Thoughts and musings on my 2nd birthing experience

I fear that my posting regularity may diminish over the next few weeks - especially if things continue as they have been these past few days. Little B is quite demanding so it seems and feeds for 2 hour long stints of on, off, on, off where I just get to thinking surely he is done now and then he starts up again. H boy is just being his usual active boisterous self but I have very little patience for it right now so I am grateful for my husband having two weeks off work so hopefully we can come up with some strategies for when I am at home by myself with the two little monsters. I am sure that broken sleep and lack of food intake are contributing to how I am feeling and I know that little B will grow and things will (hopefully) get better.

I wanted to write a few things down about the birth and the experience in general before all the details start drifting away from my brain.

It was around this time last Sunday (17th April) evening that I was beginning to get that familiar cramping of early labor and I told myself that it was most likely pre-labor and could go on for days yet  - so I took myself off to bed early in preparation for what would likely be a long night, I had no signs or indication that this was the real thing. I was reading for a while but the somewhat regular contractions were a little distracting and while I did manage to doze in between some of the early contractions I certainly could not sleep through them.  At this point they were uncomfortable but tolerable. I employed some of the breathing techniques I had learned in my meditation class and was focused on staying relaxed in order to reserve energy for the night ahead.

As the night went on the contractions didn't appear to get that much stronger or closer together and they were only lasting around 30sec so I really didn't think I was in true labor. Around 2am I had a shower and this provided a large amount of relief. I stayed in there until the hot water ran out. I got out and found the wheat bag as it was only at that point that I remembered the pain relieving properties of heat! I spent the next hour pacing around the lounge room during each contraction with the heat pack held around my abdomen. I had read in the Birth Skills book by Juju Sundin that pacing can be a useful pain relieving technique and at this stage I found that it was helping alot - in combination with the heat. However, I also realized that I could not go on pacing  like this as it would wear me out entirely. At this stage I decided to try lying down again - the contractions were about 7- 8mins apart but still not what I would call regular. They were definitely more intense lying down but the breathing and the heat was getting me through them.
I went on like this (watching bad TV on Foxtel) until about 5am when I went to the loo and discovered that I had had a show - I started to get nervous at this point. I woke my husband up and told him I was going to call his sister to come to look after H boy and then I called the birth suite and spoke with a midwife. I got off the phone to her and went to the loo again and my waters broke. After this the contractions sped up to 3- 4 minutes apart but still didn't get that much more intense. I wasn't too worried that we weren't on our way to the hospital but I was willing my sister in law to hurry up and get here. The breathing techniques combined with leaning on the edge of the lounge and swaying (also an active birth skill described in the Juju Sundin book). I felt like I was coping quite well - I was just nervous about how much longer it would go on.

I hurried hubby along and we left for the hospital - whereby all action seemed to slow down - when we arrived the midwife didn't even think I was in established labor. She did an internal though and was surprised to see that I was 6cm dilated.

At this point I got a little nervous as if it was going to go like last time then I either had a lot of pain in my very near future or another 12 hours ahead of me.

As it turned out things progressed extremely calmly and quickly. I kind of felt like things were going in slow motion. The contractions felt like they weren't all that close together when they really were.
All I wanted to do at this point was get into the shower because I knew that it would help relieve the pain somewhat (I would estimate that it did reduce the pain by about 50%), but the nurse wanted to take some blood and she was messing around trying to put a cannula in my hand for what felt like forever.

I finally got into the shower and then spent the rest of the labor in there. The pain levels were amping up and I tried very hard to stay focused on staying relaxed and calm in between contractions and then breathing through them as they happened. It is an extremely forced breathing - kind of like when you are absolutely dying on the treadmill at the end of a hard session - or in the end kilometers of a marathon and you know that you are nearly there - you just have to breath a little harder. I was also employing another of Juju Sundin's Birth Skills in making and "Ahhh" noise during the contractions and focusing on the noise and matching the volume to the level of the pain. This was amazingly effective - I remember reading through her book and thinking that I probably wouldn't be able to do that when it came to the crunch - but in the moment (at the point when breathing alone wasn't helping so much anymore) I started to try it out and found that it was extremely effective.

The midwife had told me that the Dr would be there by 8am and I think something inside me willed it to all wait until he arrived. The transition through the end of the contractions was tough and painful but with the active birth skills and some deep reaching within myself I made it through. At one point towards the end I asked myself if I needed any pain relief. I thought about the gas and I though about how I was managing and I decided that I didn't need it. I was coping and I was calm and doing well - and I told myself all of this.

I was preparing myself for at least half an hour of hard work pushing but as it turned out the baby had other ideas. I was nervous about birthing the baby standing up because I didn't know if my legs would hold up to it but I also didn't want to leave the shower. So I stayed put - Blake literally came out in two pushes and the midwife caught him.

I feel extremely comforted by this calm and positive birth experience. I didn't think that my last experience was all that bad compared to some but this experience truly was amazing and empowering.