Joy's birth story

MandMLeona · August 2014

This was my third and last birth. Each has been markedly different. I'm lucky to have midwives who are familiar with my history.

Short story: Josephine (Joy) Ruth was born Monday at 6:58 pm. She was a planned homebirth and was born in the birth tub. I had 40 minutes of active labor and 3 minutes of pushing. My water broke during pushing.

Long story:

I woke up Monday feeling normal...just the usual BH contractions. At 10 am I had one sharp contraction with a peak. I told DH he wasn't going to work (He works 80 miles away) and sent my midwife a text.. At 10:30 daycare called and had a slot for the day for DD2. Yay!

I continued working from home and tried to finish up documentation. I was having mild contractions with peaks but they were very inconsistent. One would be a minute long, but I'd have 15 minutes to the next 30 sec contraction followed by another 2 minutes later. I gave up tracking them. I worked until 1 and then decided to take a shower to see if the contractions would stop. I had a couple of contractions in the shower and a 2:00 conference call looming. I knew I would be too emotional for the confrontation I expected to have, so I cancelled the meeting and logged off work.

I wandered around for an hour with no real direction (I guess I wasted my nesting on work). I decided to take a nap at 3:00. I slept for an hour and woke up feeling normal. I thought I'd cried wolf. Five minutes later I had a mild contraction. Five minutes later I had a sharp contraction. I told my DH to start filling the birth tub and I called my midwife. How many care providers would have come for someone who said she'd had one sharp contraction? But mine didn't hesitate.

I called a couple of people and got care arranged for older DDs for the evening. DH found the fitting had broken since our last birth. He didn't want to leave, but I insisted I had others on their way. (If only he'd tried the fitting last month like I asked.) DH was back by 5. Our midwives were there a short time later. I was still talking through contractions. Our midife checked on Joy every 20 minutes or so, but she was always very happy.

At 6:15 it was uncomfortable to not get to the hands and knees position for a contraction and shifting to that position each time was slow. By 6:30 I knew if the tub wasn't ready I wasn't going to make it in. I came out to the living room where the tub was and felt feverish and nauseous...I'd hit transition. I considered telling them, but didn't. I got in the tub and it was cooler than I hoped and not as full as last time. So my midwife had to apply compresses to my pelvis to keep it warm while on my hands and knees.

I remember being stuck in my head instead of just going with things. I talked to Joy during each contraction and remember thinking I understand why pain meds are appealing (a thought I didn't have for my first two). The last couple of contractions ran together and my wrists were getting sore, so I leaned on the side of the pool and suddenly started pushing. I felt her descend and felt the start of the ring of fire. I talked through even the pushing. From God Bless to ow, ow,ow. It was bizarre to me to have words the whole time. She came out in 2 pushes.

She hated the cool water, too. She took a second to breathe, but then she complained for many minutes. Her head and chest were both 13 and 3/4 inches. Her apgars were 9/9.

She's been a great sleeper *knock on wood*. I think my milk is coming in, so we're off to the races.