birth story rewrote itself.

It's taken me a while to write this because while I am not sad about my birth journey, an aspect of me is a little embarrassed that I wasn't able to do it the way I imagined it. But, I'm in a great mental state and just really happy it that in the end, I have this little guy.

At 40+5 and after 29+ hours of laboring at home [and in restaurants and down the street and in Bible study], I called the midwife at my hospital and got the green light to finally come in at 5am on September 9th. I was dilated to 4.5cm, and admitted to the labor and delivery floor. My doula-in-training friend from high school joined me, and my birth preferences sheet was shared with the staff. I was ready for a truly beautiful journey -- laboring in the tub, walking through the contractions, breathing the baby down the canal, pushing only when I felt the need, squatting the baby out, delayed cord clamping, etc. I labored in the tub a bit, walked through the contractions, even did a little dance, and kept myself moving.

11 hours later, still no baby. They checked me to see I had dilated to... 5cm. A half centimeter increase in 11 hours. I was gutted. The midwife explained to me my options: go back home and labor there, have them break my water, get pitocin, or keep things going the way they were. Hopeful, I asked to have another hour to think about it and spent those contractions swaying in the corner and coming to the realization that I was going to need to give myself time to mourn the loss of my unmedicated birth, and let myself move forward with no judgement. I sobbed in that corner. My husband held me. I admitted that my reserves were depleted at that moment -- headed into night three with no sleep, I was physically drained, mentally fried, and emotionally exhausted. I asked for them to break my water, but I needed an epidural first. Forty hours into this, I had nothing left.

I got the epidural, they broke my water, and saw some meconium. My contractions were stronger, but I could rest except for the fact that the baby's heart rate was not recovering after it dropped during the contractions. I was at a loss -- if we need more contractions for the baby to come, but the contractions were hurting him... how the heck do we do this? I just knew to stay calm.

At this point my midwife -- who wasn't even on call that day -- came in. "Okay, this is what we are going to do. At this rate, we wont have a baby for another two days, and you are having a baby today. Your baby's heart rate isn't recovering from your contractions, meaning that the umbilical cord is likely pinched somewhere. We're going to fill your bag of waters back up a bit until the umbilical cord is unpinched. Then we'll start the pitocin. I'll go scrub up." I was so grateful to have a badass midwife who came in with a plan, because otherwise I might have been there for another 12 years trying to have this baby. We went through with her plan and at 12:09am on September 10, Zion Joseph came ripping [literally] through me. I may have labored for 50+ hours, but I pushed for less than 15 minutes.

I'm grateful that a c-section was never even considered or mentioned by the staff -- they let me stay in there laboring for a long, long time. They were patient. And when I needed a plan -- despite the fact that it was a complete turn around from what I came in wanting -- they had one. I am grateful that Zion is here. I wish I could have said I breathed the baby down and squatted the baby out with minimal ripping and no interventions... but the opposite happened, and I'm okay with it. I hope I didn't let you ladies down.

Epilogue: I lost a lot of blood during the delivery. Three hours later on the way back from the bathroom I fainted, had a blood pressure of 73/46, and lost all my color. When I came to, I was surrounded by the emergency staff with an oxygen mask and a rush to get an IV back in. Once they determined that I didn't need a blood transfusion, I was finally released to the recovery floor. Needless to say, the reality of my birth story unfolded very differently than how I had written it!