Finn's Birth Story | Part 1
I did not mean to wait this long to sit down and write this out, but finding time to do much of anything other than spend time with my little bug has been hard in the first few weeks! It's also hard to know how to begin to tell this story. I'll try my best to remember it all - luckily, my amazing doula, Cara, kept track of the timeline and I have that to reference when I need it.
I'll start by saying that our labor and delivery did not turn out how we imagined it at all. Our goal was to have a natural, unmedicated birth at a freestanding birthing center. We ended up being transferred to and delivering at the hospital with the help of an epidural and Pitocin. To be honest, I'm still working through the fact that our birth was not what we had hoped for and it still upsets me, but I know that everything went the way it needed to go and of course, the end result was so incredible! I hope by sharing my story, it will help me to start accepting it. So here goes:
My due date (May 14th) had come and gone and while I was getting a little impatient, I was enjoying my last days with Baby T in my belly. I had started to feel "crampy" almost every night for about a week and every night I would think "maybe this is IT!", but by morning everything would be back to normal. So by Tuesday, the 19th, when I started feeling cramps and tightness, I ignored them and assumed it was the same thing. I lost my mucous plug around 3:25pm and knew that was a sign that things were happening. Vaughan came home from work around 5:30 and brought some takeout. I remember how calm that evening was. My mom was staying with us and we all just sat in the living room, watched Friends and talked about my contractions as they happened. It was almost surreal. I'm so glad it wasn't the frenzy that you always see in the movies ;)
My contractions started to get a little more regular so we called the midwife and she suggested that we rest as much as possible, drink a glass of wine and take a bath. At the time (not knowing I had 36 hours of labor ahead of me), I didn't think the glass of wine was a good idea: I didn't want to be drowsy during my labor, I wanted to experience all of it (I know this sounds crazy, but it's true).
By 7pm, my contractions were lasting 45 seconds and were about 5 minutes apart. Around 8pm, they started to get much harder to deal with. I told Vaughan that I couldn't imagine them getting much stronger and didn't know how I'd get through it if they did. Little did I know, that was only the very, very beginning of my labor experience. Vaughan and I started using some techniques that we had learned in our "Birthing From Within" course: when a contraction would begin, I would lean on him and focus using low moans and "breathing the baby down." This mental image was extremely helpful to me! Knowing that each contraction had a purpose and got me closer to meeting my little girl or boy was the only thing that got me through. And let me go ahead and mention that Vaughan was right there with me for EVERY contraction. I leaned on him for 36 hours of labor and I'm so unbelievably grateful for his incredible support!
At 9:30pm, I decided to take a bath. The contractions seemed a bit easier in the tub, but I started getting overheated so I got out around 10:30pm. Afterwards, I decided to put a little makeup on and put my contacts in because I felt like we might be heading to the birth center soon and meeting our birth photographer. I ate a popsicle around 11pm then tried to get a little rest. By 1am I was ready to get back in the tub for a bit and also had a peanut butter sandwich (funny side note: my sister went to our house to pick up some stuff for us later and apparently, we left the tub full of water and half the peanut butter sandwich on the counter. I guess we were really ready to get going! Haha). By this time, my contractions were getting much closer and I started feeling like things were really moving along. We called the midwife around 2:30am and met her at the birth center at 4am. The contractions continued to be about 3 minutes apart in the car and I tried to sleep in between.
When we arrived, the midwife checked to see how dilated I was. I remember feeling like I was holding my breath to wait and hear how far I'd progressed. When she told me I was only at 2cm, I felt completely deflated. It had already been 12 hours and I was only as dilated as some women are when they begin labor! Everyone kept telling me that I was 90% effaced and that was "the hard part," but I remember just feeling like I should've been much further along after all that time! I decided to try the tub. I really thought I would love laboring in the water and even planned on trying to have a water birth, but I felt out of control when I was laying in the tub. I needed to be moving around in order to work through the contractions. Funny how you think you'll want one thing but really there's no way to know how you'll feel once you're in labor.
