Hello my cautious friends! It's taken me longer than expected but the last ten days have also been crazier, busier and more exhausting than I could have ever imagined. Spoiler: all's fine, we're very much in love and my recovery is going well, albeit slowly. Birth is an absolutely amazing process and now, with a little bit of time gone by, I look back very fondly on this experience, especially since I got what I wanted (unmedicated birth in a midwives' birthing center) PLUS a healthy and beautiful baby. It was harder than expected though. But still, birth is just the beginning. It's one point in time that passes and THEN you're suddenly a different person, living in a different world. I felt prepared for birth but no class on earth could've prepared me for what comes afterwards…
But anyway, this post is supposed to be only about that one point in time which occured on Friday, November 14, the day after my due date. During my pregnancy, I've gotten mildly addicted to birth stories in all shapes and sizes but I especially liked the novel-sized, super detailed ones. So hoping there's someone among you lovely ladies who shares this preference of mine, here you go! Of course, you'll find all the lovely pictures and a TL;DR at the end…
Part I: The Buildup
I started noticing the very first signs of regular contractions on the evening before my due date. From that point on, my main goal was not to get too excited about them, having heard too many tales of "false labor" and "being sent back home".
The next morning, the pains were still there and I was oddly satisfied when they actually showed up on the doctor's monitor. I wasn't just imagining things! My doc confirmed that the contractions were indeed regular but also told us that the baby was still way up there so she wanted to see me again the next morning. She had also noticed some slight decelerations of the baby's heartbeat when I was having a contraction but that only happened in the beginning when I was still lying on my back so I actually wasn't worried about that at all.
On the evening of my due date, things started to get timable. The contractions were stronger but not very regular. Me and DH watched some TV which didn't really help me relax (his mother's cousin had entered into a German reality TV show and was making a fool of himself - cringing about stuff like that is not the ideal way of coping with increasingly painful contractions!). Then I lost the main part of my mucous plug with a "plop" while peeing on the toilet and from then on decided that shit was actually going down so I rang up my midwife (MW).
She adviced me to take a bath and keep her in the loop. The bath felt great but it did not in any way weaken the contractions, maybe they spaced out a little bit more but I couldn't really tell. I also thought that timing contractions is a tedious thing to do...! I just wanted to focus on my body and not on some numbers. She called me back at like 10 pm and was like "should I even bother going to bed right now?". I laughed and told her to go ahead, I would try the same. Alas, I should not really get any sleep that night...
I couldn't really relax on the bed plus I didn't want to disturb DH so I moved to the sofa in my room and labored there through the night while listening to podcasts, napping, walking around and silently cursing when I had to jot down the time of yet another contraction. I could cope well but things were getting increasingly painful. Visualizing the contractions as waves and reminding myself that each one would be over after a finite number of breaths definitely helped me get through the night. I also told myself that I couldn't really call my MW now as I'd told her to go to sleep so oftentimes I'd check the time and be like "it's 1 am now. She probably got 3 hours of sleep. I should wait a little longer..."
When it started getting lighter outside, I finally managed to get some longer napping done myself only to discover at waking up that my contractions were again at over 10 mins apart although they'd been at a steady 6-7 mins in the night. I was extremely disappointed and dreaded the possibility of going through another night like this.
I had a light breakfast with my husband and called my MW again. She told me to go for a walk and see if that would get things going. There was also my doctor's appointment on the horizon...
So we headed out - it was an absolutely beautiful morning, especially for November. At first I thought the walking wasn't doing anything and I even suggested to take a longer route in order to stop by a certain ice cream place. Not soon after though, shit got real. I actually had to stop walking and breathe through a contraction and suddenly they jumped to 5/6 mins apart. So I decided to screw the doctor's appointment and head to the birthing center - if worse came to worst, my MW could just put me on a monitor there and send me home afterwards (yeah, I was still afraid of being too much of a whimp...!).
We grabbed our stuff, jumped into the car and that's where I decided this baby better be on its way out: I actually had to vocalize through the contractions and I kept yelling at DH both to hurry the eff up while not driving like an absolute maniac.
Part II: Transition
We finally made it to the birthing center around noon after what felt like forever and were greeted by my MW who seemed surprised to see me in such a state as I'd still sounded fairly composed on the phone. She put me on the monitor and I was delighted that I could remain standing and moving around a little. I joked with DH that I was racking up new highscores on the contraction monitor. Then my MW checked me and told me a number I was very, very satisfied to hear: 7 centimeters! I was nearing transition! There would be a baby today! (also, I was not being a whimp...)
I proceeded to labor in the birthing tub which was absolute heaven. I mostly kept focused on myself while DH and my MW were chilling by the tub. Breaks between contractions felt like the best thing ever and slowly I noticed my body would start pushing on its own. Turns out that I was indeed fully dilated and I cherished the thought of finally being able to push since I figured it'd be pretty much a safe thing from here. It was 2 pm and I hoped to see my baby within the hour…
Part III: Fun with pushing
But that's not what the baby had in mind! I pushed for about an hour and could somehow sense that things weren't progressing. Not that I had much energy left to really think about the fact but this wasn't the smooth water birth I had envisioned for myself... At some point, the MW told me to get out of the tub and try some different positions as baby hadn't found the right entry into my pelvis yet. I reluctantly agreed. I really liked the feeling of weightlessness in the tub but at the same time, I was anxious to get this over with. Back in our room, I basically went through all the available tools: first the birthing stool which didn't do anything because of baby's not yet ideal position. Well that was frustrating again. I moved to the bed and switched sides pushing. Very exhausting and I was definitely starting to lose my cool… When my MW told me that the baby still wasn't in the right position to slide through my pelvis, I was absolutely devastated. She calmly told me that we could just transfer to a hospital but that she didn't think it was necessary. At the hospital, they'd probably do an epidural and put me on something to intensify my contractions. Believe me, the thought of an epidural did not sound unappealing to me at all! What I really did not want to do, though, was go anywhere, not even in an ambulance. I asked my MW again if she really, in all seriousness, thought this was doable by going through some more changes of position and she assured me that yes. Of course, I wanted her to commit to something like a time estimate, she just smiled and said "yeah no, midwives don't do prognoses. But you can do it, really!"
Part IV: I can do it??
So I cursed but obliged. I tried the so-called "shepheard's position" which involved placing one foot on the birthing stool while hanging on to a rope dangling from the ceiling, pushing for two contractions and then changing feet. I've always heard and read that there is a point in any birth story where women are convinced that no, they're not going to make it, they're done and over with it and that that's usually a good sign for things being almost over. Well let me tell you, I had several moments like that during this phase of pushing. I was so done. I actually bargained with my midwife about how many more pushes I'd have to do in the shepheard's position because I really wanted to get back on the bed. There, I whined when it was time to switch sides. At some point, I apologized for being whiny. At another, my MW left the room, giving me an opportunity to pour my heart out to DH which actually felt good. I told him I felt like the biggest failure, like a weakling, blamed myself for not having exercised enough prior to birth and that all was just going downhill from there. It must've been hard for him to hear all that and still manage to maintain a positive attitude but he did. He was amazing throughout and hardly got on my nerves like I feared he would!
At my lowest point, I considered all my options and decided they were all absolutely horrible. I did not want to stay and go through countless more torturous pushes. Because, I thought, even then I'd still have to get the head out and that would also suck big time (I was right about that…). I did not want to go to the hospital either. What I really wanted was not to be in this kind of pain anymore, call it a day, go home and maybe come back tomorrow to finish this up.
Part V: Get outtttt!
After what felt like a friggin eternity (all in all, I had spent roughly three hours pushing by now), my MW told me to get back on the birthing stool. I cursed and moaned but she told me that she thought baby was now in the right position and that gravity would help me push my baby out. So I obliged, again. DH sat behind me, holding me for each push. I was so done, it was not even funny. I cursed at him for moving even one inch (he later told me he had to because I'd been exerting great pressure on his bladder… Poor guy!), then I told him he was "full of shit" because he kept telling me what a great job I was doing. He couldn't even see anything, he was just echoing the MW who couldn't help but laugh at my comment. But hey, things were actually happening! I should've been thrilled but I was way beyond that by now. Because I was so exhausted, my contractions had weakened bit by bit. My MW had given me homeopathic stuff and had rubbed a special kind of labor-supporting oil on my tummy that smelled like Christmas. The waves still came regular but further apart which meant that the "ring of fire"-phase was very long and sheer torture. All I wanted to do is get this baby out so I crammed like four of five pushes into each contraction, I thought my head would explode. My MW, being the great professional that she is, took good care of my perineum and helped me stretch it very slowly while baby's head slid out and back into my ladyparts. Of course, I wasn't pleased: "Don't slide back in, goddammit!" I yelled.
