My Birth Story

So I wanted to write a brief post about my birth experience with Darian. This is something that I didn't do with either Kaela and Eliora, but I feel that I've been blessed to have some of the experiences that I have, and I that many small things could have changed to make things turn out very differently. I also would hope that my experiences might serve someone else who is trying to learn about childbirth, possibly for the first time - especially natural childbirth.
Darian was born at 6:22am on Wednesday, December 21st.  To give a little background, I think I had better start at the end.  After Darian was born and weighed and was being wrapped up, my midwife sat down and asked, “So what do you mean that there is no pain in birth?”  She is a midwife and deals with natural childbirth frequently, so I was surprised.  I replied that it doesn’t hurt and don’t know how to clarify further.  She said, “So, does that mean you don’t feel pain, or mentally you don’t believe it or that there is really no pain.”  Oh, I am not someone that can’t feel pain, “This IV hurt going in and still hurts hour later, I definitely feel pain.”  But in Hypnobirthing, we learn to work with our body.  Yes, my uterus is contracting and I don’t use these muscles often, so yes there is strain of working very hard, but it doesn’t hurt.  Just picture running really hard and long – you are tired, your legs demand that you stop but if you push past that point you feel great and have an extra wind for longer.  Does it hurt?  Well, sort of, but not pain.
So, we went to bed about 11:00 pm.  Lee’s parents had driven in the day before and all through the day I felt great.  I had been contracting pretty regularly for 2-3 weeks and that day was like no other day.  On Friday my midwife had announced me 3 cm dilated and 70% effaced and ready to go, but here it was Tuesday night and nothing was really happening.  But come bedtime, I said “Hmmmm, these feel like pretty real contractions.”  I went to bed, knowing that if I could sleep through them then it wasn’t real.  Well, at midnight I got up and really started timing them: 5 min apart + lasting a minute + over an hour = go to the hospital.  So, at 1:00am I asked Lee, “Do you want to go to the hospital and have a baby?”  He smiled at me and said, “Really?  Yeah.”  And fell back asleep.  Five minutes later he jumped out of bed when he heard me on the phone saying I thought it was time to go to the hospital, and was dressed in 15 seconds flat.  We left Lee’s parents and our girls sleeping and drove off.
At the hospital I was admitted and found to be 4 cm dilated, not much more than 70% effaced.  I was disappointed that almost nothing had happened since Friday, and we walked over to my labor room.  The nurse started out with asking me how much pain I was in and strapping me to the monitors to watch the baby.  The second time she asked, I told her, “I don't believe there is pain in childbirth.” I was glad when she said, “Ok, I won’t ask that again.”  It was also nice that she only came to monitor the baby every other hour, instead of the 20 out of every 60 minutes that was hospital protocol.
We were left pretty well alone all through labor.  My midwife went and took a nap after she checked me and I didn’t ask again till about 5 am, and which time I was 8 cm, and fully effaced.  During those hours I was doing a variety of things, from trying to sleep, sitting on the exercise ball, walking around, holding onto Lee, sitting on the toilet with my feet propped up to open my pelvis.  Most things we tried were suggestions that my midwife with Eliora had given us and which had helped that labor progress.  This time when we were left to ourselves, it was Lee who had to be both support and labor coach.  Meaning that by 5:30 am I was so exhausted from being up all night in labor and frustrated at Lee that I lost my focus.  That half hour was the hardest part because I just wanted to give up.  I stopped concentrating on relaxing my uterine muscles and it became much harder. I don’t say that to blame my wonderful husband who was there helping labor go more quickly, but I now know that his support was more important.
At 6:10 I knew that something had to change and asked my midwife to rupture my membranes.  I was afraid that the intensity of contractions would skyrocket, and it was definitely did increase, but it allowed the baby to come down fully. I had been reclining in the bed at that moment and was very suddenly very uncomfortable.  Lee said that when Eliora came, I was lying on my side with him holding my leg up.  I laid like that and Darian Oliver Johnson was born at 6:22, a mere 12 minutes after my membranes were released, and 4 hours of labor in the hospital.
As a disclaimer, I do not believe in natural childbirth because I feel that I'm supposed to, or to earn some sort of badge of honor for suffering, or even accomplishment as if I had run a marathon. I do natural because I believe I was not created broken - I think I am likely to do less damage to myself and my baby when I am working with my body, and the relatively quick and easy of recoveries I've had have strengthened my belief in that fact. I think that medical intervention usually unnecessary, which can make it more dangerous, and can not only lead to longer recovery times but may even lead to unpleasant complications during childbirth.  Non-medicated childbirth is possible and even wonderful, and I hope that any other mothers out there who may be apprehensive about childbirth will consider my experiences when choosing how to birth their babies.