Here's my birth story, I tried to condense it- The original is 3 pages in a very small font!
Allison was due on January 27, and I was sure she'd come in February (I was also sure she was a he, so much for my intuition!) On January 22, Tim and I were sitting on the couch watching TV and I started noticing some new sorts of cramps- These were not Braxton Hicks contractions, and they weren’t gas. I sat quietly for a while, just sort of glancing at the clock and noticed these cramps were coming every 10 or 15 minutes. At around 10pm, when this had been happening for a couple of hours, I mentioned it to Tim. I decided to have a big glass of water and go to bed. I was 100% sure that this was false labor.
I fell asleep easily, and woke up again at around 3am. The “cramps” (I still couldn’t bring myself to call them contractions) were coming about every 10 minutes. I went to the bathroom and went back to bed. I was able to sleep for a few minutes between each wave and finally at around 4am I couldn’t sleep anymore. I got out of bed and decided to go have some breakfast. I was sure THAT would make this cramping stop! So I had some oatmeal, checked my email, and laid down on the couch. About 15 minutes passed with no contractions. I thought the false labor had passed and I got up to go back to bed. But then WHAM! A real contraction.
Tim woke up around 5:30 and came to check on me. I laughed it off, and said this was nothing- I showed him my little slip of paper where, just for fun, I’d been writing down the time and duration of each contraction. They were varying from 2-5 minutes apart and lasting a minute or so each. Around 7am we decided to call the midwife, just to check in. Our little “what to do” list said to call when contractions were lasting a minute or longer, were coming less than 5 minutes apart, and I couldn’t talk through them. I hesitated to call, because I could still talk and the pain wasn’t unbearable- But the contractions were pretty frequent, and I was visiting the bathroom a lot. Erika, the midwife on call, said, “It’s not quite time to come in yet, but give us a call in a few hours. Happy baby day!” I hung up the phone, relayed the information that Erika was going to be off duty at 8am and then Carol would be on, and that we should call Carol in a few hours.
At 12:30, we called again and talked to Carol. I could still talk through the contractions, which were now very regularly 3 minutes apart, unless I ate something. That tended to make them space out more. Carol said the same thing, that I should call again when I couldn’t talk through the contractions. I did have one doozy while talking to her that made me pass the phone to Tim, but I still thought that if I really wanted to or needed to, I could’ve kept talking. So we stayed put. I really wanted to do as much of my laboring as possible at home.
I had heard that when you are at home and your only clear thought is that you want to be somewhere else (hospital, birth center, wherever), it’s time to go in. So at 3:30 when I was leaning on the footboard of my bed and whimpering for the 10th time in 30 minutes, we called Carol and said we were coming in. I could still talk through the contractions, so I fully expected to be sent home.
We arrived at the hospital at 4pm. Tim dropped me at the front entrance and went to park the car. I sat in the lobby waiting for him, and had only one mild contraction the entire time. I was sure that this was what I had read about- Contractions all day, but as soon as you decide to go to the hospital, everything comes to a screeching halt. I didn’t have any contractions all the way through the LOOONG walk to the elevator, or on the long ride up to the 5th floor. We get to triage, and they do all the checks- Heart rate is good, blood pressure is good- Baby and Mom are doing fine.
Carol comes in at 4:30 to check me. She pronounces that I am 100% effaced and 5cm dilated and tells the nurse to get a room ready, I am being admitted!!! Also, Carol informs me that she has a student, Laura, working with her and asked if it would be OK if she participated in my labor and delivery. I said it was fine with me- That turned out to be an EXCELLENT decision. Laura had been a labor & delivery nurse for 20 years, and was the head nurse on the L&D floor in another area hospital. She was finishing up her Nurse Midwife Certification, and was an absolutely wonderful addition to my labor & delivery “team.”
By 4:45pm, I was in my room. Contractions had slowed for a while, but they were back. I spent a lot of time sitting on the birth ball, just rocking back and forth. The pattern of my contractions started to vary- I would have short, intense contractions with very short breaks in between for about 15 minutes, then several LOOOONG strong contractions but with nice long breaks between them. At 7pm I was 6cm dilated. I was a little disappointed, because I “should” have been progressing about 1 cm per hour, and it had been 2 ½ hours since I was last checked.
I decide to try laying in the bathtub. Until this point, any position that involved any sort of reclining (on my back, on my side, etc) felt like torture, but I’d heard such great things about laboring in water that I decided to try it. That lasted about 2 minutes, because despite the water and the Jacuzzi jets feeling very nice, lying down on my back or side still made the pain SO much worse.
A little while later, (I lost track of time somewhere in here), Carol and Laura suggest that we consider breaking my water. The membrane is bulging, and I decide to go ahead and let them do it. Contractions don’t feel too much stronger, but I am having a hard time finding any comfortable position.
