Cora’s Birth Story

I went into labor on Saturday February 1, 2015 at 1:50pm at 38 weeks 2 days. I felt my first contraction as I was getting off the couch to go take a nap. I figured I should try to nap. I had contractions every 20 minutes for the first hour which kept waking me up. After 1 hour I decided to get into the tub. We learned in Bradley Class that would help distinguish between “false” labor and the real deal. My contractions continued to increase and I started timing them. They were coming about every 8 minutes lasting about 30 seconds. After an hour in the tub I decided I was really in labor. My partner, David, was taking a nap so I decided it was time to wake him up!

We had got a birth tub from Brenda, our midwife, and I wanted to start the process of getting that ready. We hadn't set it up yet for our practice run-I figured I had probably 3.5 more weeks until our babe would come. It took David about an hour to fix the water heater, hook up the hose and get it all filled up. I walked around, tried eating and drinking and then threw up. By then it felt so good to get into the tub. David sat next to the tub on an upturned 5 gallon bucket and held my hand while he timed the contractions. At 7:30pm we decided to call Brenda. She listened to me have contractions on the phone and asked if I needed her there. I decided she should come since she was an hour and a half away. Brenda called Karin our birth assistant. We had just had a big snowstorm that weekend. It had stopped snowing but the roads were still bad. Karin got stuck on the way to our house twice and it took Brenda 3 hours to get to our house. I was very excited for them to get there!

At about 11:15pm my water broke in the tub. I stayed in the tub laboring for about 45 minutes. About that time I started to feel like a really needed to push. Brenda had me get out of the water and onto the birthing stool. After the birthing stool I got into bed and tried laying on both sides, my back and resting on the birthing ball. I was not a fan of modified hands and knees on the birth ball! After a couple hours Brenda wanted me to pee and had me get on the toilet to try. While I couldn't pee, pushing on the toilet worked well! Brenda looked and said babe was almost crowning and it was time to move back to the bed unless we wanted our baby born on the toilet! When our babe was crowning, Brenda exclaimed that you had lots of hair which was such a surprise and so motivating to me. After 13 hours of labor, 3 hours of that pushing she was born on February 2nd at 3:14 am. She had her hand on her face so it took a little bit of extra effort. When she came out they put her on my chest and she cried out! We didn’t find out her gender during pregnancy and didn’t even look for the first 15 minutes of her life. I was in shock, I couldn't believe that only a few moments before she was inside me and now she was finally here!