In His Own Time: Joseph's Birth Story Part I

Part II can be found here.

To begin, I had no expectations about the birth in terms of length or anything like that. I was thrilled to be birthing at home, and thus, doing all of my laboring in the comfort of my living room, with no worries about when to leave, how to cope in the car and so on. My labor with John (although it technically started at 4 in the morning, I don't count it as "real" labor until it got serious around 3 or 4 in the afternoon) was only 8ish hours and I guess I expected something similiar. My only "fear" was what we were going to do with John if he happened to be awake, since Mr. 2nd Lt. would have to take him (and thus, not be with me so much), so I just kept praying hard it would be at night so he could sleep through it.

I also had sort of pictured that I would birth in the living room (or kitchen, if we used the tub. Ironically, as much as I was excited about water-birthing, I just had this niggling feeling that it wouldn't work out because there wouldn't be enough time to fill it. Turns out, there wasn't enough time for the tub to even arrive, but, I digress...) because if John was asleep like I hoped, I didn't want to be upstairs making lots of noises with other people coming and going next to his room.

Although our little pumpkin was born on October 6th and my actual labor didn't start until around a quarter 'til 4AM that morning, I had been having lots and lots of uncomfortable Braxton Hicks and mild (mild. super mild) cramping for about two weeks prior. They were very frequent, but never steady, never a pattern, never consistent.

Thus, around 3:45AM on Wednesday morning, when I woke up to a contraction - at the level of an uncomfortable menstrual cramp - I thought, well, looks like today is the day. (Ps. Finally). This was actually the same time that I had gone into labor with John and so I did the same thing I had done - got up and took a hot bath, shaved and waited to see if the contractions went anywhere. Between 4AM and 5AM, I had 3, maybe 4 contractions while in the tub and while getting dressed in my labor dress (it was a little chilly, so I threw on a sweatshirt from my study abroad in Mexico that I didn't care about getting dirty and some fuzzy socks. Good thing, since scooping up a newborn in a white sweatshirt is something that never quite washes out!)

Then, around 5AM, I tried laying down in bed and reading, but had to get out of bed to have a contraction - it was too uncomfortable lying down. I would just stand next to the bed and put my arms down, bent over like, and breathe through them or, I would do the same position but over the dresser. I had a few (4 or 5?) this way and thought, hmmm, I think this is for real, I should call my midwife and let her know, since its a bit of a drive (about 30 minutes).

So, I went downstairs, had a dry waffle and some mango juice and called Donna around 5:40AM. I felt super bad about waking her up, but she was very gracious and asked if I wanted her to come. In retrospect, I should have said yes, because I did have to pause and focus on each contraction, but because I was still dealing with them very well I said, no I think I'm still ok. She reminded me to eat, drink and to call when they were intense enough that I needed help through them. While I was downstairs, I pry had 4 or 5 more contractions.

I hung up, went upstairs, finished my waffle and after another contraction or two started making labor noises (ie. more than just breathing) over the side of the bed and asked Mr. 2nd Lt. if he could get up with me now, I needed some help. So he got up and we both went back downstairs so he could eat and time some contractions and just like with John's labor, we popped in an episode of Star Trek from Netflix to watch together between contractions (last time, we watched TNG, but this time, we have been working our way through Enterprise. You know, in case you were wondering).

My couch has a built in ottoman where it sticks out, but without a back, so I knelt down over the couch, leaning on two pillows I stacked on top it for support (one was a Halloween pillow. Even my birth was decorative, how's that for seasonal?). I had one or two more contractions like this, while Mr. 2nd Lt. timed them and I was in full swing with my labor sounds. I remember that I had to have Mr. 2nd Lt. pause the show because it was too distracting during the contractions and the intensity was really high. At this point it wasn't yet 7:15AM, because that was the point when I asked him to call Donna to come because things were getting over my head.

After I finished the first contraction downstairs, Mr. 2nd Lt. said, umm, they're only 2.5 minutes apart... this is a lot faster than last time.

Hah. If only we knew!

To be continued....