On Sunday, March 1, 2009, my husband had an attack of labrynthitis (vertigo). It usually takes him several weeks to recover. Since I was already 40 weeks (or over, depending on the calculator), we knew there wasn’t going to be that much time, but I really hoped it was be at least a few days, otherwise he wasn’t going to be able to help much, if at all.

About 7:20am on March 2, I woke up to go to the washroom & felt like I was kind of damp. I stood up & gushed water all over the floor. Every step I took to the bathroom, I gushed more water. 3 labours, 3 times with my water breaking with no contractions, despite all my attempts to have it start differently. In the bathroom I quickly checked to see if I could feel any cord, since I didn’t think the baby was engaged. No sign of anything, so I figured it was fine. I put a towel between my legs, went out to the living room & called my friend, Jamie, who had offered to come to the birth, to let her know that I’d probably go into labour in the next couple days, since my water had broken. After I talked to her for a bit, I went back to bed & tried to get more sleep.

When I eventually got up, I was still leaking a little bit, but it only seemed to happen when I got up from lying down or bent over. I grabbed the fetoscope & listened for the heartbeat. It was nice & strong. I also started getting contractions around this time. They were fairly mild, I just had to pause briefly when I got one. The baby was quite active during them.They were about half an hour apart. I called Jamie again to let her know I was getting contractions, but still figured labour was a long way off, since I’d had to wait 3 days after my water broke with my second.

I spent the day mostly taking it easy; losing bits of plug all day. The contractions stayed about half an hour apart until around 10, when they started coming every 12-15 minutes. I decided to try to get some sleep. I realized it could be sooner than 3 days until labour really started, but was still hoping that I had at least another day for my husband to recover. By this point I seemed to have stopped losing plug & had a bit of blood.

I didn’t get much rest, the contractions got a lot more painful when I was lying down & started coming closer together. About 1:30am I couldn’t take it anymore. I was thinking that an epidural sounded like a lovely idea. My husband was still up, but I made him go to bed. I was still thinking it would be a long time. Getting up made the contractions hurt less, but they were still pretty painful.

Around 2:30, I couldn’t take it anymore & decided to try having a shower to see if the water helped with the contractions any. I had a waterbirth planned, the pool was all blown up, but it was in the bedroom with the sleeping kids & I really didn’t want to disturb them if I didn’t have to. So, I got in the shower. It was wonderful. Standing up was difficult, though, so I sat on the tub floor & just aimed the shower sprayer at my belly. By this point I had pretty much given up on Hypnobabies. It seemed to have helped a bit with the early contractions, but they didn’t really hurt anyway.

I stayed in the bathroom for nearly an hour. I knew the contractions were getting harder & closer together & I really wanted my waterbirth, but didn’t really want to get out. I kept hoping that hubby would wake up & come in so I could stay there while he got the pool ready, but he never did. So, I reluctantly got out of the tub, dried off & decided to try to move the pool into the living room. I wasn’t sure we’d have enough space, but was hopeful that it would fit. At this point contractions were coming about every 5 minutes, but picking up fast.

I rolled the pool out to the living room, discovered it would fit & went to grab the plastic & sheets to put under it. I woke up dh around 3:30. The thought of trying to dig out the hose & fill the pool was too overwhelming. I laid out sheets (for padding & warmth, my pool didn’t have an inflatable bottom & our floor was concrete) & put plastic over them; between contractions which were coming every 2-3 minutes by now. At some point in here (around 3:40am or so), I also called Jamie & told her the contractions were about 5 minutes apart. She said she was going to have a shower, then see if I wanted her to come up.

I thought about getting in while it was filling, but it seemed like way too much effort. When the pool was finally full (no idea how long it took, in our practice run it was 25 minutes, though) my husband encouraged me to get in. I had to go find a shirt to wear in it, since for some reason I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of being totally naked. The kids were awake by this point, not sure if it was me getting the plastic out of the bedroom, hubby getting the hose out of the closet across from the bedroom, or my moaning through the contractions that woke them, but at least it meant I could turn on the light to find a shirt. I finally found the one I was looking for & got in the pool. I think it was about 4:30am at this point, but I really wasn’t paying attention to the time anymore.

The contractions were really close together & very painful. As expected, doing the pool was about the extent of what dh was capable of doing for me with how awful he was feeling. I figured Jamie was probably on her way & just hadn’t called. Just before 5, she called to say she was on her way. I really had thought she’d be here any minute & was upset she was going to be at least 20 more minutes. H told her he thought I was in transistion. I wasn’t moaning through most of the contractions anymore, just screaming & begging dh to kill me. I was also giving deliberate little pushes on some of the contractions, just because it seemed to make them hurt a little bit less.

