Natural Water Birth 41w5d

On 11/27 I started feeling a few contractions around 3pm, nothing painful, so I just ignored them and cooked dinner because I had a few episodes of prodominal labor that has tricked me the prior week. Once hubby came home from work I started timing contractions, they were 20-30 seconds long and 4ish minutes apart. The contractions started getting stronger and painful, we went for a walk to see if they would pick up... and they did, but I still didn’t accept that I was in labor until around 8pm when I started having to get down on the ground during the contractions and breathe through them. By 9:30, the contractions were 40-50 seconds long and 2-3 minutes apart. I could hardly catch a break between contractions, so we called the midwife and left for the birth center. Having contractions in the car was literally the worst part of the whole labor, 4 total and I felt every second of them because I was sitting down strapped in by the seatbelt not able to work through them.

We arrived at the birth center at 10:26pm. I requested to be checked and was 7cm dilated and 90% effaced. Our birth team was one midwife, a midwifery student, and a nurse. They had the birth tub filled and left me to labor, they came in every 30 minutes or so to listen to baby with the doppler. In between contractions I felt completely normal was able able to walk and talk and joke freely. Right before 1am, I got in the birth tub and found it to be super calming. At 1:45am I requested another exam because I didn’t think my water had broken, they said I was 10cm and could push whenever I wanted. My bag of water was also bulging, so they broke it.

Shortly after they broke my water the contractions became uncontrollable, I had to really work through them and before I knew it my body was pushing (my body was pushing, I was not). 4-5 crazy contractions and her head was out, it felt like forever until my next contraction helped to push her body out. I was able to pull her out and lay her on my chest. She wasn’t breathing right away, the midwife stayed calm and just as she was about to give her a breath of air to remind her to breathe she let out a big cry. We stayed in the tub for about 20 minutes and just soaked her up. While I got out of the tub and dried off hubby did skin to skin. We all crawled into the big comfy bed.

We were left alone for about an hour to breastfeed and enjoy her new-ness. The midwives came in did their exam, I had to get two stitches, they weighed her and did all her exam right there in front of us. The nurse came in and gave us discharge instructions and the go ahead to leave whenever we were ready. We left the birth center at 5:15am (a little over 3 hours after birth!).

Total time from first contraction to birth was 11 hours. Total time for when I actually thought I was in labor until birth was 6 hours.

It was an amazing experience birthing naturally. I can remember I few times saying “I can’t do it”, especially towards the end. But... it wasn’t self-doubt, it was more of my way of saying “I’m not doing this, my body is, I can’t control myself”.

No, I didn’t get a medal for having a all-natural water birth. But, I did get to experience what my body was meant to do. The high from the endorphins was/is amazing, I have felt like a million bucks since she was born. There was a great sense of trust between me, my body, and daughter that we all were doing our part to get her earth-side safely. She came into this world in a way that was so full of power and amazement. I would do it again over and over.

This birth will always be meaningful to me as it taught me a lot about my own strength and gave me the most perfect, healthy little girl.