Our birth story...

I've been meaning to write this down for a while...It's the story of my labor and birth of our first son. We had a homebirth and LOVED it. OK, here it goes:

It was two days before my due date and I woke up extra early at 5:30, ready to start the day (this is very unusual for me). I got up and ate some breakfast and noticed that I was having some contractions. They were different than any of the contractions that I had been having so I decided to time them. They were coming about every 8 minutes.
I finished up breakfast and told Nate that I was having contractions, but that we needed to get ready and go to work, because it was probably just false labor. On my way into work (on 465) I had a couple of really intense contractions. By the time I got to my desk, I couldn’t sit through the contractions that were averaging about 5 minutes apart. I was trying not to let on that I was in any pain. My friend told me to wait until rush hour was over, and then go home.
I stayed at work for about an hour and a half then decided to go home. I called Nate and told him that I was going home to rest, and then called our midwife, Penny to tell her that I was having contractions. She advised me to alternate resting and being active and said that it was a possibility that I could be in labor, but that she had a mom do that the whole day before and when her husband got home from work her contractions stopped (NOT what I wanted to hear!).
Nate came home over his lunch break to check on me. We had a TV dinner (not a good choice on my part) and tried to watch a Dick Van Dyke. My contractions were still pretty strong and frequent but I sent him back to work. I was in complete denial that I was really in labor. When I mentioned him going back to work he said, “WHAT?! Can’t I just stay home and scrub the bathroom or something?!” I told him that there was nothing he could do, that I was just going to rest. After he left I laid down, hoping to take a nap. The contractions wouldn’t allow me to rest at all. I began to think that maybe this was the real thing. I called Nate, who had just arrived back at work and told him to come home. I also called Penny to tell her that the contractions were getting worse.

I was able to keep up a good sense of humor throughout the process in between contractions. When Nate got home we tried to keep my mind off of the contractions by playing a board game. We got through one round, but halfway through the second game I couldn’t concentrate anymore on anything but laboring. We live out in the country so we decided to take a walk around our long driveway. I wasn’t able to do that for very long, but it was nice to be outside in the fresh, October air. We got the mail and I had received my birthday letter from Mr. Stroup (a Bible teacher that I had in middle school). It was a nice distraction from the contractions!
Penny and her assistant, Dana arrived around 4:00 p.m. and checked my vitals and got the baby’s heart rate. She began setting up her equipment and that’s when it hit me that I was really in labor. It was really happening. Sometimes I can’t believe that I was in denial for that long – almost 12 hours. Shortly after Penny arrived, I ended up throwing up my lunch and will never again eat one of those TV dinners again as long as I live.
I decided to get into the birthing tub. It wasn’t as big of a relief as I was expecting it to be, but it was nice because I could switch positions easily. I very quickly fell into a pain coping pattern with my leg during the contractions. When the midwife came in to check the baby’s heart rate, she said that it was a little fast. I had to get out of the tub to see if it would slow down. It slowed back down right away and she told me that I could get back into the tub. At that point I was sitting on the birthing ball and was not able to move. I waited a while then got back in. I had tried to eat a little and ended up throwing it up again. I was, however, able to keep a good amount of Gatorade and water down.
Throughout the process it was so nice to have the privacy that we had. Penny and her assistant only came in to check our vitals and to see how I was laboring. Otherwise they left us alone. It was nice to not have someone standing over me the whole time. I was able to sleep in between contractions with my chin resting on the side of the tub (I ended up with a nice size bruise on my chin the next day!). Around 11 p.m., after several hours of laboring in the tub, the midwife came in and said that if I didn’t feel like pushing in the next hour I would have to get out for her to check my dilation (that would have been my first internal exam). That’s all I needed to hear. About 15 minutes later, my body began to push. It was definitely a relief from the hard contractions that I had been having. Nate asked if he could go tell Penny what was going on. I just gave him a look that said, “Please don’t leave me.” He stayed. After about an hour of pushing Nate put his swim trunks on and got in the tub with me. I couldn't have done it without him! He was so great throughout the whole process. I'm so thankful that he was so willing to be such an active participant in the whole experience.

Penny came into the room and was coaching me through pushing. I reached down to see if I could feel his head and it was there. I let Nate feel his soft head. That was all the motivation I needed to get to the point where we could meet our little man! At 12:26 a.m. on my birthday, and the day before my due date, our 9 pound son was born into our hands. It was the most incredible and intimate experience of my life.