Ok, to be totally honest I was pushing quite hard on a couple of them. I just couldn’t handle the pain anymore. I was trying all kinds of different positions to try to get away from how much it hurt. I was really scared of a long pushing phase because I knew I couldn’t take this much pain for that long. I was also scared that I was pushing too soon since I’d only been in active labour for a few hours & I wasn’t feeling any kind of pushing urge, it just felt less painful.

I asked h to check me, since at least then I’d have some idea if pushing hard was likely to cause problems. He checked & said he couldn’t feel anything that seemed like cervix, just something jello-y feeling & possibly the head underneath. He figured the squishy thing was probably the sac. I started pushing with every contraction after he told me he didn’t feel any cervix, but I still wasn’t pushing really hard.

Sometime around here, Jamie arrived. It was about 5:20am Dh was relieved. He was starting to worry he was going to have to decide whether I needed to go to the hospital or not. In fact, just after she called, I’d told him that I was going to make her take me to the hospital as soon as she arrived because I couldn’t take it anymore.

The baby was obviously moving down.  At this point, I wasn’t even really thinking about the baby, I just wanted to get rid of that feeling. It’s horrible! So I started pushing really hard, several times each contraction. I was just concentrating on pushing & so, even though I felt it, it took me awhile to realize that I was feeling a burning sensation & a little bit longer to process what that meant.

I told everyone (the kids were watching from the hall, I think my screaming had scared them a bit, especially the youngest) that I thought I was crowning. Then I reached down to feel if I actually was. The baby’s head was partially out already, with the edges of the membranes floating in the water. What I really wanted to do at this point was to push as hard as I could to get his head out & stop the burning. I also really wanted to avoid tearing.

So, despite how much I wanted the burning to stop, I slowly pushed his head out. Push, pause, burn, push, pause, burn. After about 7 pushes, his head was out. I waited until the next contraction & gave a hard push & his shoulders came out. It almost felt like there was a ‘pop’ as they came out. I think Jamie said his arm was out even before I pushed out his shoulders, but the timing of everything is a bit fuzzy. Unlike with my second, who had just slipped out on the push after his head was out, I had to push again to get N’s body out after his shoulders.

He floated up to the surface of the pool, face down. I grabbed him out of the water & brought him to my chest, then checked to see if he was a boy or a girl. I was kind of surprised to find that he was a boy, but also relieved that labour was over. It was 5:35 am, only 4 hours from when I couldn’t handle the contractions in bed anymore, even though they had still been 10 minutes apart.

I leaned back against the side of the pool and looked down at him. He was a little blue & completely quiet, which freaked me out a bit. Then I saw him move his mouth & knew he was ok. He looked up at me, then promptly closed his eyes & went to sleep. Jamie grabbed a towel & covered him with it.

After waiting for a little, I started getting a few mild contractions and decided to try pushing again to see if the placenta was ready to come out. It took a bit more work then I was expecting & as it came out, Nick woke up & cried for the first time.

Before I’d gotten in the pool, I’d grabbed some containers for things, since I knew dh wouldn’t be able to find anything with as bad as he was feeling. He handed Jamie the bowl for the placenta, which she floated in the pool while I was pushing it out. Once it was out, it was put in the bowl.

The pool was very bloody at this point & I decided I wanted to get out. I gave N to Jamie & leaned on h to get out. Then I sat down on the couch with some towels under me & a big blanket around me & cuddled my new little guy. I tried to nurse him, but he wasn’t at all interested at this point. My older boys came over to see their new brother & h started draining the pool.

Eventually we cut the cord & confirmed something Jamie thought she’d noticed earlier; there was a knot in the cord. When I cut up the placenta to dry it for encapsulation, I took pictures of the knot. After we’d dealt with the cord, I went for a quick shower to get rinsed/warm & get dry clothes on. Jamie went home about 8:30 & h & I crashed for awhile. The kids were wide awake, so I napped on the couch with the baby while they played a game on the playstation. At some point my youngest had a nap on the floor, but my oldest stayed awake for the whole day.

I don’t know exactly how much he weighed at birth, I think he was around 6lb 6oz, maybe a bit less. 19 1/2 inches long & head circumference of 13.4 inches.

Lisa-Marie

During the day on Tuesday, I would get an occasional contraction, but never more than about 1 an hour, sometimes I wouldn’t get one for several hours.  Wednesday was more of the same, although I was getting one almost every hour.  There were even a few that were closer together than that.  I kind of lost it on Wednesday night.  Between the leaking and the fear that I was looking at a repeat cesarean because labour would never start (which I know was completely irrational, but I was tired and desperate for it to start).  I lost it so bad I seriously considered going to the hospital.  My husband very bluntly asked me would I rather leak or be cut open again?  That quickly brought me back down.