I rested in the bed for a while (I was starting to get really tired and knew I had a long way to go) and was checked again at 6am. I was at a "stretchy 4cm" and was officially admitted to the birth center. For the next couple of hours I had a lot of nausea, which I knew was normal, but that did not help make it more enjoyable. I started to walk around and stay active in order to try to help things progress. At 8am I had to receive an IV of Penicillin because I had tested positive for Group B Strep. If you know me, you know that I am awful with needles and had been really worried about getting the IV. So to help deal with it, I used some Nitrous Oxide. This was a wonderful option that they had at our birth center! They even had to try a few times to get the IV in and I barely noticed. The nitrous took the edge off and helped me so much!
Vaughan and I took a nap together until about 9:30am when we got up and decided to take a walk. The weather was really nice and it was actually a little cooler outside than it felt inside. Cara and Vaughan were making sure I stayed hydrated with lots of coconut water and a protein shake. I had absolutely no desire to drink either one of them, but they kept at it and I know it was good for me. After a loop around the building, the midwife checked me and I was at 5cm. At this point, I started to feel totally overwhelmed and felt like giving up. I couldn't believe I was only halfway there! It took everything in me to focus on getting through each contraction one at a time. I knew I needed rest so I decided to lay down. While it was nice to get a tiny bit of sleep in between contractions, I would wake up in the middle of them (at the worst part) and they were much harder to deal with while laying down. By 11:15am, my contractions were 4 minutes apart lasting 2 minutes each.
At 12pm the nurse decided I needed to get up and moving again. I took a walk and tried using the birthing ball in the shower to help with the pain. I sat on the ball with the shower hitting my back and Vaughan took the sprayer and sprayed it on my front side. I'm honestly not sure how long I was in there, but every time Vaughan would try to take a break from spraying, I would get upset and ask what he was doing. Poor guy didn't get any rest all day! The nurse also gave me an herbal supplement that she said "may or may not" get things moving quicker. I started to tell Vaughan and Cara that I just needed a break. I knew that the only way to get a break was to get an epidural, and quietly considered it, but never said anything out loud. Apparently the herbs did not work for me because at 2pm I was checked again and was still at 5cm. That was the moment when I felt completely defeated. I had not progressed in 5 hours and I felt like there was no light at the end of this tunnel. I remember telling our midwife that I needed something to work towards, some kind of hope. I'm not sure what I wanted her to say to me, but I was desperate.
After 24 hours of labor, our midwife sat down and talked to us about the option of moving to the hospital to get an epidural so I could get some sleep. She thought that if my body could rest, labor may progress a lot more.This was the beginning of the break down of our birth plan. We decided to take her advice and were admitted to the hospital at 3:30pm.
If you've made it this far and want to hear the rest of the story, part 2 will be up soon :) Thanks for reading up to this point!
-Lauren
I'll start by saying that our labor and delivery did not turn out how we imagined it at all. Our goal was to have a natural, unmedicated birth at a freestanding birthing center. We ended up being transferred to and delivering at the hospital with the help of an epidural and Pitocin. To be honest, I'm still working through the fact that our birth was not what we had hoped for and it still upsets me, but I know that everything went the way it needed to go and of course, the end result was so incredible! I hope by sharing my story, it will help me to start accepting it. So here goes:
My due date (May 14th) had come and gone and while I was getting a little impatient, I was enjoying my last days with Baby T in my belly. I had started to feel "crampy" almost every night for about a week and every night I would think "maybe this is IT!", but by morning everything would be back to normal. So by Tuesday, the 19th, when I started feeling cramps and tightness, I ignored them and assumed it was the same thing. I lost my mucous plug around 3:25pm and knew that was a sign that things were happening. Vaughan came home from work around 5:30 and brought some takeout. I remember how calm that evening was. My mom was staying with us and we all just sat in the living room, watched Friends and talked about my contractions as they happened. It was almost surreal. I'm so glad it wasn't the frenzy that you always see in the movies ;)
My contractions started to get a little more regular so we called the midwife and she suggested that we rest as much as possible, drink a glass of wine and take a bath. At the time (not knowing I had 36 hours of labor ahead of me), I didn't think the glass of wine was a good idea: I didn't want to be drowsy during my labor, I wanted to experience all of it (I know this sounds crazy, but it's true).
