I woke up anxious on Wed. morning (12/8/04) because we had an appt with the Birth Center and I was going to get the results of my iron test. I had been severely anemic and had problems getting my iron levels up. If I didn’t get them above the appropriate level before the birth then I would have to go to the hospital instead and I really didn’t want that. So, to calm my nerves before the appt, I decided to pack for the birth. I already had a ridiculously long list of stuff made up so it was pretty easy to just gather everything and pack it into bags. After packing, we headed to the center and saw Athar & Anjum, one of the couples from our birthing class. I was mentioning how I didn’t feel like I was going to give birth anytime soon. It just didn’t feel like anything was happening and I wasn’t feeling the impatience that I heard everyone else got a couple of weeks beforehand. The midwife, Sandra, came out and told me that I looked glowy and asked if I was in early labor. I laughed at the thought and said “No, of course not, ha ha”. Sandra checked my cervix and I was 0% effaced with 0 dilation, but she did mention that my cervix was “starting to soften”. She thought it would be 2-3 weeks and definitely not in the next week or so. I told her that is what I had thought as well. Initially (a few weeks before), I was sure she was going to be early, but now I was convinced she wouldn’t make it before Christmas. The good news was my iron levels were all okay. We went home and I headed out to yoga class. During the class we worked on legs and arms quite a bit more than usual, and I came home feeling really good and relaxed but worked out. Rob was at climbing and when he got home he told me how he really climbed hard and totally wore himself out esp. his arms. I sent him out for milk around 10:30p and while he was gone I got some bloody show. I thought that it would mean only a couple of days until I went into labor but wasn’t sure so I checked one of the various books we had lying around. The book said it could be hours, days, or weeks before labor started so I went back to being unexcited. I told Rob about it when he got home. I was sleepy so I had him put me to bed around 11:00 or so. Before I went to sleep, Rob said that he had just finished all his tasks at work that needed to be done before he took off 5 weeks for the birth. So we told six that everything was all ready for her and she could show up whenever she wanted. And so around 12:00, I fell asleep and Rob proceeded to have some drinks and play Xbox games really late.

At 2:30am, I woke up with a contraction that was different from the many Braxton-Hicks ones I had been getting. I went to the bathroom and then tried to go back to sleep. Around 3:00, Rob came up to bed and was surprised to find me awake. I told him about the new contractions but that they were irregular and probably false labor. While we were talking, I had 2 of them really close together. We decided between all the laughing to go ahead and time them. At this point, they were 5 minutes apart and over a minute long. It was obviously not false labor. I decided to take all the advice I’d heard and try to get some sleep. After about 30 minutes of Rob reading to me (it usually only takes 5), I decided to go into the other room and watch some TV. As I was getting into the other bed at 4:30am, my water broke… just like in the movies, gushing all over the floor. That was the first time we really realized that we were going to have a baby that day. I told Rob that we should discuss plans for a c-section since my water broke and we were now “on the clock”. Since absolutely nothing had been happening, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to pull out a full labor in time and they would have to go and get her. We made a few decisions and I had Rob start packing his stuff up. The contractions started getting much heavier and closer together but I could still talk and move around through them. I was still gushing water with almost every contraction, but I managed to get comfortable enough on the bed to relax through them. Around 7:00, I told Rob that soon I wouldn’t be able to talk through them. He started to pack stuff into the car and 15 minutes later, I could no longer talk and he called the birth center. Sandra was on call and told us she lived in Hutto and that it would take about an hour to get there. We were supposed to meet her at 8:30. I told Rob that we should head out immediately cause I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the car if we waited. It took me 45 min to make it downstairs to the car and we got to the center around 8:45. Sandra quickly checked me and declared me to be 4 cm. I then decided to throw up for about 5 minutes. I walked back to the room and got comfortable reclined on the bed in a modified tailor pose. This is the position we end yoga in for the relaxation and meditation. It really helped that my entire body knew what to do without much effort on my part.

I was totally prepared for a long, boring, many-houred labor. We found out that there were 2 other couples in labor on their way in to the center. We didn’t yet know that one of the couples was Leo and Selene, another couple from our birthing class. After about an hour of hanging out in the reclined position just breathing deeply and meditating, I suddenly decided that hands and knees was a much idea and that my head really needed to be shoved tightly into the pillows I was using. I remember Rob mentioning to Sandra (who was mostly out of the room dealing with all the craziness of having 3 couples in at once) that I had started some primal-sounding moaning. I hadn’t realized I had been doing that. My only thought at that point was that I was moaning and I wasn’t even in transition yet! I mean I couldn’t be cause not enough time had passed. I thought “Wow, this is pretty painful already and if it gets that much worse during transition, then this is going to really suck.” Poor Rob and Sandra had nothing to do and just kinda hung out and watched me breathe the entire time. I vaguely remember them having a short conversation about how I was just sitting there breathing and doing nothing and that they didn’t know what to do. Rob mentioned that I did a bunch of yoga and that was probably where the breathing came from. After a very short while (maybe 45 min – an hour), I felt like I really had to go to the bathroom and needed to push. The feeling was very overwhelming so I mentioned this to Sandra. She checked me and told me I was only 7 cm and probably shouldn’t push yet. I was a bit confused though because I really shouldn’t be to the pushing phase yet, cause it still hadn’t been long enough and I hadn’t hit transition yet (ha ha). So I hung out and didn’t give in to the pushing instinct… for about 15 minutes. At that point, I told Sandra that I had to push and was going to do so, there was nothing I could do about it. She checked me one more time and said that I was at 10 cm so I should go for it.

