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| Paul's birth was a joyous experience, any birth after this one will have to excellent to even compare.
I had a lot of prelabor stuff for about 2 weeks before Paul was born; he was born 3 weeks "early" so this would be 5 weeks before his due date. I lost my mucous plug on Saturday, on Sunday I felt just like I do before my period starts, and had quite a bit of spotting. I did a self-exam and found that I was already 3 cm. dilated. I kept in close contact with the midwife; we were both getting nervous about the distance she had to drive and worried she wouldn't make it in time. So, we decided to speed things along. She and her assistant came on Tuesday night and put the suppository in to induce. (I'm sorry, I can't remember exactly what it was. If anyone knows, let me know.) Almost immediately I started having INTENSE contractions. They didn't hurt at all, but I felt like my uterus would split it was so powerful. I finally had to go get in the bath to relax. I felt like I had a lot of gas and was cramping up not being able to release it (the midwives prescence made me inhibited about that). When i got into the bath, everything stopped. This was about 11m and we had started at 9. Jennifer, my midwife thought it was going to be a very fast labor. At about 1 she gave me another suppository, and we went for a walk. I was very giddy, knowing I would shortly be holding my child. Finally about 3 I dozed off. I would wake up for a contraction and then go back to sleep again. We slept till about 6. When we got up I got another suppository, the same thing was happening; long, intense contractions, and pretty close together, uut very little progress. At about 3 in the afternoon on Wednesday (which happened to be my birthday), she checked me and found I was at 7 cm. We started talking about breaking my water then, but I wanted to wait a little while longer. Jennifer said that if I didn't progress and decided to not break my water that the contractions would probably stop and I'd be pregnant for another week. Boy, what discouraging news. I didn't feel like giving up after all the time I'd invested in this labor. At 5 she checked me again and I was still at 7 cm.
I'll add here that this whole labor had been intense contractions, some I had to breathe through, some I had to rock through, some I went into the tub for, but I could get through them easily. I knew all this would change as soon as my water broke, but I decided to do it. When she was examining me to break the water, I had a contraction. She was pretty surprised by the intensity of it, as I had been handling them so well. She told me afterwards that she knew then the baby would have come then whether she broke the water or not. She first tried an amnicot, but couldn't break the sac. After several tries with the hook, she finally got it to break. Raoul, my husband, had been instructed to have the bath water hot for me, and I went straight upstairs to hop in. While in there I had my first, let's go to the hospital thoughts. I had probably 5 or 6 contractions in there before the water wasn't working. I went back downstairs and had 2 contractions on the way. I had a couple of contractions in the living room, and couldn't get through them with the same techniques I'd used before. Jennifer was so helpful at this point, up until now she'd really been in the background, just watching. I was really getting to the breaking point and she interjected her nice calm voice saying "Victoria, just imagine the baby coming down to come out, just think about opening up and letting him come out." I laid there and concentrated on those few words. For the next contraction I was completely relaxed and had NO PAIN! I was shocked. I tensed up before the next one and had pain again. Jennifer said later she didn't know what was wrong, thought the labor had stopped or something when I wasn't writhing through contractions for those few minutes. After those 2 contractions I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. So, I went in. This is really embarassing for me to talk about here, but bear with me. It felt sooo good to use the bathroom. Just to push that stuff out, just the pushing. I knew then that I had to be close, I wanted to push again because it made me feel better, but the toilet wasn't very comfortable. I squatted down in there, and that felt very good. Then I went and tried the bed out, but couldn't get comfortable. I got out again and squatted holding onto the bed post. I started doing preliminary little pushes. Jennifer came in at this point and saw what was going on. She quickly set up the birth stool and called in the assistant. From the time I got on the birth stool to Paul coming out was 2 minutes, and that was with my chin up panting through it all. When they let me push he just came flying out. His little face was black from coming out so quickly. What a joyous moment. He nursed for the first time about a half hour later. After nursing Raoul held him while I got stitched up. I tore along the line of my previous episiotomy; I know that him coming out so fast caused that, but I don't know how we could have gone slower. We really tried. If anyone wonders, I've had both an episiotomy and a tear. My tear was pretty bad, but it didn't feel nearly as bad as my episiotomy. I've now had one hospital and one home birth. If I have any choice, I'll never go back to the hospital for a birth again. I can't wait to have more children, just to experience child birth again.
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