The power of prayer and faith before and throughout my pregnancy to have a natural childbirth lead me to have this truly amazing birth!

After battling 6 weeks of pre-term labor that landed me with strict bedrest and at 3cm dilated and 75% effaced, my 36th week came around. It was a Friday night and I was trying to sleep, but at midnight my first contraction hit, although it wasn’t painful. I was wondering if they were just my usual Braxton Hick’s but couldn’t get comfortable in bed.

I got up and called my midwife who told me to take a bath and see if they stopped and call her back in an hour. So I did, but they didn’t. I called her back at 1am and she said to time them for an hour and if they got stronger, longer, and/or closer together to call her back. After an hour they were still 5-7 minutes apart and not any stronger, but had gone from 30 seconds long to a minute long.

At 2am I called her back and she told me to go to the hospital. So my husband and I packed up, had his parents come to stay with our sleeping 17 month old son, and left. Of course we had to stop and get gas on the way, and it’s a 30 minute drive to the hospital. In the car I was still having the contractions without any pain so I was sure they would say I wasn’t in labor and send me home.

We arrived, parked in the parking garage, and made our way into the hospital and up to Labor & Delivery. They put me in a room right away (3:30am) and hooked me up to the monitors, although the contractions felt as if they had stopped completely upon parking. I was so bummed. Yet lo and behold I was contracting every 5 minutes and 5cm and 90% effaced! We all marveled at how I couldn’t feel anything at all and my husband and I set off to walk the halls and make our phone calls. Every so often I had to report back to my room, still feeling nothing at all but apparently laboring away. I was so glad I didn’t have an I.V. or anything at all. It made staying mobile so much easier and made me so much more comfortable.

Around 8cm I had some bloody show so they wouldn’t allow me to leave the room anymore because without feeling anything they were afraid I’d suddenly birth him in the hall somewhere. We sat around in the room talking until 9cm when they broke my water. A few minutes later (8:30am on the dot) I began pushing. I never felt a thing. 9 minutes later my 6lb 10oz 19inch baby boy was born. He wasn’t breathing and I was bleeding too much. They whisked him to the side to give him oxygen and gave me an emergency I.V. to administer something to stop my bleeding. I had a 2nd-3rd degree tear so they gave me a local and stitched me up. He stayed 1 extra night in the hospital for jaundice. To this day he still has breathing problems occasionally, but other than that is a healthy big boy!!

Denise