I don't know why but I can't seem to shorten his birth story 
In my defense, it was a LONG one!
I'll start by saying that both my boys have made me be patient. DS1 by coming 9 days late and Everett by starting early but making me be patient through 3 very long days.
Wednesday, May 14th, I finalized plans with my work about who to call if my labour started early etc. and I made arrangements with my replacement to come with me on the 15th. It was the last thing on my before labor "to do list". I also had a midwife appointment and we went over just about everything, due to scheduling I hadn't seen "my" midwife for several weeks so it was great to catch up.
That evening before bed I had a bit of a pity party. Despite being 2+ weeks short of my "due" date, I was feeling anxious that this baby would be late like the last one and have a different outcome than what we had been planning and hoping for. DH gave me a good pep talk, reassured me that we were still weeks away and tried to get me out of my funk.
DS1 woke up very briefly around midnight, as usual I put him back down and went to pee. I just got back upstairs and felt a drip. Hmmmm. Went back downstairs, grabbed a prefold and went back to bed to try and sleep. I tried for 45 minutes or so but with light tightenings coming every 2-3 minutes, I decided I'd go downstairs for awhile. I tried a few different things to stay comfortable, finally settled on a glass of wine and dozed for a couple hours. DH woke up at one point, I told him what was up and told him to go back to sleep. It was bound to be a long day!
The tightenings seemed pretty strong and were consistently 2-3 minutes apart so I was sure baby would arrive before too long.
I made other arrangements for work, DH decided to stay home and we went on with our day. We went for a long walk to the back of the farm, entertained DS1 and I set about my "pre labour plans" of baking bread and a birthday cake for the Baby's one and only real birthday.
The day dragged on, I took a nap for awhile and the tightenings shifted to every 10 minutes. Finally overnight they all but stopped and I slept for several hours and awoke feeling refreshed but also disappointed.
I went for a long walk by myself first thing in the morning and had a good chat with baby, explaining how much easier his start to life on the outside would be if he came out soon.
Everything all but petered out throughout the day. We went for a drive which he didn't seem to appreciate, I could feel him bracing himself against the sides with every turn. I thought for sure it would speed things up.
I also tried taking some castor oil, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected, but it also didn't have the desired results. Tightenings stayed around 10-20 minutes apart. I took a shower which seemed to stall everything completely, had a short nap which didn't help either.
Eventually nighttime came and we called it a day.
Throughout the night the tightenings came every 20 minutes or so, accompanied by sharp pain across the front of my pubic bone and down the sides of my hips. I honestly couldn't feel the tightenings themselves because of this. I gave up trying to sleep, went downstairs and tried to find some info. I started to think that maybe baby was stuck on my pubic bone so I did some lunges and other exercises to try and get him to shift. Suddenly that sharp pubic bone pain disappeared. It didn't do much to help the hip pain though!
The following morning I caved and checked myself - 3-4cm, 90% effaced with waters bulging still. Not what I was hoping for but at least SOMETHING was happening! We decided to go out for breakfast because things were clearly not going anywhere and we needed to get out of the house. I also suggested going garage saleing to get our minds off of things.
Tightenings continued every 10-12 minutes but we made it through breakfast with I think only one other patron noticing my discomfort We then drove by some garage sales and did a short trip through the grocery store for some essentials. We went for another walk which didn't seem to do a darn thing.
Things continued to just go at a very slow pace, nothing got better or worse.
We finally decided to call the midwife for some advice mid-afternoon. She came over, listened to the baby's heart rate, made sure he was in a good position and listened to me whine about the searing hip pain. She offered some words of encouragement, assured us that we weren't really on a countdown yet due to it being a small leak and left us with some labour tincture. I started taking the labour tincture around 6pm, made it through two doses and threw up. At this point DS1 was not interested in napping despite needing it - something about having daddy home so many days in a row and his routine completely disrupted. DH took him over to the neighbors so we could focus on labour.
I took another couple rounds of the tincture then I finally caved and hopped in the bathtub to try and alleviate the hip pain. It felt SO much better! Along with rubbing peppermint oil on my hips and lower back, it made a huge difference. (highly recommend the peppermind oil!!) But I still couldn't feel distinct pain from the contractions themselves.