THEN FINALLY the head was out and it wasn't going anywhere. The feeling I had at this point is absolutely undescribable. It must've been the most ginormous form of relief I've ever felt in my existence. I was basically high by now. And then my contractions stopped. Which was cool by me because I wasn't in much pain anymore but of course I wanted the whole of my baby out. And then… I felt something I hadn't felt at all during the last hours of pushing: the baby was kicking and wriggling in there! It was wriggling its body out all on its own! I still hadn't had another contraction but my MW (very shocked as she hadn't experienced anything like that herself) told me to just give some gentle pushes and slowly but surely my baby's body slid out of me, was caught by my MW and carefully placed on the floor below me. What an absoluty amazing moment! She asked me if I wanted to hold it but I couldn't see a thing, just a baby-shaped blob on the floor so I yelled "My glasses! Someone give me my glasses, now!!". DH did, I could finally take a look and cry out "My baby! It's here! Finally! And it's a girl! We have a daughter, honey!!".
Part VI: The Aftermath
I picked her up, put her to my chest and we waited for the umbilical cord to stop pulsing so DH could cut it. She was alert, had cried almost immediately after birth and was also covered in blood and goo. But she looked like she had coped with the whole process way better than me. She was wrinkly, but her head wasn't squished or anything. We got to cuddle for quite some time and got her to latch while my MW tried to deliver my placenta. It took pretty long for the next mild contraction to come along but it felt great pushing that big floppy thing out of my stomach. The birth was finally over. DH also got to cuddle her while the midwife examined me. No tears, only two deeper abrasions on the inside that I could've gotten stitches for but I opted out of it since it didn't seem terribly necessary. After some more cuddles, we finally decided on a name (she'll be "Baby E" for now since this isn't a private subreddit) and she got her first checkup which went great. I then needed three attempts to leave the bed and hobble to the shower, my MW assisted me in cleaning up. I had lost a fair amount of blood ("normal, but on the upper end of normal") and my circulation wasn't working at all. Standing and walking with my head down was the way to go. That's how I made it into the car and up our two flights of stairs. I passed out on my bed with Baby E on my chest. DH didn't catch a second of sleep that night.
I think I've gone on quite long enough now. There's still so much I'd like to tell you but I think this'll fit better into a coherent postpartum post.
I'd like to thank this wonderful community for keeping me sane during these crazy 40 weeks. I'll graduate to /r/CautiousBTB now but I'll keep an eye on you!
But anyway, this post is supposed to be only about that one point in time which occured on Friday, November 14, the day after my due date. During my pregnancy, I've gotten mildly addicted to birth stories in all shapes and sizes but I especially liked the novel-sized, super detailed ones. So hoping there's someone among you lovely ladies who shares this preference of mine, here you go! Of course, you'll find all the lovely pictures and a TL;DR at the end…
Part I: The Buildup
I started noticing the very first signs of regular contractions on the evening before my due date. From that point on, my main goal was not to get too excited about them, having heard too many tales of "false labor" and "being sent back home".
The next morning, the pains were still there and I was oddly satisfied when they actually showed up on the doctor's monitor. I wasn't just imagining things! My doc confirmed that the contractions were indeed regular but also told us that the baby was still way up there so she wanted to see me again the next morning. She had also noticed some slight decelerations of the baby's heartbeat when I was having a contraction but that only happened in the beginning when I was still lying on my back so I actually wasn't worried about that at all.
On the evening of my due date, things started to get timable. The contractions were stronger but not very regular. Me and DH watched some TV which didn't really help me relax (his mother's cousin had entered into a German reality TV show and was making a fool of himself - cringing about stuff like that is not the ideal way of coping with increasingly painful contractions!). Then I lost the main part of my mucous plug with a "plop" while peeing on the toilet and from then on decided that shit was actually going down so I rang up my midwife (MW).
She adviced me to take a bath and keep her in the loop. The bath felt great but it did not in any way weaken the contractions, maybe they spaced out a little bit more but I couldn't really tell. I also thought that timing contractions is a tedious thing to do...! I just wanted to focus on my body and not on some numbers. She called me back at like 10 pm and was like "should I even bother going to bed right now?". I laughed and told her to go ahead, I would try the same. Alas, I should not really get any sleep that night...
