So I just finished writing Mikayla's birth story, in as much detail as a new mama can remember. Scrolling back through, I'm realizing that it is seven pages, single spaced. Now that is a lot of detail for one blog post, so at Joel's suggestion I am going to post it in installments over the course of a few days. Let me know if you're interested in the whole thing; I can email the file in its entirety so you don't have to wait :-).
As a brief word of introduction, I'll say that we had an amazing birth experience supported by a phenomenal midwife and nurse. Joel was an amazing coach! The birth story you'll read here was written by me, from a laboring mama's point of view. I noted where I had to check with Joel for details. He's planning to read through the whole thing and add comments where he remembers things that I don't, or remembers them differently. Hopefully he'll add those comments here as well, but at the very least you'll get a sense for the course of our labor and delivery from my perspective. Again, this is as much detail as I can remember, carefully recorded as an encouragement to other moms-to-be and as a personal memoir of this life-changing experience. It is not for the faint of heart, and probably not for the uninitiated male reader. I left out some of the less dignified details, but recorded as much as I could of the physical sensations and mental gymnastics that were involved in birthing our daughter. For those who would like to learn about the most intense, beautiful, miraculous eleven and a half hours of my life, read on...
Our birth experience began quietly and unexpectedly at 11:00 p.m. on 1/11/11. I was dozing, having gone to bed a short time before, when I experienced my first contraction. Now, I had been pre-laboring for about a week – lots of random, relatively painless contractions, sometimes happening regularly for a few hours, but always spacing out and subsiding eventually. So when this one woke me up and took my breath away, I didn’t immediately suspect that I was starting into labor. But, since it felt different than previous contractions, and I continued to feel somewhat crampy even after the contraction ended, I decided to make a note of it.
Despite the ongoing discomfort following this first contraction, I was able to go back to sleep for a bit. The next contraction woke me at 11:29 p.m. and felt similar to the first one. I abdominal-breathed through it just as our birth class instructor had taught us, and again made a mental note that it had come about 30 minutes after the first one. So far, Joel was still sleeping soundly with nary a clue that anything might be happening. I decided not to sound the alarm just yet, and settled in for (hopefully) some more sleep myself.
The next contraction didn’t hit until 12:30 a.m., so I’m not sure whether I slept through one. I still wasn’t getting TOO excited because they were pretty far apart, but the contractions were definitely intense enough that I needed my deep breathing and relaxation skills to feel ok. At this point I got up to walk around a little and use the bathroom, to see if that would help the crampy feeling to go away (it didn’t).
At 12:54 I had another contraction, and the next followed swiftly on its heels at 1:03. We went from spaced out, almost half an hour apart contractions to 9 minutes apart after only three contractions. At this point I was definitely considering waking Joel to provide some coaching! He actually woke on his own and asked if everything was alright. I told him I was considering waking him in a few minutes, that I was having painful contractions.
I should mention at this point that Joel can, and often does, sleep through anything. He is not easy to rouse. So I confess to several minutes of bitterness as another contraction rolled through at 1:11 and he was still, apparently, sleeping soundly. If he wasn’t going to wake up, then I was going to need to get comfortable. I headed for the bathroom. And may I say, laboring while sitting on the toilet is amazing! I was able to use all my breathing to completely relax through each contraction. Contractions kept coming at 8 minutes, then 7 minutes, then 6 minutes apart. It seemed that each one came closer upon the previous one, rush upon rush.
In all fairness, Joel got up quickly as soon as he realized what was happening. But naturally he requested to go to the bathroom – what?!? Give up my precious laboring position?? But there weren’t a lot of options, so I stood for the next one. Yup, I definitely preferred sitting on the toilet.
I labored until about 2 a.m. in the bathroom. We lit a scented candle, wrote down the timing of contractions on a little note pad, and generally talked about what in the world should we do?? Our area had a winter weather advisory in effect, and our driveway (not to mention the roads) was covered in 4-5 inches of snow. At 2:00, my contractions were 6-7 minutes apart (we only had a few contractions that were 8-9 minutes apart before they ramped up). We decided that with how quickly things seemed to be moving along, we had better call the midwife to give her a heads up and talk about when to head to the birth center. While Joel was on the phone with her, my contractions went from 6 minutes to 3 minutes apart. Holy smokes! Our midwife on call, Jen, asked to speak with me. I told her everything was going fine, and had a contraction while we were on the phone. She observed that I had to stop talking and breathe through it, and we decided to meet at the birth center at 3:30 a.m.
Tomorrow's installment: Battling the snow!