After a couple more hours I decided I needed to poo, that was surely what was holding everything up. Tightenings continued to be steady at 6-6.5 minutes and around a minute long so we were ready for another long night. I laid on the floor, whining and complaining and started telling DH that maybe we should go to the hospital. I would really appreciate a shot of demerol and/or maybe some gravol and that I wasn't sure if I could make it much longer nevermind through the night again. He reassured me that obviously things were progressing, I had warned him I would start talking crazy like that!
I caved again and checked myself, what do you know - bag of water was right there and I wasn't positive but it felt like I was fully dilated.
So I laboured on the toilet for awhile, much to DH's dismay. He was quite worried I would have the baby IN the toilet but I had assured him ahead of time that it wasn't that bad of an idea. Especially mess wise It didn't occur to me that the hip pain had suddenly stopped. In between tightenings that really weren't that painful compared to the hip pain, DH read aloud from our birthing manual and outlined everything that was actually happening. I joked to him that clearly that book is my user manual.
At one point I had this light spontaneous push which I thought was for the poo that I was convinced was holding things up Then my water broke with a healthy splash and I told DH he'd better find those gloves from the birth box!
I thoughtfully started to squat beside the bathtub, DH put towels down everywhere and watched as with a spontaneous push, the baby's head started to show. There was a long gap between pushing, around 1.5 minutes then the next urge would come and a little more head would show. DH exclaimed that he had hair I asked him if it was dark and he said "Yes, he has a mop!" Just like the baby I dreamt about!
After a couple more spontaneous pushes, about 6 in total over 8-10 minutes with me not actually doing any pushing on purpose, he sat on the brink of being born then suddenly his head popped out, then an arm and with a big gush he splashed out with the cord wrapped around his body a couple times. He let out a good cry and started to pink up right away. We paged the midwife and asked her to come when she could, cut the cord when it stopped pulsing, moved the show to the livingroom before the placenta nicely came out - that was a relief feeling! Baby was interested in nursing pretty quickly which I was hoping for to help with the after-bleeding. He was a little chilly so we got him on the heating pad, the midwife showed up and did all her paperwork and checks. While she put in a few stitches (which I was a suck about to be honest!) the 2nd midwife came and measured baby and checked him over - he's perfect of course
We all had birthday cake and called it a night!
In my defense, it was a LONG one!I'll start by saying that both my boys have made me be patient. DS1 by coming 9 days late and Everett by starting early but making me be patient through 3 very long days.
Wednesday, May 14th, I finalized plans with my work about who to call if my labour started early etc. and I made arrangements with my replacement to come with me on the 15th. It was the last thing on my before labor "to do list". I also had a midwife appointment and we went over just about everything, due to scheduling I hadn't seen "my" midwife for several weeks so it was great to catch up.
That evening before bed I had a bit of a pity party. Despite being 2+ weeks short of my "due" date, I was feeling anxious that this baby would be late like the last one and have a different outcome than what we had been planning and hoping for. DH gave me a good pep talk, reassured me that we were still weeks away and tried to get me out of my funk.
DS1 woke up very briefly around midnight, as usual I put him back down and went to pee. I just got back upstairs and felt a drip. Hmmmm. Went back downstairs, grabbed a prefold and went back to bed to try and sleep. I tried for 45 minutes or so but with light tightenings coming every 2-3 minutes, I decided I'd go downstairs for awhile. I tried a few different things to stay comfortable, finally settled on a glass of wine and dozed for a couple hours. DH woke up at one point, I told him what was up and told him to go back to sleep. It was bound to be a long day!
The tightenings seemed pretty strong and were consistently 2-3 minutes apart so I was sure baby would arrive before too long.
I made other arrangements for work, DH decided to stay home and we went on with our day. We went for a long walk to the back of the farm, entertained DS1 and I set about my "pre labour plans" of baking bread and a birthday cake for the Baby's one and only real birthday.
The day dragged on, I took a nap for awhile and the tightenings shifted to every 10 minutes. Finally overnight they all but stopped and I slept for several hours and awoke feeling refreshed but also disappointed.
I went for a long walk by myself first thing in the morning and had a good chat with baby, explaining how much easier his start to life on the outside would be if he came out soon.
Everything all but petered out throughout the day. We went for a drive which he didn't seem to appreciate, I could feel him bracing himself against the sides with every turn. I thought for sure it would speed things up.
