Natural Birth Diaries: Nova

This is the natural birth diary of Nova Warren, born 9/14/09, 10:31pm 8lbs. 6oz and 21 in long.

On my first official day of not working we decided to go up north while Selah - my 6 yr old Daughter - was in school to see our friends new baby girl who was born last week.

After that we had an hour or 2 to kill so we ate and started walking around and I started having contractions every 4 to 6 minutes but they weren't too strong.

We figured that it was from all the walking so we went to pick up Selah and the contractions started to get a little stronger at that point.

We got home and I was tired but could not lay down because my hips were in so much pain and when I went to the bathroom I had a bit of bloody show.

I knew it was too early to go in to the birth center at this point but it was around 3:30pm and we knew that traffic was coming soon. We called the midwife to see if we should come in and they said we should since this was my second baby and my daughter came very quickly the last time.

So we left and dropped off Selah at my mom's house on the way because we knew that it was going to be a while and we did not want her to get bored waiting in case it was just a false alarm.

We got at the birth center and I was at 4 cm and my cervix was soft. The midwife on call at the time said that she was not going to send us home as it looked like it would be coming later that day.

So to speed things along we went on a pretty lengthy walk around the neighborhood behind the center. At this point the contractions started getting stronger and closer together at about 3 minutes apart.

The midwife did another exam and she determined that it would be alright for me to get into the tub, so I did. The contractions continued to get stronger, longer and very very intense. After a couple of hours my water broke and it was time to push.

Panic set in with me at this point because it was happening so fast and they had to hold me in the position I needed to be in for the baby to make his way out while I was abusing my wonderful husband and screaming like a banshee for "MEDICINE!!!"

They reminded me that it would not be good for the baby at this point and after about 4 or 5 good pushes the baby was out.

We had planned for Selah to be there but she fell asleep at her Grand-mother's and wouldn't wake up and everything happened so fast she would not have made it anyway.

Active labor was only about 3 hours. So after a very long feeding - 45 minutes - we found out that he was an 8 pound 6 ounce 21 inch beautiful baby boy born at 10:31pm!

I had a very small tear that did not need stitches which was probably from all my thrashing around like a Louisiana gater and not from just the normal pushing.

We got home exhausted and we put Nova down between us in bed. He was great, slept through the rest of the night considering we got home around 4:00am.

He's great at breast feeding and has only barely cried when we changed his diaper.

Upon reflection, I'm really glad I did this at the birth center because I KNOW I would have gotten drugs at the hospital. I would also not have let the midwife do so many internal exams. She did about 4 but he was moving so quickly and they were very painful. Eventually, I just flat out said NO MORE and she said she needed to see if it was almost time to push and I told her "IF I HAVE TO PUSH I WILL PUSH!"

And that's exactly what happened. Also, I'm not going to lie, it hurt...BAD. But I love knowing I got the natural drug-free waterbirth I really wanted.

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