Yella726's Birth Story!!

yella726 · October 2014

Yella726's Birth Story (Team Green turned Team Blue) - Lucas Armando

Saturday October 11 was 2 days past my due date, so DH and I decided to drop by the vineyard (I work at a winery) to check out how harvest was going and then go for a hike that morning. Almost as soon as I started on the trail, I definitely felt some downward pressure as if gravity was starting to take effect.

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The previous couple of days had seen sex, nipple stimulation and accupressure, eggplant parmesan and pineapple. The rest of the day ahead was relatively uneventful and we took advantage of doing stuff around the house (including making some yummy lasagna for dinner later that night).

But by 8 PM, I started having some uncomfortable (what I thought were) Braxton Hicks. Up until that point, I was getting Braxton Hicks pretty regularly, so this didn't phase me -- except for the fact that it was getting difficult to get comfortable. My doula was 1.5 hours away that weekend, but told me to call as soon as things started happening. After deciding to take a bath and (try to) relax, I decided to start timing things. They were already 3-4 minutes apart and lasting average 45 seconds each. I was expecting to have *some* back pain, but it was all in front which continued making me question things. After hemming and hawing for a while (I felt bad for waking her up since I just wasn't sure), I called our doula at 10PM. She told me (since I wasn't sure), to drink some water and lie down for an hour to see if they continued in intensity or died down. But before the hour was even up, I knew this was the real deal. I called her back and she said she'd hit the road immediately. Since we had decided in our birth plan to labor at home for as much as possible, I drew another bath and tried again to relax. The sensations began radiating into my back and, at a certain point, I told my husband to just text our doula and let her know to meet us at the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital just after 12AM and were wheeled directly into the birthing center. The lights were low and the atmosphere was calm. We had brought an iPod with a playlist on it to play and soothe us. Things are a little hazy after this point; my husband tells me stories of things that happened that I just can't remember. We were going for a natural birth, and I was hooked up to a saline lock right away for antibiotics (Group B Strep Positive). Our doula arrived about half an hour after that and we immediately set up the birthing tub and I jumped in as soon as it was ready. After an hour or two, we decided to get me up and out and moving around and going to the bathroom. Over the course of the next -- ::counts on fingers:: -- 10 hours, I shifted from the yoga ball (the pressure on my nether regions was too much), the birthing tub, the toilet, the birthing stool, hands and knees and squatting. Each change of position was incredibly painful, so once I was IN a position, I was hellbent on staying there. Ultimately, I ended up on my back pushing with my legs against the squatting bar and pulling with my arms. Not how I had wanted to push my baby out, but that's the way my body (and my baby) chose!

After a little over 2 hours of (incredibly vocal) pushing, a lot of breathing and focusing my energy on helping to move the baby downward, as well as an offer of an episiotomy from my midwife (which I turned down), and the most intense "ring of fire" sensations I have ever felt, Lucas Armando came into our lives on Sunday October 12 at 12:56 PM, weighing in at 8 lbs, 8.5 oz and 21 inches long. I was relieved, in shock and so in love! My husband cut the cord (he swore up and down that he wouldn't be able to) and we had some serious skin-to-skin time (DH as well!). Our midwife told us that my pelvic floor muscles were so strong (uuhh, thanks yoga?) that it prolonged my labor and that if I had let her give me an episiotomy the baby would have been born 45 minutes earlier. That said, I had almost no tearing BUT I did bleed quite a lot so I was hooked up to an IV bag of Pitocin and given methergine (in pill form) to help stop bleeding, as well as a daily iron pill to combat my bleeding-induced anemia.

But srsly, you guise: