So this was my second baby, we had our first in the hospital and decided to have a homebirth this time since our first was pretty straight forward and uncomplicated. I went to my midwife appointment on the 25th and we decided to do a stretch and sweep and discussed the possibility of induction the following week if things didn't seem to move along as I was 40 weeks on the 24th. So the stretch and sweep wasn't anywhere near as bad as I expected, it wasn't comfortable but didn't hurt me like I had expected it to. On my drive home I started having small contractions but didn't think much of them since I'd been having contractions that would start and stop within a couple of hours for the past couple of days. By 11 that night they were clearly getting stronger but were pretty irregular and anywhere from 7 minutes to 20 minutes apart. They started to happen regularly every 10 minutes and lasting about a minute and a half. I was able to get some sleep between the contractions but started to feel anxious and decided to get up and walk around a bit. As soon as I started walking around the house the contractions started coming between 2.5 and 5 minutes apart. Since this was my second birth I got worried that pushing probably wasn't far off, I called my midwife to have her come over. She was able to get to my house around 2:45 am and checked me and I was at 7 cm and fully effaced (at my appointment earlier I was 3 cm and 50% effaced). She went ahead and set up all her stuff in our bedroom and I kept labouring in our kitchen. When my son (my first) was born I was able to suffer through the labour without an epidural as I was pretty determined to go home the day he was born. This time I felt like I had a lot better control of my labour and contractions. I focused on my breathing well they happened and leaned on my kitchen counter. I visually focused on a spot on the floor and kind of danced around which I found helped a lot. I laboured for about 50 minutes more then asked the midwife to check me again since I was starting to feel like I needed to push. This time I was about 9.5 cm dilated. I laboured in bed from here on because my back had become so sore that I didn't feel like I'd be able to birth the baby standing up. I started to push and my water broke and I would say my daughter came out within 10 minutes, it only felt like maybe 2 minutes passed in that time to me though. She is healthy and was instantly doing well, she latched within 5 minutes and has been nursing well since. I only had a small tear, which is in the same spot as with my first. My midwife thought I may need one stitch but she ended up being able to close it by just putting pressure on it. With my first my body felt pretty sore for a week after I gave birth, like I had worked out way too hard. This time I have mostly felt like myself, my muscles aren't sore and my downstairs region doesn't feel sore really at all. The only thing I can say has been bothering me is the afterpains from my uterus contracting. I didn't have these after my first but today I spent a good amount of time with a heating pad on my belly and have taken a good amount of Motrin. It seems to help a lot if I make sure I use the heating pad when I'm nursing the baby.

This is Nora, she was born at 4:34am on October 26th and weighs 8lb7oz and is 20 inches long.