My due date was July 17th. It all started to happen on Wednesday, July 8th, around 6 pm when I noticed a little bit of a bloody show and told my DH. Three hours later my water broke. I was on my way to go to the bathroom, but I thought it was just pee and me losing control of my bladder. My first thought was “stupid kegals”. It wasn’t a big deal because I was right in front of the toilet when it happened. I cried a little bit, “Honey, I didn’t make it!” He and my mom came in and told me that my water had broken and it wasn’t that I couldn’t hold my pee. I called the doctor after about an hour, and he told me to head down to the hospital. We got there around midnight and light contractions started shortly thereafter. I was at 3cm, and they thought I wasn’t in labor and would have sent me home if it weren’t for the fact that my water had definitely broken.
The contractions steadily became stronger and stronger. Around 10 or 11 that morning I was at 10cm but I had a lip on the cervix. The nurse made me lay on my side to make the lip go away. Man oh man I did not like that position, but it worked! I was so tired at this point that in between every contraction I fell asleep. I didn’t try to fall asleep, but it got to the point where DH had checked my pulse to make sure I was ok. My body apparently knew that I needed a break because right when it was time to start pushing the contractions slowed down, lasting only about 30 seconds, and were very light. At this time when I would push everyone would see her head then the contraction would go away and she’d slip back in. It sounded like a game of golf on the Wii where everyone was really excited right when you hit the ball, and then you hear everyone’s tone change as the ball falls obviously too short of the green. Kind of comical really. After a few hours of pushing, Cosette Rose finally arrived at 2:02 pm. She weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. I did tear in a couple places but I think the one tear (from a burst hematoma) caused, or at least made, the other tear to be worse.
A couple little notes to those who might be curious about this sort of stuff:
~Before all this I thought to myself “I’m not going to moan and make weird noises like some of those ladies did in the videos”… I made whatever noise was necessary to ease the pain.
~I did not poop on the table.
~I slowly lost my clothes to the point where I was completely naked by the time I started pushing.
~It was all natural; I didn’t take anything for the pain until afterward when I took an Ibuprophen.
~There were times when I questioned my decision to go the natural route because the pain was so intense but two days later when I was leaving the hospital I was thinking that it wasn’t so bad.
~Having a coach/doula is a great idea. I had my husband, my sister-in-law, my mom, and the nurse there coaching me and helping me.
~I was the only one that week to have a natural and un-medicated birth at the hospital.
~Even though we wrote up a birth plan it never came out of our bag. Our hospital was great; they totally respected our wishes to a “T”. All we had to say was that we wanted a natural birth and that’s what we got.
~Most of my laboring was spent walking the halls and standing in the shower with hot water beating on my belly.
~We took the Bradley Method birth classes.
Beautiful. Awesome. Thanks for sharing!