After a while, Carol tells me that Allison is in a “left occupit anterior” position, meaning she is looking down and to the side- rather than straight down at the floor, which would be the ideal position. This explains why she’s not coming down as fast as we’d like. So I kneel on the bed, leaning over the back of the bed which is raised up. The hope is that leaning forward will make Allison turn the rest of the way so she is facing down. I stayed like this for about 20 minutes, until I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Everything I’d read and everyone I talked to said that when the pain of the contractions reaches a point where it’s the absolute most you can take, then that is as bad as it will get. When I was kneeling and leaning forward, that was the worst pain I had had and I knew that I couldn’t take much more than that. So I thought I must have reached transition, which is supposed to be the most intense part of labor, and that I would soon be pushing. When I got down from the kneeling position, I laid on my side and Carol and Laura checked my progress. I was at 8 centimeters, which is just at the start of transition. I felt like crying, but didn’t have the energy! I said if that wasn’t transition, then I will not be able to handle transition when it comes. The nurse starts to prepare some sort of narcotic (can’t remember what it was) so it was ready if I asked for it. While I lay there contemplating whether I could keep going unmedicated, I had a strange seizing feeling take over my entire mid-section. It was a completely different feeling than a contraction, and it kind of freaked me out. I looked at Tim and whispered that something weird was happening and I didn’t know what was going on.
I rolled over onto my right side, and it started again- This time accompanied by a strange grunting sound that I could not control in any way. When that noise came out of me, every head in the room (3 nurses, 2 midwives) turned toward me, wide-eyed, and I thought that was odd. Laura said, “We better check you again,” and lo and behold, I was at 9 ½ centimeters. This was, at most, 10 minutes after I’d been at 8 and very discouraged. Turns out that seizing and grunting was my body starting to push! I had no idea.
All of a sudden, the nurses and midwives sprung into action. The foot of the bed was removed, closets and cabinets were opened and suddenly the room was FULL of medical equipment, nurses, and we were on our way! It was an amazing transformation- Before this moment the room just looked like a hotel room! Suddenly it looked like every delivery room you’ve ever seen on TV. Laura and Carol instructed me to push when I felt the urge- It was very frustrating at first because the urge to push wasn’t lasting long enough to be very productive. I could feel Allison’s head moving down, but as soon as the contraction stopped, she’d move back again. It was 2 steps forward, 1 step back, for about 20 minutes. We tried some different positions, but ultimately the one I least expected turned out to work out the best for me- laying in bed with Tim and a nurse holding my legs. The out-of-body feeling continued, and I was once again very thankful that I had done so much reading about childbirth- I knew what I was feeling most of the time, and I knew it was normal. I also knew what might help lessen the pain and was able to ask for those things in my birth plan. Warm compresses on the perineum between pushes were amazing, and I am certain they contributed to the ease of delivery and the fact that I had only a minor tear.
Finally, her head started to crown and I was able to reach down and feel her little head of hair working its way out. What a strange feeling!!! A few pushes later, her head was out. The cord was around her neck, so I had to wait to push until they were able to loop it around and off of her neck. A couple more pushes and her shoulders were out, and from there she just slid right on out! What an amazing feeling. I was instantly taken over by such a surge of adrenaline, endorphins, whatever you want to call it, that I felt no pain whatsoever! Allison was placed on my chest, arms and legs flailing, and she looked right at me. The next few moments were awesome - I just held her and stared at her and said all the typical things I thought I wouldn’t say, “She’s so pretty, she’s so little, look at her!” Tim was beaming and it was just such a peaceful, fulfilling, amazing span of time that I will never forget.
Allison Campbell S. was born at 11:41pm on January 23, 2005. She was 19” long and weight 6 lbs, 2 ½ oz.
A while later, after Allison had settled down and gotten over some of the initial shock of entering the world, I cut her cord and she was taken a few feet away to be weighed and measured and cleaned. Tim stayed with her the whole time, and I watched from across the room while the midwives did whatever they did to clean me up. Somewhere in this time I delivered the placenta, but it’s only a vague memory of one more push. Again, I really cannot describe the feeling- I felt drugged, euphoric, and truly didn’t mind that 2 women were using a large needle and putting stitches in a place that should never have any sort of needle anywhere near it! But I didn’t care. My baby was here and she was perfect. During this time, I did something else I didn’t think I’d do—I asked to see the placenta, and it was fascinating! Laura showed me all the parts, including that double-bag that was so tough to break! I am very glad I took the time to do that- It was my daughter’s home for 10 months, and such an amazing thing that a woman’s body can do—Create something new for the sole purpose of sustaining another life.
Tim brought Allison back to me after the initial checks. We tried our first nursing session- She seemed to have all the basics down, she just needed to work on perfecting her skills. Of course, we learned later that that would take a lot of time and work! (Allison was 3 ½ weeks old when I wrote this, and we were still working hard to perfect her nursing!)
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He didn't let on until months later how disappointed he was that my name was NOT Leia. We were friends most of the year (my freshman year, his junior) and we started dating at the end of the year. Been together ever since! It was 11 years this past April.
She is very agile and we taught her to get up and down from the bed pretty early on.
: but if she does it's in the car then I move her to my bed, sometimes DH or MIL can get her down reading to her, but I haven't ever been able to get her to sleep for a nap without nursing, and she weaned in February. 
