On Monday, October 3rd, 2016 I was 39 weeks and 3 days. I woke up at 2:15am with a mild contraction. I had another about 20 minutes later but I just decided to go back to sleep and figured if it was real labor I would wake up. I had a weird dream that I had bloody show and couldn’t find a pad anywhere (lol) and woke up at 4:45am with more contractions. I went to the bathroom and had some light bloody show! Matt’s alarm went off at 5:30am and I told him things might be happening. We decided to work from home for the day just in case this was real labor.

I stayed in bed for another hour and then went downstairs and had breakfast. By this point contractions were 7-8 minutes apart. I showered and got ready for the day, leaning and swaying against the bathroom counter when a contraction would come. By 8:30am contractions were about 5 minutes apart. I came downstairs and called my parents while Matt walked the dogs and showered. We spent the rest of the morning sitting on a ball, relaxing and breathing, and timing contractions and listening to music. I tried taking a bath at one point but that wasn’t doing much for me. By 11am contractions were 3 minutes apart and we called the midwife on call and told them we would be in.

It was a beautiful sunny day and we were in good spirits! I was still managing pretty well. We were laughing and giddy on the way to the hospital. And of course we got stuck behind a garbage truck at some point which luckily we found funny at the time!

We got to the hospital at 12:00pm and went to labor and delivery triage. The midwife and student midwife on call came in to check me. I was 3cm. I was a little disappointed at the time, hoping I would be further along, but looking back I think I would have had a hard time being monitored in the bed if I would’ve been any farther along. I was monitored in triage for about 30 minutes and then we went to our our room and were monitored for another 30 minutes so our nurse could get a baseline.

My midwife had put that we took Bradley classes in my chart and the nurses and midwives were super respectful! They asked for our birth plan and told us since we were a Bradley couple they would stay out of our way unless we needed them. So awesome!

We spent the next hour laboring in our room. I tried rocking on a ball but that started making me nauseous. I leaned over the end of the bed, got on all fours on the bed, put my back to the wall, and tried sitting on the toilet forwards and backwards. Matt ordered a pizza at some point, haha! About 2:30pm I got really nauseous sitting on the toilet and puked into a bucket. At that point I wanted to get into the tub. They had wanted me to wait initially until I was farther along but at this point decided I was in active labor and the tub would be ok. Our nurse went to get the tub ready (our hospital has a dark room with a jacuzzi tub and twinkle lights on the ceiling).

We went to the tub around 3pm. I had to kneel and lay my head against the side while Matt held towels under my head. I started sweating and Matt put cold washcloths on my neck and forehead. I had to start vocalizing through contractions and kept my voice low so I wouldn’t tense up. After about an hour I was done with the tub and no position was comfortable and I needed a change.

We got back to our room around 4pm and I got checked again – 7cm. I was waiting for transition to hit me at this point! I mostly labored on the bed on hands and knees and had the back of the bed put up so I could lean against it. I was still sweating like crazy and Matt was using cold wash cloths on my neck and back and giving me water and juice between contractions.

At 5pm our nurse said, “My shift is over at 7:30 so if you could have your baby by then that would be great!” I said, “I would love to!” and she left the room. The next contraction I felt like it would feel good to push and then I felt and heard a pop! I said, “What was that?! Oh! My water broke?” Matt said it was just more blood (I was having lots of bloody show throughout). Then I felt the water start to leak out and said, “No, I think my water broke” and Matt looked and then went to get our nurse. Our nurse came in and saw me grunting through the next contraction and called the midwives. They came in and checked me and I was at 10cm! I was still on my knees facing the back of the bed and started pushing through each contraction. They had me spread my knees apart further so I was in a squat/kneel kind of position. Margot was born at 5:39pm!

Margot was placed on my chest right after she came out. The midwives waited until the umbilical cord stopped pulsing and then Matt cut the cord. She started to nurse pretty soon after. She also peed on me right away! We got a little over an hour of skin to skin time and they did all of her checks while she was on my chest. Then Matt did skin to skin for about 30 minutes and then they weighed and measured her.

I needed a few stitches for a few small tears and had to get an IV of pitocin because my uterus wasn’t contracting enough to slow the blood flow. One thing we did not do a good job of was going to the bathroom enough! They had to drain my bladder with a catheter so they could knead my uterus when they were trying to slow the blood. Other than that the things we were surprised by were having a baby before her due date, and I did not have a clear transition. I had sweating and got the shakes a bit when I was going from 7cm to 10cm but did not have the emotional signposts of transition.

Overall we were both so happy with our birth and so proud of how we worked together to bring Margot into the world!