Birth story

Our story starts Tuesday when I had my last appointment. When I was checked I was dilated to a 3 and 50% effaced. This was about where I was with EmmaLynn the week before I delivered her. We talked about taking a magic pill that will induce labor, however, the midwife wanted me to be closer to my due date before taking it. I would have to wait till next Tuesday, and if I hadn't gone into labor by then, she'd give me the pill. I was a little disappointed, I would have taken it then and there, but I guess I could wait. I loaded up on the red raspberry leaf tea over the next few days. Wednesday I finished my car seat cover, and nothing much else happened. Thursday I spent the day getting everything ready. I rearranged the room, polished the cradle, set up the change table, and did all of our laundry. Finally I packed up the baby stuff into the bag to take to the birth center with us. After doing all that work, I started to have contractions, this was very exciting to me. They were about 20-30 minutes apart.. So I met up with Eleasha and added some homeopathic stuff to the red raspberry leaf tea. The contractions went for about 3 hours.. then stopped when I settled down for the night.

Friday was the day it started. I went and did my visiting teaching and when I got home I tried to call the midwife to see if I could get the pill that day, instead of waiting till tuesday. I wasn't able to get a hold of her so I put it off for a little while longer. I had some lunch before we went out to finish picking up those last things we'd need for birth. On our way out to the door, I looked at Dan and said... " maybe we should grab the baby birth bag just in case and get it in the car" So he took it out to the car... When I got to the car ready to get in that is when it happened... I told Dan " just a second... I think my water might have just broke." I went inside to see if I just needed to go to the bathroom and found I was right, it had broken. I couldn't believe it, I didn't need the pill after all.. I did it all by myself... I was so excited and so ready to have a baby.

I was supposed to go to the New Moon movie with my sister in law that night, and by the time 6 rolled around no contractions still, so I went to the movie. It was alright... the contractions still hadn't started when the movie was over just a few here and there so we hung out and had some pizza. Then i went to bed... contractions waking me every 30 minutes and getting closer.. so I had a lot of intermittent sleep. Finally at 5 am they were consistently 5 minutes apart. I woke Dan up and called the midwife and we headed to the birth center. At 6 am I was dilated to a 6 almost 7... I couldn't believe it, with EmmaLynn we were so much farther after so much time. Clearly this was a very different delivery than with EmmaLynn. By the time I got to a 9 I was sooooooo exhausted and hungry... I was in the water, and this only helped to relax me more and slow the contractions down.. I hit the 9 cm around 9 am.. but couldn't quite push past the 9 for several hours. Finally we decided the water was just slowing us down so, I got out and laid down and slept between the contractions that gave me the tiny bit of energy to speed the contractions back up and finally at 1:45 our little boy was born. I swear I heard him cry a little before his head was fully out and that gave me the last bit of energy I needed to push him out. Then once he was out... I just cried... I was so exhausted and tired I just wanted some food and sleep and to hold my baby.

I was so glad Eleasha was able to be there with me, she was such a great support to have there. She helped so much feeding me and giving me water and holding my head and just being there to help me and keep me positive. My midwife and her assistant were fantastic and super supportive, and Dan was great helping me to hold onto him to finally push the baby out at the end. Overall it was a long exhausting but incredibly exciting and happy day.