Birth Story!

The next morning, Wednesday September 8th, 2010, at just before 3 am I woke up with some contractions so after laying in bed for a little bit trying to sleep through them I got up and went out to the computer to bounce on my yoga ball and time them for a bit to see how consistent they were. After about 45 minutes of timing them they were consistently 4-6 minutes apart and lasting 45-60 seconds. All of a sudden I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom with a contraction and so thought I’d wait until that one ended and then go but before it ended my fore-waters broke. I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time and thought maybe it was just a leak but I went to talk to my husband and wake him up. I found out later fore-waters basically means the front part of the water and then the baby’s head blocks the rest of the water bag from leaking. Knowing how quickly my last baby came my husband was insistent that we call the midwife. She said she would come over and check on us and was over shortly. Then my husband called his sister as she wanted to be here for the birth as well, though I told him to wait on calling her as well until we had some info from the midwife. My midwife checked our heart rates and my blood pressure and after hanging out with us for an hour or so while myself, my husband, and my sister-in-law gabbed and had a “party” all piled on my king sized bed and then told us she would head to her office to rest until the contractions were closer or longer in length.

After a while longer of gabbing and hanging out in bed with contractions still sticking to 4-6 minutes apart I went out to bounce on the yoga ball some more and started watching “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” with my mom while my husband and his sister both fell asleep for about 2 hours. 45 minutes or so into the show my mom and I decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood so we took my 2 year old and walked to the neighborhood playground. When I got back from the walk I went back to timing the contractions for a bit and they were still sticking to 4-6 minutes apart so I decided to get into the bath, that was at about 10:30. My mom came in and turned on some music for me on her cell phone and we went with an upbeat country mix station and I rocked out singing to them and started having contractions 1-2 per song, so I figured about 2-3 minutes apart and had my mom come in and time them for about. After timing them for about 20 minutes they increased from 3 minutes to 1.5-2 minutes apart but were still pretty short in length. They were starting to hurt really bad though so we called my midwife again and she said she’d head out in 5 minutes as a client would be showing up in a few minutes for an appointment and she would head out.

After calling my midwife the contractions started hurting really bad and I began to feel the baby really, really low and nearing a pushing urge so my husband called the midwife again to be sure she was on her way and then would massage my back through the contractions as I would moan and try to get through them. My midwife got there just about 5 minutes or so before the baby arrived and at this point the contractions were right on top of each other and I was ready to push. I pushed for 3-4 contractions of very intense pressure and burning until the head was born and then the rest of the baby was born with the next contraction and placed right onto my belly. I looked down and just felt instant joy and so much love for this little baby placed on me and then quickly and excited turned him to see what the gender was – a boy! Baby boy number 3! He was born at 11:29 AM. Everything else went well with the rest of the delivery and I had no tears or even skid marks!

I LOVED being able to go right into my own bed and be so comfortable in my own home! We named our new baby boy Andrew Stanton and he weighed 7 lbs 2 oz and was 20″ long. My labor was MUCH harder this time around as my water had broken early and the contractions were much more intense and also lasted longer overall but I still loved having a home birth and was very glad to be in my own place following the birth and have had NO problems in recuperating at all, I feel great and have been able to get in a lot of rest.