By 7pm, my contractions were lasting 45 seconds and were about 5 minutes apart. Around 8pm, they started to get much harder to deal with. I told Vaughan that I couldn't imagine them getting much stronger and didn't know how I'd get through it if they did. Little did I know, that was only the very, very beginning of my labor experience. Vaughan and I started using some techniques that we had learned in our "Birthing From Within" course: when a contraction would begin, I would lean on him and focus using low moans and "breathing the baby down." This mental image was extremely helpful to me! Knowing that each contraction had a purpose and got me closer to meeting my little girl or boy was the only thing that got me through. And let me go ahead and mention that Vaughan was right there with me for EVERY contraction. I leaned on him for 36 hours of labor and I'm so unbelievably grateful for his incredible support!
I rested in the bed for a while (I was starting to get really tired and knew I had a long way to go) and was checked again at 6am. I was at a "stretchy 4cm" and was officially admitted to the birth center. For the next couple of hours I had a lot of nausea, which I knew was normal, but that did not help make it more enjoyable. I started to walk around and stay active in order to try to help things progress. At 8am I had to receive an IV of Penicillin because I had tested positive for Group B Strep. If you know me, you know that I am awful with needles and had been really worried about getting the IV. So to help deal with it, I used some Nitrous Oxide. This was a wonderful option that they had at our birth center! They even had to try a few times to get the IV in and I barely noticed. The nitrous took the edge off and helped me so much!
Vaughan and I took a nap together until about 9:30am when we got up and decided to take a walk. The weather was really nice and it was actually a little cooler outside than it felt inside. Cara and Vaughan were making sure I stayed hydrated with lots of coconut water and a protein shake. I had absolutely no desire to drink either one of them, but they kept at it and I know it was good for me. After a loop around the building, the midwife checked me and I was at 5cm. At this point, I started to feel totally overwhelmed and felt like giving up. I couldn't believe I was only halfway there! It took everything in me to focus on getting through each contraction one at a time. I knew I needed rest so I decided to lay down. While it was nice to get a tiny bit of sleep in between contractions, I would wake up in the middle of them (at the worst part) and they were much harder to deal with while laying down. By 11:15am, my contractions were 4 minutes apart lasting 2 minutes each.
At 12pm the nurse decided I needed to get up and moving again. I took a walk and tried using the birthing ball in the shower to help with the pain. I sat on the ball with the shower hitting my back and Vaughan took the sprayer and sprayed it on my front side. I'm honestly not sure how long I was in there, but every time Vaughan would try to take a break from spraying, I would get upset and ask what he was doing. Poor guy didn't get any rest all day! The nurse also gave me an herbal supplement that she said "may or may not" get things moving quicker. I started to tell Vaughan and Cara that I just needed a break. I knew that the only way to get a break was to get an epidural, and quietly considered it, but never said anything out loud. Apparently the herbs did not work for me because at 2pm I was checked again and was still at 5cm. That was the moment when I felt completely defeated. I had not progressed in 5 hours and I felt like there was no light at the end of this tunnel. I remember telling our midwife that I needed something to work towards, some kind of hope. I'm not sure what I wanted her to say to me, but I was desperate.
After 24 hours of labor, our midwife sat down and talked to us about the option of moving to the hospital to get an epidural so I could get some sleep. She thought that if my body could rest, labor may progress a lot more.This was the beginning of the break down of our birth plan. We decided to take her advice and were admitted to the hospital at 3:30pm.
*All photos by Amanda of Manda's Memories*
-Lauren
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