I woke up for my nightly pee session at 3am at 40+4. When I got back into bed, I started feeling some cramping come on every handful of minutes, and I was super excited. I had been feeling no progress towards labor for days and was convinced this baby was never coming out.

An hour went by and the cramps did not lighten up in frequency and grew more intense. They got to the point where I woke up my husband to ask him to do some of the hip squeezing exercises we were taught and that helped, but they were still coming every 5-8 minutes and they kept growing in intensity. They felt like really bad gas pains. I texted my midwife around 4am to tell her and was advised to get some rest.

I couldn't sleep through the back labor, so my midwife gave me a stretching circuit to do. Though it did not help the intensity nor the frequency of my contractions, it did move the pain to the front.

Around 9am, the pains were so bad and frequent that nothing was working and I just wailed through them while my husband encouraged me to breathe and relax my body. At this point, I was considering calling it quits on having a birth at home. "If these were the pains of early labor, I don't think I can make it the rest of the way."

My midwife came at 11am to give me a cervical exam. I was told I was dialated to 4cm and that we would most likely meet our baby late that evening. This news was so encouraging and gave me the determination to keep going.

The intensity had then died down significantly and I was able to rest while waking up every 3-5 minutes to breathe through the contractions. After about an hour, the contractions picked up again. They were barely manageable, but I felt more in control this time.

However, I remember laying on my couch and feeling this intense, painful pressure all through my stomach, back, and cervix. I was terrified my stomach was going to explode. My husband helped me off the couch and as soon as I stood up, I lost my mucus plug.

Just then, my midwife walked through the door at 4pm. She gave me another exam and said "wow, you've progressed quite nicely" but she didn't say right away how much further I had dialated. At this point I thought "if this bitch says I'm like 6cm I'm done!"😂 After a moment she said that I was at 9cm and fully effaced. So in 3 hours I went from 4cm to 9cm.

The assistant Midwife came over. I had several excruciating contractions that were double peaked. All I could do was cry and groan loudly through them in a child's pose position. I had to tell my husband to stop touching me which I'm sure broke his heart because he didn't know how to help me. I told him I loved him and just needed a little space. He tenderly continued to coach me to breathe and give into the contractions.

I soon began to feel the urge to push. They quickly set up the area for the coming mess. At first, I fought against the pushing and it hurt like a bitch. I realized I was fighting and told myself to give in and listen to my body.

With each push, I could feel this pressure dropping further down my vagina and when I stopped pushing it would recede a bit. With every push, they could see more and more of the head.

After a few pushes, I felt the ring of fire. It became a little harder to push because of the sharpness of the pain. A couple pushes later, I for some reason just yelled "RING OF FIRE!"

The next moment, I felt a bunch of stuff slip out of me and I had a tiny little body wiggling and crying on my chest. I snapped right out of my dazed state and I cannot tell you how quickly I forgot about all the pain I had just experienced. Our baby was here! We didn't know the gender and to our surprise, it was a baby girl!!

Next, I had to birth the placenta. Apparently, a portion had gotten stuck and I began to hemorrhage a bit. They gave me a shot of pitocin and I remember looking at the midwife and going "ow 😑" when she gave me the shot. I had just pushed a baby out of my vagina and I was complaining about the pain from a shot in my thigh 😂

Within a couple hours, I was stabilized, breastfeeding was well on its way to being established, and baby girl was assessed and given a report of perfect health.

Our little girl is Charlotte and she is very strong. Since day one she's been lifting her head, tightly gripping our fingers, and soaking up her surroundings with her alert eyes.

PC: Rachel Simon Photography