birth story.
Esther Rosina
August 5, 2011
8:05 am
10 lb 4 oz.
22" long
I can't tell this story without starting the day before, when I had FALSE LABOR. we were already at 41w3d, and I started contractions at 2 am on thursday, august 4, that hit immediately at 6 minutes apart. due to the fact that a) we were having a home birth, b) my midwife lives an hour and a half away, c) my last labor was only 6 hours start to finish, and d) my labors have gotten shorter and shorter, I waited only an hour before calling my midwife. she was on her way already when things slowed town... by 4 am I had nothing. NOTHING! when the midwife got to my house I told her things had slowed down. she said she'd crash on my couch and I could wake her if I needed to. I assured her things would likely pick up since I never ever had false labor before, in my 4 previous births. then I went up to bed.
two hours later I woke up, disappointed that I got two hours of sleep and nothing was happening. my midwife slept for another 3 hours past that. when she finally woke up, I had to hold back tears as I told her labor had completely stopped and I didn't think it was going to start up again. she said I was due for an appointment anyway, so it wasn't a waste of a drive out. when I laid down for her to feel the baby, she said, this baby is completely posterior. can't even feel the spine, look, these are little hands and feet here! I felt around myself, then looked directly at her as I stated "I'm not depressed anymore, about labor stopping." she left, and said I should check in with her before I go to bed.
the rest of the day I had a few contractions, here or there, but not close together, but still pretty painful. added to the horrific pelvic pain I'd been dealing with for the last few weeks, I could hardly move. my husband had his break from work scheduled for 2 weeks after my due date (my last two kids were late), and that was to be his last night of work before it started. I told him to call in. whether or not labor started, I wasn't going to handle 4 kids in the pain I was in. so he did. I spent the day on hands and knees, trying to turn the posterior baby. then at bedtime, I called my MW and reported the sporadic contractions. she told me to call her during the night if ANYTHING wakes me up.
so I went to bed. first contraction woke me at 12:45. not much sleep there. :P they were about half hour apart at first, so I waited for 3 of them, then called the MW. she said I could call ehr back in an hour if they kept up. all told, I ended up calling a few times before she left home, about 4:30 am, as contractions were in fact getting closer and closer together.
I also had to pee every half hour. contraction pressing against a full bladder hurt like I was being ripped in two. I decided to move closer to the toilet. I had my husband toss the toddler bed mattress on the bathroom floor and I laid down there. the peeing let up after a while but being in the bathroom made me kind of want to get in the shower. so I did, hot water, until I couldn't take it anymore. then I turned it off and stayed in the tub, kneeling on the hard floor, leaning against the side, contractions becoming more and more intense. I told my husband to cover the toddler mattress with plastic and an old sheet so I could kneel on that instead of the hard tub. then I moved over there, getting into the same position, leaning on the tub from the outside.
somewhere in here the midwife showed up, my husband packed the kids up to go to my mom's and I started pushing. I mean, it's kind of a blur here, I couldn't tell you what time it was, either. just that next thing I knew, I was pushing, and pushing, and thinking it was gonna be any minute now. then the MW says, oh wait, I think you must have a lip. she checks and says, yep, not quite fully dilated in the front. I need to lean back a bit and breathe through a few contractions. my husband later said he thought that must have been excruciating for me, but it was more emotionally excruciating, really. I thought I was just about done here then we've got a roadblock and I had no idea how long it would take to resolve. I also thought I must have caused it myself, spending all day yesterday, and the whole labor to this point, on hands and knees. I was sitting on the toilet here, leaning back, but then I started pushing again, hardcore, involuntarily. the MW said it must have resolved, and I should get back into whatever position I wanted. I landed right back onto my knees on the mattress, leaning against the tub again. it resolved much faster than I was thinking.
and the next thing you know, I can feel the head bulging out. water sack still around it. I was so happy. I pushed and pushed some more and could feel the rest of the body coming out. which made me even more happy, because it also meant this baby was smaller than my last one!* oh! and the baby had turned, too, and wasn't posterior anymore. whew.
