November 3rd - I woke up and noticed throughout the morning that my usual braxton hicks contractions were different. They had a sharper, more painful quality to them. They didn't seem to be coming any closer, and I didn't feel like timing them to see it they were. I figured that if they really started to grab my attention I would start timing them. But the contractions were persistent, even if they weren't all that painful, so in the early afternoon I called Carol, my midwife, to let her know what was going on - that the contractions had changed, and I really thought that labor would begin in earnest in the middle of the night. She told me to keep her posted and I went about my day.
I picked the kids up from school as usual and found that being in the car made the contractions not only stronger, but settle into a timeable pattern. While I was driving they were about 6-7 minutes apart, still light enough to talk through. At about 4pm I told Posy that things were probably started and I canceled our dinner plans. Jay was already home from work and had started getting the pool set up. I called a friend and asked if the kids could come to their house for dinner to give us some down time and see how things developed. By 5:30pm, when we were supposed to have friends over for dinner, the contractions were good and strong and I knew for sure we were on our way.
But my labors have a way of hesitating, so I wasn't sure I wanted Carol to come over just yet. But since she had missed Lily's birth, she convinced me to let her come over then and check me and just be there with us for a while.
My labor built very slowly through the evening. At some point the kids came back home and were put to bed in their own rooms. I labored on the birth ball a lot and paced when I felt like it. Around 9:30pm, Carol siad she would like me to try laying on my left side for a while to see if that helped the labor or at least let me get some rest. I had wanted to keep moving to keep the power in the contractions, but I agreed with her that some rest would be a good idea.
Wow. Once I was on my left side there was no rest to be had. Jay laid down with me and dozed, but my contractions took off like crazy. They immediately went to about 3 minutes apart and took all my concentration. Sometime around 11, I decided that if I had this lovely pool all ready to go to help ease my pain, I might as well use it.
I got into the pool and Jay supported me from outside of it. I labored in there until past midnight and eventually started pushing. But the water was on the hotter end of birth pool temperatures (probably 101-102) and I was working hard, so I got very hot and uncomfortable. It finally started to make me a bit dizzy. Jay said that seemed to alarm Carol when I said I was dizzy. She told me to get out of the pool and finish pushing the baby out on the floor or bed. But as soon as I turned over to move and get out, Molly moved down a bunch. It was too late to go anywhere.
So I knelt, facing the wall of the pool and pushed like crazy. I kind of roared as she came out. The position I was in made it very hard for the the midwife to catch her, so Molly popped out, almost all at once, just into the water. As soon as she was out the midwife could reach her and she pulled her up out of the water while I turned over. Pushing had only lasted about 15 minutes once I got serious about it. She was born a little after midnight on November 4th.
Molly was retracting some and snorting, so we moved out of the pool right away and they cut the cord and gave her some oxygen. Immediately upon receiving the oxygen though she recovered and started to breath properly. She was a teeny little thing at only 6 lbs, 12 oz, 19 inches long.
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