welcome to Athena Elizabeth!

This is XP to my other BMB. Thanks for all of your labor dust and whatnot! As impatient/sad/worried I was she was overdue, I'm really happy about when she came in the end. :-)

Short version - I had time-able contractions starting around 5pm, and then we went to the hospital around 8pm--earlier than I would have, but recommended by the midwife due to my previous fast labor and being GBS+. As it were, I still only got one dose of penicillin in. Because I was 3cm they made me walk the halls for an hour (this was now 9-10pm) before really admitting to me, and I moved to 5cm. The penicillin dose came from 10:30-11, after which I was allowed to go in the shower for relief. That was nice, but from 11-1 I was in late active labor / transition so it just really sucked in that shower! haha At 1am my water broke and it was clear to the midwife the baby was almost there, so they quickly set me up in the birthing tub. DD was born at 1:18.

Full version -
For weeks I had been experiencing braxton hicks contractions. Unlike last pregnancy, there were a lot more of them and they were becoming more painful as well. I knew the onset of early labor would be ambiguous.

For the past week I have occasionally used the app on my phone to time contractions, but the most I ever got was maybe 3-4 in a row, still spaced 20-30 min apart before fizzling. So Wednesday afternoon I thought my timing efforts were going to be the same (futile), but once I started timing the contractions they didn't go away. At first it was every 25 min, but they were getting shorter. This was around 5pm. We decided to pick up DS from daycare together. I had that "yup, still pregnant!" conversation with several teachers and parents, but did mention that I was maybe starting labor.

Then, ridiculously, DH and I decided the family should go out to eat rather than having dinner at home. We went to a burger place. The contractions kept coming, so we made the decision to call the midwife answering service and the babysitter. The midwife said she'd normally tell people to come in when contractions are every 5 min but because I was fast with DS and I was GBS+ she said come in when they were under 10 min. We still finished dinner normally and went back home. There was enough time to wait for the babysitter and help get her situated before we left for the hospital (but I was consistently under 10 min before this point.)

Once at the hospital they checked me and I was 3cm. I was told I needed to improve within the hour or they'd send me home, so DH and I walked the halls from 9-10pm. The whole thing was actually very surreal because with DS I was nearly to transition by the time I got to the hospital. I definitely felt I was there too early this time! (But I was not, ultimately.)

At the second check I was 5cm so they set up my penicillin (c. 10:30). They acknowledged that in spite of everyone's best efforts, I probably was not going to get the two doses 4 hrs apart. As the contractions had been getting worse (even while I was still in the walking part 9-10pm), I just knew that hamburger was going to come back up, and by 11pm it did. Also around this time they let me into the shower because I was done with the penicillin dose. The shower was a relief, but everything was getting so much more intense. I labored in there for 2 hours and was very miserable because, well, this was the really hard part, and because I didn't have a sense of making progress...I was worried I was stalled at 6cm or something because it seemed to me the contractions weren't coming closer together (the midwife after the fact thought I was crazy for thinking those things!) During this shower time I said I think I wanted an epidural and everyone kind of pretended I hadn't said it (I wasn't saying it that emphatically, plus I was probably too late anyway.) I also knew even as I asked that it wasn't going to happen and I just had to get through this, but boy did I want to give up!

At 1am I finally felt my water break and everything hurt a lot more. I thought perhaps this was the start of transition, but I didn't realize the truth--it was basically the end of transition! The midwife said, "there's a baby right there, isn't there?" and that gave me lots of hope about how close I was. They set up the birthing tub immediately and helped me in. WOW did it really help to be in the water! Holy cow!

I did my loudest screaming at this point but it really was better than the nebulous shower time because I knew I was very close to the end. Athena was born at 1:18am. I think there were maybe 3-4 contractions worth of pushing. I don't know if anyone else felt this, but when it was time for the "ring of fire," I actually also felt fire in my FEET because the pain was radiating down or something. Odd. Well I'm glad that part was short. We delivered the placenta in the bed after getting out of the tub. DH cried and cried, just like he did with DS--it was so sweet!

Athena nursed really well and for a long time, and I was pleased that her being in an extra 8 days compared to DS might have led to her being a lb heavier, too, a nice 7lbs, 5oz. I'm optimistic nursing will go better this time around as a result (DS basically nursed like a preemie and was really small and weak for 1-2 mo after birth.)

However, my after-birth pains were really bad for hours, even with the meds they gave. That sucked and prevented me from fully enjoying my daughter immediately, IMO. I was sitting there writhing in pain even as I nursed and DH was all, "look at her perfect face! Look at those eyes!" etc...I couldn't focus on her. For comparison, with DS I got an epidural at the very end (9cm) and that covered the final/worst part of labor, plus stitches (which I just refused for the extremely minor tear I got this time), plus immediate after-birth pains. Honestly I think that was better than going med-free, though the water birth was REALLY special. I don't know how anyone goes med-free without a water birth! For that matter I don't know how anyone spends more than a few hours total in active labor / transition...I'm blessed to have had fast labors.

My total labor lasted about the same length for DS and DD; perhaps 30 or so min faster with DD, but that could have been in part the lack of epidural (that slowed things down with DS at the end.) So I didn't necessarily follow the typical STM pattern, otoh both labors were fast so I'm not surprised I didn't speed up much from #1 to #2.