3:00 pm- Standing in the kitchen heating up Mac and cheese for my toddler I feel a small gush of liquid come out of me. I check it in the bathroom and think maybe baby pressed on my bladder.
Over the course of a couple hours I notice I am going through panty liners way quicker than before. I start to think that my water has broke. I call one of my midwives who tells me to lay down for 20 mins and then get up and see if it gushes out again. She also tells me she is about to head over to another birth.
6:30 pm I get up to get the Chinese food I've had delivered and as me and my toddler sit at the table to eat it more amniotic fluid leaks out. I call my husband and midwife back to tell them the news that my waters are broken. No meconium this time, yay. I am told to stay home and wait for contractions to start.
I also text my friend who is on her way home from San Diego, I hope she makes it back in time to attend my birth.
8:00 pm Contractions start, they are about ten minutes apart. I call my husband and tell him to start on his way home. We have begun early labor!
9:30 pm husband arrives home and contractions are a bit stronger. He starts getting our toddler ready for bed while I start setting up the house for birth, laying down the tarp, inflating the pool, gathering supplies.
11:00 or so. My friend arrives! Contractions are getting a bit closer together and stronger, she puts counter pressure on my back to help ease contractions. Our toddler is asleep and will amazingly start asleep through the entire labor and birth.
12:30 am Contractions are now about 4 or 5 mins apart so I call the midwives to come. We have entered active labor! More owie, I start to have doubts about getting through it again.
1 am Midwives arrive and shortly after we start filling the birth tub.
2 am or so. I get into tub and cry a lot. Midwives tell me it's very normal to cry during this stage of labor and not really know why. I am filled with so many emotions about meeting my baby soon and fears about birth.
Sometime between 2 and 3 am. Contraction get really freaking strong and come one on top of the other. Transitional labor time. I get really nauseated and only want water, though I force myself to try some juice and honey for energy. I demand counter pressure for every contraction and become very vocal during them. I swear and regularly try to empty my bladder. Sometimes I need to get out and sit on the toilet before my body will pee. I need to pee to make more room for baby to come out.
Sometime around 4 or 5 am. I feel like something is wrong. I kind of want to push, but feel like I can't. I have this feeling that I have been in this hard stage of labor for way too long. I have the midwives check me and they say I still have a bit of cervix left to melt away. I labor out of the tub for a while, trying to get gravity to work for me. I even go up and down the stairs. They have me do lunges during contractions to try to get that cervix to open.
A little before 6 am. They check me again and say there is just a bit of cervix in the front left. Midwives tell me to get on my hands and knees in the tub. I do this for a few contractions and I remember distinctly hating everyone in the room because I wanted to be anyone but me right now. Then suddenly I want to push, I want to push hard. I squat or kneel in the tub and push, I push so hard, I want this to be over.
After a bit of pushing I can feel that baby is about to be born. She's coming, I announce. One of my midwives guides her out, she tells me she is passing the baby to me between my legs. I reach down and pull my baby daughter out of the water and hold her immediately to my chest and sit down in amazement. 6:23 am.
I can feel the cord pulling and I tell them the cord is short. Maybe this is why she took so long to transition. Although, ideally I'd like to keep the cord in place until after the placenta is born I know the cord is too short for me to be able to pass the baby to anyone to birth the placenta. We wait until the cord stops pulsing and cut it.
I then get out of the tub and move to the futon and birth the placenta while my husband holds the baby skin to skin.
Baby is given back to me and I hold her and slowly coax her on to my breast, it takes an hour or so, but eventually she is latched on and nursing for the first time.
Over all a hard, but very satisfactory birthing experience. No tears this time, I think, thanks to the tub and my vertical pushing position.
More later on the adventure after birth!
Wow, you had your kids like WAAAAAAY too close in age!!! I am unable and unwilling to ever have or raise any, being the 33 y/o FtM transgender with a complete hysterectomy that I am, but don't you think it's a bit too soon to have another baby when you still haven't potty-trained and/or weaned your first one? I thank God (assuming God exists) my parents had my little sister, my one-and-only sibling (now 24), when I was 8 yrs. 10 mos. (106 mos. total) old and plenty able to read, write, do math, and understand why she needed my mom's attention way more than I did! I thank God I never had any "potty-training regression," or delayed potty-training, because of my little sister or the "jealousy" you say your son had toward his. And I'm sure she thanks God (assuming she believes he's real) that I wasn't young enough to be slobbering all over her baby toys with my school germs, and that she, like me, never saw a doctor for a cold until she entered kindergarten, all thanks to my 9-year-old understanding of handwashing and not playing with her when I was sick. Oh, and I found this blog while searching for results on Cedric from Sofia the First getting sick, in case you don't understand why I'm here.
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