And Then There Were 5...

It all began at 2 am Thursday morning, November 20, 2014. I woke up to labor pains. Fun. I wasn't sure if this was real labor as I never experienced Braxton Hicks contractions, so I figured I would get some work done and see if they went away. I kept my eye on the clock as the pains just kept coming about every 5 minutes. I didn't bother waking Matt, though he did open an eye long enough for me to inform him. Besides, one of us should at least get some sleep (and I couldn't have done anything anyway...like rub her shoulders or feet). My midwife told me to text her when my contractions were 4 minutes apart, lasting a minute for an hour. I reached this point by 8 am and texted her "today might be the day." By this point I believe I was just waking up to all the excitement.

My midwife, Tanya, arrived a few hours later to check me out. I was dilated to a 4, but my contractions were only lasting about 30 seconds. She left us with instructions to get our birth pool ready and to call her back when they were consistently lasting over a minute. She said it would be a good idea to get some sleep and suggested I drink some red wine. Since that wasn't an option, the next best thing was a sleeping pill. This ended up being the worst decision ever (this comes as no surprise to her chiropractic husband) as it made me so groggy, and I was unable to fall asleep due to the pain.

Meet Tanya. No, that is not her holding my baby.  Unfortunately I never got a picture of her so I stole borrowed this one from her website :)

We cancelled the patients on the schedule and Matt set out picking up the list of birth supplies we had been procrastinating on getting. Once home, I think he had a lot of fun preparing for the birth. Inflating a birthing tub without a working pump actually gave me quite the workout. Thinking back I actually had abdominal pains similar to Merrit's. Let's see, I was breathing heavy a minute at a time, 4 minutes apart, for at least an hour.

I was actually trying to do the 70s swimming dance move while taking a selfie.

Tanya came back with a second midwife around 5 pm and said I had progressed to a 9. When she told me that I just started crying thinking how close I must be! Labor was turning out to be much more painful than the Hypnobirthing book had me believe. Thank goodness Matt was there holding me, breathing with me, telling me how strong and wonderful I would be as a mother. I added that last part. All of my contractions were in my back and the only thing that felt good was when Matt applied counter pressure during each contraction. I'm sure he enjoyed being summoned for each contraction!

It felt so good to get into the water and I was so sure that I would be pushing soon. Boy was I wrong! Tanya ended up breaking my waters about an hour after I got in the water as I wasn't progressing at all. There ended up being meconium in my waters that they fished out with a mesh strainer.  

I ended up getting out of the water and started walking the hallway back and forth to try and get things moving along. Turns out after Tanya broke my waters, I went back to a 4 since my baby's head wasn't in place to keep my cervix open. Over the next several hours my midwives had me push in several different positions but it just felt like I wasn't making any progress.

After what felt like forever, she came. At first we didn't know. Yeah, we were (are) those weird people who decided not to know our baby's gender. And though the 24 hours of labor felt like eternity, it was worse waiting to find out what our baby was. I just remember holding her on my chest with my hand cupped under her bum while my midwives busily suctioned her lungs. At exactly 2 am Friday November 21, 2014 Tanya delivered our sweet baby Maelyn into my arms. Instead of the birthing pool, I delivered on my bed with Matt behind me, supporting me as I dug my elbows deeply into his inner thighs. Here is the first picture he snapped.  So adorable!