Team green turned team pink!

Short version: Phoebe Louise born at 41 weeks exactly, natural home water birth 8lbs 5oz, 23" long 12:20am 01-19-12

January 18th started out like any other day, another day pregnant, another day bitter. Levi was already 9 days old at this point and I was starting to hate the fact that my body wasn't "working" right. I had acupuncture the afternoon before and my contractions had about tripled since my appointment. At about 1pm I decided to take some castor oil and see if I could encourage some more action out of these contractions. 6pm rolled around and my body cleared itself out and I was having contractions every 2 minutes, nothing painful though. They petered off around 7 and I got discouraged again. I was on the computer and at 7:30 I had a contraction that was really uncomfortable, I had to get off the computer and walk around and rock my hips... now THIS was new. all of a sudden contractions were back to 3 minutes apart and every single one was uncomfortable/mildly painful. I did some laundry and took a shower and called my MW at about 8 and explained what was going on. I didn't want to make her come over if it was a false alarm, so we agreed that her apprentice would come over and check me and we would go from there (she lives 15 minutes away vs the hour away my MW was). Sera (the apprentice) arrived at 8:45 and checked me... 6cm! This was definitely the real thing. We all started to take apart the dining room and set up the pool and all the stuff for the birth. There was no way I was not staying busy. I continued to walk and would just rock when a contraction hit, my water didn't break so they were pretty bearable, nothing I couldn't talk through. My MW, her apprentice and assistant, my aunt and mom all retreated to the kitchen to munch on snacks and give me some space as I wanted to be alone. Andrea Boccelli was playing and the lights were dim and I just paced and paced. I asked to be checked at midnight to see if I had made any progression as I didn't feel anything intensifying, my legs were starting to get tired and I wanted to get in the pool and relax. I was at 8cm. Seeing as my birth with my first was 4.5 hours start to finish I was pretty discouraged.. 2cm in almost 4 hours? I figured I'd get in the pool anyway and just relax as I had an hour or two to go at this pace. I sunk down into the water at 12:05 and everything felt calm, I was scared it was going to make my labor stall. Boy was I wrong. I felt a contraction coming on and immediately knew I was transitioning as it became almost unbearable downward pressure. This is when my MWs assistant chimes in that I was only at this stage for 55 minutes with my first. "SCREW THAT! I am NOT lasting 55 minutes like this!" I thought. These contractions were long, lasting about 3 minutes. The next one came and I felt like I had to push, I put my hand inside and wasn't sure if I could feel the head up there or not, it certainly wasn't visible to the MW when she looked, I rolled through it, scared that it was premature as I was only 8cm 5 minutes ago. That went out the window when the next contraction hit, I couldn't hold back, held onto the side of the pool, screamed (so loud!) and pushed her out... in 1 contraction! She was born in the caul too. I pulled her out of the water and onto my chest and she started crying almost immediately. I heard my aunt yell, "It's a girl!" I was sure I would have torn because of how fast she came out and I only pushed once, but I had two surface scrapes on each side up near the top (same thing I had with my son). She started rooting a minute after she came out and nursed for an hour straight! My placenta was more stubborn than my child and took an hour to come out, after taking witch hazel and some other tincture I cant remember the name of. Overall I had a very awesome birth! 5 hours of easy labor and 15 minutes of hell, totally worth it