I was due to give birth to my first child, a son, on March 6th, 2004. By the time March 8th rolled around, I was very impatient and ready to meet my little boy! My mom Wisconsin came from Minnesota to help my husband and I and to distract me while I waited for the big day.
The morning of March 9th was my th and I decided to go shopping in Madison. On the drive home I noticed a slight lag coming on and I went about every 8 minutes or so. I don’t know if they were contractions or not since I hadn’t experienced Braxton-Hicks contractions in my womb. When I got home, I ate a cheeseburger and fries, thinking that if I start labor, I’m sure I won’t starve through it, since our hospital only allows liquids during labor. I tried to sleep and rest because I was trying to late in the afternoon and I thought I was probably going to have uncomfortable contractions all night. But I was restless, and decided to try walking instead. I thought that walking would either reduce or strengthen the contractions. My mom started leo for me at about 6:00 PM (my husband was at work), and I found myself constantly between I was five and six minutes apart. I decided to take a bath as I heard this is another trick for muscle relaxer to go to work faster. I had a midwife in my womb and I decided to try through labor and delivery without medicine.
I called my husband and told him to come home because the contractions were constant and coming together. When I got a house in a barrel and nervous contractions started. During this time I had been constantly contracted for about 3 hours. We were surprised that the contractions were only between one and three minutes apart! Thus they stood until he was born. We got to the hospital at 10:30 and I was 4 centimeters dilated. I spent about an hour walking and when they stopped me again, I was still only 4 centimeters. I felt discouraged and decided that if I didn’t make progress soon, I would probably ask for drugs. As it turned out, my midwife was not on call and so I worked with the doctor. He ordered me sleeping pills and told me to try to rest and work hard to come in the morning. I was convinced that my contractions were so strong and constant that I could not rest, and therefore took no remedies. The nurse said she wouldn’t check on me for a while and left the room. So for the next 3 hours I walked around leaning on the glider, made several trips to the bathroom and tried the abortion pill (which was very helpful!). The unfortunate husband had strep throat and so spent a lot of time sleeping on a leather-a-bed. room
I began to feel very uncomfortable, and I asked my husband to get a nurse and ask him to check on me. I am 8 centimeters! Here I stayed in bed as I was too bothered to get up much. He was a wonderful man! He sat quietly by my side, and refrained from laboring and giving me lips to breathe (I prefer to be quiet when I am in pain!). He simply handed me ice water between contractions. Within 45 minutes the nurse checked on me again, which broke my water, and I was fully dilated and voided. I went through two contractions before the doctor made it into the room. Then I told him that I didn’t want an episiotomy (it had never happened before). He was incredulous, he had been a doctor for about 30 years and cutting episiotomy was a common practice for him. It was evident, I preferred to tear my discord, and no help to lessen the probability or severity of the tear. (My midwife helped stretch the vaginal tissue with mineral oil and encouraged me to push in a more vertical position rather than supine). I pushed through four or five other contractions, and suddenly Caleb’s head fell off, and the rest of his body quickly followed. I’m significantly torn and have to have two vitamin K shots to clot the blood. But the tear healed well, and I have no negative effects from it now.
My son was a beautiful, perfect little boy who weighed in at 6lbs 14 oz and was 20 inches long. He was born at 4:40 AM on March 10, 2003.
