The Birth Story

I've had a request for Rose's birth story, and I figured all my female readers will enjoy it. Male readers (all 2 of you :), I will not be offended if you skip this one!

When people ask me how long I was in labor, it's hard for me to give an answer. With all of the kids, I've had pretty good braxton hicks contractions for about 2 weeks beforehand. With Rose especially, there were several nights where I was sure I was in labor, only to have it die away after several hours. So sometimes I want to say "4 days," but that's kind of a confusing answer. The night that I truly went into labor, David had stayed up late working on his lecture for the next day (which, it turns out, he wasn't going to need). He came to bed at 1:30, and about that time I woke up with regular contractions. After sitting downstairs for about a half hour, I decided that I wanted to walk around the neighborhood to distract myself. I knew he wouldn't be happy about me going by myself in the middle of the night, and I knew that he had just gone to bed, so it took me a little while to decide if I really wanted to go wake him up and ask him to go with me. When I did finally decide that I wanted to wake him up, he'd been asleep about an hour. As I woke him up and told him what I wanted to do, I could see the disbelief on his face--it was actually funny except that I felt so bad for him. He was a good sport, though, and got all dressed, put his contacts back in, and came downstairs to help me. We walked for about a half hour and the contractions were getting more painful, so we came back. We decided to go ahead and call the midwife and go to the hospital, because I hate going when the contractions are at their worst. All the commotion had awakened my mom, so I went and told her we were leaving. We got to the hospital at 4, after driving through road bumpy road construction to get there. I still didn't feel like they were that bad and was happy we had come earlier rather than later. As they showed us to our room, I saw another laboring mom walking the hallways, looking miserable, and was grateful that I wasn't feeling like that yet. We got settled in the hospital room and the nurse started check-in procedure. She asked me how bad the pain was, on a scale of 1 to 10, and I told her about an 8. My midwife arrived, got her scrubs on, and checked me. To my shock, I was at 9 and in transition. The nurses scrambled around for a few minutes, getting the baby-receiving contraption (does anybody know what those things are called?) ready and the room ready for delivery. at 4:45, after 3 pushes, she was born. Start to finish, it was a little over 3 hours. And, boy, am I glad it's over! Because the pushing stage was so short, I did tear, but that recovery has also been good, I think due to my Mom's diligent insistence that I stay in bed for the first week.

I think it's my easiest labor so far. They've all been a little different, but in my recollection, this was the quickest and least painful (not that I'd call it a picnic, but any means!). My midwife did not break my water, but let it break on its own, which did not happen until the second push. I think that helped distribute the pain of the contractions a little more evenly and made the whole thing more manageable.