On your "due date" of 24 June.
That evening, baby was very active and the kicks/punches seemed to indicate posterior positioning ("sunny side up"), which we definitely did NOT want to go through! Between 9-midnight, I stood and read my book while doing some positioning techniques. Around midnight, I felt a weird crunch in my pelvis and then felt wet. I dashed for the bathroom (not something easily done!) and saw that, yes something had happened and my water had probably broken or at least I had started to leak. This was so different from all my other pregnancies and labors, and I was concerned because I had tested positive for Group B strep at 37 weeks, so it was something that would need monitoring at the least and IV antibiotics during labor. But nothing was immediately happening, so I went to bed and tried to get some sleep.
When I woke up around 2am, I had leaked a little onto the sheet. Again, something new and not what I had envisioned. So I put on a pad and went back to bed, trying not to visualize worst case scenarios or become too anxious.
The next day, the boys went to daycare while Jake and I ran errands and completed some last-minute chores around the house. I watched while he weeded the garden and cleaned up the yard. We drove to Troy for a midwife appointment with Maureen and a visiting midwifery student. We told Maureen about all the weird things that had been happening, and she offered to do a fern test to see if what I was leaking was actually amniotic fluid or not. We said yes, and she did the swab-- we did see the fern pattern using the microscope (so cool!), and confirmed that yes, my water was leaking. We talked about what that meant for me and this baby-- we were coming up on 18 hours since the first pop, which is a risk factor for the baby being infected with GBS. So we decided that, once labor actually started, that we would definitely do the IV antibiotics. I was not having any contractions, so nothing seemed to really be "happening".
Maureen checked my cervix and did a membrane sweep to try to get things moving along. I was 3 cm dilated, 70% effaced, and baby was at -1 station-- significant progress already! Those numbers made J a little panicked, and Maureen kept telling us "Ok, so we'll see you later tonight". I was not buying it-- nothing felt different, and I thought that I'd have another full day or so. Still, J called my sister on our way home and asked her to spend the night at our house just in case.
Maureen suggested that we get some rest, pick up the boys from daycare, have some dinner and then do some walking to get things moving along later that evening. When we came home, the boys swam and then Jake mowed the lawn. After dinner, we took a walk up to the high school and boys rode their bikes down the tall hill.
When I woke up around 2am, I had leaked a little onto the sheet. Again, something new and not what I had envisioned. So I put on a pad and went back to bed, trying not to visualize worst case scenarios or become too anxious.
The next day, the boys went to daycare while Jake and I ran errands and completed some last-minute chores around the house. I watched while he weeded the garden and cleaned up the yard. We drove to Troy for a midwife appointment with Maureen and a visiting midwifery student. We told Maureen about all the weird things that had been happening, and she offered to do a fern test to see if what I was leaking was actually amniotic fluid or not. We said yes, and she did the swab-- we did see the fern pattern using the microscope (so cool!), and confirmed that yes, my water was leaking. We talked about what that meant for me and this baby-- we were coming up on 18 hours since the first pop, which is a risk factor for the baby being infected with GBS. So we decided that, once labor actually started, that we would definitely do the IV antibiotics. I was not having any contractions, so nothing seemed to really be "happening".
Maureen checked my cervix and did a membrane sweep to try to get things moving along. I was 3 cm dilated, 70% effaced, and baby was at -1 station-- significant progress already! Those numbers made J a little panicked, and Maureen kept telling us "Ok, so we'll see you later tonight". I was not buying it-- nothing felt different, and I thought that I'd have another full day or so. Still, J called my sister on our way home and asked her to spend the night at our house just in case.
Maureen suggested that we get some rest, pick up the boys from daycare, have some dinner and then do some walking to get things moving along later that evening. When we came home, the boys swam and then Jake mowed the lawn. After dinner, we took a walk up to the high school and boys rode their bikes down the tall hill.
By this point, I was having irregular contractions that were about 15 or 20 minutes apart. I figured this would last through the night, then we would have things pick up tomorrow morning and a baby by that afternoon. We walked home slowly and put the boys to bed.
Overnight, the contractions kept coming every 10-12 minutes and were fairly strong. I lay still and tried to doze as much as possible, but when one started building I'd get up and sway next to the bed or go to my hands and knees. Lying down through a contraction was awful, as was having one on the toilet. I was trying to relax as much as possible because I knew there was going to be a full day's worth of labor ahead of me and I wanted to conserve my strength. I also expected contractions to space out at any time and for me to get in some good rest. This did not happen.
Around 6 am, I finally decided to get up for the day. Once I was upright, the contractions started coming more closely together (5-7 min) and were fairly strong. J wanted to call Heidi right away, but I wanted him to wait until we either had a longer pattern established or I had some visible sign of labor (mucus plug, etc). After 15 min, he called Heidi and she said she was on her way.
