Today 3 years ago...

This is the birth story, as I wrote it a few days after Nen was born...

I started dilating (2-3 cm.) two weeks before the due date, 8 days before I was 4-5 cm., and 3 days before (last Tuesday) I was already 5-6 cm. dilated, 100% effaced, and the baby was station 0. The OB that works with my midwife offered to just go ahead and break my water that day, but I decided to wait. She then sent me to the hospital for contraction monitoring and, since everything was fine, I was sent home. In fact, I had not noticed any contractions at all till then. Only there, at the hospital, I felt the first ones (it was easier to notice them with the belts).

On Thursday, something was different: I felt like the baby was dropping more and, for the first time, I couldn't do my daily exercise routine, consisting of a 30-min. brisk walk, a 15-min. aerobic tape, and a section of a yoga tape that concentrates on openness. I called my midwife and she said that I could go to the hospital, where she would meet me, and we would take a look. Off we went and they could see contractions that were OK but the baseline heart rate of the baby was somewhat high, and my midwife said that it was a sign that the baby was getting tired and that we should break the water and start the process. My husband went home to pick up my mom and I was officially checked in at the hospital.

I was concerned because I wanted an all-natural start, but she said that I was so dilated (7 cm.) that I shouldn't have any problems and things would progress really quickly after it. And they did! At 20:12 they broke my water, at 21:10 I received an epidural (8 cm. dilated), at 23:00 I started pushing, and at 00:09 our son was born. So I was very lucky for a first-time mom to have a quick labor, no episiotomy, and just two stitches. Even the placenta only took 3 minutes to be delivered, according to the medical report.

Unlike many women, for me the hardest part was pushing. Since I requested a low-dose epidural, I could totally feel the contractions, and they were painful, plus I wasn't very skilled at pushing, since it's something you don't practice in the childbirth preparation classes. After 2-3 contractions I got better at it, but it was so hard to keep doing it in the right position and going through the painful contractions. I reached a point where I thought I couldn't do one more, and then I felt the weirdest sensation: the hips of my son passing by and his feet kicking inside me for the first time on their way to a new world. They placed my boy on my chest where we could introduce ourselves and the first breastfeeding attempt was made, it was gorgeous. His Apgars were 9 and 9, missing one point for color in the extremities. His weight 8 lbs. 4 ozs. and his height 21''. My mom videotaped the whole process.

Then they cleaned our son and placed him close to me again. Two hours later he got his vitamin K shot and his eye ointment, and they did a quick check-up. Then something happened to me that scared my mom to death: At 2:30 they wanted me to pee so that they could remove the IV. A nurse on one side and my mother on the other helped me to walk and I started seeing everything blurry, my pupils would hurt and I started losing it. They put some ammonia salt by my nose and it felt absolutely horrible, but it also didn't help. Right after that and hearing the nurse say "don't fall asleep, don't, stay awake", I lost consciousness. My mother informed me that if I recovered it was because the nurse gave me another sniff of the ammonia salt. It was brief, but my mom said she has never seen me so pale and it scared her to death. When I woke up, I still couldn't pee because of lack of sensation, so they walked me back to bed. They would keep giving me fluids and checking on my bladder to see that it wasn't filling up too much. A second try at 5 am was successful.

After that a lactation specialist came to assist me, as I had requested in my birth plan, and she taught me many tricks on how to get things working. He seemed to be doing fine, according to her. Next he was taken for a bath (with daddy by his side, of course :-) and at his return, we enjoyed some time together, before he fell into a long and deep sleep for 5-6 hours.

Everything went great and I am more than pleased with my birthing team: my midwife, my husband, my mom, and all the rest of the staff that showed up at the last minute to assist and welcome our son. My birth plan was fully respected and I was impressed with the hospital care I received.

My husband and I feel like we've got sooo much to learn, but it's so much fun!