My Natural Hospital Birth Story

Jenilyn and Matthew · January 2013

Brayden Nicholas was born 1-26 at 12:14am after a fast 5 hour labor. Having a natural birth was wonderful after having and induction/epidural with my first. Thank you ladies for all of your support and wisdom during my pregnancy to help me achieve my natural birth goal!

At 37 weeks I started having timeable contractions. They were annoying, but not really painful, so I was left wondering when this little guy would come. They continued for 4 days with very few breaks and no change in intensity. I almost left work Thursday night because they were getting intense, but they were still 5-8 minutes apart, so I stayed and worked my shift. Once I got home Friday morning, they stopped completely, so DD and I went on about our day. We spent the day playing, then took a LONG 3.5 hour nap which was amazing. God knew I was going to need that nap and settled DD down for me.

DH came home from work, and I told him I had hardly had a contraction all day, which was welcome after the constant ones all week. I went to the bathroom and noticed a little blood, came out and told DH, and he said "it could be soon then!" He called in a pizza and left to go pick it up. He had been gone 5 minutes when I felt a little pop and a small gush of fluid. I took off to the bathroom to make sure I hadn't peed myself, and sure enough, it was my water broken. I threw on a pad, sat on a towel, and called DH. He said "what do we do now??" I told him to get the pizza because I was hungry and wanted to eat! This was at 7:00pm Friday night.

Once he got home, I ate a little bit, drank a lot to stay hydrated, and got a few more things together for the hospital. I wanted to stay home for a while to avoid interventions at the hospital since my water had broken. My dad came to get DD, and my mom stayed with us to ride to the hospital. I took a long shower then wanted to watch TV. DH was getting nervous and wanted to go to the hospital, but I didn't want to yet because my contractions had not started back. I told him when they were coming regularly we would leave. I grabbed my exercise ball and started watching Duck Dynasty to relax me and make me laugh to get labor started. While DH was worrying, he sneaked off and called our OB to ask when we should head in. Of course he said to come on in since my water had broken. Great. I told DH we would watch one more episode then head in, but I wasn't happy about it.

We left the house at 10:30, 3.5 hours after my water had broken and got checked in to L&D. I had 2 contractions in the car that weren't really painful. They hooked me up to monitors for a few minutes and I had 1 contraction, but since I was on my back, it was kind of irritating. They checked me and I was at 5cm. The nurse asked for my birth plan, and since it was kind of early, I had not written one. I told her I wanted to walk around and use the labor ball to help with labor, and wanted no pain meds or IVs. She didn't put up any arguments (great!) and let me go to my L&D room. They drew blood and put in my heplock, then I was allowed to labor off the monitors after only having a few contractions. I put the labor ball on top of my bed, and got on my knees leaning on the ball. Rocking on my chest on the ball felt great, and when I had a contraction, DH could easily push on my hips for me. I had 2 contractions this way that I could talk through. My brother, mom and SIL were all in the room hanging out at the time.

Then I had "THE" contraction. This one came out of nowhere. It was painful and seemed to last forever. I told DH not to touch me and closed my eyes and breathed, waiting for it to go away. I looked up at my Mom and told here that this contraction had to have done 2cm worth of work! All of a sudden I felt like I needed to be alone, and went to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and had another contraction. I yelled for DH to bring me my iPod because I needed something to concentrate on. I didn't even get to my favorite song before another contraction hit, and I had to get up and stand at the sink. I gripped the sink and started shaking. DH opened the door to check on me and saw me standing there shaking and asked what I needed. I could only say "I think.....I need....." and I finally managed to say "to push!". My body started pushing on it's own at the sink and I couldn't stop it. He asked if I was okay as he looked down and saw the top of our son's head starting to crown! He took off to get the nurse and told my Mom to get me into the bed.

I made it to the bed, but was refusing to get in. The pushing contractions were coming too close together for me to get my leg up to get into bed. They finally hoisted me up and called in an emergency doctor. Since I had only been 5cm and not having regular contractions, they had not called my doctor until a few minutes prior, and he was on call! (I was the only person in labor that night) They said he wouldn't make it. I felt like I was losing control because I wanted to slow down and focus on pushing, but my body was pushing for me and I couldn't slow it down. My Mom was in my face trying to get me to focus, which helped, and I could hear DH telling me what was going on with DS. The nurses were running around trying to get the doctor ready and get some things in the room ready. They didn't even break down the bed.

I felt his head coming out and pushed slowly to get it out. I kept saying "it stings, it stings" hoping that talking would slow my pushes down. DH told me the head was out, and I saw my OB run into the room (yay!). He got one glove on and held DS's head as I pushed and delivered his body. The cord was around his neck twice, so he unwrapped it, and held him until he started to cry a little, then handed him to me to hold. I felt the most amazing high as soon as he came out. DH said I looked and sounded drunk once he was out. I laughed and told my doctor that this was NOT the time to make a grand entrance!

I needed a few stitches in a couple of places, so they sewed me up as DH got him weighed and measured. He nursed for a little while before we brough in my family and DD to meet the little man. It was 12:14 am, so we had a small group, which was nice. He was 7lbs even, and 20 1/4 inches long, almost a pound smaller than DD was! My doctor was very interested the next day to hear about how I almost had the little guy in the bathroom while gripping the sink.

I'm very thankful that DH was looking out for me, and checking on me so often. And as much as I fought him, I'm glad we left the house when we did! If we had waited for regular contractions, he would have been born in OUR bathroom. We are enjoying our little family of 4 at home and Big Sister is totally in love!