Birth Story of Atlas Edward

For weeks I had been having Prodromal labor starting at 3pm and lasting 1.5hrs. On 2/7 it started at 6pm and lasted 1.5hrs, but through the night till 4am i had very weird light period cramps.

Come 8am on 2/8 I am up feeding the kids and at 8:30am i had a strong pressured contraction. That was new so early, then I had a huge burst of energy and I cleaned 2 kids rooms, the loft, my room and vacuumed the stairs. All the while still having painless contraction about every 20-30min.

My water has always broke prior to contraction/labor so all of this was unfamiliar.

I decided to pump some colostrum to help keep the contractions going. I got out 1oz during this.

Now its 3pm and I jumped in the bath because I had a mom's night dinner event to attend at 5pm. They all stopped after that.

Once i arrived at dinner, being able to relax and get away from kids and enjoy adult time, it must have helped bring them back. At dinner they were about 10 min apart, now also in my back and not just the front. I had a delicious steak dinner and the girls said we think you're in labor and just in denial and baby will come tonight! Since i had no previous experience with these painless frequent contractions, i really had no clue.

I got home at 7:30pm and climbed in bed to watch some Hallmark movies.

My hubby had recently left for work, but i told him they were 10min apart and so he held off loading for a lil while. I did lots of manual nipple stimulation to keep things going. They went from 10min, 8min, 5min then 2min in a matter of 2hrs. I climed in the bath at 2min apart to see if they were going to stop or keep going.

After only 2min in the bath my water breaks! I called hubby and he headed home right away, (he missed the last one) called my photographer and started preparing things like my bed for after birth and cleaning the birth area with my sage stick.

It's 10:10pm when water breaks. Everything still going great and nothing super painful. Hubby got pulled over on the way home and the sheriff followed him home to confirm i was really in labor and not an excuse. I have percipitious labors, so he knew he had no time to waist!

Once he was home i finally got in the bath. Things still going well, contractions are getting stronger and I decided it was time for my Bluetooth headphones with my meditation music. By this time we have the Facebook live video going and i am breathing through each contraction.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but i felt it had been a while and he still wasn't fully engaged yet. I changed my position in the tub a few times to try and help move things along. This helped and my contractions really picked up. They were much more intense and feeling like they couldn't get much worse than this. I checked myself to see if i could feel anything yet and still no baby descending at all. I had no idea if he was head down, breach or footling.

Finally FER kicked in. I still didn't feel like i hit transition yet and i just kept telling myself to be patient and it might just be a long labor. FER took a while to get baby down. I felt again once i needed to poop and a head was so far up, but so relieved it was a head and was coming down. Ring of fire presented it's self and i changed position again for a better view of the under water camera.

The head was finally crowning and it was the most painful of all the kids. I went extremely slow because the head felt bigger and i didn't want to tear. It was such a relief when the head was out. He was sideways presenting instead of anterior. Waited for another FER and finally the rest of him came out. I didn't tear at all!

He was holding his breath and could tell was struggling more than my others, so i sucked his mouth/nose with mine

several times and finally got a small sound and then a much better cry.

I gushed a lot of blood after he came out and i took a few saved placenta pills to air on the side of caution since i had never had that much blood before.

As i was getting out of the tub i lost an extremely large "clot" that we soon learned was actually part of the placenta.

Everything else after went great and no surprises or complications. He does have a very bad lip tie, so assume tongue as well and nursing started off rocky, but allowing him to root and self latch in side laying position has helped tremendously.

Overall this was an amazing unassisted pregnancy and unassisted birth and couldn't have asked for a better last baby experience!

Atlas Edward born at 1:16am on a beautiful full moon and weighing in at my largest baby 7lbs 7oz born early at 37+4 on his own.