Rebecca and Donato's Birth

Rebecca is 40 years old and has a 2 year old, Rocco, whose birth was also an unmedicated birth. They used a doula and had him in the same hospital, attended by Certified Nurse-Midwives.
 

I had contractions about every 20 - 25 minutes after I went to bed. I was able to sleep in between them so I did get some rest. At 2:45 they started coming pretty fast and furious. 2 minutes apart lasting 2 minutes. Rick(husband) called our back-up doula and the hospital because I was pretty convinced that we may have to up and leave.

This went on for 45 minutes and then they stabilized at 4-5 minutes apart lasting about 45 seconds to a minute. In the meantime our backup doula was on her way to the house and we called the hospital back to tell them we weren't coming yet.

Once Wendy (doula) got to the house she and Rick began actively working with me to relax and work through the contractions. This was about 5:00 am. They were increasing in intensity but they were getting easier to deal with thanks to both of them. Somewhere around 8:00 am they stepped up another level in intensity and I told Wendy and Rick that I wanted to go to the hospital because I felt that if we waited any longer I would be too uncomfortable in the car. At this point my contractions were still 4 - 5 minutes lasting a minute and a half.

We finally made the 45 minute trip to the hospital and got checked in to triage. Lo and behold, miracle of miracles I was dilated to 8 cm, 100% effaced with a big bulging bag of waters. I cried I was so happy...I knew I wasn't in for another 10 hours like it had been with Rocco. It was somewhere around 10:00 am by this time so we got checked in and taken to our room.

I got in the shower for awhile and when I got out I was dilated to 9+ with a lip of cervix left. They kept asking me if I wanted to start pushing but I was leery of that because I did that with Roc and pushed for an hour and didn't budge him past that lip of cervix. I had them break my water because I wanted to know if there was meconium in it (there was with Rocco which is why I wanted to know), there was, thick meconium so they put the pediatric team on alert to suction him out after he was born.

I believe that another hour or so went by after they broke my water and the contractions got more intense and he was pressing against something that made it increasingly difficult (translation - painful) to move or change positions. I tried the squat bar, couldn't do that. Tried laying on my side, no way. Then I decided that I had to pee so I got up and went and sat on the toilet...had two pushing contractions where I absolutely could not control the urge to push and he started crowning! I had to get up and get back in bed.

They paged the midwife 3 times and on the last one it was 'tell her to get here or she's going to miss it!' She got there and I pushed out his head, or rather I kept myself from pushing while his head eased out to prevent tearing.  I kept saying, "is he out yet?", it seemed like it took forever but the total time I spent pushing was 6 minutes, according to the nurse. 

The cord was wrapped around his neck. She unwrapped it, and tried to suction him out and was having some difficulty before she realized that the cord was wrapped twice and she had only unwrapped it once.  She unwrapped it again, suctioned him out and when instructed I pushed him the rest of the way out. 

I had a tiny1st degree, 3 stitch tear so the effort put in to keep me from pushing his head out was worth it :-).  He was with the pediatricians for about 15 minutes so they could finish suctioning him out and then they gave him back to me. I held him and nursed him and they didn't take him back and do the rest of the tests until about an hour and a half later. His apgars were 9 and 9 after all that so he did well in spite of it all. 

It was a wonderful birth and so much easier than Rocco's. I didn't feel as beat up at all. Matter of fact, I got up and took a shower a few hours later, I didn't have the energy to do that until the day after Rocco was born.  One thing that was distinctly different between the two was this time I didn't 'check out' and go into labor-land.  I was conversational and smiling the entire time.  Don't ask me why, I can't explain it but the midwife who delivered Donato, the nurse, our doula and my husband were rather amazed at this and to this day my husband is still talking about it.

I am very proud of my unmedicated births, it is something that I chose to do and I wouldn't try to convince anyone else to do it. I believe that you have to do what is right for you, but it is amazing how different the two births were and still they were both wonderful. 

One footnote, on Monday, the day after Donato was born, Rick left and picked up Rocco early from daycare (my mother was staying with him and we kept his schedule as 'normal' as possible). He brought him to the hospital for a visit and when they walked in the room I was nursing Donato, Roc got this huge smile on his face and he said "Brother" in the most joyful way. It brought tears to both Rick and I. He's absolutely in love with his brother and can't hold him, kiss him or hug him enough.