Owwie

So yes...it was labor alright.

Regular contractions began at 4:03 a.m. Wednesday. Our little princess tried desperately to come out of her momma ear-first. This bad positioning confused my body and led to 66 hours of contractions (at 100% effacement). After a routine midwife appointment Friday morning determined that I was 5+ cm dialated, I went home to try and take one last nap.

Mike, mom, Becky, Brian and I arrived at the hospital around 3 p.m. I was 7+ cm dialated, and requested the "room with the tub." Almost the instant I sat down in my hospital bed, my water broke. As soon as I said, "I think I am leaking," my brother shot out of the room like a bat out of hell yelling, "Someone help!" He did not come back. :) Everyone else stayed. After a bit of rolling around on the birth ball and swimming around the tub, the pushing contractions began. Soon we were even joined by my friend comebacknikki (who walked in on me nude, in a very compromising position...) 2.5 hours into the pushing, the fetal monitor heart rate dropped drastically, and an OB was called for emergency consult. Debi (the midwife) used the waiting time to continue trying to move me into other positions to relieve the stress on the baby. A flip to the side and a serious push resembling an arm-wrestling match did the trick and the heartrate returned to normal. 2.5 more hours of pushing (in about 7 different positions) resulted in lots of tears of joy and our little girl, with a nice lump above her right ear where she first attempted to emerge.

When Debi stopped by for a visit on Saturday, she confirmed that if I had in fact chosen to have an epidural, then there was a 99.9% chance that I would have had a c-section, since repositioning the baby was dependant on repositioning mom.

No drugs. No epidural. Just lots of hard work. I would never wish that kind of pain on anyone, but I would not change my decision to have natural childbirth for the world.