April 14, 2012
Birth Partnership Midwives

Brei gave birth to our new daughter Saturday evening!  We are open with you sharing our birth story on the website if you’d like….here goes:

On Friday morning Brei went to the bathroom and noticed a small amount of bloody show, but we knew that didn’t necessarily mean that labour was imminent so she sent me a text letting me know.  Later in the day she called our midwife to let her know what was happening – she reiterated what we already knew and told Brei that it could still be a couple of weeks before the baby comes.

Around midnight Brei woke up and felt like she needed to move around.  She felt like she couldn’t stay lying down or sit still for too long.  So she left the bedroom and went downstairs to take care of these fellings. (In hindsight, these were early labour signs and she could likely have slept through these to save energy for later in the day.)  After being awake downstairs for a few hours, she went to the bathroom and once she thought she was done, her water broke!  This was 4:30am on Saturday.  Following her water breaking she came upstairs to wake me up and let me know that her labour was starting.  Contractions were relatively mild and quite infrequent so we thought we’d let our midwife sleep a little longer before we gave her a call.  At 6:15am contractions were about 3 minutes apart but only about 20 seconds to the peak – we still had a long way to go!

We called our midwife shortly after 6am and she told Brei to try and get some sleep if possible and call her after an hour if she’s unable to sleep.  She tried lying on her side on the couch but this proved to make contractions a bit too difficult to handle so she stayed awake and dealt with contractions in her preferred positions (on all fours or leaning on the coffee table or counter).  I cooked Brei some eggs and toast around 7:00am to give her a bit of energy and she managed to get a good portion of it down but was definitely starting to lose her appetite.  We called our midwife around 7:45 and filled her in – she said she was going to get ready slowly and make her way to our place to give Brei an exam.

At 8:15am her contractions started to get noticeably more intense and she was starting to make some quiet moaning sounds while contracting.  Counterpressure is helping ease the pain and the contractions are now about 30 seconds to the peak and still coming about every 3 minutes. By the time our midwife arrived at 9:30am we were both ready to see her and were eager to hear how Brei was progressing.  After the first exam our midwife told us that Brei was effacing nicely and that she was very happy with how she was progressing so far.  I think she made a deliberate choice to not tell us how much Brei was dilated.  It may have been a bit frustrating at the time, but in retrospect this was a good way to manage the birth.

We figure we started into active labour shortly after our midwife arrived and the next few hours passed in a whirlwind!  We tried many different positions and strategies: Brei was in the bath for a while but found it difficult to get comfortable, we tried some stairs to get things moving but that was not much liked either, Brei got in the shower a few times and although she was still uncomfortable this was one of the places she stayed for the greatest amount of time.  Another good, productive position was squatting.  She spent a good chunk of time walking the hall upstairs and stopping to squat using some yoga blocks to help out whenever she started contracting.  I feel like she made some of her best progress during this time.  Exhaustion was starting to kick in at this point since Brei had been up for over 12 hours on only 3 hours of sleep.  Her emotions were definitely running high and she had a couple moments of doubt, but our midwife and I both gave her some encouraging words and she was able to keep going like a champ.

Another quick exam and our midwife told us that she was still very pleased with Brei’s progression.  Still no mention of how dilated she was, but she did offer to help Brei’s progression by gently pushing back her cervix during a few contractions.  This was supposed to make contractions a bit more painful but Brei actually seemed to prefer contracting like this.  So our midwife kept at it for a few contractions and helped Brei to make some more progress.

Brei continued to labour very well in the shower and on the bed with the birth ball.  Contractions were as strong as they’d been all day and were still coming about every three minutes.  After another hour or two of strong contractions, our midwife checked Brei one more time and lo and behold, she told us that Brei was now at 9.5cm!  Upon hearing this news the exhaustion that Brei had been feeling for a while seemed to disappear and she got a strong second wind of energy and motivation to keep labouring and push our new baby out.  Brei quickly asked our midwife if we are able to deliver at home and of course she said yes.  So while we stayed upstairs on the bed working through the last little bit of labour our midwife went downstairs to get all of her gear.

After what seemed like a very short hour of labour Brei reached 10cm and was given the go ahead to start making some pushes.  Our second midwife was on the way and it seemed like we were just a short time from meeting our new baby.  Brei was still on the bed leaning on the birth ball since this was a comfortable position and she was able to make some great pushes.  After a short 45 minutes, our child’s head was crowning and was ready to come out.  Another solid push and the head was out with the cord wrapped around her neck once.  Our midwife tried to pull it over the head but it was too tight so she asked Brei to give another big push because the baby needed to come out – and out she popped!  Truly amazing.

Love at first sight isn’t enough to describe our feelings for Rory.

Although Brei tore a bit because of the last final push, she is recovering well.  Rory is happy and healthy and nursing as well as can be expected.  We’re absolutely thrilled to be parents and are trying to soak in all the joy of these first few days as best we can.

We both want to give you a huge thank you, Sue.  Your class really helped us to prepare and make sure we were as ready as we could be for our new addition – and to be honest, it crossed my mind a few times that it would have been great to have you with us as a doula.  The extra support and positive attitude you would have brought would have been great but I did my best to channel my inner Sue 🙂  We will definitely be recommending your class to our friends in the future!

Again, thanks so much!

Regards,

Heath, Brei, and Rory