhood to try to get things moving at about 5pm. The contrax continued, getting stronger and closer together. I had a little bloody show and called the midwife to tell her. At about 8pm, I suddenly started having some very WEIRD contractions. They were very strong, coming every 10-15 minutes and lasting a few minutes each. I walked laps around our house and called the midwife for the 3rd time to let her know what was going on. I told dh to put ds to bed and I started to fill up the birthing pool. The midwife arrived around 9pm and checked me. I was already 7cm dilated! We thought for sure I would be having a New Year's Day baby.
The long, irregular contractions continued until 1:45 am. It was awful. I was getting so worn out and really frustrated. I would go 15-20 minutes without a contraction and then have one that lasted 5-10 minutes! It was like each contraction had no end in sight and it was just so mentally exhausting. At 1:45 when the midwife checked me again, I was still only at 7cm.
: I had been doing everything to get these conrtactions closer together with no result. I was in and out of the pool, walking, squatting. And on top of everything, she was posterior and with her position, there was no relief on my back or sides between contractions.
We decided to break my water to see if it would change the labor pattern into something productive. I just couldn't go any longer like that. The water was clear and her heartbeat was steady. I immediately started having NORMAL contractions, every 3 minutes, lasting 30-60 seconds each. They were strong but it was a breeze compared to what I had been going through before. I said to dh, "bring it on"!
Less than an hour later, I felt like pushing, so I got back in the pool. My pushing was strong, but the urge wasn't and I couldn't get into a comfortable position. I got out and sat on the birthing stool. She was turning from her posterior position, so the pushing was hard, harder than with ds. I think it took me about 10 contractions and she was born at 3:11 am, already crying.
We celebrated with champagne (I had sparkling pear juice). She started nursing about 20-30 minutes after she was born. The midwife tucked us into bed at about 5:30 am, after we called our families. Ds woke up around 7:00am and dh brought him into to meet his new sister. As I was dozing and dh was holding Soraya, ds ran down stairs. He came back into our bedroom with his wooden birthday cake, complete with candles and sang happy birthday to her!
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Welcome Soraya! Congratulations, mama!
