I grew up in a family of women
who had all birthed naturally and greatly valued the experience, so
when I got pregnant I knew it would be a goal of mine too. My
husband and I are fortunate to live in an area with a hospital that
contains a natural birthing center inside the hospital. For our
first birth, this made us feel so comfortable, knowing that all of our
preferences for natural birth would be supported and affirmed, but also
knowing that in the case of necessary interventions, the regular hospital
wards were just down the hall. My nine months passed with no complications
or risk factors, and my due date came and went, and I was just starting
to feel resigned to the fact that the baby wasn’t going to come after
all.
Saturday night, we went to bed about 10:00 p.m., and I started to feel
sick. I got up to visit the potty, but was never really ill, and
after many repetitions of this, about 20 minutes apart, I started to
catch on that I was in labor! But I wanted to let my husband sleep
as long as possible, so I would get up and work through the surges,
go back to bed, and I waited until about 5:00 a.m. before waking my
husband to help me time them. I took a bath, tried to relax, and
we kept a nice little record of my surges on paper (he’s an engineer!).
We arrived at the hospital around 7:30 a.m. and went to the birthing center, and I was about 4 cm dilated. Over the course of the next several hours, I walked, rocked on the birthing ball, and used hydrotherapy to help manage my surges. The transition stage was very intense for me, and lasted for several more hours, until my midwife realized that my membranes hadn’t yet ruptured. We then chose to go ahead and break my waters, so that this baby could come out! A couple more hours of surges and pushing, and our son was born. All that hard work of laboring with my water intact had provided him with a wonderful cushion for his little body and head as he made his way through my body. He was simply born a beautiful baby! He entered our life at 2:20 p.m. that Sunday, and the most priceless moments of my life were nursing him, looking into his tiny face, shortly after he emerged. How amazing that God would make us a family and entrust us with the care of something so precious!
Reflecting on and sharing our son’s birth has been a great exercise for me, because it was a very positive experience. I ended up losing a lot of blood after the birth as my uterus didn’t clamp down like it should have, and the physical weakness accompanying this circumstance really colored my memories of that whole time, and left me feeling negative about it. But looking back to the labor and birth, I realize that it was an empowering experience; I succeeded; I met my goals, and was able to birth our son naturally!
That was 13 months ago, and
our son is our greatest joy. We are now preparing for the birth
of his sibling in a few short weeks!
