When I was pregnant, I read a lot of birth stories and found them very helpful, so I thought I would share mine and maybe help someone else. I wish I had written it down sooner now that I'm almost five months removed from it, but my husband and I have recounted it so many times to friends and new parents that we have met, I think I can put down all the most pertinent details.
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| water, water, everywhere... |
It all started on a Sunday night in February 2014. We had just gotten through a holiday weekend with a full moon and a huge snowstorm, all of which made me extremely anxious. But now that the snow had stopped and everyone seemed to be calmer around the city, I was more at ease. My due date was on Wednesday, but since this was my first pregnancy, I expected to go past it. Everyone I knew thought I would be later for some reason.
That night, my husband and I went to bed early, around 9:30, as we had been wont to do in the later stages of my pregnancy. We had just moved houses two weeks before and everyday was exhausting as we continued to unpack and make our new house a home. Only a few days before, we had assembled the bed so we weren't sleeping with the mattress directly on the floor. As we watched a "Law and Order" rerun on his laptop, I started to drift off to sleep, only to be awoken moments later by a wet feeling. It didn't feel like urination and I couldn't do anything to stop the flow. I immediately told my sleepy husband who asked a number of questions trying to figure out what was going on. Then we started to search online for answers, of course, and we texted my doula to give her a status report. From our reports, she thought it could either be water breaking or heavy discharge.
Throughout my labor, the doula maintained that everything was our decision, but she phrased all of her advice as what she would do in our situation. This is a very important part of her service, because she feels that, even though she is a registered nurse, her capacity as a doula is not to tell her clients what to do, but only help and guide to achieve their goals as they saw fit. However, I chose to follow her lead since she had given birth four times without any interventions, including a breach!
So my doula stated that, if it were her, she would not call the midwives or hospital just yet, since they would order me to come in to be evaluated even though I had no contractions yet and no other issues, such as fever. I took my temperature regularly, I made sure my baby was kicking regularly, and my husband monitored my constitution closely. I soaked through a bath towel during the night.
Monday came and went with a few minor contractions spaced widely, some only as close as an hour apart. My husband and I walked around a little, although the icy sidewalks impeded us. I continued to leak slowly but had decided to wait after reading an article on Evidence Based Birth and after learning how it is only recently that policy has shifted (in the last ten years) from wait-and-see up to 72 hours after water breaking to immediate hospital admittance for evaluation. I knew I did not want to go to the hospital any sooner than transition; that was the whole point of hiring a doula and I wanted to avoid being in the stressful hospital environment any longer than need be.
On Tuesday, I started to have more regular contractions, but they were still far apart and not very difficult. I was prepared for some mean contractions, since my menstrual cramps had always been very intense and painful. I took these as a chance to practice meditating through the pain and relaxing every other muscle in my body to focus my strength. I must have looked a little crazy in the coffee shop my husband and I walked to, as I stopped in mid-sentence to shut my eyes and collect myself inwardly for a minute or two, only to come out the other side relaxed and relieved.
Then on Tuesday night, as we went to bed early, s*** got real.
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