Birth Story Part One

I woke up at about 3:30 am on Sunday morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I hoped it was sign of something, but nothing was happening physically. I got out of bed and looked up birth stories and videos online for four hours until Sergio got up. By the time he got up I thought maybe, perhaps, if I wished really hard, I was feeling something. Something only mildly unpleasant and not at all on a rhythm, but it was something.

Sergio and I decided to have breakfast and then go for a hike to see if we could make something out of this. We walked for about two miles and were encouraged to find the contractions got worse with exercise. Then we came home and I took a nap and we were encouraged to find that the contractions continued through sleep. It probably wasn't false labor, but we weren't entirely sure that it was going to turn into active labor either. I won't get into the early signs of labor, but if you know about them, I didn't have any. We attempted to time the contractions, but it was impossible.

We decided to take one more walk before bed and I was discussing whether or not I was going to go into work the next day if this was still going on. As I stepped up to the door I felt a really strange and sudden sensation. Before I could identify what it was, water was dripping all down my legs. At this point Sergio and I had a funny little exchange where he kept questioning whether I was sure rather than unlocking the door, and I kept telling him I was dripping and to unlock the door already!

We called the midwife at 8:30, who told us to see if real contractions started and to call back at ten. Within ten minutes the real contractions had begun. By ten they were mostly regular and painful, but when the midwife talked me through one she said I needed to wait for them to be more painful.  Awesome.  Then she got on the phone with Sergio and told him what to look for before calling back. She expected to hear from us around 2 am. At 1:45 I got really frustrated at a contraction and did a bit of yelling and at that point Sergio decided to go ahead and call. The midwife did not make me talk through a contraction this time, but just told us to come on in.

We got to the birthing center a few minutes ahead of the midwife. When she arrived she checked me and found that I was five centimeters. I was pretty happy with that since I had only been laboring about five hours. I was also encouraged because the first five are usually the slowest and labor would probably pick up now. I could almost see the end of this thing! Probably before the sun came up even! Since I was feeling a little out of control of the contractions I asked if I could get in the tub. It was heavenly.

I wish the birth story continued like this. I wish I could say that things continued to progress and I labored in the wonderful warm water and then I pushed for ten minutes and out came my daughter. That is how I imagined it should go.

But no.