Backstory: I use certified nurse midwives at a free standing birth center to bring my children into the world. With my first babe i was in active labor for 22 hours and then pushed for 2. 24 very long, scream filled hours. My baby boy was born sunny side up, tore me down to my sphincter and broke my buttbone. He was 9lbs 9oz and 21.5in of pure perfection.

Afterwards my pelvic floor was shot for months and I worked hard getting it back to normal, my tear healed terribly and I was pretty scarred emotionally, it was a long recovery. That was more pain than I thought a human could withstand. A natural birth hurts like hell but add all that extra on?

My healing birth: 3 weeks and 4 days ago my baby girl arrived, 4 days late and in a hurry. After such a large baby the first time around I was nervous about going too far over so I asked my CNM for a sweep. I contracted during the sweep and i never stopped.

My sweep was at 5pm, I got home and immediately took my son for a walk to encourage the contractions, it was a short walk. The contractions were consistently 7-10 mins apart and fairly strong. We came back and ate dinner and I bounced on my birthing ball until about 9:30pm, during that time they went from 5-7 mins apart straight to 2 mins apart. I went to the bathroom and lost my plug/had bloody show and as I was getting up I had a contraction that was so strong I was sure the baby was coming soon. I yell to my husband to call the midwife and we hopped in the car and drove over.

When I arrived I was a stretchy 6 cm and effaced. I labored (very loudly again) for about 2 hours and my body began pushing. We hopped in the tub and in two pushes my husband pulled our beautiful little girl onto my chest. She was born at 11:30pm, 9lbs 4oz and 20 3/4in long.

It was still horribly painful as expected, I thought I birthed her 4 times before she was all the way out 😂, you never forget the feeling of the decent->crown->ring of fire->shoulders->drag of the body following, she did tear me in the exact way but that gave my midwife the opportunity to fix the mess from last time. My pelvic floor remains strong 💪🏼, I never felt my stitches and I recovered very quickly.

This blurry picture is the only one we got and it was taken about 30 secs after birth. Our first pic as a family of four, in the glow of our perfect, healing waterbirth 🥰