I also tried taking some castor oil, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected, but it also didn't have the desired results. Tightenings stayed around 10-20 minutes apart. I took a shower which seemed to stall everything completely, had a short nap which didn't help either.
Eventually nighttime came and we called it a day.
Throughout the night the tightenings came every 20 minutes or so, accompanied by sharp pain across the front of my pubic bone and down the sides of my hips. I honestly couldn't feel the tightenings themselves because of this. I gave up trying to sleep, went downstairs and tried to find some info. I started to think that maybe baby was stuck on my pubic bone so I did some lunges and other exercises to try and get him to shift. Suddenly that sharp pubic bone pain disappeared. It didn't do much to help the hip pain though!
The following morning I caved and checked myself - 3-4cm, 90% effaced with waters bulging still. Not what I was hoping for but at least SOMETHING was happening! We decided to go out for breakfast because things were clearly not going anywhere and we needed to get out of the house. I also suggested going garage saleing to get our minds off of things.
Tightenings continued every 10-12 minutes but we made it through breakfast with I think only one other patron noticing my discomfort
We then drove by some garage sales and did a short trip through the grocery store for some essentials. We went for another walk which didn't seem to do a darn thing.Things continued to just go at a very slow pace, nothing got better or worse.
We finally decided to call the midwife for some advice mid-afternoon. She came over, listened to the baby's heart rate, made sure he was in a good position and listened to me whine about the searing hip pain. She offered some words of encouragement, assured us that we weren't really on a countdown yet due to it being a small leak and left us with some labour tincture. I started taking the labour tincture around 6pm, made it through two doses and threw up. At this point DS1 was not interested in napping despite needing it - something about having daddy home so many days in a row and his routine completely disrupted. DH took him over to the neighbors so we could focus on labour.
I took another couple rounds of the tincture then I finally caved and hopped in the bathtub to try and alleviate the hip pain. It felt SO much better! Along with rubbing peppermint oil on my hips and lower back, it made a huge difference. (highly recommend the peppermind oil!!) But I still couldn't feel distinct pain from the contractions themselves.
After a couple more hours I decided I needed to poo, that was surely what was holding everything up. Tightenings continued to be steady at 6-6.5 minutes and around a minute long so we were ready for another long night. I laid on the floor, whining and complaining and started telling DH that maybe we should go to the hospital. I would really appreciate a shot of demerol and/or maybe some gravol and that I wasn't sure if I could make it much longer nevermind through the night again. He reassured me that obviously things were progressing, I had warned him I would start talking crazy like that!
I caved again and checked myself, what do you know - bag of water was right there and I wasn't positive but it felt like I was fully dilated.
So I laboured on the toilet for awhile, much to DH's dismay. He was quite worried I would have the baby IN the toilet but I had assured him ahead of time that it wasn't that bad of an idea. Especially mess wise
It didn't occur to me that the hip pain had suddenly stopped. In between tightenings that really weren't that painful compared to the hip pain, DH read aloud from our birthing manual and outlined everything that was actually happening. I joked to him that clearly that book is my user manual.At one point I had this light spontaneous push which I thought was for the poo that I was convinced was holding things up
Then my water broke with a healthy splash and I told DH he'd better find those gloves from the birth box!I thoughtfully started to squat beside the bathtub, DH put towels down everywhere and watched as with a spontaneous push, the baby's head started to show. There was a long gap between pushing, around 1.5 minutes then the next urge would come and a little more head would show. DH exclaimed that he had hair I asked him if it was dark and he said "Yes, he has a mop!" Just like the baby I dreamt about!
After a couple more spontaneous pushes, about 6 in total over 8-10 minutes with me not actually doing any pushing on purpose, he sat on the brink of being born then suddenly his head popped out, then an arm and with a big gush he splashed out with the cord wrapped around his body a couple times. He let out a good cry and started to pink up right away. We paged the midwife and asked her to come when she could, cut the cord when it stopped pulsing, moved the show to the livingroom before the placenta nicely came out - that was a relief feeling! Baby was interested in nursing pretty quickly which I was hoping for to help with the after-bleeding. He was a little chilly so we got him on the heating pad, the midwife showed up and did all her paperwork and checks. While she put in a few stitches (which I was a suck about to be honest!) the 2nd midwife came and measured baby and checked him over - he's perfect of course
We all had birthday cake and called it a night!
