So my due date was August 26th and Tuesday morning (8/21....39w 2d) I woke up and on my panty liner it looked like I was just spotting. I went to the bathroom and I was. Nothing bad, nothing significant, just kinda spotting like I would before a period starts. I called my OB office and the nurse asked me if I had had sex, I said yes, and she said it’s probably because of that and it would go away within a few hours but to call back if i started bleeding more or if I was in a lot of pain. I went on with my day as normal, my 2 year old and I went to the library for story time and everything was fine. I did indeed stop spotting that afternoon and actually got a little discouraged that nothing had happened. That night I had period like cramps again, but figured now that it was normal this far along in pregnancy. (With my first, I also had horrible back labor, so I wasn’t sure what contractions or normal labor really felt like).

Wednesday morning (8/22/18) I woke up and got my toddler out of bed, just like any other day, and went to the bathroom before we went downstairs to eat breakfast. I noticed that my bleeding had started again but it wasn’t just spotting this time, my panty liner was all bloody. Not anything alarming but definitely more than spotting. I called my OB again and the nurse on the phone said that they would probably want me to go into the hospital to be seen, but she was going to ask my doctor and call me back. While I was waiting for the call, I called my husband to let him know what was going on and that I was probably going to have to go to the hospital, at least to just be checked out (he has a 30 minute drive from work back to our house, and then another 30 minutes to the hospital). As he’s on his way home, I try finding someone to watch my daughter, and fortunately our neighbor had taken the day off of work… So I asked her and she said she could watch my daughter until my family was able to come pick her up.

We pull in to the hospital and walk up to the OB floor at about 10am, and sign paperwork to check into the observation room. The doctor checked me and says that I am about 4cm and 50% effaced. That paired with the fact that I was bleeding a little, the midwife wanted to admit me even though I wasn’t contracting so she could keep her eye on me. So they moved us to a labor room and start an IV (I was GB+ so I needed two runs of antibiotics four hours apart before the baby was born). After the first run of antibiotics the midwife comes in and tells me that I could walk the halls and try to progress labor a little quicker that way. So my husband and I are walking the halls and just talking normally because I’m barely in pain but as we kept walking my contractions got a little worse to where I have to at least slow down while I’m walking during the contractions.

After my dad and my husbands parents got out of work that afternoon, they all came up to visit as well. So at about 5:30pm, my labor room is full of people and I’m just talking to them like nothing is happening. A little while passes, it’s probably 7pm and now during conversation I really have to close my eyes and concentrate during contractions, but I was super quiet the whole time. As long as I could close my eyes and slowly breathe trough them, I was fine and it wasn’t super painful, and I was fine in between. My new midwife finally gets a chance to come in, and it was the one midwife I was hoping would be on call when I was delivering! She was just so sweet when I saw her at the office every time. She has a super calming presence about her. Anyways, once she introduces herself to everyone, she comes over to my bed and holds my hand, looks me straight in the eyes and asks “what is most important to you during and after your birth?” I give her a print out of my birth plan and tell her that the super most important part would be skin to skin time after she’s born if I was able to (her older sister wasn’t breathing at first when she was born so I missed out on skin to skin time with her). She said that it looked like everything that I wanted on my birth plan was pretty much standard practice at this hospital so everything was going to be super easy to accommodate.

Because my contractions were starting to get a little more painful and she could see on the monitor that they were about every 3-5 minutes now, she had asked me “what feels right to you right now? Do you want to get on the labor ball, or get in the labor tub? Or even just walk around the room? Pain meds? What feels right to you?” I had said I thought the tub sounded nice so all my visitors left and I got ready to get in the tub. I brought my bikini top to wear, some LED candles and brought some lavender essential oil too (highly recommend, btw!). So by probably 7:50ish I’m in the tub with the lights out, the LED candles on, and a washcloth with some lavender on the back of my neck. Contractions are coming about every 2-3 minutes still and more intense, I still only needed to close my eyes and breathe slow during them...I felt very controlled at this point. I did have to squeeze my husbands hand during them, but more or less I was ok and it was totally bearable. The lavender smell was sooo nice too and really helped me to relax, I think.

About 8:30 hits and BOOM my water breaks in the tub. I suddenly sit up and tell my husband to call the midwife in that my water broke. Things are getting SERIOUS now. The midwife comes in and I’m starting to cry during contractions now. She asks if I want to stay in the tub and labor some more, but I said “no I need to get out now”. She and my husband help me stand up and get out of the tub, and she asks if I want her to check me. I said yes cause I’m interested how far along I am and I also want pain meds. This hospital offered nitrous oxide (laughing gas) for labor and I wanted to try that for pain management, so as the midwife is checking me the nurse calls for anesthesia. The midwife says I’m 7cm, and each contraction is pretty much making me try to crawl out of bed and I was screaming good at this point (my poor husband, I was pretty much screaming in his ear haha).

The midwife says to my husband “I just have to answer this page really really quick, I’ll be back in 3 minutes...will you be ok?” He reluctantly nods yes as I’m screaming in pain, and I kid you not the contractions were one on top of the other and I couldn’t help but scream. She doesn’t even get to the doorway and I scream at the top of my lungs “I have to poop!!!” 😂😂 Why that was the first thing I said, I’m not sure, but I had a TON of pressure and that’s exactly what it felt like! She runs back to my bedside and says she’s going to check me, but I’m stuck on my side and couldn’t lay on my back I was in so much pain. I was acting like a fool, but pain makes you do crazy things! I couldn’t roll on my back so she went with it and lifted my leg up to her shoulder to check me. She tells my husband “push that red button on the call light now, WERE HAVING A BABY!”. So he frantically is trying to push the button (he’s not great when he’s nervous and under pressure) and someone answers and the midwife goes “I need help now, we’re having a baby!!!!”. I don’t even know what’s happening but somehow they manage to get me on my back and she tells me to look at her (my eyes were clamped shut). I said I couldn’t so she instructed me through breathing, and they tell me to push. Push #1, WOAH RING OF FIRE HELLO. Push #2 and I hear “her heads out and she’s got a ton of hair!!”. They told me to stop pushing for a minute because the cord was wrapped around her neck, but then they gave me the ok and push #3 her shoulders were out and the rest was history! They put her right up on my chest and asked my husband for his phone so they could take pictures for us!

Theresa (Tessa) Frances was born 8/22 at 9:06pm

As my midwife was stitching me up (I only had a 1st degree tear) she was telling me that I wasn’t supposed to go from 7 to 10cm in two contractions and said she felt sorry for me because going that fast in labor is like being run over by a semi truck, which I’m sure some of you ladies can certainly relate to! And it was only about 20 minutes from when my water broke until she was born. She came super fast, I wanted pain meds but didn’t get them...but in a way I’m sort of glad I could experience it and say I gave birth naturally. Hah she came so fast that her head was perfectly round! She looked like a little baby doll.

Birth is miraculous, and God is so good and so sovereign, even in the tiny details.