Eleanor Rose

For the past two weeks, I have tried every recommended home remedy to get labor going. Among these treatments were: red raspberry leaf tea, evening primrose oil, pineapple, spicy foods, blue cohosh, pressure points, acupuncture, sex and chiropractic adjustments. As of Thursday morning the only two I hadn't tried was castor oil and having a membrane sweep performed by my doctor. I scheduled the membrane sweep for Friday morning and drank the castor oil on Thursday morning. That was the worst by far of all of the previous treatments. Not only did it NOT put me into labor, but it gave me the most painful and horrendous case of loose bowels that I had ever experienced in my life. NEVER AGAIN! So by the time Friday morning came around, I was feeling pretty low. My legs and pelvis hurt so bad that it was hard to move, let alone walk, and I was just DONE with being pregnant. I was pretty emotional and cried on and off all day. I had my membrane sweep appointment in the morning and I even bawled in the doctor's office about how miserable I was. Then I came home and cried some more. After the sweep, she told me to try and be as active as possible to get things moving. I certainly tried, but it was hard with all of the pain in my legs, hips and pelvis. Nevertheless, by that evening, I was having some mild but regular contractions (not unlike what I had been experiencing for nearly 3 weeks now however) and cramping. Unfortunately they started to die off around bed time, and by 11pm, had gone away completely. I was exhausted and fell into a fitful sleep.

Saturday morning I awoke at my normal time of 7am and realized that I was having some mild cramping. It was heavy enough to catch my attention, but not enough to get me excited. The one thing that did make me stop and wonder a bit, was that these were the first contractions I had had, where I had done nothing to cause them. I was literally just laying there not moving and they were happening. I laid there for about 15 minutes and then both Michael and I decided to get up for the day. After going to the bathroom, I noticed that I had lost a pretty significant chunk of mucous plug, and there was blood in it. This must be the famous bloody show I had heard so much about. I never had that with Will! I decided to take a shower, and right before I got in, I had my first "real" contraction. It wasn't mind blowing, but I had to breathe and moan through it, which made it one of the more powerful ones I had had this pregnancy. I still wasn't getting too excited though as I had been through enough rounds of false labor in the past three weeks that I didnt want to get my hopes up. While in the shower I had a couple more attention-grabbing contractions. I got out and called my mother-in-law, alerting her to the fact that I MIGHT be in labor, and asked her if she and my father-in-law could pick up Will, in the event that I did go into labor. I then paged my midwife to tell her that I had had some real feeling contractions and bloody show, and while I wasn't sure that this was the real deal, I thought she should come over. It was 7:25am at this point.

By the time ten minutes had passed, my contractions had picked up in both frequency and intensity on an alarming scale and I called my MIL back to inform her that I was definitely in labor and that they should try and hurry to get Will as soon as they could. I then ran around the house (between increasingly debilitating contractions) trying to get things set up for the birth and make sure Will had a bag packed while he was with his grandparents. Finally the contractions were so close together and so painful, that I had to go lay down on the bed. My midwife and her assistant arrived at our house, a little after 8am. By this point I was 90% sure that I was in labor, and they listened to my vitals and the baby's heartbeat, and then rushed to get the birthing tub all set up. The tub took close to an hour to set up, meanwhile I lay in bed and labored. By this time I was in no doubt that this was the real deal, as the contractions were coming fast and furiously, and were extremely painful.

Finally around 8:50 or so, the tub was mostly filled with warm water and my midwife told me I could get in if I wanted. I waited until I was between contractions and then waddled out toward the tub. Just like last time, the relief I felt as I stepped into the warm water, was immediate and wonderful. I didn't have a lot of time to reflect on this fact though as the contractions were becoming more painful by the minute. Things seemed to be progressing too quickly and I was a little confused. I had only been in the tub a few minutes when my body started pushing. I felt like it must be too soon to start pushing, by my midwife told me to listen to my body and do what it was telling me to do. So I pushed through maybe 3-4 contractions (maybe 10 minutes). After the last push, I could feel something enter my birth canal. I reached up and felt that I was now completely dilated and her head was starting to enter the birth canal. Another 3-4 pushing contractions later and I started to feel the telltale burning sensation that happens when the head starts to crown. I was absolutely shocked that I was already at this point, especially since I had not been pushing all that hard, and it took nearly an hour to get Will down that far. Another few contractions after that (with me getting louder and louder and eventually yelling about how much it hurt) and her head was out. Now during this time, Michael was getting Will ready to go (packing a bag, making him breakfast and handing him off to his grandparents). Right as the baby was starting to crown, my midwife had her assistant run out and grab Michael to tell him to come back inside or he was going to miss the birth. He walked into the room, just as her head was being born. The relief I felt in that moment was magnificent but short lived. With Will, once his head was out, his body just slid out no problem, with very little effort on my part. This time however, her body was nearly as hard to push out as her head had been, and I had to endure one more, long, painful pushing contraction in order to get the rest of her out. Pushing for me both times, was truly the worst part of labor. Finally she was out and all the pain was gone. It was 9:41. Only two hours and sixteen minutes from the time I had gone into active labor.

Amazingly, she was born in her sack. Thats one reason why her body was so hard to push out, the water was still all around her in the sack, making it a lot larger than it would have been otherwise. We had to strip the membrane off of her before I got to hold her. Also the cord was very short this time, so I had to hold her at waist level to avoid pulling on the cord too much. A few minutes later, the cord stopped pulsing and Michael got to cut it. I informed my midwife that I was starting to feel crampy, and thought the placenta was getting ready to come out. I handed the baby off to Michael, stood up in the tub, sat on the birthing stool and the placenta just came right out immediately, just like it did with Will. The midwife and her assistant both remarked that my body is extremely efficient. I'd have to agree! They checked me for tears and didn't find a single one! I was amazed as it certainly felt like I might have. I was relieved to say the least though. They helped me get cleaned up, and I got to breastfeed Eleanor for the first time. She was pretty upset and cried for the first 20 minutes, but eventually she calmed down and got in a decent feeding. She was weighed and measured and they found her to be 8 pounds 7 ounces and 20 inches long. Her head was 13" in circumference. All in all a MUCH bigger baby than Will had been. Once again I was amazed that I didn't tear. The midwives cleaned everything up and left, and Michael, Eleanor and I got some bonding time in. Will came home a few hours later and got to meet his baby sister for the first time. He was a little intrigued and kept coming over to her and gently petting her head. It was pretty adorable! Other than that, we are all doing well and are adjusting to being a new family of four!