My sweet baby boy was born last Thursday morning at 4:45 after (get this) 15 hours of hard labor! I went into the hospital the previous morning after seeing my regular doctor because I was having regular contractions every 6 minutes. He told me that if I was having pain I should go in and be checked and they'd let me know what to do then. So we called Cory and told him to come home and headed up to the hospital. I told the midwife my story and they did a fetal monitoring for 30 minutes which showed the contractions were regular and between 5-6 minutes. The doctor did a check and said that my water hadn't broken, but she thought labor would for sure be in the next day or two. She couldn't say for sure, just told me that if the pains got worse or my water broke to come back in. Only mildly discouraged, but happier at the prospect we left. By the time we got to the parking lot and were walking to the car my water broke. I wasn't entirely convinced though (after having just been told it would be another day) and so I made Cory drive the 20 minutes home while I counted contractions, they were coming every 3 minutes and were a little more intense than before. But I was hungry and I wanted to eat (they told us we could in Germany and I was going to take advantage of it since I know it's ice chips only in the states).
We went back to the hospital almost immediately after getting home and this time they did the fetal monitoring again, the little line showing the contractions went lots higher this time and were definately more intense. The doctor did the check and then they said they would keep me. Yay!! I was so glad that there would be no inducing and no more waiting. They showed us to our room and the midwife told me to come back once an hour for the fetal monitoring to make sure baby was still doing well, but in between to walk and help the baby come as quickly as possible. I was still determined to go naturally, but I did accept the offer of IV pain meds (which didn't do much let me tell you!). I have to say the whole experience was really natural and amazing. I had one midwife who would come and check on me anytime I'd come back to the labor room and she was so encouraging. For the first several hours I was very peaceful and would even sleep inbetween contractions. After 10 that night she said she had to go but the nighttime midwife would be there and she couldn't wait to see the baby in the morning. The second midwife (who actually delivered the baby) was so good. She was very encouraging and soothing and when I went from a 6 to a 10 very quickly she stayed the entire time and helped me breathe through the contractions.
Cory was abnormally tired and kept falling asleep. He tried to stay awake and was good when he was there, but he was pretty useless so he went back to the waiting room and took a nap. My mom stayed with me the whole time and would hold my hand through the tough pains and help me. Cory did come back in when I was about a 6 and stayed right by my side the last few hours. The last hour was so hard though, I just kept telling them I couldn't do it, it was too hard and I couldn't do it. The midwife kept patting my head and telling me it was ok, I didn't realize right at the end how close it was and was amazed when Cory said he could see the head. A few loud pushes later and my baby was born. He's absolutely beautiful and a big boy too!! He was 9 lbs 4 oz. and 21 in. long. The midwives kept telling me they knew why it was so long. I'm still recovering, I think they described it best on the Gilmore Girls when she said it's like doing the splits on a crate of dynamite. But I'm sore and trying to recover as quickly as I can. We're both trying to figure out feeding and all of that, but it's nice to be home.
