My labor with my son, Mason, was quite an experience. It was a completely natural labor and birth by choice, which was honestly exactly how I wanted it. It all started around 2 a.m. on Monday, October 17th.
Throughout my third trimester, it had been impossible for me to sleep through the night, so it wasn’t unusual for me to wake up around 2 a.m. to toss and turn for a bit before falling back into a fitful sleep. That morning was different. I remember waking up and then feeling my whole stomach tighten up and harden. It wasn’t painful at that time, basically like mild Braxton Hicks contractions. I made a mental note of the time and tried to get comfortable as I listened to my husband lightly snoring beside me.
Soon enough, it was 3:45 a.m. and his alarm was going off. It was time for my husband to get up and go to the gym. I cumbersomely rolled to face him as he lay back down after turning the alarm off. “Good morning, I’ve been having contractions since 2 a.m.” His eyes widened slightly, and then the questions started: “Really? How bad? How far apart? Do we need to go in?”
“No, I’m not feeling it enough yet. The contractions are very mild and far apart. I’m good.” He gave me an incredulous look. “Okay, but if things pick up while I’m at work, I can come home just let me know.”
I gave him a kiss, said my goodbyes as he started to get ready for work and rolled back over to try to sleep more. I dozed on and off for a little while longer before deciding to just get up and eat something. My mom, who was staying with us until a week after my due date to be with our daughter when my husband and I were at the hospital, was already downstairs. We chatted for a bit, and I mentioned I’d been having contractions for a bit, but still nothing major.
Our daughter, Avalyn, got up then. The normal morning routine started; make her breakfast while she got dressed, she’d eat, brush her teeth and hair, get her shoes on and then out the door. I’d started taking a 2-3 mile morning walk after dropping Avalyn off at kindergarten to continue getting some movement each day. My mom came with me, and we did a few slow laps around the nearby park. At 39 weeks and 6 days, I definitely wasn’t going anywhere fast.
The contractions were consistent, but still mild all morning. Around 11:00 am, they started to pick up. I felt slightly like I had to use the bathroom but also like I could have thrown up. Neither would have done anything, of course, because I didn’t actually need to use the restroom or vomit. My early contractions just present themselves like the cramps of an upset stomach.
I’d been texting my husband, Rocky, all morning. Well, he’d been incessantly texting me, asking if everything was alright, what was happening with my contractions, if we needed to go in, he could come home whenever, etc. While my contractions had been consistent for 9 hours by this time, I still wasn’t in the type of pain I recalled from my labor with Avalyn. Around 11:30 am, Rocky decided enough was enough and that we were going in to get checked. I’d been hesitating all morning because I’d had two false starts in the last two weeks which had resulted in me being off work a week earlier than I’d planned. I had a hard time believing that this third time was actually it, especially when I was navigating the pain so easily still after this many hours. I just didn’t want to get my hopes up that this was really it.
But Rocky said he was coming home, so I checked our packed hospital bag and went to eat some lunch. When he got home, both he and my mom sat there watching me weather the contractions for a minute before they shared a look and said “You’re going in.” I laughed shakily after the contraction ended and finally agreed. It was close to 1:00 pm, and we were going to the hospital to have our son.
When we got to the hospital, there was a bit of a wait to get into a triage room to monitor my contractions and check my cervix. I know some women prefer to not do cervical checks, stating that they are unnecessary and invasive, but I personally like to know where I’m at. It helps me pace myself and mentally prepare. I continued having contractions as we sat in that waiting room, occasionally getting up to pace and then sit back down. I was fidgeting, uncomfortable and impatient to have confirmation if this was actually it. You’d think that this being my second child I would have known, but I really doubted myself after those two false starts.
Finally, we got into a triage room. To begin, I was instructed to change into a gown so that the nurse could hook the monitor up to my belly. Once changed, she came in and strapped to sensors to my belly to monitor my contractions and baby boy’s heart rate. Once that was set, the nurse walked me through all the check-in questions and health stats, all the while watching the machine record my contractions. The baby’s heartbeat was strong even during contractions. Once all the check-in questions were done, she checked my cervix and announced, “Ohhh, you are at 5cm! That’s an admittable cervix, between that and the contractions, you are definitely in labor.” Rocky and I gazed at each other excitedly upon hearing that news. We weren’t leaving the hospital without our son.
We were moved upstairs to our private birthing room. It was spacious, with a bed in the middle, a bassinet for the baby and a bathroom with a shower. As we got settled in, another nurse came to do more paperwork, have discussions about my birth plan and who would be the doctor caring for me that day. I really didn’t have a set birth plan, outside of one detail: no epidural, pitocin or pain meds. I wanted a completely natural birth in the hospital setting. I had already done a birth with no epidural with our daughter, so I knew what I was in for and was sure of my choice. I’d make the same choice again in a heartbeat.
Throughout all of this, I was still having moderate contractions. While they had gradually increased in intensity throughout the day, it still wasn’t unbearable. Once the nurse had no more to ask us, Rocky and I started walking the halls of the birthing floor. We paced and chatted, up and down, back and forth. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the room to be checked. I’d progressed, but barely. The nurse told me that there was a bubble of amniotic fluid in between my baby’s head and my cervix, acting like a cushion preventing him from fully engaging my cervix. I made the call to have the doctor break my water for me to get things moving along. This also was not new to me because I’d had the same thing done in my first labor.
After she broke my water, things intensified significantly. I was suddenly not able to talk through contractions anymore, and the tips the nurse gave us for labor positioning majorly helped (and hurt like crazy). Finally, it felt like something was happening and progress was being made. While it was nice to have mild contractions at first, I knew they weren’t productive contractions. The key to weathering labor pains for me is to remember that the pain had a purpose, and that purpose was to help us meet our son.
My husband was my rock throughout. He supported my body during contractions in some labor positions, he held the shower head to spray the hot water on my back for an hour, he talked me through each contraction and wiped my hair from my face. He held my hand and let me squeeze as tight as I needed while my body shook during transition. And when it was time to push, he held one of my legs and continued talking me through it all. I couldn’t have done it without his support.
I pushed for 10 minutes, five pushes total to birth our son. I truly can’t remember the “ring of fire” I remember reading all about before my births. It was just insane downward pressure while I pushed. The first push brought him low, the second got his head out but it slipped back in after getting stuck on his shoulders, the third push had his head back out with me holding pressure to keep him there while waiting for the next contraction, the fourth ended with a slight shriek of effort to get his broad shoulders out, and finally on the fifth push the rest of him slid out.
Same as with our daughter, the very first thing I said to our son, Mason, was “Oh, hi.” I again experienced this feeling of seeing someone I had known for a long time as I looked at his sweet face. I looked up at Rocky and saw tears in his eyes as he gazed at his son. Mason was finally here with us, and I couldn’t have asked for a better birth experience or a better partner.
Dakota DeSanctis is the Editor-in-Chief of Connecting Mothers Initiative, a Navy wife and a mother of two. She has her bachelor’s degree in English from California Baptist University and loves baking, reading, spending time with her family and exercising.
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