Birth Story!! STM Med-free Hospital Birth (Long with PIP)

hamiltks10 · October 2013

Hello ladies! I haven't been super active on this board this time around, but I have posted here and there recently and wanted to share my birth story.

A little background: My first son was born on 10/19/2012 (just one year ago!). With him, I had a med-free birth with a midwife at the hospital. My water broke as a first sign of labor, we stayed home until I "knew" I had to go, arrived in triage at 9cm and had my DS less than 20 minutes later. In hindsight…we waited a bit too long to leave for the hospital (the reason I “knew” it was time to go was because I felt my body pushing). We've been told many times during this pregnancy that the 2nd baby can come much faster and labor can be way shorter. So we thought it would be best to leave for the hospital just a little sooner. : )

This baby was due on 10/27. I began having contractions on Saturday, 10/19, around 2pm (it was my LO’s 1^st birthday!). They began about 10 minutes apart. Gradually they increased in frequency to 7 minutes, then 5 minutes and eventually 3 minutes apart. During that time I took a nice warm bath, had a glass of wine, had a late lunch and dinner, and even got in a nap. The contractions were totally manageable.

While I felt like it was too early still because of my comfort level, my DH became nervous after we timed the contractions at 3 minutes apart for an hour...so we decided to head in to the hospital. This was around 11pm. In triage, we found that I was just 4cm dilated. The midwife on-call suggested that we walk the hospital for an hour and then get checked out again to see if I'd made any progress. So...we did that and when checked again just after midnight, I'd progressed to 5cm and we were admitted.

Once to our room, DH and I were actually able to get a little more rest. Once my contractions became uncomfortable, I sat in the rocker and focused hard on taking long, deep breaths (like I’d learned in Hypnobirthing last time around) Things became really uncomfortable, so around 3:30am I asked for the nurse to check me. She said I was a 6 or a 7 with a bulging bag of waters. I’d planned on avoiding all interventions…but the thought of having my waters broken crossed my mind. So I asked the nurse to give me the pros and cons of having my water broken.

She said the cons were that the contractions would increase in strength and frequency, but that that the pros were it would speed up my labor. She guessed that if I had it done, I would be complete in 20 minutes! She wasn’t worried about cord prolapsed….I wouldn’t need any additional monitoring and wouldn’t need to get hooked up to an IV. The decision was easy for me. If I had to give it a number, I was already at an 8 on the pain scale. I’d rather experience pain at a 10 for just 20 minutes than suffer through pain at 8 for another “how many” hours.

So…the midwife broke my water right around 4am. She’d told the nurse that she thought my baby would be born by 4:30am. They left me alone with DH and said to buzz them when I began to feel “pushy”. Contractions picked up in strength and frequency immediately. Within about 20 minutes (as the nurse guessed), I began to feel my body push. We called them back in…the midwife did a quick check and said “yep” (implying that I was complete) and literally with the next contraction, my body pushed my baby right out. There was absolutely nothing I could do to stop him from coming! She hadn’t even broken the bed down for the birth. It was insane how fast he came out!

Jacob Carson was born with a full head of dark hair at 4:29am on 10/20/2013. He weighed 8lbs 3oz and was 19in long. He is doing wonderful! I felt pretty fantastic right after the birth. I had a 2^nd degree tear (just like last time), but getting stitched up was way less painful for some reason. And recovery has been a breeze compared to my experience last year.

My DH, again, was a rock star and I couldn’t ask for a better support person during labor and after. We are home now and just getting settled in. Although I arrived at the hospital earlier than I’d hoped to, I am still completely satisfied with our birth experience and I'm feeling blessed to have another beautiful son.