My sister got the boys breakfasted, dressed, and out the door. Little J threw a mini fit that I could hear through the doorway because his sandals were broken and he had to wear his sneakers at the last moment.
Heidi arrived around 7 am, I think. She said she wanted to listen to baby's heart and to check me out to see if we needed to start the IV antibiotics. Baby's heart tones were in the 140s (the same as at nearly every prenatal visit and throughout the rest of labor) and I was 8 cm dilated. I was surprised-- I didn't think I could have made that much progress overnight! Heidi said that there was no real point in starting the IV antibiotics, because we probably didn't have 4 hours lead time before baby would be born. (She was right-- she was only there for 90 minutes before baby was born.)
Jake started topping off the birth pool with hot water, because I really wanted to get in and see if it helped at all. Some of the contractions were getting particularly intense and hard; I could feel my pelvic bones moving and shifting as the baby descended and it was not pleasant.
I got changed into a bathing suit top and awkwardly climbed into the pool. It was still hard to deal with the contractions, but there wasn't as much bone-crushing pain. I can't imagine how much harder it would have been to deal with out of the tub (!) and being able to float a bit between contractions helped immensely.
Jake took these pictures around 8 am-- I was somewhere between 8 and 9 cm. I was having contractions about every 10 min, so it was nice to have the little break between to catch my breath and gather strength. Contractions transitioned to uncontrollable pushing/bearing down somewhere around 8:20 am. I think I had 4 pushing contractions, that stage lasted around 20 minutes. I could feel the bowling ball head moving down in my pelvis and pushing everything aside. It was intense and hard and fast and I was scared at how quickly everything was moving.
At the end of one hard push, the head was out! Heidi looped the cord around the neck and asked me to push again. I tried to catch my breath and squeeze the rest of the baby out, but I think I couldn't get enough leverage in the pool (it was quite wide, and my feet didn't touch the other side to push against) to be effective. Mary, the assistant midwife, grabbed my leg and pushed it up, told me to hold it back to open my pelvis. My eyes were closed and there seemed to be a lot of splashing and squirming and SUPER INTENSE BURNING pressure and then suddenly the pressure moved down and through and there was a baby out in the water. Heidi scooped the baby up and placed it on my chest.
I was completely overwhelmed with emotions. I kept saying "Oh God, Oh God" and "It's a baby! It's really a baby!" I couldn't believe that there was actually a baby who was yelling and moving and alive.
I had been so worried, especially in the last weeks before birth, that everything was going to go wrong. I panicked when baby would sleep for an extended period of time, when I couldn't feel it moving around. My fears and anxiety was increasing with each passing day, although I knew intellectually there was nothing I could do but wait and that being stressed would make things delayed and more difficult. This essay sums up my frame of mind.
After the cord stopped pulsing, J cut it and took the baby into his arms. We hadn't checked for sex yet, and he peeked under the towel to see that baby was a girl !!! We were completely shocked and stunned-- after so many boys, we thought it was impossible to have a girl, yet here she was!
Heidi asked me to push out the placenta, which was harder than I thought it would be. Then she and Mary helped me out of the pool and onto some towels on the floor, where Heidi removed some clots manually and teased out some shreds of trailing membrane which were left behind. She said that my cervix had come down with the baby during pushing, so she helped maneuver that back into place and said that it was probably going to be pretty bruised and sore for a while. She inspected my bottom and there were no tears or even skid marks-- for such a fast pushing phase, I was surprised!
I was shaking with cold and adrenaline on the floor, which made it harder for Heidi to get out the last bits of membranes. Mary gave me a shot of Pitocin to help things clamp down. Then they bundled me up and helped me climb into bed, where Mary put a heating pad on my legs and they passed my baby daughter back over to me.
She was snuffling and snorting and crying. She pinked up very quickly and her APGAR scores were all excellent. She and I had some nice skin-to-skin time for the following hour or so (passing back and forth with J), while Mary helped clean up the birth pool and Heidi completed the labor notes and birth certificate paperwork.
We spent the rest of the day snuggling our new baby girl and marveling at how wonderful and perfect she was! My sister came to sit with me while J drove to the daycare to pick up the boys around 5 pm. The boys thundered up the stairs to meet the new baby and they were SO SURPRISED when we told them she was a girl! They jumped up and down-- they had wanted a baby sister very badly.
At 3 days postpartum, baby CC was down to 6 pounds, 11 ounces and by 1 week she was back up to 7 pounds, 1 ounce (of course, she hasn't pooped for days, so that's probably an overestimate). She has been an eating and sleeping champion and we are so happy that she has joined our family.
