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Thought I’d share my birth story from June ’10 when my baby girl was born, seeing as we are on the topic of birth stories lately 🙂
Funny stretching inside.. I should’ve trusted my instincts!
A day or two before my 36 week appointment with my gynae, I felt a funny type of stretching low down inside, so made a mental note to talk to the doc about it at my appointment. I ended up NOT, I felt so embarassed – who wants to tell a MALE gynae to please check the funny stretching feeling inside?? lol. So I left it. At the appointment, he said baby was all good, 2.8kg-ish, and if she came this week may need NICU for a day or two. Went home a happy lady.
That night at 8:45PM, I was reading on the couch next to my hubby, when I got a slight period pain for a few seconds, which didn’t ease when I changed position. Ten minutes or so, had another one.. I told hubby to get my pregnancy book so I could look up stuff. Half an hour later, I had had a few more, and called the midwife to mention I was having these funny pains. She told me to keep her posted. I called back a short while later, with these period type pains still happening now every 5 minutes apart. She said she was concerned they were so close together, but I could breathe through them easily so I wasn’t concerned at all. Besides, these pains were so low down, and my first labor’s pains had been much higher up, so it couldn’t be labor could it??
She asked if I’d had a show at all, to which I said no, and then called back a minute later to say ‘um.. well I have bled a bit now that you mention it, and I’ve checked’, and that’s when things sped up! As I was 36 weeks pregnant, my plans to have baby at the midwife hospital were ruled out (they only take from 37 weeks on), so she asked me to meet her at a private hospital 20 minutes away.
Finished packing hospital bag through contractions
It was June – mid Winter here in South Africa, and I realised I hadn’t packed baby hats in the hospital bag. So through rounds of 15 second long contractions where I stopped to breathe, I dug through 2 baskets of washed clothing to find baby hats!! I still laugh about this when I think about it. Really didn’t expect baby to come so early!
Drove to hospital on NO petrol!!
My hubby also didn’t expect baby to arrive so early, and we drove the 20 minutes on gas fumes. We stopped at the closest garage for petrol and they told us they didn’t have any (It was late, very late, like 10pm-ish, I guess they were waiting for the tanker to arrive). I made it through contractions by squeezing my hairbrush handle (also gives me a good laugh when I recall it), and hubby counting from 1 to 20 through each contraction. Something in his counting and voice made me feel sane, it was awesome. Hubby counted out loud for me, and prayed in his head at the same time that we’d not run out of petrol on the side of the highway at night (who said men can’t multitask?)
Made it to hospital 9cm dilated 😮
My midwife met me, checked me and said ‘wow, baby’s almost here,’ I was like WHAAAT?? I was expecting to be a few cm dilated, but not NINE!
I swallowed back waves of nausea, took off some layers of clothing and remembered how blind I felt at my socks – they were bright blue (hey, casual midwinter night at home, what can I say). Breathing through contractions with very little on besides blue socks, and holding my hairbrush. We still laugh about that when we remember it! Midwife asked me to take off my top as I’d be breastfeeding soon, that felt kinda surreal 🙂
5 pushes & some impressively loud screaming for such a quiet person.. 😀
At 10cm a few minutes later, midwife broke my waters, and the urge to push came over me. I felt kinda possessed, like I wasn’t really in my body, and unlike the screaming in the movies, the screaming was more about FORCE than pain. It was frikkin’ awesome. My baby girl was out in 5 very loud pushes, and weighed a little 2.58kg’s (5 pounds,11 ounces). She was born at 10:40PM, around 2 hrs after the first funny ‘period pain’ I felt on the couch! Her agpar score was 10, and I got to take her home the next morning. This is her at just over a week old..
I was really grateful for that easy birth, as my first birth was AWFUL – not worth going into detail on as it involved (thankfully) an epidural, a whooole lot of stitches, an episiotomy & suction cup to get baby out. Can somebody say OWWW?? 😉 This 2nd birth felt like a walk in the park, I couldnt believe it!
Fingers crossed this birth coming up in April (home birth) is more like the second labor and birth, not the first!! 🙂
Trendy Tummy Maternity says
It’s so lovely to hear that your second birth is so easy than the first one.Wish you all the best.
Scrapless Press says
Adorable picture and great story telling. Great that you can refer to her birth as “easy”. 🙂 Hope the third was like the second.
Victoria from the Busy House Big Heart says
So jealous! What a great birth story, in and out of the hospital with a beautiful baby 🙂
Heidi de Jesus Ferreira says
Thanks, I was really blessed. Can’t say the same for my first child’s birth, all of them are different I guess 🙂 Just have to hold thumbs for the best and go with whatever happens on the day!