For the past week my body had been contracting on and off and from my doctor's appointments it was clear birth was nearing. At my appointment on Monday I was dialated to a 4.5 and 60% effaced. This was exciting news, but each day felt like a marathon with a lot of anxiety and anticipation wondering just when this little one would decide to come. My doctor offered to induce me on the 9th or 10th, but I declined. I was really hoping things would start on their own and thought that would make me more nervous having a set date.
I had two meetings this week that I had hoped to make it to. Baby was cooperative, and I did!
Tuesday
evening, Wednesday morning I was up and down all night, going to the
bathroom and just overall discomfort. At one time I woke up with sharp
pain in my back. It was so bad that I had to wake Justin up to give me
counter pressure. This continued for about 20 minutes and finally my
body relaxed again. Justin thought for sure that was it, but we both
fell asleep and awoke tired the next morning.
We all went about our day as we had planned. Natalie and I headed to playgroup at the park.
My friends were joking with me about having a baby that night.
Other than being tired, I felt pretty good the whole day and didn't notice many contractions.
That night I had a meeting and Justin and Natalie had a really good time at the Splash Pad.
We fell asleep at about 10:20 only for me to awake at 10:50 with sharp, long contractions. I woke Justin up immediately because I needed counter pressure stat. Each contraction was at least a minute long and was coming every 3 1/2 to 4 minutes.
At first I told Justin we should wait for an hour before heading to the hospital.
I did not want to make the 20 minute drive to only be sent home with false labor.
After he watched me go through about 3 more contractions he said that we were going in right away. I had a strong feeling I just needed to let him take the lead on this.
He called the hospital and then our friends who live across the street to come over to stay with Natalie We left our house by 11:30 ish and arrived at the hospital just before midnight.
The nurses were taking it slow with a little bit of paperwork when we got there and I was slightly irritated. My contractions had not slowed down at all and I just wanted to get into a private room and not chat. (Obviously later stages of labor)
I think the nurses thought they were going to send me home, because Justin had told them we had only been laboring for less than an hour.
They then saw I was in pain and took me to a room. The nurses comment on the way was, "Well let's go check to see if you are going to stay the night."
We got to the room and she was fiddling around with computers and I don't know what else while I continued contracting.
Finally she checked me and said, "Oh, well you are at an 8, we are going to need to go call the doctor."
I was not surprised at all and glad she finally realized I really was going to have a baby, soon.
The staff got into gear and the room was being prepped for a baby.
I was having strong contractions, consistently, but they were not nearly as painful as they had been with Natalie's birth, and I wonder if that is because my water had not yet broke?
The nurse wanted me on the bed to be attached to the fetal monitoring system, yet I did not want to lie down. The only other position not on my back was on my hands and knees.
Justin was great about applying counter pressure with each contraction and that helped take the edge off of each contraction.
I also had the nurse give me a narcotic through the IV. That didn't really change any of the pain, just made me really loopy and relaxed. It was nice to be so calm between contractions.
Not long after they got the IV in and had give me the medication, the doctor arrived. She walked in and asked if my water had broke yet. Right as she said that it broke and then I started feeling like I could push.That was about 12:53 a.m.
This was the hardest part of my labor experience by far. Feeling my baby descend down and crown was very painful. Thankfully it was a relatively short amount of time. I think it took about 6 contractions of pushing and our baby Jenna was born at 1:11 a.m. on July 9th.She was born at exactly 39 weeks gestation.
She cried first thing.Everyone remarked on how much dark hair she had. I smiled to myself, I knew she was going to have dark hair. Once I got turned around on my back Justin brought her up and placed her on my chest. Once again a rush of love and joy. She went to nursing right away.
I had a small tear that had to be stitched up, but other than that was just fine.
We love our dark haired girl and are so grateful she is healthy, happy and here. We were also both thankful it was a short labor, as we were both exhausted from the previous night's excitement.
I am grateful that I was able to once again deliver a baby naturally. It is very difficult to go through the pain of giving birth, but always worth it once that little baby is placed on your chest. I was very anxious leading up to Jenna's birth and I know that Heavenly Father blessed me to get through it once again.
One thing that I felt like helped my body a lot with getting my body ready to labor and the actual labor process was drinking Red Raspberry Leaf Tea. I started at about 28 weeks and tried to drink a cup twice a day. This is suppose to help strengthen the muscles in the uterus. In turn this should help with having deep effective contractions along with really helping prevent hemorrhaging after labor. I feel like it did it's job wonderfully and even helped my body prepare well.
There were many tender mercies along this journey that I recorded in my personal journal.
I am so grateful for the gift to be a mother!
First bath by my awesome nurse Shannon. She was called in right when I started pushing, then stayed to help me after she was born. She said her two favorite smells in the world were new babies and a horse's mane. That isn't really important, just something fun about her I want to remember.