I didn't think I could move at this point but I somehow managed to sit myself down so I could pick up my baby. baby girl. we hadn't found out before hand, but I suspected due to the horrendous morning sickness I'd had. after two boys and two girls before this. I kind of get a sense of certain patterns. like, girls make me sick. she was out of her sack already, but the MW said she didn't rip it open. and it didn't break itself, either. nope, baby girl had a little nuchal arm and she stretched it out and broke her own waters with it :)
the placenta took a good 10 minutes or so to come out, so I spent that time trying and eventually succeeding to nurse the baby. finally the placenta was out, the cord got cut, and we decided it was time to weigh Little Miss. but first, a few guesses. we all looked her over and said, she is not as big as Ingrid*, no way. the midwife guessed 9 lb 5 oz. I said, no she looks bigger than I remember Linus (my second) being. I thought closer to 10. but couldn't remember how big my 3rd kid (10 pounds even) looked at birth. so we stuck her on the scale and she was 10 lb 4 oz. I mean, I was pretty close there, with my guess :)
the MW doesn't usually take births too close together, but she had a mom going early, who happened to give birth about 4 hours after me. so she was all business and no chit chat, took off, and we were on our own for the afternoon. I was really, really hungry, so I had my husband bake up the pan of stuffed manicotti my MW had made for me and we had in our freezer. and then slept a lot :)
*I tossed a few asteriks into the story so I could just reference my last birth story once and for all. the tl;dr of it is that I had an 11 lb 6 oz baby girl last time, who got stuck even after her shoulders were out. it's hard to have a subsequent baby after that without comparing every last detail to it, hence my linking her story to this one: http://so-there.livejournal.com/27839.html
oh, and if anyone's particularly interested in a birth story from dad's point of view, my husband blogged about it here: http://mannursediaries.blogspot.com/2011/08/it-gril.html
August 5, 2011
8:05 am
10 lb 4 oz.
22" long
I can't tell this story without starting the day before, when I had FALSE LABOR. we were already at 41w3d, and I started contractions at 2 am on thursday, august 4, that hit immediately at 6 minutes apart. due to the fact that a) we were having a home birth, b) my midwife lives an hour and a half away, c) my last labor was only 6 hours start to finish, and d) my labors have gotten shorter and shorter, I waited only an hour before calling my midwife. she was on her way already when things slowed town... by 4 am I had nothing. NOTHING! when the midwife got to my house I told her things had slowed down. she said she'd crash on my couch and I could wake her if I needed to. I assured her things would likely pick up since I never ever had false labor before, in my 4 previous births. then I went up to bed.
two hours later I woke up, disappointed that I got two hours of sleep and nothing was happening. my midwife slept for another 3 hours past that. when she finally woke up, I had to hold back tears as I told her labor had completely stopped and I didn't think it was going to start up again. she said I was due for an appointment anyway, so it wasn't a waste of a drive out. when I laid down for her to feel the baby, she said, this baby is completely posterior. can't even feel the spine, look, these are little hands and feet here! I felt around myself, then looked directly at her as I stated "I'm not depressed anymore, about labor stopping." she left, and said I should check in with her before I go to bed.
the rest of the day I had a few contractions, here or there, but not close together, but still pretty painful. added to the horrific pelvic pain I'd been dealing with for the last few weeks, I could hardly move. my husband had his break from work scheduled for 2 weeks after my due date (my last two kids were late), and that was to be his last night of work before it started. I told him to call in. whether or not labor started, I wasn't going to handle 4 kids in the pain I was in. so he did. I spent the day on hands and knees, trying to turn the posterior baby. then at bedtime, I called my MW and reported the sporadic contractions. she told me to call her during the night if ANYTHING wakes me up.
so I went to bed. first contraction woke me at 12:45. not much sleep there. :P they were about half hour apart at first, so I waited for 3 of them, then called the MW. she said I could call ehr back in an hour if they kept up. all told, I ended up calling a few times before she left home, about 4:30 am, as contractions were in fact getting closer and closer together.
