My Second Birth Experience

When awoke on a Sunday, my due date, it felt like an ordinary day in my pregnancy. Since our boy hadn't been born yet, my selfish wish was that he would be a week late. I did not want him to be born on Thanksgiving, like my daughter was 2 years ago. I did feel a little guilty for having the midwife and assistant at our house instead of theirs for the holiday.

After breakfast, I happily went to the Pre-Natal yoga class- and oh did it feel SO good to stretch & breathe! After-wards, I decided to go to the craft fair to continue some early holiday shopping.... Of course lots of sweet people asked me when I was due and I got to respond TODAY! more than a dozen times. Funny to see people's expressions when I told them- some looked & sounded shocked as if I should be home waiting for my water to break. LOL! Later that day, my husband and I had romantic lunch together, and that evening, we joined my daughter and in-laws at a restaurant for dinner.

I bathed and got our daughter to bed, and once she was asleep, I caught up on emails while my husband went to work. Around 11pm, still Sunday, my due date, I started to get cramps. I went to bed to try and sleep but the cramps didn't go away like the last couple of nights. Instead they got a little stronger and more frequent. Hmmmm, I thought, that's strange. When I heard my husband open the door, I got out of bed, and asked him to time my sensations, just in case they were contractions. Within a half hour, we figured I must be in labor as my contractions were about 30 to 40 seconds long and 2 +/- minutes apart. Finally, we decided to call our midwife, who came shortly after midnight, and her assistant arrived around 2 am. Our boy took his first breath at 3:30am, just a few hours after my due date and my first sensations.

It was the "perfect storm" on a full moon, the last day of Scorpio (I really wanted a Scorpio- a water sign like me.) The labor, for lack of better words, was fast and furious! I spent most of my time on hands and knees, and the last hour was pushing on a birthing stool, slightly reclined & leaning on my husband seated behind me.

This birth surprised us all as it was much faster than my first labor. My first birth with our daughter built up slowly and took 15 hours, while the second with my son was only about 4 hours. My husbands words: "I felt like I got hit by a train." He was setting up the birthing trough most of the time while I was laboring but I was never able to get in for the water therapy I craved as the trough leaked and my labor was just too fast anyway for the hassle of trying to get in to it and then back out. So a couple hours after birth, I took the longest shower of my life, until all the hot water was gone :) Then it was time to rest.