My name is Toni, I was 20 years old and this was my first pregnancy, and birth. I knew immediately that I didn’t want to birth my baby in a hospital, I wanted it to be natural with no interventions so I chose a free standing birth center. I was always interested in the birthing process, I thought it was the most beautiful and natural thing I would do as a woman (this was before I discovered breastfeeding of course!), so the thought of birth and labor never worried me, I knew I could do it, I was fearless.

It was 10 days past my due date on a Friday night, my husband and I went out to dinner with my parents. The whole time we were at dinner I kept having to run to the bathroom to “pee”, I was having these really intense contractions, which I assumed were just braxton hicks, and I thought the pressure was making me pee my pants a little. Well I had no idea my water had broke and that was what this liquid was.

When we got home I took off my dress, I wanted to check out what was going on, I was starting to wonder if it really was pee, right then a gush of water trickled down my leg! I was so excited, I wrapped a towel around me and wobbled into the living room to tell my parents and husband. I didn’t call the midwife right away, I laid down for a while, my contractions were already pretty strong and I wanted to time them. They were about 10 minutes apart. I called the midwife, she was already at the birth center with another woman in labor, she told me to lay on my side and call her when they were closer together. This was around 9pm.

I laid in bed till my contractions were very close, I don’t know how close because I wasn’t counting anymore, I was in “laborland” Everything felt very calm, and in control, I was trying to focus on EVERY contraction, I had to be prepared because if I was not paying attention, the contraction would come and be extremely painful!  I learned pretty quick that relaxing through my contractions made a huge difference, like night and day people!

At 12am we called and said we were ready, she was very surprised and thought I wouldn’t be in so soon, she asked me to come in an hour and the room would be ready. I didn’t mind because I honestly wasn’t looking forward to the car ride anyway. We hung out for about 45 minutes and then we left. When we got there it was a little after 1am my contraction were about every 2 or 3 minutes.

The birth center is upstairs in this little shopping mall, the elevator is on the other side of the mall, so I took the stairs. My mother thought I was crazy but I was thinking, a walk up 2 flights of stairs might help my labor along! I had to stop twice when a contraction hit before I got up there. They checked me right away and I was 6 cm! yay!

I was planning on having a water birth, the birth center has a nice tub. But the down side is there is only 2 rooms at the birth center and no guarantee you will get the one with a tub. And because a woman was already in labor, I did not get the tub room. They do have a birthing pool but it was being stored at someones house a couple hours away, and it was the middle of the night, but I was gonna have this baby before the pool would even arrive, let only be filled with water.

So I took a shower! Which was AMAZING, but made my contractions much more intense because I was standing. The warm water made me feel so good, I couldn’t imagine how great it would be to birth in a full tub of it!

After I got out of the shower I sat on the toilet. I had made a list of things I wanted my husband(Ed) to say to me while I was laboring, little did I know he was going to drink a whole Rockstar energy drink, (apparently he thought my labor was going to be a lot longer and he was going to need the caffeine) so the whole time he is talking to me all I can smell is Rockstar and I just want him to shut up because its distracting me!

I was in a lot of pain by now and I was trying to continue relaxing though my contractions, which was not working anymore because my body did not want to relax, it wanted to push. I told my husband that I could not do this anymore. He said we should go to the bed and have the midwife check me. She did and I was complete! 10cm and ready for pushing!

I started pushing on my back, which the baby wasn’t liking, so I turned on my side. Pushing was the most painful part for me, I’m NOT kidding, I was thinking it would be more relieving but it hurt so bad! I pushed for about 5 minutes and she started crowning, I reached down and touched my baby! I continued pushing another 5 or so minutes and at 2:45am, February 2nd 2008, Lucille Marie Bopp’s head popped out, and the rest of her came too! She flew out and water slashed all over my poor midwife and her assistant! Ed helped catch her and place her on my chest.

15 minutes later my placenta delivered and Ed cut the cord. After that I tried breastfeeding for the first time, it was difficult and felt foreign to me, but thank goodness Lucy knew what she was doing and quickly latched on. Then they checked me for any tears, I did, I wasn’t surprised, I was pushing too fast and wasn’t allowing time to stretch, plus Lucy’s hand was up by her face. They gave me 7 stitches total, 2 on each side and 3 on the bottom. After that I showered and we weighed Lucy, 6lbs 8oz! We nursed once more before we left the birth center at 6 am. Best day of my life!

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Toni