Birth Story
Here's the story of my posterior nine pounder:
Sunday I woke up feeling worried about the baby, and called the midwife asking her to come over and listen again. When she came over; baby sounded OK, but not great. That being the case, I asked her strip my membranes. She did so; she said she'd had it done to her, so she tried to be very gentle- it was not as painful this time as with ds#1 for sure.
Only about 1/2 hour after she left I had a little contraction accompanied by a warm wet feeling *water broke!* I called my Midwife all happy and told her I hoped I would be much less cheerful next time I talked to her (boy was I). Continued puttering around the house. James was already at my brother's, so we didn't have to worry about him.
Contactions during this time were hardly painful, but I was losing more and more mucous plug so I knew things were happening. Dh started filling the birth tub. Around 5pm I played a card game with dh and ctx were getting stronger. By 6 I said we should time them, and over the next hour they went from manageable to crazy pain. They felt different than my first labor. During this hour I had gotten in the tub a couple times, which provided some relief, but not much, then I'd just have to get out to go pee. The ctx were so hard- I was really having a hard time finding any way to remotely be comfortable. Dh was wonderful- at one point I was in the midst of really deep pain and I heard him say "It'll be a beautiful baby", and that got in to me and helped so much. I found myself during some contractions repeating, "I can do it, I can do it" And sometimes, "it will be done, it will be done, it will be over"
Whew- Around 7pm, when dh called the midwives, I wound up pushing some during the contractions. By the time Midwife # 1 showed up I was pushing. She walked in and went- "oh- I better get set up" I heard her calling the other midwife and saying, "I just walked into Alissa's, and she's pushing" Midwife #2 and apprentice showed up at some point. I could not find a good position to push in. Each contraction brought pushing, but didn't feel right. Instinctualy I felt things weren't as they should be. They didn't feel coordinated, and I actually found myself wondering if I could do this. We tried a number of different positions- my legs would get so tired I wanted to find a way to rest, but couldn't.
The baby was stuck. And then we began hearing heart decelerations on the doppler. Serious heart decels that were
scary to hear. They got oxygen on me and we tried more positions but he wasn't coming down- I could feel it wasn't working. The midwives were having me push while trying to stretch things out and sometimes rubbing the baby's head to keep the heart rate up. They told me, "let's try one more push in a squat and if that doesn't work we'll need to go to the hospital, this baby might need help." Squatting didn't work-
So during pushing labor I had to get on a robe & get into the car with my oxygen and lay on my right side.
: Somehow made it to the hospital, out of the car, walked into L&D, into the elevator, leaning on WONDERFUL Dh through pushing contractions. I made it into the room they had prepared for me and onto the bed, and all that movement had helped baby turn enough from posterior that my pushes started working. SO GREATFULL!!! Pushing suddenly felt SO MUCH better! Only about 10 minutes after arrival I was crowning- they didn't even have time to place an IV on me. The doctor on call walked in after the head was out and put a bit of traction on it to help get the shoulders out. Once he was out and we found out we had a boy, they weighed him and I was shocked to hear he was 9lbs 6oz. holy moly- no wonder he was having a hard time turning in there. I was just so glad he was out and I couldn't believe I did it. I felt so amazed to have such a whirlwind birth and wind up at the hospital and STILL have an intervention free birth with both of us healthy. I am so greatfull for how it all turned out, I can't believe I had only an hour of active (though be it killer) labor. Then about a 2 1/2 hour second stage. And I'm feeling really good- better than after my first birth!
Well thanks for reading what felt like an epic to me. Birth is such an amazing experience. I guess that stays the same for each baby born
He has the cutest little mouth!
