game time | my birth story part 2

Before I even got pregnant I knew that I wanted to hire a doula to help with my birth. I appreciate hospitals and what they provide and I trusted my doctor and his methods... but I wanted to have a go-between for me and Aaron and the hospital staff in case things got tense at any point. I also wanted to have someone to assist me in laboring at home as long as possible, so that I could avoid unnecessary interventions and deliver naturally - although lots of well-meaning older women told me I wouldn't be "getting any prize" for not using the drugs. I just wanted to avoid the epidural potentially slowing labor down for me, and I'll be honest that big needle freaked me the heck out.

In any case, we made it to game time a bit faster than I anticipated. (If you missed Part 1 of the story you can stop for a moment and READ IT HERE. I'll wait....) So Aaron arrived home from work that evening and I began to labor. My doula had dropped by quickly around 6ish to give me a cool doohickey (I actually didn't know you could just buy this on Amazon until I wrote this post so - you're welcome!) that sends some electronic waves to manage the contraction pains. Nifty! I was doing pretty good for a while, just me and that yoga ball. Breathing. All that jazz.

The last few weeks before I went into labor I went into full-on nesting madness and redid three out of three bedrooms in our house. YUP. You heard that right. Every room. We had a large dresser that some friends of ours were picking up to get out of our bedroom and while I was breathing and bouncing on that yoga ball in full-on labor. So I was trying to convince Aaron to tell our friend to come pick up the dresser. I was convinced I'd be doing this thing for a while and they had time. I was also encouraging Aaron to eat something! He was also finishing up sending our tax paperwork to our tax guy. Talk about multi-tasking! We were crushing it.

But it got pretty crazy pretty quickly. I didn't know this at the time (cause how would I know any different) but I was mainly having what's called Back Labor. That means my little darling babe was turned so that her head was pressing into my tailbone. And that meant it #1 - it hurt like a mofo and #2 I could really only labor sitting up/squatting/etc. There was no laying down for me. And these visions I had of laboring in a warm bathtub or shower didn't end up working out so well. So eventually I call Lucia (my doula! she's great!) to tell her things are getting good and to come over at her earliest convenience. I swear she was only at our house for 10 minutes (my sense of time is probably skewed so who knows) before I started to feel like I'm leaking a little. She helps me over to the toilet (I think she was using a doula secret here) and BAM! my water breaks. Just like that...

It's really not like in the movie where that's the first thing to go! It can happen at any time! You might know all this stuff but I didn't before I got pregnant. Maybe it's better that way. Save a little mystery. There's not much left in life once you're an adult.

After my water breaks - at this point I think my contractions are probably about 3-4 minutes apart- Lucia tells us we should head to the hospital and honestly my head was a little fuzzy. It's around 8:40pm. We don't have a hospital bag packed (That was on my to-do list for earlier that day! I swear.) Aaron did manage to send our tax docs in. But I'm not sure how much of his dinner he managed to eat.

We roll up to the hospital and they pull out a wheelchair. As they are wheeling me in I don't even look up at the nurse's station but I say something like "I'm having a baby tonight!" and I tell them my doctor's name. He pops up behind one of the nurses like "Hey! How's it going?" So as they are getting us settled into our room I want to get in the shower since things are feeling pretty real and as soon as the water hits my back I feel like whoa. Something's different.

I turn to Lucia and Aaron and I'm like - "I think I need to push" - and my tone is probably implying "Is that possible?" I'm still under the impression I was gonna be at this whole labor part a bit longer but since my doc happens to be there they get him in and he's like - "do you want me to check you?" Sure! Like why not? I'm not doing anything else tonight.

He looks down there and I don't know the specifics really but he's like: "YEP. You can start pushing now!" He's practically gleeful delivering that news to me. Great. It's Game time folks.

To Be Continued....Part 3 : BEAST MODE. Coming soon to The Refined Woman.

XO,