Birth Story: all natural water birth

mom2be0912 · November 2012

This message board has been very helpful to me throughout my pregnancy! Thanks for everyone's advice through it all! Here is my birth story.

I started having some very mild but timeable contractions on the evening of Weds 10/31 but once I went to bed, I was able to sleep through the night, so I didn?t think much of them. I called in sick to work on Thursday because I was really tired from the day before and I?m really glad I did because that whole day I started having the contractions again throughout the day but they weren?t anything I couldn?t handle. Around 3pm I started timing them and they were about 8-12 minutes apart but I was still doing laundry, made dinner, did the dishes and I was thinking if this is labor, then I can definitely handle it! Around 8pm, the contractions were about 5-6 minutes apart and getting stronger so I thought I?d just call my MW to let her know that if things continued this way, I may be calling her in the middle of the night unless they magically stopped like the night before. She told me to take a bath, try to relax and get some sleep and to prepare myself for a long night as typical first time moms usually labor for a long time and to call her back if my water broke or if the contractions were 4 minutes apart lasting 1 minute long for 2 hours and she didn?t want me to be able to walk or talk through them.

So I got into the bath, DH went to the store to grab a few things and when he got back to help me out, I stood up and my water broke at 10pm. I was in serious denial because I knew this meant that not only were my contractions going to get stronger but I was definitely going to have this baby sometime within the next 24 hours.

My first contraction post water breaking was super intense. DH talked to the MW again and she wanted to make sure there was no meconium in my water, which there wasn?t, so she still prepared us that it may take a while for active labor to begin, so she still didn?t want to hear from us until my contractions were 4 minutes apart for 2 hours. After a few hours of seriously intense contractions where I was in this other place and could not do anything to get comfortable, they were still usually 3-4 minutes apart but since there were some occasional 5-6 minute intervals, DH didn?t call quite yet per her instructions. Then at around 2am, DH talked to the MW again and told her that he thought it was time to come in even though there were still some longer intervals, so she wanted us to meet her at the birthing center in an hour. DH started loading the car and while I was lying on the bed, I had my first urge to push, which totally freaked me out as I had never experienced that before and wasn?t sure that was really what it was, so I didn?t tell DH. When he got me in the car, he let the dog out to pee really quick and by the time he got back into the car, I was screaming and grunging / bearing down uncontrollably telling him I had to push. So, he drove like a bat out of hell, started panicking but tried to keep me calm, which was not quite possible at this point, ran 2 red lights, thought we were getting pulled over but thank God the cop flew right by us and we finally made it there. We got to the birthing center around 2:45am, I had 2 killer contractions before I even hit the bed and when she checked me I was at 7cm and I again made this grunty noise and beared down. My MW asked me if I was pushing and I just nodded my head, so she had me get in the tub right away. There was no time to call family or even unload anything form the car. Within a few minutes I started pushing for real and after 10 minutes of pushing, my son was born into my husband?s arms and placed immediately on my chest. Bodhi William was born at 3:17am on Friday, 11/02/2012 at 6 lbs 8 oz and 20 in long. It was truly surreal and I?m told I now hold their record for fastest pushing time of a first time mom and with such a fast labor that the next time I give birth, I should probably call after my first contraction! I will never forget this experience and I?m very proud of myself for going totally med-free, as it was extremely intense but totally worth every ounce of pain. I love my son so much and my husband did such an awesome job supporting me!

My recovery has been a little more difficult than I expected as I only had a first degree tear which I didn't even have stitched up but I also had a pretty big hematoma which made walking or any kind of movement very difficult and it's still a work in progress to do much of anything but every day is getting better and better!