I couldn't really relax on the bed plus I didn't want to disturb DH so I moved to the sofa in my room and labored there through the night while listening to podcasts, napping, walking around and silently cursing when I had to jot down the time of yet another contraction. I could cope well but things were getting increasingly painful. Visualizing the contractions as waves and reminding myself that each one would be over after a finite number of breaths definitely helped me get through the night. I also told myself that I couldn't really call my MW now as I'd told her to go to sleep so oftentimes I'd check the time and be like "it's 1 am now. She probably got 3 hours of sleep. I should wait a little longer..."
When it started getting lighter outside, I finally managed to get some longer napping done myself only to discover at waking up that my contractions were again at over 10 mins apart although they'd been at a steady 6-7 mins in the night. I was extremely disappointed and dreaded the possibility of going through another night like this.
I had a light breakfast with my husband and called my MW again. She told me to go for a walk and see if that would get things going. There was also my doctor's appointment on the horizon...
So we headed out - it was an absolutely beautiful morning, especially for November. At first I thought the walking wasn't doing anything and I even suggested to take a longer route in order to stop by a certain ice cream place. Not soon after though, shit got real. I actually had to stop walking and breathe through a contraction and suddenly they jumped to 5/6 mins apart. So I decided to screw the doctor's appointment and head to the birthing center - if worse came to worst, my MW could just put me on a monitor there and send me home afterwards (yeah, I was still afraid of being too much of a whimp...!).
We grabbed our stuff, jumped into the car and that's where I decided this baby better be on its way out: I actually had to vocalize through the contractions and I kept yelling at DH both to hurry the eff up while not driving like an absolute maniac.
Part II: Transition
We finally made it to the birthing center around noon after what felt like forever and were greeted by my MW who seemed surprised to see me in such a state as I'd still sounded fairly composed on the phone. She put me on the monitor and I was delighted that I could remain standing and moving around a little. I joked with DH that I was racking up new highscores on the contraction monitor. Then my MW checked me and told me a number I was very, very satisfied to hear: 7 centimeters! I was nearing transition! There would be a baby today! (also, I was not being a whimp...)
I proceeded to labor in the birthing tub which was absolute heaven. I mostly kept focused on myself while DH and my MW were chilling by the tub. Breaks between contractions felt like the best thing ever and slowly I noticed my body would start pushing on its own. Turns out that I was indeed fully dilated and I cherished the thought of finally being able to push since I figured it'd be pretty much a safe thing from here. It was 2 pm and I hoped to see my baby within the hour…
Part III: Fun with pushing
But that's not what the baby had in mind! I pushed for about an hour and could somehow sense that things weren't progressing. Not that I had much energy left to really think about the fact but this wasn't the smooth water birth I had envisioned for myself... At some point, the MW told me to get out of the tub and try some different positions as baby hadn't found the right entry into my pelvis yet. I reluctantly agreed. I really liked the feeling of weightlessness in the tub but at the same time, I was anxious to get this over with. Back in our room, I basically went through all the available tools: first the birthing stool which didn't do anything because of baby's not yet ideal position. Well that was frustrating again. I moved to the bed and switched sides pushing. Very exhausting and I was definitely starting to lose my cool… When my MW told me that the baby still wasn't in the right position to slide through my pelvis, I was absolutely devastated. She calmly told me that we could just transfer to a hospital but that she didn't think it was necessary. At the hospital, they'd probably do an epidural and put me on something to intensify my contractions. Believe me, the thought of an epidural did not sound unappealing to me at all! What I really did not want to do, though, was go anywhere, not even in an ambulance. I asked my MW again if she really, in all seriousness, thought this was doable by going through some more changes of position and she assured me that yes. Of course, I wanted her to commit to something like a time estimate, she just smiled and said "yeah no, midwives don't do prognoses. But you can do it, really!"
Part IV: I can do it??
So I cursed but obliged. I tried the so-called "shepheard's position" which involved placing one foot on the birthing stool while hanging on to a rope dangling from the ceiling, pushing for two contractions and then changing feet. I've always heard and read that there is a point in any birth story where women are convinced that no, they're not going to make it, they're done and over with it and that that's usually a good sign for things being almost over. Well let me tell you, I had several moments like that during this phase of pushing. I was so done. I actually bargained with my midwife about how many more pushes I'd have to do in the shepheard's position because I really wanted to get back on the bed. There, I whined when it was time to switch sides. At some point, I apologized for being whiny. At another, my MW left the room, giving me an opportunity to pour my heart out to DH which actually felt good. I told him I felt like the biggest failure, like a weakling, blamed myself for not having exercised enough prior to birth and that all was just going downhill from there. It must've been hard for him to hear all that and still manage to maintain a positive attitude but he did. He was amazing throughout and hardly got on my nerves like I feared he would!
