Birth Story - Part 1, The Delivery

Hello Sweet Friends,

Ryan and I wanted to share with you the incredible journey that was the entrance of this little princess into the world. Fair warning, may be TMI for the menfolk, but either 'skim-read' or just dive into your primal self and enjoy it. :) I wanted to start with the first part, labor & delivery. Boo yah. Ka Sha.

Early Monday (23rd) morningat 2am I woke up with pretty consistent, positively annoying contractions that were 5-7 minutes apart, but not very intense (just enough to steal me from my slumber). Cue thought: this can't be labor. If this is labor, I'm going to OWN it. Oh cocky young padawan. They continued until about 6 or 7am, and I finally called SH our labor coach at 5am and talked to her about what was going on. She gave me amazing advice. Have a glass of red wine and try to sleep. Hah! Again, thought the woman was crazy, but I did what she said, slept for a few hours, and when I woke up, they had stopped completely. Boo. Through the rest of the day, they came and went every 10-20 minutes. Again, enough to be ANNOYING. But it was a pretty stressful day due to some family stuff, but we did get a chance to walk around the mall for awhile, trying to bring something on.

Later that evening, they started up again, mildly increased in intensity and every 10 minutes. We went to bed at 12am, and then at 2am exactly again, I was awoken by contractions every 10 minutes. But these were not the same contractions. These were game time contractions, taking more of my concentration. So for about 2 hours I worked through them on my own...in bed, in the tub, at Ryan's desk, finished packing my hospital bag (yes was still not packed. lay off me.). By 4am I had to wake The "All Time Greatest Labor Hubbin Coach" to start helping me through them, as they had moved to 5 minutes apart and again increased in intensity. We still walked around the house, finished packing, fed the dog, and he watched me 'sing/chant' through many a contraction (He later called it quasi-yodeling. SO. Rude.)

By 6am, the contractions said to themselves, 'ok team, let's get with it. let's see how serious this gal is about natural labor. muuahhahhah.' They went ahead and increased themselves down to 2 1/2 minutes apart, leaving no room for a break. I also got nauseous, vomited (TMI?) and started getting the cold sweats, a tell-tale sign that I was in the Transition stage of labor, the stage right before you start pushing. This was going fast! It was time to go to the hospital! I checked in and was dilated to 7cm at 7:30am - which was a) awesome we labored that long at home but b) a little discouraging - I thought it was game time! Turned out it was - while we were in triage still checking in I felt an urge to push and kind of did, and the nurse goes, "oh no try not to do that - we aren't ready for that yet!" YOU try not to push lady. :) By the time we checked into our room, Cecily (awesome midwife Numero Uno) checked me again and I was fully dilated to a 10 and we were ready to start pushing! (25 minutes had passed since we checked in - talk about fast moving!)

Sooo, I pushed for an hour and a half (all sorts of funny positions we can chat about later if you are interested... :) ), and then there was my little Angel pumpkin pants! (Who promptly pooed all over me as soon as she came out and they placed her on my chest. I never thought poo could be presh. It so was. The preshest poo I ever saw.

Gals, if you are even considering a natural childbirth experience, I would LOVE to talk to you about it. It was an incredible experience, fully humbling and empowering all at the same time. Never have I depended on my maker so much - and never have I depended on my husband so much! Ryan shout out - he was the most incredible help, right by my side during the whole process. My hero. I could not have done it without you my love. Davey was born, I boo hooed and we had some great family time for about an hour before we let everyone in to share in our secret!

I'm so glad this experience was amazing - because three hours later, things definitely took a turn toward the more interesting. I'll save that for Part 2. Thanks for reading! Love to you all!