Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Birth Story

Avery's birth was quite different than Cohen's birth. Let's start from the week prior to Avery's arrival.

On August 17th and 18th I began having contractions around 6:00 in the evening. They were never consistent and lasted about 3 hours in length, then just stopped. The morning of the 18th I had a midwife appointment and was surprised to find I was almost 5 cm dilated. But since I was 3 cm dilated with Cohen, I didn't get my hopes up. The weekend came and went. And it was a hard weekend. I was ready to be done being pregnant. I wanted to hold my baby and I wanted to be comfortable again. I woke Monday morning feeling pretty good. I took Cohen to play group and continued our usual Monday routine. I was having back pains infrequently all day, but didn't think too much of it. Later that early evening I mention to Jason that I had been getting a lot of back pain throughout the day and they seemed to be coming more frequent throughout dinner. But since I wasn't having any discomfort in my abdomen, I again, didn't think anything of it. He asked me if I wanted to go to Candlelight practice with him that evening, so in case anything happened, we'd all be together. I decided not to go since I thought it would be harder to chase after a 2 year old if anything really did happen. And I would feel more comfortable going into labor at my home versus somewhere else in public.

At 6:30 I started timing my contractions. I did that for the next hour and 40 minutes when at 8:10 I had a huge contraction and thought I should probably call Jason. I think this may be the real deal. I called Jay and said..

"I think you should come home now."

" You think?"

"Well, I just had this huge contraction, but none of my timings have been consistent. I don't know. [huge contraction] Yeah, I think you should come home."

"Okay I'm going to come home. They just got done with the recording and now they are just playing it back."

"Okay. Bye"

At that time I started to get my bag ready all while having one contraction right after the other with not much of a break in between. Then I decided I better call my mom. No answer. Then I call my dad. Not answer. I call the midwife and tried talking to her through my contractions and she decided I should definitely come in.

At 8:25 I called Jason to see where he was. Well, more like "Are you almost here?"

I called my mom again and finally got through to her and told her I needed her to come get Cohen. Then because she is on speaker phone and Cohen is with me, she proceeds to have a conversation with him. To then which I yelled, "Bye!!!" Called my dad again and told him what was going on and he was going to call my mom and meet up with us at the birthing center.

Jason finally got home. I between every contraction we gathered all our bags and put Cohen in the car. As we were pulling out, my mom drove up and we yelled out the window for her to just follow us.

I was so thankful that the birthing center was only 10 minutes away. There was so much pressure down there that I couldn't even sit down in the car. I was propping myself up and trying to breathe through the contractions. At one point I had to tell Jay to slow down. I didn't want to die in the car from his weaving in and out of cars on the way to the birthing center. I swear he was going 70 in a 45. Plus there was a Police Station up ahead, I didn't need a line a police cars following us to the birthing center on a high speed chase that'd we'd be watching on the 11:00 news later that night.

We got to the birthing center at 8:45. I jumped out of the car and went inside right away where I was greeted my the midwife and another huge contraction. Once I got through that one we headed back to our room where she then checked me. I was shocked to find only a rim left and my waters ready to pop out. She then asked if I wanted to get into the tub and very forthright said, "yes".

It felt so good to get into the water. The hot water helped alleviate a lot of the pressure I was feeling all around and even helped with the contractions. I just sat as calmly as I could in the water, thankful to be able to have a water birth that I had been hoping for. I went through less than 10 contractions when my water broke. My urge to push became greater at that moment. I was trying my hardest to just breath down the baby, but all i wanted to do was push. I think I pushed about 5 times before the babies head came out. Then two or 3 more pushes after the midwife said, "Now, deliver your baby!" So, without hesitation I grabbed her right under her arms and began to pull her up. "Wait! Wait!" I had to stop pulling for a minute so they could get the umbilical cord loose because it was wrapped around her arm. I was then able to bring her up and asked "Is it still a Girl?" Then I just checked for myself. And it was! At that point I just held her. Looking at her. Screaming in my face. We waited for the cord to stop pulsing and then Jay was able to cut the cord.

We then transitioned into the bed and they let us have family time, just the three of us until we were ready for the rest of our family to visit. Four hours later we were allowed to go home and sleep in our own beds.

We forgot our camera and video camera. Of course. But my mom did have her work camera, so we did catch just a few pictures. Here they are...

meeting Avery





2 comments:

  1. that's awesome! I'm hoping to be able to do VBAC with a midwife when we decide to have our next baby. Congratulations again on a beautiful little girl!

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  2. Thanks Patty! I really hope you can have the VBAC. That would be so great. It's hard work but oh so worth it.

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