Birth Story

I wrote this about a week after Alice was born.  I wanted to let it sit for a little while, as I was still going over and over the birth in my mind.  Its been a while now and I am glad I wrote this down when I did.
___________________________________________________________

Over the summer, I changed my entire birth plan.  Originally I was going to deliver at the local hospital with an OB.  After much thought, I decided that I would rather deliver with a midwife at the birth center in town.  I think that made a much bigger difference that I ever thought in the way things went last Friday.

Brad and I both went to bed on the night of October 13th with the feeling that the baby would come the next day.  I hadn't been having many noticeable or painful contractions, so I was also a bit worried about how soon the baby would or would not arrive, and how big baby would be.

Sure enough, shortly after a 2 a.m. bathroom run I was drifting back to sleep when I felt my water break.  I still wasn't having contractions but knew it was time to get up and try to get things moving.  I called the midwife right before 3 a.m. to tell her and see what I should do.  I would not have bothered her in the middle of the night except that I was Group B strep positive and knew I needed to get antibiotics started soon.  The on-call midwife decided that the antibiotics could wait until I started having contractions and told me to call her back in a few hours.  So we were able to let the kids continue sleeping and I walked around the kitchen.  Contractions started after an hour or so and I called the midwife back around 5 a.m.  She agreed to meet me at the birth center as soon as she could get there and we ended up getting there around 6.

We took the kids with us and packed breakfast for them to eat there.  Because things were still going slowly Brad took them to school, saying that he would probably be back for them around lunch time.  That  turned out to be wishful thinking.

I got my first dose of antibiotics and walked around.  It was still very dark outside and there aren't good sidewalks around the birth center, so we stayed on the porch.  Eventually we went for a longer walk through town and then back to the birth center.

Contractions were starting to hurt but were still manageable.  I was definitely getting tired after getting up so early in the morning.  I had to keep walking and stair climbing to keep the contractions regular.

Eventually it got to be lunch time and I was still not feeling much closer to delivery, so Brad went out to get us lunch.  I had soup and a sandwich, along with lots of grape juice, to help keep me energized.

After lunch I had to lie down for a few minutes, even though that slowed the contractions quite a bit.  All I wanted was to take a nap, but with my water broken, I felt I couldn't afford to waste time sleeping.  So I got back up and kept moving around.

As we got close to the 8-hour deadline for the antibiotics, the midwife checked to see if I was getting close.   I was still only 6 cm dilated, so I had to get another dose of the antibiotics.  This was administered through an IV, which they put in and took out each time.  Part of my desire to go to the birth center was to avoid an IV altogether, but at least the midwives don't have anything else to put in an IV.  That would have been totally different in a hospital; I didn't want to worry about fighting off interventions when I was in labor.

After the second dose, things started picking up and hurting more.  I was already 12 hours into labor and feeling very frustrated at how long it was taking.  My labor with Susanna was 18 hours and with Ben it was 6.  I was really hoping to get there in time to deliver the baby and hadn't really considered that it might take much longer than that.

After about 2 hours of very painful contractions the baby was finally ready to be born.  Fortunately it took only a few pushes and she was out.  She had her cord wrapped tightly around her neck two times and the midwife ended up cutting it before she was out completely.  She was a bit blue and needed a bit of oxygen, but her heartbeat stayed strong the entire time.  While they were working on her in these first few minutes I was able to see that we had a girl!

We still hadn't finalized a name and because we needed to finish the birth certificate form before leaving, we had to hurry and decide.  We had narrowed it down to Elena or Alice, so we decided to just use both and like the sound of Alice Elena better.

We texted our neighbor who had Susanna and Ben since they got off the bus and asked her to bring them over.  She kindly fed them dinner and offered to bring something for us.  Another neighbor works for P.F. Changs and they ended up providing our meal - it was quite tasty after my long day.

When the kids arrived we told them the baby was a girl.  Susanna was thrilled and Ben needed a moment - he had many months to dream of a baby brother.  He got past it soon enough and thinks his baby sister is great.

I was a little worried about going home so quickly after the birth (average stay at the birth center is 4 hours) but it was totally fine.  The big kids were exhausted from their long day of waiting and we were ready to get everyone home and settled.  Ben went straight to bed as soon as we walked in, but Susanna was ready to stay up all night with the baby.  We eventually chased her upstairs after one last cuddle, and Brad and I (and Alice) quickly fell asleep for our first night at home as a family of five.