About 10pm on Thursday, I went to take a shower (aka hiding out from my mom phoning to find out what was going on).  While I was in there, I also scrubbed the tub a bit, since it had been driving me nuts for days.  Near the end of my shower or just after I got out, labour suddenly kicked into high gear. From every twenty minutes or so (we weren’t really timing, except for one or two contractions occasionally), contractions moved to 15 minutes, then 7, then 2, in less than a couple of hours.

Sometime around 3/4am on Friday, I started getting pain in my back, too.  Until this point, all the contractions had been in a band extremely low down in my belly.  Once they started hurting in my back too, I just couldn’t take anymore and decided to try sitting in the tub and using the sprayer during contractions.  Unfortunately, we only had one and it didn’t stretch very far, so either my back or my belly got sprayed, and it was very difficult to get my back without standing up, which I didn’t want to do. My husband put a pillow in the tub with me and I alternated between sitting up and leaning back.  Sometimes one seemed to work, then the next time it would make it hurt worse.

I finally got my husband to put the plug in (I couldn’t reach and didn’t really have room to move) and let the tub fill while I used the sprayer.  Once there was enough water, my husband started using a cup to pour it over my back during contractions while I sprayed my belly.  The pouring didn’t really do anything to lessen the pain, but it did give me something that briefly distracted from it, which was nice.

By around 7 or a bit later, I’d been out of the tub for while and the only way I could endure the contractions was to push during them.  I don’t know if I was fully dilated or not and I didn’t feel what I would call an “urge”, but the pain was manageable when I was pushing and excruciating when I wasn’t.

Sometime after this, my husband checked me and said it felt like the baby’s head was jammed against my bones.  I think the baby must have been stuck for awhile, because on several pushes my husband and I noticed that my stomach was bulging out, which it didn’t do when I pushed later, after he was unstuck. I spent several contractions on my hands and knees, no idea how long, but when husband checked again, he said it seemed like the baby was even more stuck and had moved back.  I decided to try lying on my back for awhile to see if that made any difference.

I don’t remember if I did it because I remembered someone mentioning it, because it felt better or because husband had written to the ICAN list and a couple people mentioned it to him, but I started arching my back during the contractions, occasionally alternating with sitting up and leaning forward, which seemed to also make it hurt a bit less.

The arching seemed to be working, but I couldn’t really do it very well due to the problems with sciatica I’d been having for months (I was going to be going to the chiropractor that week, but never went because of the leaking). I had some pillows and a cushion under my head, so I got rid of the pillows, which helped me arch a bit better and I heard a slight sound kind of like bone on bone.

I knew then that the arching was probably making a difference and I wanted to be able to do more of an arch, so I left my cushion where it was and slid so that my head was on the floor (our bed was just a mattress on the floor).  I then planted my feet on the bed and used the cushion to help me get a bit more arch.  After a few times of this, there was a loud, several second long, sound of bone on bone.  I didn’t feel anything, but I must have noticed something, because I don’t recall doing much, if any, arching after this point.

During all this, my husband and son were in and out of the room and shortly after my husband came and lay down on the bed next to me.  I seemed to be getting a bit of a break between contractions at this point, though they were still extremely painful.  My husband was so wiped, he fell asleep for several contractions.  At some point, they must have eased off enough that I was able to sleep briefly, too.  I have no idea how long we slept, my husband seems to think he only slept about 20 minutes, but he actually fell asleep twice, once was when I was asleep too, so it was probably longer than that.  I woke up and dealt with a few contractions before they got bad enough that my moaning woke my husband up.

I continued labouring in the bedroom for awhile.  My friend, J, called around 12:30 to see how things were going.  We had planned for her to come watch our son if needed and maybe offer some reassurance to husband (since she had had a VBAC herself), but our son was doing really well and my husband had been coping pretty well, too, until it seemed like things were dragging on forever.  She managed to reassure my husband some.  Around 1pm, my son fell asleep on the couch in the living room, so my husband no longer had to go back and forth between us.

By this point, I was just thinking about the next break between contractions, they hurt so much.  When I was between them, I just enjoyed the relief and didn’t worry about the next one, didn’t think about anything.  There were several points, and this was one of them, when I really, really wanted my husband to just call the ambulance and let them make the pain stop.  I really didn’t believe I could take it anymore, but I did. [The first time I felt like that was when I was in the bath and started pushing the first time.  I also felt like I couldn't take it anymore around when I was arching my back, especially before I figured out that doing that would help.]  Changing positions didn’t seem to help at all, but I kept trying anyway.  I alternated lying down on my back, my sides, kneeling against a pile of cushions, sitting on the toilet, leaning against the wall and hanging onto my husband.

I decided to try the tub again for awhile.  I don’t know exactly what time that was, probably about 2:30 or 3.  I think it helped a bit.  I started pushing some again while I was in the tub, but I couldn’t really get comfortable in there and had to keep moving around.

