I want to share my non-perfect but positive birth story, to give mom to be some encouragement, hopefully some of my experience could help u. I was 33 year old with my first pregnancy, me and my husband decided to give birth to our baby in China. My husband is an American who speaks only a little Chinese. This cultural difference and language problems gave me an interesting incidence later. I have heard people talking about whatever kinds of disadvantages for giving birth to your first child not early enough. So I kept my 10 years' yoga routine during pregnancy, but nothing too crazy. Meanwhile I read a lot about natural delivery to get myself mentally ready.

On my due date, my OB decided to give me an induction, by putting a water balloon device into the uterus, to imitate the descending of baby's head. This the is worst part of my birth story, as my birth canal is extra narrow and long. It took her almost 1 hour to set the water balloon, I felt like I was gonna black out. They were going to give me oxytocin the next day, so nobody were expecting anything for the night. I had a chocolate ice cream just because I was bored at hospital.

At 1 Am, I felt some mild contractions, didn't got my attention, as I fell back asleep. Then I woke up at 1:30, feeling uncomfortable, Still thought it was nothing. But I started counting my contractions on APP sitting on a little stool, not even bother to wake up my husband. Nurse came in surprised that I was playing on my phone in darkness. Told her I might have a little contractions, 5 min each time with 2 minutes apart. she felt my stomach and told me continue tracking. By 3 o'clock, nurse came in and checked, she said I was 3 centimeters dilated, and it was time to wake up my husband. So I woke him up and called my mom(my parents live quite close to my hospital, somehow, she was expecting my labor to last 10 hours above, so she was taking her time preparing my food).

I was walking around between each contraction avoiding laying on my back as this would cause more pain and slow down the progress. I used sitting or standing position during each contraction leaning forward, this not only eases the pain, but also helps the uterus to push the baby down. I did my best not to tighten my body when the pain comes, instead, I took deep breath while relaxing all my muscles except uterus. By doing so, I really didn't feel that much pain as I have heard(I'd rather describe it as uncomfortable) it also speeded the dilating.

The real pain came at about 6 o'clock a little after my doula showed up. I was humming when the pain gets unbearable(by doing so, I relaxed my throat, when throat relaxes, so is the cervix) My doula asked me to lay down and checked my cervix, I was 8 centimeters dilated and ready to push.

After 8 centimeters dilated, the pain got weakened, especially when I push, I could barely feel the pain. Again, because my long and narrow birth canal, it took forever for baby to crown. doula broke my water, and gave me some oxytocin, as my contractions weren't strong enough. My husband fed me some milk, but I threw up right after, I knew that means baby is coming. Finally I was crowning, the doula told my husband to leave because of hospital rule. And here came the drama, I had to translate between each push! My husband surely wouldn't want to miss the moment of our baby girl's arrival, and the hospital was worried about traumatizing my husband!!! All I remembered was my husband was yelling at my midwife, while getting kicked out of the room. Doula suggested an episiotomy as I started losing stamina and he thinks I might have bad tear, by then all I wanted was to see my little girl, so I agreed. Not long after that, I felt something slipped out of me, my stomach went empty, and they set this warm slippery and crying little person on my tummy. I felt her weight outside of my stomach for the first time. I finally saw this little stranger that I had known for 40 weeks!

At 7:51AM, April 1st, Annunciata Marie came to the world, nothing else matters! Although my husband was disappointed and my mom showed up 1 hour late, being ready for her granddaughter to come. Later when we posted our announcement, everyone thought it was a prank! Can't blame them lol