At my lowest point, I considered all my options and decided they were all absolutely horrible. I did not want to stay and go through countless more torturous pushes. Because, I thought, even then I'd still have to get the head out and that would also suck big time (I was right about that…). I did not want to go to the hospital either. What I really wanted was not to be in this kind of pain anymore, call it a day, go home and maybe come back tomorrow to finish this up.Part V: Get outtttt!
After what felt like a friggin eternity (all in all, I had spent roughly three hours pushing by now), my MW told me to get back on the birthing stool. I cursed and moaned but she told me that she thought baby was now in the right position and that gravity would help me push my baby out. So I obliged, again. DH sat behind me, holding me for each push. I was so done, it was not even funny. I cursed at him for moving even one inch (he later told me he had to because I'd been exerting great pressure on his bladder… Poor guy!), then I told him he was "full of shit" because he kept telling me what a great job I was doing. He couldn't even see anything, he was just echoing the MW who couldn't help but laugh at my comment. But hey, things were actually happening! I should've been thrilled but I was way beyond that by now. Because I was so exhausted, my contractions had weakened bit by bit. My MW had given me homeopathic stuff and had rubbed a special kind of labor-supporting oil on my tummy that smelled like Christmas. The waves still came regular but further apart which meant that the "ring of fire"-phase was very long and sheer torture. All I wanted to do is get this baby out so I crammed like four of five pushes into each contraction, I thought my head would explode. My MW, being the great professional that she is, took good care of my perineum and helped me stretch it very slowly while baby's head slid out and back into my ladyparts. Of course, I wasn't pleased: "Don't slide back in, goddammit!" I yelled.
THEN FINALLY the head was out and it wasn't going anywhere. The feeling I had at this point is absolutely undescribable. It must've been the most ginormous form of relief I've ever felt in my existence. I was basically high by now. And then my contractions stopped. Which was cool by me because I wasn't in much pain anymore but of course I wanted the whole of my baby out. And then… I felt something I hadn't felt at all during the last hours of pushing: the baby was kicking and wriggling in there! It was wriggling its body out all on its own! I still hadn't had another contraction but my MW (very shocked as she hadn't experienced anything like that herself) told me to just give some gentle pushes and slowly but surely my baby's body slid out of me, was caught by my MW and carefully placed on the floor below me. What an absoluty amazing moment! She asked me if I wanted to hold it but I couldn't see a thing, just a baby-shaped blob on the floor so I yelled "My glasses! Someone give me my glasses, now!!". DH did, I could finally take a look and cry out "My baby! It's here! Finally! And it's a girl! We have a daughter, honey!!".
Part VI: The Aftermath
I picked her up, put her to my chest and we waited for the umbilical cord to stop pulsing so DH could cut it. She was alert, had cried almost immediately after birth and was also covered in blood and goo. But she looked like she had coped with the whole process way better than me. She was wrinkly, but her head wasn't squished or anything. We got to cuddle for quite some time and got her to latch while my MW tried to deliver my placenta. It took pretty long for the next mild contraction to come along but it felt great pushing that big floppy thing out of my stomach. The birth was finally over. DH also got to cuddle her while the midwife examined me. No tears, only two deeper abrasions on the inside that I could've gotten stitches for but I opted out of it since it didn't seem terribly necessary. After some more cuddles, we finally decided on a name (she'll be "Baby E" for now since this isn't a private subreddit) and she got her first checkup which went great. I then needed three attempts to leave the bed and hobble to the shower, my MW assisted me in cleaning up. I had lost a fair amount of blood ("normal, but on the upper end of normal") and my circulation wasn't working at all. Standing and walking with my head down was the way to go. That's how I made it into the car and up our two flights of stairs. I passed out on my bed with Baby E on my chest. DH didn't catch a second of sleep that night.
I think I've gone on quite long enough now. There's still so much I'd like to tell you but I think this'll fit better into a coherent postpartum post.
I'd like to thank this wonderful community for keeping me sane during these crazy 40 weeks. I'll graduate to /r/CautiousBTB now but I'll keep an eye on you!