My husband was completely exhausted and in agony, so when he talked to J again, and she offered to come over, he was very willing to have her.  She had to get someone to watch the kids and then she got stuck in traffic, so she didn’t make it here until about 5, at which point I was back in the bedroom and I’d been pushing again.  Just before she got here, husband checked me again and the top of the baby’s head was only about a knuckle in.

I can’t tell you how relieved I was that I was actually making progress this time.  I couldn’t feel him moving down at all, but obviously this time the pushing was working and he hadn’t gotten stuck again.

When J got here, my son woke up and my husband stayed with him for a bit while J came to support me.  I was pushing on the toilet when she got here and didn’t really want to move, but I also didn’t want to have the baby there, so eventually I moved back to the bedroom.

I alternated pushing in kneeling, hands and knees and reclining positions.  I couldn’t get enough leverage in either of the first two positions and it was taking forever.  Knowing I was so close, I really wanted to get it over with.

When the head was visible and not really sliding back anymore, I switched to a mostly sitting position, with a huge pile of pillows behind me.  J told my husband she didn’t think it would be very much longer, so my husband and son came into the bedroom, too.  We had promised our son that he could watch the baby be born, but he didn’t want to be around the rest of the time.

J suggested that I plant my feet on the bed against the bed to try to get a bit more leverage.  I did this for quite awhile and the baby was very slowly moving down more, but I still felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere.  J then suggested that I try holding my husband’s hands, since I kept grabbing at my arms to try to use my whole self to push.  Holding my husband’s hands really helped with the pushing, since I really yanked on him and I actually started feeling like I was making progress.

I reached down to feel the baby’s head and there was quite a bit out.  I couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to get his head out, but after he was born I realized that what felt like it must have been all of his head above the eyes was actually only about the top half of his head, it had moulded so much.

I kept pushing and I started screaming with every push.  I’m not entirely sure why, since it didn’t hurt that much, it just felt like the right thing to do.  Really surprised we didn’t have anyone coming to check on things here (apartment).  I was determined not to tear, so I regularly paused between pushes to have time to stretch.  It was uncomfortable, but I figured it was better than recovering from a tear, especially since I had no one to sew one.

It was really weird how I was thinking rationally, but I wasn’t able to articulate anything while I was labouring.

I finally felt his head come out and knew that one or two more pushes and I’d be done.  The cord was around his neck loosely, but I just couldn’t handle having anyone’s hands there long enough to unloop it, so I just pushed the rest of him out into my husband’s hands and J unlooped the cord.  Then I got to hold my new little boy!  He let out a little whimper and pinked up right away.  We didn’t suction him at all since he obviously was breathing fine on his own.

I found out later that he had come out facing my right hip and he hadn’t rotated at all after his head was out, he just came straight out the next time I pushed.

My husband got a towel to cover him and I sat there and held my new son for quite awhile, at least an hour.  J left right away, since she had only planned to come over for a little bit to give my husband a break and she had to get back to her kids.

Eventually my tailbone started really hurting from the way I was sitting, so I got my husband to come tie the cord.  He tied it off with a couple of shoelaces that had been boiled and then cut it with a pair of scissors that had also been boiled.

The placenta still hadn’t come out, so I got my husband to tie the cord again closer to my body and cut it short so I didn’t have to have it dragging around until the placenta decided to come out.  My husband took our new little boy and I went to have a shower.  I was a bit woozy, though, so I sat down in the tub and used the sprayer to wash myself.

Eventually we had some nuked chili for a very late supper, around about 9:30.  After that, I went to get ready for bed.  I went to the washroom and the placenta came out, about 4 hours after the birth.  It really stung coming out because it was huge.  We were all too exhausted to deal with it, so we put it in the fridge overnight, and then froze it.  Eventually, we’ll be getting a tree and planting it at my mom’s place.

We weren’t expecting the baby quite so soon, I have no idea why, when I’d been leaking for days, but we had no diapers.  We just kept the baby wrapped up in a towel until the next day, when my husband went and bought some diapers.  We didn’t dress him or bathe him until Monday morning, when I gave him a quick sponge bath to get rid of the little bit of blood that was still on him.  Except for a tiny bit in the creases, all the vernix got rubbed into his skin, like it’s supposed to be.

We weighed him by putting him in a sling and hanging it on a fish scale the day after he was born and he was 8lbs 8oz.  His head was 35cm and he was about 19 1/2 inches long.  Really hard to measure, though, since he was so curled up and not at all happy about me trying to straighten him a bit.   It turned out that the fish scale was off by quite some way, since when I took him to the health nurse at 10 days old, he was only 6lb 12oz.

Lisa-Marie