Hands and knees was really not where I wanted to be so I ended up on my left side with my right leg stuck straight into the air. I demanded that Rob hold onto the leg and hold it straight up and that he needed to put his knee into my back. I pushed like this for a little bit and finally realized that I was actually pushing a baby out when I could feel her moving down into position. Rob was crying hysterically and had been for quite awhile and kept having problems holding up my leg. I kept telling him that he needed to hold it up more but poor Rob had spent so much arm energy at climbing the night before and the crying wasn’t helping. So when her head got close, I decided I wanted to squat but couldn’t really move into that position, so I ended up on my back. That is the absolutely last position I ever thought I would find myself in when pushing. I had my knees pulled back into a severe squat position and it ended up working out great anyway. I could crunch with my stomach and pull my legs in and it gave me great leverage. I felt her crown and they told me I could touch her head. I did but it left my hands really slimy and I had problems getting the same purchase with the squat. So I quickly had them clean my hand and I got down to business. I was pushing the head out for what seemed like forever. Rob and Sandra both kept telling me what great progress I was making and I could feel her head moving farther out. But it went on so long that I thought they must be lying to me and she was sliding back in after each contraction. I decided to really push much harder to finish the job cause otherwise I might be there all day. That’s when I tore unfortunately. I just didn’t listen to my body or Rob or Sandra. But it was okay, cause her head finally made it out.

Rob said to me “Her head is out, her eyes are open and she’s looking straight at me.” It was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. Her head came out at the very end of a long contraction and it was a relatively long time until I had another one. Sandra worked on suctioning her nose and mouth and told us that she was already breathing and pinking up. She wasn’t even fully out yet! When the next contraction came, I easily pushed out her tiny shoulders and Sandra said I could grab her. I put my hands under her arms and pulled her to my chest at 12:31pm on Dec. 9th not realizing that I would feel the rest of her getting pulled out of me. That was such a crazy, weird, incredible feeling and then she was on my chest and already trying to move towards my breast to feed. She was so beautiful and tiny and perfect and I was so happy to have her in my arms. I delivered the placenta pretty much immediately and then Sandra had Rob cut the cord. Everything was perfect.

And then the craziness started. I started bleeding like crazy and we suddenly had 3 midwives in the room giving me multiple shots of stuff to make my uterus contract and massaging my fundus which I swear hurt more than the birth and really pissed me off, but had to be done. Rob took Six from my arms and had some really good immediate bonding time with her and she was able to distract him from everything going on with me which was great. I never felt really bad or dizzy or anything so I knew I was going to be okay. It was just really unpleasant having all the needles and I ended up with an IV. I also had to wait to hold my little girl again and feed her until I was stabilized. I was able to feed her within the hour though. Little girl was great and didn’t have much problem with the whole experience. She was a little shaky from low-blood sugar so they gave her a little formula while I breastfed her. She also needed to have her lungs suctioned a bit more with a tube cause they were pretty filled with mucus. Six didn’t have a problem at all with anything they did including the vitamin K shot or the mucus suction. She cried a little at the bath from the temperature change but was easily consolable. She was awake, alert, and happy the entire time. I wasn’t surprised though since she had been kicking and moving between contractions throughout the entire labor. I was so happy with the unmedicated, natural birth. They kept me a couple hours longer than normal but by 8:00 that night we were home and starting to get comfortable with the new family arrangement.

Overall, I had an amazing birth experience. It was exactly what I wanted and what I could only dream about for a perfect delivery. I can’t imagine it going much better (except for the bleeding of course). I was never scared or felt out of control. I’m not sure which was more helpful… being prepared or the fact that I always thought it was going to get much worse. Even with an incredibly fast labor, which is supposed to be more painful, it was never really as bad as I expected from all the stories I’ve heard. Relaxing and just letting things happen was awesome. I just let go of everything and let my body do whatever it needed to do and tried to meditate through the entire thing. I loved the whole thing, pain and all (cause it definitely wasn’t pain-free, just very tolerable amounts of it).