I also had to pee every half hour. contraction pressing against a full bladder hurt like I was being ripped in two. I decided to move closer to the toilet. I had my husband toss the toddler bed mattress on the bathroom floor and I laid down there. the peeing let up after a while but being in the bathroom made me kind of want to get in the shower. so I did, hot water, until I couldn't take it anymore. then I turned it off and stayed in the tub, kneeling on the hard floor, leaning against the side, contractions becoming more and more intense. I told my husband to cover the toddler mattress with plastic and an old sheet so I could kneel on that instead of the hard tub. then I moved over there, getting into the same position, leaning on the tub from the outside.
somewhere in here the midwife showed up, my husband packed the kids up to go to my mom's and I started pushing. I mean, it's kind of a blur here, I couldn't tell you what time it was, either. just that next thing I knew, I was pushing, and pushing, and thinking it was gonna be any minute now. then the MW says, oh wait, I think you must have a lip. she checks and says, yep, not quite fully dilated in the front. I need to lean back a bit and breathe through a few contractions. my husband later said he thought that must have been excruciating for me, but it was more emotionally excruciating, really. I thought I was just about done here then we've got a roadblock and I had no idea how long it would take to resolve. I also thought I must have caused it myself, spending all day yesterday, and the whole labor to this point, on hands and knees. I was sitting on the toilet here, leaning back, but then I started pushing again, hardcore, involuntarily. the MW said it must have resolved, and I should get back into whatever position I wanted. I landed right back onto my knees on the mattress, leaning against the tub again. it resolved much faster than I was thinking.
and the next thing you know, I can feel the head bulging out. water sack still around it. I was so happy. I pushed and pushed some more and could feel the rest of the body coming out. which made me even more happy, because it also meant this baby was smaller than my last one!* oh! and the baby had turned, too, and wasn't posterior anymore. whew.
I didn't think I could move at this point but I somehow managed to sit myself down so I could pick up my baby. baby girl. we hadn't found out before hand, but I suspected due to the horrendous morning sickness I'd had. after two boys and two girls before this. I kind of get a sense of certain patterns. like, girls make me sick. she was out of her sack already, but the MW said she didn't rip it open. and it didn't break itself, either. nope, baby girl had a little nuchal arm and she stretched it out and broke her own waters with it :)
the placenta took a good 10 minutes or so to come out, so I spent that time trying and eventually succeeding to nurse the baby. finally the placenta was out, the cord got cut, and we decided it was time to weigh Little Miss. but first, a few guesses. we all looked her over and said, she is not as big as Ingrid*, no way. the midwife guessed 9 lb 5 oz. I said, no she looks bigger than I remember Linus (my second) being. I thought closer to 10. but couldn't remember how big my 3rd kid (10 pounds even) looked at birth. so we stuck her on the scale and she was 10 lb 4 oz. I mean, I was pretty close there, with my guess :)
the MW doesn't usually take births too close together, but she had a mom going early, who happened to give birth about 4 hours after me. so she was all business and no chit chat, took off, and we were on our own for the afternoon. I was really, really hungry, so I had my husband bake up the pan of stuffed manicotti my MW had made for me and we had in our freezer. and then slept a lot :)
*I tossed a few asteriks into the story so I could just reference my last birth story once and for all. the tl;dr of it is that I had an 11 lb 6 oz baby girl last time, who got stuck even after her shoulders were out. it's hard to have a subsequent baby after that without comparing every last detail to it, hence my linking her story to this one: http://so-there.livejournal.com/27839.html
oh, and if anyone's particularly interested in a birth story from dad's point of view, my husband blogged about it here: http://mannursediaries.blogspot.com/2011/08/it-gril.html